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Prof. Mohammed Arif*
SLAVERY AND FREEDOM**
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to congratulate the
Writer's International Society of Harrow and the Black History Month
for organising this meeting. I feel privileged to have been invited
to speak to you on the subject of slavery and freedom.
The "Abolition of the Slave Trade Act"
was passed by the British Parliament in 1807. This Act outlawed the
slave trade in the British Empire. It was achieved as a result of
enormous struggle by the slaves themselves as well as by their
supporters and sympathisers throughout the world.
To understand the horrors of slavery,
we need to be both passionate and informed about the way in which
human relations were perverted by the insatiable thirst for
excessive wealth.
I would like to quote Makgabuka K
Kola, a distinguished African writer who said, "a person without
knowledge of his own history, culture and identity is a lost person.
He is like a lifeless leaf that drifts aimlessly with neither
direction nor destiny over the ocean of time."
This quotation underlines the
significance of this meeting and indeed the importance of Black
History Month. Slavery did try to disconnect African slaves from
their heritage, achievements, culture and identity.
Slavery is about the ownership and
control of people by other people through economic and military
means. It has existed since the beginning of time, long before it
came to be seen in terms of race. In fact, slavery was an economic
institution of the greatest importance. It was the basis of the
Greek economy and propped up the Roman Empire.
The demand for African slave labour
arose in the New World through the development of plantation
agriculture, the long-term rise in the price of sugar, cotton and
minerals, and the need for domestic servants. The African slave
trade was massively boosted and carried out on an industrial scale
as Europeans began to invade and occupy that continent. Corrupt
African rulers were supported by Europeans to participate in the
ghastly trade.
This point was eloquently elaborated
by Karl Marx: "Western capitalism, in its period of primitive
accumulation, turned Africa into a commercial warren for the hunting
of black skin." Marx further pointed out that "labour in the white
skin can never be free when in the black it is branded".
The state of Virginia in the USA was
the primary site for the development of black slavery. In 1672, the
King of England chartered the Royal Africa Company to bring a
shipload of slaves from West Africa to the trading centres in
Virginia. Prior to that time, the Dutch had already formed their own
Dutch West Indies Co. in 1621 to ship slaves to the Americas.
African slaves were also in great
demand because they were skilled workers, experts in tropical
agriculture. They had high immunity to malaria and yellow fever
compared with Europeans and Native Americans. The slave trade made
slave traders rich and brought a massive supply of labour to the
Caribbean and American colonies. Capitalism in America could not
have progressed without the slave trade. They did not succeed in
enslave Native Americans (so-called "Red Indians") as they were
rebellious, supported by their tribes and knew their country better
than white immigrants, while African slaves found themselves in a
strange atmosphere in a strange country without any help or support.
As a result of the trans-Atlantic
slave trade between the 16th - mid 19th centuries, over 20 million
Africans were removed from their homes and shipped to the New World.
Around 50 per cent died, either in transit or while being prepared
for servitude.
These sons and daughters of the
African continent were kidnapped and forcibly carried to the
Americas to be sold and branded with the initials of their masters’
name, with large iron hooks hung around their necks. Extremely cruel
instruments of torture were used against them. This applied not only
to the USA but also to the Caribbean and South America.
Slavery In America Was Fundamentally Different From Other Parts
Of The World. Here, Most Blacks Were Slaves And No Slaves Were
White. It Was Strictly Racial.
From 1660 to 1860, slavery in the
United States was governed by an extensive body of laws: These laws
made slavery a permanent condition inherited through the mother and
defined slaves as property. It placed the label of inferiority on
black skin and black culture. Slaves could not marry, own property,
give evidence in a court of law, carry weapons, assemble in groups
or leave plantations without permission of their master; slaves
could be bought and sold, auctioned, rented and separated from their
family.
It may be worth noting that many
distinguished leaders of the US were slave owners. In 1774 George
Washington held 202 slaves, while Thomas Jefferson owned 187 slaves
and both became Presidents of the United States and "founding
fathers" of the nation. However, in their lifetimes, they did very
little to relieve the suffering of slaves. In fact, African slaves
had very few supporters and friends in the countries which owned and
traded them. With the honourable exception of Methodists and
Quakers, many leading churches supported and profited from the slave
trade.
Many slaves were converted to
Christianity but that led to little improvement in their conditions.
Slave owners had Christian names but no Christian ethics. The
complicity of some Christian missionaries in the plunder of Africa
has been very powerfully presented by Gomo Kenyatta, former
president of Zambia: "When the white man came to Africa, he had the
Bible and we had the land, and now we have the Bible and he has the
land."
The intellectual basis for the slave
trade was provided by a twisted logic promoted by the slave owners,
that slave labour was uneconomic and if slaves were freed, then they
would not produce enough to feed themselves. At the same time, slave
owners were renting slaves, earning rental income and were still
able to feed them. This proved the duplicitous nature of this logic.
Slavery in America was different from
other parts of the world not only because of its racial dimensions
but also because it was solely motivated by commercial incentives.
In other words a slave was not only considered to be a chattel but
also racially and culturally inferior.
It is important to note that "slavery was not born out of racism
but racism was the consequence of slavery".
Slavery has existed as a human
institution in Africa and Asia since the days immemorial but it was
not based on race or the colour of skin. It typically involved
prisoners of war and was considered a humane alternative to
prisoners being put to death. It was common in Africa for slave
owners to adopt slave children and to marry slave women who then
became a full member of the family. Slaves, after gaining their
freedom, faced no difficulty in settling down in society as equals.
Slaves accumulated property and in some cases reached the status of
kings, for example Jaja of Opobo in Nigeria. One finds similar
instances in the Islamic world: Prophet Mohammed's own spokesman was
a slave named Bilal. There had been a slave dynasty in India. Within
Europe, slavery was common but was not based on the racial
inferiority of slaves. For example, Cicero, the great orator and
statesman of Rome, had a low opinion of the intellectual ability of
the English, but it was not racial. He wrote in 50 BC to Atticus,
his close friend and a slave trader who had settled in Athens: "Do
not obtain slaves from England because they are so utterly incapable
of being taught that they are unfit to form a part of the household
in Athens."
On the other hand, slavery in America
was solely based on the colour of the skin and the racist perception
of the inferiority of the African culture.
The example of Phyllis Wheatley is a case in point. Phyllis was born
in Senegal in 1753. She was abducted into slavery at the age of
seven and shipped to Boston, USA. She was brought up by a family
called Wheatley. At the age of 13, Phyllis had not only achieved a
complete command of the English language, but also had studied
Greek, Latin and published her first poem. Later on, she published
many masterpiece poems and pieces of prose. Had she lived in more
enlightened times, she could have won the Nobel Prize. Many of her
white opponents could not believe that a young black slave was
capable of writing so well and so profoundly. They also could not
tolerate her revolutionary views regarding freedom, human equality
and human dignity. The racists at the time tried to dismiss her as a
fraud. The Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts prosecuted her in a
court of law for plagiarism, which was a criminal offence at that
time. She won the case and the racists were forced to acknowledge
that she was the sole author of her works.
Oscar Wilde later on wrote that the
mistreatment of Phyllis Wheatley could be put down to the fact that
they (Americans) were a nation of philistines who would not have
been able to define the term "philistine".
It is an established maxim that where
there is oppression, there is resistance. There were slave revolts
in America as early as 1712. In New York slaves revolted - the
revolt was not successful and 21 slaves were executed. Again there
was another revolt in New York in 1741. However, the successful
revolt took place in Haiti in 1791. The slaves set us the first free
black state. The Haitian revolutionaries exploded the myth of white
imperialist supremacy by driving the Spanish, the British and the
French out of their island in a brilliant guerrilla war.
At the same time, anti-slavery
movements were set up all over Europe and in America.
The 1772 Case of Somerset vs Stuart,
with Judgement by Mansfield, the Chief Justice of England, freeing
the slave (Somerset) from bondage is held to be a landmark in
British judicial history. Mansfield held that slavery was irrational
and could only be maintained by perverse laws.
In 1774, a Ghanaian scholar presented
a brilliant thesis against slavery in a University in Holland,
arguing that slavery was inconsistent and incompatible with
Christianity.
In 1775, Lord Dumore, Commander of
British Forces in America, declared freedom for slaves who joined
the British forces against the rebels.
George Washington also asked the help
of slaves to fight for freedom from the British, promising that he
would put the issue of abolition of slavery before the Congress,
knowing full well that the Congress would never approve it.
In 1778, the Society of Friends of
Blacks was set up in Paris.
In 1807 Britain finally abolished the
slave trade in all its colonies.
In this respect, the contributions of
Lord (William) Wilberforce (a Conservative MP) and Thomas Clarkson
in fighting slavery were extremely important. They helped to set up
anti-slavery committees throughout the country and mobilised public
opinion against it.
Moreover, the French revolution of
1789 played a major role in providing the ideological basis for
revolt against slavery. One of the first acts of the revolution was
to abolish slavery.
When Britain finally abolished the
slave trade, it compensated the slave owners but not the slaves,
leaving the question of compensation and reparation unresolved. This
is a powerful argument for the cancellation of all African debt as a
collective way of admitting responsibility and atoning for the
suffering western countries caused.
It will not be out of the place to
mention that indentured migrant labour from South Asia in the
nineteenth century carried on where the classical slave trade left
off. Indentured labourers from South Asia were dispatched to the
plantations of the empire from the Pacific to the Caribbean. Death
rates on these sea voyages were similar to those on the earlier
Trans-Atlantic slave trade voyages.
Today, there are some 30 million
slaves in the world, if you include bonded labour, child labour, and
a large numbers of women caught up in international prostitution.
Moreover, neo-liberalism and the
dominance of multinationals are enslaving the people of Africa, Asia
and Latin America, with debt bondage predatory pricing, skewed
concepts of intellectual property rights, interference in internal
affairs under the pretext of "human rights", wars, occupations,
setting up puppet regimes, and the outright exploitation and theft
of the natural resources of these countries.
Whatever we do, Ladies and Gentlemen,
we must not allow the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave
trade to mollify us into self-congratulation. We ought to link it
with the broader issues of today, such as poverty, disease,
inequality, exploitation, environmental degradation, unprovoked
attacks against defenceless countries, and occupation. I firmly
believe the battle is far from won.
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* British Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization
** This speech was delivered on slavery and Freedom’s meeting held
by Writer's International Society of Harrow in Association with
Black History Month
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