LAST WORD
On The Guilt Of The
Victim
O
chieng
remembers
listening
attentively to their history teacher
who was explaining about the
valiant abolitionists that fought a protracted
battle in the British parliament to stop the
horrific slave trade that had dehumanized
Africans.
He remembers that quite a few pupils in
school had been baptized Wilberforce in
honor of the stubborn Englishman who had
doggedly campaigned against the trade that
had made fortunes for the British gentry.
Yes there was a time that slavery was a
respectable trade in England.
There were a few details that were
intriguing about the story and did not really
make sense and when Ochieng asked some
pointed questions what he got as answers
fell short of explaining how this devastating
trade was able to thrive and enrich so many
on the back of slave labor.
To recap the Atlantic Triangular Trade
worked this way: Manufactured goods,
guns, beads, trinkets and cloth were
shipped to West Coast of Africa where
they obtained slaves who were then shipped
to be sold in the Americas and from there
sugar, cotton, rum, tobacco and coffee went
back to England.
The industrial revolution was stimulated
and fueled by the huge profits that this
grand trade was able to inject into the
British economy and Britain was launched
as a maritime and industrial power and
London become an international financial
center.
There is a popular saying that behind every
great fortune there is a great crime and this
was never truer than in the astronomical
profits that were realized by the British
traders which were only possible because
they were anchored on the exploitation of
free slave labor.
Slavery had always existed in the world
in some form or other but to make this
great trade work the British had to first
dehumanize Africans to the level of live
goods on the same level as farm animals
to morally justify the horrific and unjust
treatment of slaves.
Britain was not the only slave trading
country, Spain, Portugal, France and the
Dutch were all in it and as surprising as
it may sound the British were considered
the more humane of the slavers so one
can imagine the level of cruelty meted to
slaves by the others.
What Ochieng wanted to know and
the teacher was not providing adequate
answers was how the great trade was able
And to prove that we are truly bewitched
we adopted wholesale their gods who
have never been kind to us and even took
on their names which have no meaning
for us but most annoying is we took up
their political system that was used to
dominate us.
94 MAL34/20 ISSUE
to acquire so many slaves to ship across
the Atlantic to the Americas and how
was it possible to sustain the business.
It sounds incredulous that a ship left
Bristol or Liverpool manned by perhaps
ten crew members including the captain
and they were somehow able to load
three hundred to six hundred slaves for
the middle passage to the Americas.
Even today on the mention of the word
slave the immediate picture that one
conjures up in one’s mind is a black
person because so many of them were
shipped across that the name slave
was permanently associated with black
people.
Let us pause and remember that slavery
is a form of human bondage and not
another description of an African.
The Britons traded with great African
kingdoms and there were many in the
West Coast that were established and
prosperous.
It is recorded history that the African
kings of the West Coast actually sent
their sons to Britain to learn English
and they were safely brought back to
their fathers so they could facilitate
communication during the trade
negotiations and to translate for the
kings.
So it transpires that the slaves that were
traded as goods on the West Coast
were traded by Africans themselves
in exchange for mainly guns that the
kingdoms used to not only dominate
their neighbors but also traded the
captured African foes for European
goods.
This trade became so profitable for the
African kingdoms that it sparked slave
wars in that a kingdom would attack
another tribe purely to capture their