Synopsis

Racism is as old as the human race and has been the cause of most of the world’s problems as well as inhumane treatment among humans. Slavery was one of the causes of racism and it affected the African ethnic group.  Slavery, or involuntary human servitude, was a major practice across the United States from prehistoric era to the mid-modern era. In the United States, the subject of slavery is the least favored and people choose not to discuss the details and many have envisioned its existence before the American Civil War. Many societies recognized slaves as property. Traditionally, slavers served their owners by performing domestic labor, which enhanced the status of the slave owners. Slavery represented one of the few methods of producing wealth available to common people. Racism existed because blacks were viewed as un-human or inferior because of their dark complexion. Basically, people viewed race as a factor to decide who should be a slave owner and who would serve as slaves. Even in modern day United States, racial prejudice plays a very important role. In the era of slavery, Slave owners, mostly held racial prejudices against blacks presumably because of their race. Psychologist Jack[1] Brigham of Florida State University, an expert in racial attitudes research conducted a study involving students from diverse ethnic backgrounds and encompassed prejudice scores. Black participants had higher prejudice scores and were viewed as less Americans, in relation to Whites. He proceeded to conclude that, “the results strongly

support a role of racism [in the society].” Slavery can have many forms: forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor, among others. Nonetheless, slavery, regardless of form, shares a range of characteristics. For example, enslaved people are forced to work against their will via use of force. Slaves are also controlled by mental and physical abuse. Slaves can also be constrained and their freedom can be taken away. Slaves can also be enslaved from generation to generation. However, most importantly gender-specific forms of slavery are most central to the existence of slavery.

According to Slavery and Gender[2], “poverty, greed, and marginalization of women and girls and of minority groups,” were mostly obligated to work and perform services including but not limited to sexual favors. It is apparent that gender discrimination also played a vital role in slavery.  For example, women were less valuable assets to slave owners than male slaves were because female slaves were unable to perform labor-intensive tasks due to the fact that they were physically unfit and couldn’t sustain long periods of labor. As indicated in Slavery and Gender, slaves were typically forced to “work long hours regardless of their age or health, sometimes for seven days a week, 365 days a year.” Slaves were also commonly traded as commodity for other luxuries of life. The mistreatment of slaves was directly correlated with the racial prejudices associated with an African decent. There is a popular proverb that states, “Until the lion writes its own history, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” In other words, the true nature of slavery will never be discovered, until the slaves themselves document their own mistreatment or someone else does so on their behalf. Since the Colonial Slavery, there have been numerous publications shedding light on the mistreatments of African slaves. Based on publications such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass[3], some of the gruesome treatments of slaves were documented. Frederick Douglass was the son of an African-American woman and a white slaveholder. His dramatic autobiography was published in 1845, creating a sensation and spurring Douglass’s career as a militant, uncompromising leader of African-Americans.

Moreover, slaves received severe punishments for even the slightest offense. For instance, Frederick Douglass, who himself was an ex-slave, published his narrative during the colonial era of slavery noted that the act of raping an African slave was not only legal, but also a daily occurrence. The mere fact that Africans were not viewed as humans, but as property made it legal to commit the gruesome act of rape. Frederick Douglass also stated that slaves were beaten severely and would mostly sustain life-threatening injuries. Women made-up the majority of the slave population and participated in functions such as trading and cotton spinning, in addition to domestic chores such as preparing food, washing clothes and cleaning. In his narrative, Mr. Douglass continued to educate his audience by informing them that colonial slavery was not only physically abusive, but also mentally. Furthermore, according to the narrative, slave owners would order their slaves to be stripped naked, raped, beaten and as a direct consequence would die due to severe injuries. Furthermore, Inhumane treatment and racism were the direct consequences of slavery providing a source of cheap labor.

            Mistreatment and racism were not only directed towards African slaves but have also been witnessed in other events across the world such as the Holocaust. According to Slavery in Africa[4], the article in Encarta, non-Africans, such as Jews were enslaved through channels such as warfare. In addition, after the 5^th century BC, Romans were the dominant force in scavenging the African continent and acquiring massive numbers of slaves.

Ultimately, the practices of slavery expanded and were adapted by the Arabs and the Europeans. Slavery in Africa, points out that the Atlantic slave trade was developed in the west coast of Africa. This was a direct result of new explorations of trade lines by the Europeans who were the first major traders in Africa. The article also mentions that the Portuguese were the first group of Europeans to explore the African continent, followed by the British and the French. In Slavery in Africa, European colonial powers began to pursue agriculture and expand in the New World, which consisted of North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean islands).  Additionally, the article indicates that as European demand grew for products such as sugar, tobacco, rice, and cotton; the need for plantation labor increased.

The increased demand for plantation required an increased demand in the number of slaves supplied. According to Slavery in Africa, the West and Central African states already supplied the Europeans with African slaves for export. Also, enslaved men and women from Africa provided a source of reliable and inexpensive labor by European standards. Therefore, Africans became the major source, and eventually the only source of plantation labor in the New World, as indicated in Slavery in Africa.

Due to the abundant supply of slaves provided by the African continent, the different European powers set ground rules in partitioning Africa. As Mark Rosenberg, a European writer attested, “what ultimately resulted from the Berlin Conference was a hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that divided Africa into 50 irregular countries. This new map was superimposed over the 1,000 indigenous cultures and regions of Africa.”

Moreover, according to Licence to Colonise[5] February 26, 2010 marked the 125 years from the end of the Berlin Conference that led to the partition of lands in the African continent. The Berlin Conference was held over a period of three months in a snowy Berlin, and attended by 14 European nations and the USA. The conference opened in Berlin on November 15, 1884 and officials from countries such as Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway, Turkey, and the United States among others attended the conference. As the demand for agricultural products increased, Europeans deemed it necessary to divide Africa and exploit its resources strategically and to decrease hostility between the European nations.

As a Nigerian journalist points out, “the partition of Africa must not be seen as an isolated event. It was a continuation of previous policies of European exploitation and flowed naturally from the 400 years of transatlantic slavery. Having provided the wealth that created the basis for the Industrial Revolution in Europe, transatlantic slavery had outlined its main usefulness, the industries needed raw materials and these were to be found in Africa.” Clearly, the European nations viewed Africa as an important element in the creation of wealth and sought after it diligently.

Johann Blumenbach, a German professor of ethnology, has created a color-coded classification hierarchy of all races – whites, brown, yellow, black and red. Later on, a French ethnologist refined Blumenbach’s color classification. In Licence to Colonise, it is stated that the color-coding scheme, “included a complete racial hierarchy with white-skinned people of European origins at the top.” In the era of colonial slavery, this idea was widely accepted by the majority of the people in Europe. As Africa was being divided and partitioned among Europeans – not a single African was at the table at Berlin Conference. People from African blood were not even involved in the process of partitioning their continent.

The article, Licence to Colonise, indicated that, “over the three months that the Berlin Conference lasted, the Europeans powers similarly haggled over territories all over Africa, disregarding the cultural and linguistic boundaries established by the indigenous population, after the conference, the give-and take continued and by the 1920s, 90% of Africa had come under tight colonial bondage. The continent had been carved into 50 disparate countries, most of which cut across the logic nationality, geography, language, culture and other unifying factors.” The excerpt above indicates that European colonization had dominated Africa during the era of colonial slavery and the territories were strategically partitioned to that the demand for slaves are met in order to increase the production of rice, cotton, and tobacco in the European countries.

Most of the Africans who were enslaved were prisoners and captives resulting from slave raids. Slave raiding became an attractive and most efficient form of acquiring slaves because slave traders were now able to capture and export slaves by the hundreds to meet expected demands. The practice of slave raiding consisted of gathering, organizing, and collecting slaves by force and transporting them across coast mainly via ships. [6]A Portuguese official in 1724 had said, “ There is no difference between negroes and goods.” As usual, the arrival of the slaves in the fifteenth century in Portugal set the tone for what happened next. It was very systematic the way the slaves were brought in. Once a ship carrying slaves had anchored off Lisbon, in the old days, several officials would be carried out to the ship to inspect the cargo; the slaves would be assembled on the deck and listed. They would be taken to the Casa dos Escravos, where they would be divided into lots for the purpose of deciding the taxes due. The director and the treasurer would carefully examine each slave, who would be naked. A price would then be fixed and the price tag was hung around the slave’s neck. The slaves were treated like cattle or even furniture. Not given the right to speak or ask questions of their fate, the slaves would take their place on the dock and be examined.

Once the slaves arrived to their destination in Europe, they were not only stripped of their human title but they were denied the means to read and write. Europeans would not allow their slaves to be educated in fear of their growing wisdom and possibly revolting against the masters. [7]Anthony Tibbles believes that racist beliefs come from personal experience and familiarity with Africans as subordinates. This was the case throughout the Americas for slave masters and non-slave holding whites. Having forced Africans into slavery, having imposed inferiority by denying them means or motivation to read and write, and having established a system whereby all values, traditions, achievements and accomplishments were to be judged by European values and morality, there was little that the African could do not to be inferior, at least in the eyes of Europeans. This is clearly tied in with racism. Not only did Europeans view Africans as being “ape” like and thus they treated them like animals. [8]Willem Bosman reported of his fellow countrymen the Dutch, that some of their traders seemed “utterly ignorant of the manners of the people and don’t know how to treat them with that decency which they require. Racist ideas were leading to completely degrading the slaves of even their human rights. The way these slaves were treated was almost barbaric, especially considering the fact that most Europeans who were Christian were proud of themselves for being a civilized people. As a matter of fact, [9]Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban has said, “We acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade, including the Transatlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their magnitude, organized nature and especially their negation of the essence of victims, and further acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should have always been so, especially the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and are among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African decent, Asians and people of Asian decent and indigenous peoples were victims of these and continue to be victims of their consequences.” With Europe’s economy thriving and their advancing technology, it is no wonder why they would choose Africans as slaves. The Africans did not have the means to retaliate and were not as strong and powerful as the Europeans were.

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[1] Vergano, Dan. "Study: Racial Prejudice Plays Role in Obama Citizenship Views - Science Fair - USATODAY.com." News, Travel, Weather, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, U.S. & World - USATODAY.com. USA TODAY, 05 Jan. 2011. Web. 20 July 2011. <http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/04/social-scientists-look-at-racisms-role-in-birther-viewpoint/1>.

[2] Herzfeld, Beth. "Slavery and Gender: Women's Double Exploitation." Gender and Development 10.1 (2002): 50-55. Print.

[3] "Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave." Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE. Web. 20 July 2011. <http://ucblibrary3.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/>.

[4] "Slavery in Africa." Login Page. Web. 20 July 2011. <http://autocww.colorado.edu/~blackmon/E64ContentFiles/AfricanHistory/SlaveryInAfrica.html>.

[5] Licence to Colonise 492 (2010): 14-20. Print.

[6] Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: the Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Print

[7] Tibbles, Anthony. Transatlantic Slavery: against Human Dignity. London: HMSO, 1994. Print.

[8] Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: the Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Print

[9] Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. Race and Racism: an Introduction. Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2006. Print.

Short Essay #3

Zarmina Ismail

HST 498

July 1, 2011

Short Essay 3

Change of Attitude

            European influence had been a part of the African continent for many years. Although Islam dominated most parts of Africa, European culture and presence was starting to spread throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The idea of bringing Europe to Africa rather than bringing Africans to Europe was more attractive to Europeans now. Scientists wanted to observe Africans while Christians wanted to convert them to Christianity. Between 1790 and 1875, the steady expansion of European activities and the growing assurance of Europeans, transformed the nature of the European presence in Africa. One way in which Europeans attitudes towards Africans changed between 1800 and 1960 was by converting the Africans to Christianity and making them more civilized.

            From 1790 to 1945, the number of both African slaves and people of pure African descent were declining in Europe. People of pure African descent were not as much as before because so many Africans were mixing in with the Europeans. These mixed Africans were now being called Negros. The practice of slavery was also becoming less popular as ships carrying slaves were going in the opposite direction and were now carrying Europeans to live in Africa. Africa was a new world and Europeans wanted to be a part of it. These European imperialists wanted to occupy and colonize Africa. As European technology was advancing, they thought of themselves as the lords of mankind and needed to spread their knowledge among the Africans. It was the European people’s duty as Christians to convert the Africans to their religion. By doing so, these Europeans were also civilizing the Africans. Although most Africans were Muslim, many of them were converting. Of course Europeans still thought that Africans were inferior to them because Africans had been the slaves of Europeans for hundreds of years.

            As the gap between the two continents widened, Europeans began to adopt new attitudes towards peoples of alien culture whose way of life seemed increasingly different from their own. Scientists were especially interested in observing the ways of African people and who they really were. These scientific investigators studied the Africans and experimented with their skin colors. Through these experiments the scientists concluded that the lighter skinned the African the more exotic their brains were and the darker the African the less exotic the brain.

            The reason why these Europeans were invading Africa was because Africa had a lot to offer in trade. It was an open market for Europeans and the trading goods would help the economic statuses of their countries; especially Great Britain since it had gone through a long economic depression. Europe had a high demand of raw materials that Africa had. Theses materials were: copper, cotton, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea and tin. European industries had grown almost dependent on these materials. Britain wanted the Southern and Eastern coasts of Africa to use as stopover ports when going to Asia and India.

            Africans from different parts of Africa were resisting the Europeans. However, the industrial revolution had provided the European armies with advanced weapons such as machine guns, which African armies had difficulty defeating. Also, unlike their European counterparts, African rulers and its people did not at first form a continental united front although within a few years, a Pan-African movement did emerge.

            Before 1790, Africa was viewed as a dark continent by Europeans. By the 1870’s this image had changed because Europeans had more information on Africans than they did before. Their interests in the continent had grown and the tide of their activities which were often abrasive and sometimes invigorating in impact of African societies was steadily rising. European imperialists were taking over Africa and using it in any and every way possible all while converting the Africans to the Christian religion and civilizing them. 

Short Essay 2

Religion & Social Class

            During the 17^th and 18^th century, governments in Europe were politically structured to address the needs of a few elite who were ranked at the very top of the social class hierarchy. An important factor is that the political structure involved religion. Religion has always been at the center of conflict – between and within empires. Moreover, religion was a characteristic of social class. Social class is the degree of prestige attached to an individual’s position in society. A high social status meant more power and privilege. The different types of characteristics that can determine one’s social class can include, but not limited to: race, ethnicity, gender, age, skin color, economic class, religious sect, and regional grouping. The connection between Christianity and social status was that Africans who were Christian were sometimes able to get out of slavery and build a community with other Africans who were Christian.

            In Sue Peabody’s 2004 article, discusses how Christianity was linked to social status. She states that slavery was illegal in France although the French people embraced the notion that dark skinned people were inferior to whites. The French expressed some discrimination against anyone who was darker than them. Although slavery was illegal in France, slaves were brought to France for two reasons which were for religious instruction or for training in a particular trade. The religious instruction was to teach the Africans about Christianity and make them a more civilized people. Peabody also explains how a trial for Jean Boucaux, a slave brought from Saint Dominingue, favored in him being freed of slavery. The attorney general argued that Boucaux was a man equal to them and he was a citizen. They considered him French because he was born the subject of their monarch and he was their equal as much by humanity as by the religion which Boucaux professed. Boucaux went from slave status to the status of a free man and one of the reasons that Boucaux was freed was because of his Christian religion.

            In Gretchen Gerzina’s 2002 article, the Christian religion of black men and slaves in Europe brought them together. In the article, Equiano wrote a Christianized tale combining a religious awakening and commercial enterprise. Black seamen identified themselves first as African and Christian and secondarily as seamen. Whether they were enslaved or free, they became perceived as a community through the combined lenses of race, religion and travel. The article explained how seamen both of slave and non slave social statuses were brought together by their Christian religion. In Christopher Brown’s 2008 article, he discusses how the religion of Christianity had made possible the more ambitious commitment to rid the entire societies of long accepted customs and practices that degraded the human race.  The religious leaders of every Protestant denomination and every Catholic order regarded slaveholding among their brethren as unexceptional and unobjectionable. In this article, Christianity forbids anyone of any social status to own slaves because the religion does not allow slaveholding. Pierre H. Bouelle’s article talks about how nonwhites were viewed as exotic in France. If prejudice was expressed against them, it was only because they were not Christians and remained uncivilized. Here in this article, Christianity and social status are not connected because anyone who was not Christian was considered to be uncivilized no matter their status. Nicholas Hudson does not really discuss Christianity and social status because Great Britain was against slavery altogether. You did not have to be Christian to be a free black man in Great Britain as the government did not allow anyone to be of slave status there.

            In conclusion, the connection between Christianity and social status in Europe was that being Christian could help a slave become a free man. The Christian religion also brought free men and slaves together to build a community among them because they had their ethnicity and religion in common. In some places such as Britain where slavery was illegal, the Christian religion did not have much of a connection with the social status because everyone was free there. There were classes of rich and poor but nobody was a slave. Discussed here were the many different reasons of connections between Christianity and social status in Medieval Europe.

Short Essay One for HST 498

Zarmina Ismail

HST – 498

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Short Essay One

            Most Americans assumption of slavery is that it started here in the United States. Americans are responsible for binging innocent Africans over here and making them work to their core. What many people are not aware of however is that slavery goes back hundreds of years. Africans were used as slaves in Europe as far back as the 1400’s and were treated just as poorly as they were by Americans. Italians, Germans, French and the British took advantage of these people and the idea crossed over the Atlantic Ocean and into the U.S also. Slaves were used to work in the fields, and also to perform domestic chores. The increased number of slaves in Europe resulted in a large variety of abuses, mistreatments, and intense violence. Before Africans were brought to Europe, Europeans based their images of the Africans on what they would read from the published books of travelers. They had an interest in Africa and kept in contact with them. The images of Africans changed among the Mediterranean and Atlantic Europeans throughout the medieval period because their positive relations turned into taking advantage of the Africans and turning them into market and domestic slaves.

            The Europeans always imagined Africa as a hot, rainy and forested continent with exotic fauna and many black people. By the seventeenth century, Western Europeans were able to see Africans in both a European environment as well as in their own African homelands. The Italians, French and English got their images of Africans from books published by travelers such as Peter Martyr, Leo Africanus, Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas. Portuguese travelers brought back stories of African politics, traditions and customs mainly of the Kongo and Ethiopian nations. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, Europeans and Western Africans kept in contact. People are not sure whether they had cultural conflicts or if they were just societies in contact with each other. Europeans wanted to spread their Christian beliefs throughout Africa and influence them more than the Muslims. Soon after exploring the West Coast of Africa, Portuguese sailors started to enslave Africans and have them work on sugar plantations. Spaniards discovered sugar plantations in parts of Cuba and soon followed in the Portuguese footsteps and imported slaves back from Africa to work in the sugar plantations.

            During the medieval time, Italy was the economic center of Europe. (Lecture 1.3). When the black plague broke out in Europe it wiped out half of the population there and Italy had a labor shortage. Landlords in Italy started looking for slaves on the Italian Peninsula and wanted slaves that would work for them like the Serbs did. (Lecture 1.3). When Italians heard of the African slaves they soon started to import as well. Some slaves were ordered to work on farms while other slaves were domestic and had to do household chores. Sometimes the domestic slaves were seen as “exotic” by their masters and were used for sexual pleasure as well.

            In the 1600’s, the English, French and the Dutch had established colonies in the West Indies and started an African slave trade. By this time, most Europeans were only enslaving Africans. Their images of Africans were that they were cheaper, and better at labor than other slaves. Sugar was developed in Africa and became the main export to Europe. The rising European demand for sugar was creating a fierce competition for slaves and for new sugar colonies. From the 1500's to the mid-1800's, the Europeans were shipping out about 12 million black slaves from Africa to not only Europe but the entire Western Hemisphere. Nearly 2 million of these slaves died on the voyages. The African slave trade increased throughout the years from 1400’s to the 1600’s.

By the 1600’s, Africans were the only slaves that Europeans were using which was a change from Indians and Western Asians that they were using before. The Europeans had an image of Africans which was always to keep relations with them and to bring them to Europe and use them as slaves. What they read in the books brought by sailors was of an “exotic” land and people, but once they knew they could use them for their own good those images started changing.  Africans were slaves in Europe all throughout the medieval years.