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COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE -- Issue 2

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD -- PART ONE

ALTHOUGH there are many blots on the world’s copybook -- the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Spanish Inquisition, the Witch Trials and, more recently, the spate of African tribal persecutions -- there are few that are as immediately emotive as slavery. In its inhumanity and brutality, in the suffering it brought to so many who were undeserving of such harsh treatment, in its disregard for human dignity, slavery is one of the most severe atrocities. Or so it seems to us from our ivory tower of civilised respectability.
....As we look at the history of the New World we can see the slavery that helped to make America prosperous as a major factor that also helped to shape and reshape nations and continents. But that has always been the case. Although it is the US slave trade that is the focus for our condemnation, it is well to remember that slavery has been around for a lot longer than America. The pyramids in Egypt and South America weren’t built by a crowd of Irish navvies on hire from MacAlpine nor were they Romans dying in the gladiatorial arena. In many eastern and African societies a tradition of slave ownership had existed for hundreds of years and only ceased to flourish in the censorous gaze of the Western invaders seeking an excuse to bring civilisation to the fuzzy wuzzies.
....Not that the western oppressors had much of a claim to civilisation themselves. Although slavery had been abolished in most of the First World countries by the second decade of the 18th century, less overt forms of bondage continued to exist. The rules of serfdom and peonage were still in existence in England and other western countries at the start of the 20th century. And -- surprise, surprise -- it was in England that the abolition of the slave trade had the biggest impact. Although many countries had been involved in the trade in people, few had been as involved as the British. And, indeed, only the British had the naval resources and the arrogance to enforce the new anti-slavery laws on the high seas for the whole of Europe. In theory, anyway.
....With the British out of the way, the trade passed to the Portuguese and the Spanish. They had not abolished the slave trade and they were both maritime nations capable of filling the gap left by the English. The British, of course, as always unable to keep their nose out of their own protectionism, assumed the responsibility for policing the oceans wide with some verve. Noble? Or . . . . With the slave trade no longer a runner, British merchants were forging new trade links with the African nations. But, whilst the slave trade existed with other nations, African potentates, who made a lot of money out of selling their citizens to the slave traders, were reluctant to develop other forms of trade. And the British didn’t like that.
....It was, however, a fairly fruitless task trying to patrol an ocean with only 20 ships. Other than at either end of of the sea journey, it was unlikely that slave ships would encounter any resistance. Although, between 1825 and 1865 nearly 1300 slave ships were stopped and over 130, 000 erstwhile slaves were liberated, during the same period over 1.8 million slaves are thought to have arrived in North America.
....Not all the slaves transported across the seas by the Portuguese and Spanish were destined for the Americas. They had their own dominions in the Caribbean to service before they got to the American mainland. From the sugar plantations of Barbados to the banana fields of Jamaica, blacks took over the islands, with the reluctant immigrants making up more than 90% of the population on several.
....If the zeal with which the British policed the seas seemed somewhat contradictory, not to say hypocritical, it is only because it was. For it had been (oh, dear!) the British who had opened up the slave trade with North America in the first place. The first slaves had arrived in Virginia in the early 1600s. Throughout the 17th and the early 18th centuries, slaves continued to be funnelled into the States in a steady stream. By 1790, blacks constituted around one third of the population of the southern states. Although some freed blacks gravitated towards the northern states, where slavery had increasingly been the subject of condemnation, the negro population of North America was concentrated in the south in the slave communities that worked the land on behalf of the Massa.
....In the 1830’s the south was moved to stand up for its ‘peculiar institution.’ In a spirited defense of the institution of slavery, it came up with not only economic justifications but also put forward a biblical case and one of racial inferiority. The south argued its case with little success for thirty years until, finally, eleven states took the massive step of seceding from the Union and forming the Confederate States of America. The result was the Civil War.
....Although the ensuing war ended forever the trade in slaves, it did little to bring about the emancipation, integration and equality that would have made it worthwhile. Blacks remained and still remain a sub-culture within the USA. It was, however, one that would have a powerful influence.