Dynamic Africa

Richard and John Lander visit the King of Badagry, Nigeria, circa 1830-31.

The two men, brothers and British explorers from Truro in Cornwall, England, had been sent by the British government to explore the length and course of the Niger River and map it. They published their results in a “Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger”, in 1832.

Note the European arms in the King’s place.

Not sure who the King of Badagry was at this time but you can read more about Badagry, a coastal town in southwestern Nigeria that served as a port during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade where many of the kidnapped and enslaved peoples were transported to Brasil.

Nigeria’s first Christian mission is located in Badagry.

b-sama:

AFRICAN INDEPENDENCE

African Independence is a feature-length documentary covering the history of the African continent since enslavement and colonization by Europeans.

The film highlights the birth and realization of and the problems confronted by the movement to win independence in Africa.

The story is told through the voices of freedom fighters and leaders who achieved independence and justice for Africans.

It seeks to enlighten and provide audiences with African insights into the continent’s past, present and future through the lens of four watershed events: World War II, the end of colonialism, the Cold War and the era of African republics.

On my ‘to watch’ list.

White American Writer Joe Mozingo Traces, Discovers & Chronicles His African Ancestry

“I always had kind of a longing to understand the history of the place I lived in, and I think that kind of came from the fact that I had no family history that I knew of. … Then when people started asking me my name … I kept wondering, how is it that we don’t actually know where this name came from?”

“I met a professor, who was Sherrie Mazingo, and she was black, and she had done a lot more research than I had on our genealogy, and had been to a family reunion in North Carolina. [She] came back with the news that the name was African, and that we all descended from the same person, and he was, in her words, a ‘Bantu warrior.’ My uncle, out of nowhere, said we did in fact come from Virginia, where this slave had landed.”

“There was the period in Virginia, that I had never known about, where free blacks and poor whites were mixing and even getting married.”

“We think he landed when he was about 11 years old, near Jamestown, and basically when these Africans arrived, you know they figured they wouldn’t live more than a couple of years — there was no reason to have a lifelong slave — so they treated them as indentured servants.

“Edward appears to have had a contract with his master to work a certain amount of time.”

“There was this brief period when Edward did well, and then the rich classes really wanted to put the squeeze on the poor to create this system of slavery, which really marginalized the poor whites and the free people of color. Their fates went downhill really fast; they were suddenly out of money. One of them even re-indentured himself to pay off some debt.

“They basically started leaving the area, and that was the time they could reinvent themselves. Those that were light-skinned enough could say they were white, and wherever they landed they came up with a new myth. You know, people said they were French Huguenots, Portuguese — anything but African.”

(cont. reading)

melanatedcontributions:

Gaspar Yanga

When students learn about slavery in school, a lot of them often ask this question: “Why didn’t they fight back?” It’s a question that often remains unanswered because lesson plans don’t always address the grittier elements of history, particularly the slave trade.

But they did fight back. And one of them, Gaspar Yanga, changed history forever.

Often referred to as the “first liberator of the Americas,” Yanga was a leader of a slave rebellion in Mexico during the early period of Spanish colonial rule around 1570. By the year 1609, the large number of escaped slaves had reduced much of rural Mexico to desperation, especially in the mountains in the state of Veracruz.

Taking refuge in the difficult terrain of the highlands, Yanga and his people built a small maroon colony, or “Palenque”—a community of runaway slaves living on mountaintops. The colony grew for more than 30 years, partially surviving by capturing caravans bringing goods to Veracruz. In 1609, the Spanish colonial government decided to try to regain control of the territory.

Spanish troops, numbering around 550, set out from Puebla in January 1609. The maroons facing them were an irregular force of 100 fighters with some type of firearm and 400 more with primitive weapons such as stones, machetes, and bows and arrows. These maroon troops were led by Francisco de la Matosa, an Angolan. Yanga—who was quite old by this time—decided to use his troops’ superior knowledge of the terrain to resist the Spaniards. His goal was to cause the Spaniards enough pain to draw them to the negotiating table.

Upon the approach of the Spanish troops, Yanga sent terms of peace, including an area of self-rule. The Spaniards refused the terms and the two groups fought a battle that lasted for many years. Finally, unable to win indefinitely, the Spaniards agreed to give Yanga’s followers their freedom in exchange for ending the constant raids in the area and gain their help in tracking down other escaped slaves.

Additional conditions were also met, including:

1. Upon surrender, Yanga and his people would receive a farm as well as the right of self-government;
2. Only Franciscan priests would tend to the people; and
3. Yanga’s family would be granted the right of rule.

In 1618, the treaty was signed, and by 1630, the town of San Lorenzo de los Negros de Cerralvo was established. The town name of “San Lorenzo de los Negros” was officially changed to Yanga, Veracruz in 1956. This town of more than 20,000 people remains under the name of Yanga today.

» Contributed by Raymond Ward, DuSable Museum of African American History.

afrodiaspores:

Frédéric/Federico Mialhe (who lived in Cuba from 1838 to 1854), ”Dia de Reyes” (also known as “Twelfth Day Festival, or “Day of the Kings”), ca. 1851

In nineteenth-century Cuba, people of African descent were organized in cabildos-associations related to African “nations” or ethnic groups. During the Day of the Kings on January 6 (Epiphany), authorities granted the cabildos permission to celebrate on the streets.

Permitting slaves certain days of fiesta was a way for the slave-owners to keep up a sense of morale or at least keep rebellion at bay, but this fiesta was highly significant because the owners declared their slaves free for the day. Each ethnic group of slaves would choose a king, and then each group would parade down the street, demanding money from the crowd, the government officials, and the houses they passed. Their costumes—imitating liturgical colors, white elites’ formal dress, or devils—were meant not just “to reenact African ritual practices but to astonish and even to frighten.”

The Brazilian Baracoon, built in the 1840s and held up to 40 slaves at a time in Badagry, Lagos State.

This ancient town of Badagry was founded around l425 A.D. Before its existence, people lived along the Coast of Gberefu and this area later gave birth to the town of Badagry. It is the second largest commercial town in Lagos State, located an hour from Lagos and half-hour from the Republic of Benin. The town of Badagry is bordered on the south by the Gulf of Guinea and surrounded by creeks, islands and a lake. The ancient town served mainly the Oyo Empire, which was comprised of Yoruba and Ogu people. Today, the Aworis and Egun are mainly the people who reside in the town of Badagry as well as in Ogun State in Nigeria and in the neighbouring Republic of Benin.

The name originated from the fact that the people of Badagry’s means of livelihood are farming, fishing and salt making due to the availability of trees and presence of ocean water respectively. The natives believed that Badagry was founded by a famous farmer called Agbedeh who maintained a farm which became popular it was named after him. The word Greme meant farm in Ogu language and a visit to Agbedeh’s farm brought about the word and Agbedegreme and its usage meaning Agbedeh’s farm. It was then coined to Agbadagari by the Yoruba inhabitants and later corrupted to Badagry by the European slave merchants before the end of the seventeenth century.

Badagry is majorly recognised for its slave trade by the foreigners.

The trade began in 1440 with Prince Henry, the navigator of Portugal. By 1593, 12,000 slaves had been sold to labour markets in Italy and Spain. One horse was traded for 25-30 slaves in the 1440s and the value of African slaves rose from six to eight slaves per horse. By the 16th century, there were over 32,000 slaves in Portugal.

Along the line, Seriki Faremi Williams, an African slave appealed a bargain with his buyers. He agreed to supply slaves to the foreigners in exchange for his freedom. The Nigerian, specifically of the Yoruba tribe to be exact, got his wish and was immediately set free to begin business. He returned to Badagry and built the Brazillian Baracoon with the mission to transport as much slaves as possible. He raided villages and captured their natives and sold them to the middlemen who eventually re-sold them as slaves to European slave merchants.

The baracoons were small rooms where up to 40 slaves were kept, all in upright position for days before they were shipped across the lagoon via the point of no return into the waiting ships. The group of houses, now mostly residential, were all at one point or the other used to keep slaves waiting to be transported. Vlekete square, founded in 1510, was known to be the slave market in Badagry.

The slave merchants began to work on his intelligence and that of African Leaders involved and enticed them with material gifts. Slaves were then exchanged for merchandises as little as whisky, tobacco, rum, cuppino glass, canons, iron bars, brass, woollen, cotton, linen, silk, beads, guns, gun powder amongst others. Because they knew it was of paramount importance to these natives.

Historically speaking, Badagry was the first and last port of call. When the ships arrive to pick these slaves, they would be brought out from the hole in which they were put and taken to a place called ‘The Point of No Return’. This process involved the crossing of slaves through the ocean that links the Badagry port to this point. When the slaves have been crossed over, they would walk about 20miles to the point.

In between, they would each approach a coven where they would drink from a well that contained a silver shiny liquid claimed to be water and recite a verse. This initiation would wipe out there memory so as to avoid foreknowledge of their whereabouts. The curator further explained that these slaves immediately loose their memory and do not regain it until they reach their final destination. Only the strong ones make it to the New World and maybe luckily, back.

(x)

“The Whipping on the back of the fugitive slave named Gordon”

(via wahaladey)

By 1680, you see the beginning of the changes. What had happened - and this is a complicated story - was that colonial leaders had to deal with Bacon and that rebellion. The British sent a fleet of three ships and by the time they got to Virginia, there were 8,000 poor men rebelling who had burned down Jamestown - blacks, whites, mulattos. And it was quite clear that this kind of unity and solidarity among the poor was dangerous.

After that, they began to pass laws, very gradually. They passed laws that gave Europeans privileges while they increasingly enslaved Africans. They passed a number of laws that prevented blacks, Indians, and mulattos from owning firearms, for example. Everybody had firearms. Everybody in Virginia still has firearms!

Then there was another change: There was a decline in the number of European servants coming to the New World. At the same time, there was an increase in the ships bringing Africans to the New World. By the 1690s or so, the English themselves had outfitted their ships to bring Africans back from the continent, and this is the first time that they had had direct connections.

But the Africans also had something else. They had skills which neither the Indians nor the Irish had. The Africans brought here were farmers. They knew how to farm semi-tropical crops. They knew how to build houses. They were brick makers, for example. They were carpenters and calabash carvers and rope makers and leather workers. They were metal workers. They were people who knew how to smelt ore and get iron out of it. They had so many skills that we don’t often recognize. But the colony leaders certainly recognized that. And they certainly gave high value to those slaves who had those skills.

After 1690 things begin to change. All of the Europeans become identified as “white.” And Africans take on a different kind of identity. They are not only heathens, but they are people who are perceived as vulnerable to being enslaved. And that’s a major point. Africans were vulnerable because it became part of the consciousness that they had no rights as Englishmen. Even the poorest Englishman knew that he had some rights. But once a planter owns a few Africans, the idea that the Africans had no rights that they had to recognize became very clear. And that’s why they were vulnerable to being enslaved, and kept in slavery. The laws that were passed after that all tended to diminish the rights of African people. But between 1690 and 1735, even those Africans who had been free and who had been there for many generations, had their rights taken away from them.

Once you magnify the difference between the slaves and the free, then it was possible to create a society in which the slaves were little better than animals. They were thought of as animals. And the more you think of slaves as animals, the more you justify keeping them as slaves.

After a while, slavery became identified with Africans. Blackness and slavery went together in the popular mind. And this is why we can say that race is a product of the popular mind, because it was this consciousness that blackness and slavery were bound together, that gave people the idea that Africans were a different kind of people.

Think of the early 17th century planter who wrote to the trustees of his company and he said, “Please don’t send us any more Irishmen. Send us some Africans, because the Africans are civilized and the Irish are not.” But 100 years later, the Africans become increasingly brutalized. They become increasingly homogenized into a category called “savages.” And all the attributes of savagery which the English had once given to the Irish, now they are giving to the Africans.

Why were Africans the slaves of choice?

Audrey Smedley is a professor of anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is author of Race in North America: Origins of a Worldview.

(via howtobeterrell)

(via nocturnalphantasmagoria)

vintageblackbeauty:

Syrien négociant à Khartoum, drogman du vice-consulat de France. Deux barbarins de Nubie. Vue prise dans la maison du vice-consulat. - Négresse de race Bongo, du Nil blanc, ancienne bayadère. - Négresse de race Dinka, esclave à Khartoum.

Date of publication : 1882

“Syrian trader in Khartoum, dragoman (interpreter) of the vice-consulate of France. Two Nubian barbarins/barbarians(?). View taken in the house of the vice-consulate. Black woman of the Bongo ‘race’, of the white Nile, old harlequin. - Black woman of the Dinka ‘race’, enslaved in Khartoum”

Date of publication : 1882

I believe these photographs are evidence of enslavement of Africans during the Ottoman Empire (from Wikipedia)*:

Circassians, Syrians and Nubians were the three primary races of females who were sold as sex slaves in the Ottoman Empire. Circassian girls were described as fair, light skinned and were frequently sent by the Circassian leaders as gifts to the Ottomans. They were the most expensive, reaching up to 500 pounds sterling and the most popular with the Turks.

Second in popularity were Syrian girls, with their dark eyes, dark hair, and light brown skin, and came largely from coastal regions in Anatolia. Their price could reach up to 30 pounds sterling. They were described as having “good figures when young”. Nubian girls were the cheapest and least popular, fetching up to 20 pounds sterling.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, female slavery was not only central to Ottoman practice but a critical component of imperial governance and elite social reproduction.

Dhimmi boys taken in the devşirme could also become sexual slaves, though usually they worked in places like bathhouses (hammam) and coffeehouses. They became tellak, köçek or sāqī for as long as they were young and beardless.

*not entirely sure on this.

africanlens:

Description of the slave ship Brookes, 1788 – infodesign history in Eye 82 (via Eye Magazine | Blog | Charts change minds)

Excerpt from Eye Magazine:

Eighteenth-century abolitionists used every propaganda tool in the book, but one of their most widely circulated visual aids was an innovative diagram of the Liverpool slave ship Brookes, first published in 1788, writes Anne-Marie Conway in Eye 82.

History of Slavery and early colonisation in SA timeline 1602-1841 →

1602

Chamber Representatives of the Netherlands Parliament grant a founding charter to the Dutch East India Company to establish an Indian trading empire in the East.

1652

The Dutch East India Company started a refreshment station at the Cape for its VOC shipping fleet on their way to East and/or on their return trips from Batavia (i.e. present day Java as part of Indonesia).

1653

Abraham van Batavia, the first slave, arrives at the Cape.

Before the first shipment of slaves in 1658, a hand full off slaves had already arrived in the Cape with their ‘owners’. By 1658 there were 11 slaves, 8 women and 3 men at the Cape. One of these, Abraham, was a stowaway who, in 1653, arrived from the East aboard the ship Malacca, claiming to have run away from his master, Cornelis Lichthart of Batavia. Abraham was set to work at the Cape.

1654

A slaving voyage is undertaken from the Cape via Mauritius to Madagascar.

1658

Farms granted to Dutch free burghers (ex-Company soldiers).The first shipload of slaves are brought to the Cape, from Angola on-board the ship, the Amersfoort.

1666

Slaves built the Castle - Fort Good Hope.

1679

Foundations are laid for the Company Slave Lodge.

1687

Free burghers petition for slave trade to be opened to free enterprise.

1693

Slaves at the Cape outnumber free people for the first time. They are mainly from around the Indian Ocean ? Mocambique, Madagascar, Mauritius.

1700

Government directive restricting male slaves being brought from the East.

1717

Dutch East India Company ends assisted immigration from Europe and decides to retain the institution of slavery as the main labour system for the Cape.

1719

Free burghers petition again for slave trade to be opened to free enterprise.

1720

France occupies Mauritius.

1722

Slaving post established at Maputo (Lourenco Marques, pre-independence name) by Dutch.

1725

Evidence that runaway slaves have been living at the mountainous Hangklip for extensive periods, between Gordons Bay and Kleinmond/Hermanus.

1732

Maputo slave post abandoned due to mutiny.

1738

The Moravian Church started their first mission station at Baviaans-kloof, now known as Genadendal in the Swellendam district.

1745 - 46

Free burghers petition again for slave trade to be opened to free enterprise.

1753

Governor Rijk Tulbagh codifies slave law.

1754

The governor, Tulbagh, consolidated the numerous VOC slave regulations into a single placaaten, the Cape Slave CodeA census taken of the Cape colony at the time showed the two populations, both slaves and settlers to be roughly equal to about 6000 each.

1767

Abolition of importation of male slaves from Asia.

1779

Free burghers petition again for slave trade to be opened to free enterprise.

1784

Free burghers petition again for slave trade to be opened to free enterprise.Government directive abolishing the importation of male slaves from Asia repeated.

1787

Government directive abolishing the importation of male slaves from Asia repeated again.

1791

Slave trade opened to free enterprise.

1792

The Moravian Missionary Society re-established their first mission station, Genadendal in the Swellendam district.

1795

The British takes over control of the Cape and remain in charge throughout the 19th century.

1796

The British outlaws torture and some of the most brutal forms of capital punishments.

1803

Dutch temporarily re-occupy the Cape of Good Hope (Short three years, see Batavian Republic).

1806

Britain occupies the Cape again.Company slaves are released from the Slave Lodge under rule of the then Governor, the Earl of Caledon.Mission station at Groene-kloof [Mamre] near Malmesbury. This former military outpost on the farm, Louwplaas was offered by the British government to the Moravian Missionary Society for the establishment of a mission station. There are more than 5 000 people living at Mamre today.

1807

Britain passes Abolition of Slave Trade Act, outlawing the Trans-Indian Oceanic slave trade. It was now illegal to be a slave trader buying or selling slaves, but it was still legal to own slaves.Prohibition on the importation of overseas slaves resulted in increasing the exchange value of Cape born Creole slaves.

1808

Britain enforces the Abolition of Slave Trade Act, ending the external slave trade. Slaves can now be traded only within the colony.The Koeberg slave rebellion in the Swartland near Malmesbury, led by Louis of Mauritius, is defeated at Salt River. Resulted in the capturing of 300 farm slaves as dissidents.1812The London Missionary Society was invited by the leader of the local Khoi i.e. the Attaquas tribe to establish a mission station. Thus the mission station, Zuurbraak was established at the foot of Tradouw Pass.The London Missionary Society sponsored missionary, Rev Charles Pacalt who established this small mission station a few miles south of George. Pacaltsdorp, presently a vibrant ‘Cape Coloured’ town outside George in the Southern Cape.

1813

Het Gesticht, the fourth oldest church building in South Africa and erected in 1813 by the inhabitants of Paarl as a meeting house for non-Christian slaves and heathen in the town. The Paarl Missionary Society took over the administration of Het Gesticht. It has been proclaimed a National Monument, and serves nowadays as a museum for the South African Mission Foundation.Fiscal Dennyson codifies the Cape Slave Law.

1822

Last slaves imported, illegally.

1823

The British House of Commons discusses the conditions of slaves at the Cape of Good Hope by appointing a parliamentary commission of enquiry due to relentless pressure of the Anti-Slavery Abolitionists lobby.

1825

Appointment of two Crown Commissioners, visiting the Cape of Good Hope - including the various mission settlements - to investigate slavery at the Cape. A second slave uprising at the farm, Hou-den-Bek, led by Galant van die Kaap, is defeated in the Koue Bokkeveld, near Ceres.

1826

Guardian of Slaves appointed. The Colonial Office intervened by forcing local colonial assemblies to bring the local amelioration legislation such Ordinance 19 of 1826 promulgated at the Cape, into line with the Trinidad Order aimed at the sugar plantation slave owners. Thus the British introduced ameliorisation laws in order to improve the living conditions of slaves as well as a a series of practical ameliorisation measures to make punishments less cruel, and the Office of the Protector of Slaves is established with Assistant Slave Protectors in rural towns and villages away from Cape Town.Collapse of the Cape wine industry.

1827

Coloured Persons qualified for the municipal franchise of Cape Town, and a Malay property owner was elected as Wardmaster.

1828

Ordinance 50 of 1828 liberated Khoisan into the category on par with Free Blacks and placed all Free Black persons i.e. both Hottentots and Vrye Swartes on equal legal footing with White colonists within the judiciary system.The two Rhenish missionaries, J G Leipoldt and T. von Wurmb jointly bought a farm Rietmond on the Tratra River in the Cedarberg District. The Rhenish Missionary Society started several industries, including the well-known shoe making factory at the Wupperthal mission station.

1830

Slave owners have to start keeping a record of punishments. Revised provisions of Ordinance 19 by the British Parliament resulted in the renamed Office of the Protector of Slaves.

1831

Stellenbosch slave owners rioted by refusing to accept this order to keep registers of slave punishments.

1832

More than 2000 slave owners assembled in Cape Town to hold a protest meeting demonstrating against this government order which was adopted without proper consultation.

1833

The Rhenish Mission Society ensured that a mission chapel was built and completed in 1833. As a result the Headquarters of the Rhenish Mission Society relocated from Steinthal near Tulbach to Worcester.

1833

Emancipation Decree issued in London.

1834

Slavery is abolished in British colonies on 01 December, ‘liberated’ slaves now falls into the category of Free Blacks, although the ‘freed’ slaves are forced to serve an extended four year apprenticeship to make them ‘fit for freedom’.The Cape farmers faced prolonged weather conditions of drought. The Berlin Missionary Society established a mission at Bethanie.

1835

Ordinance No. 1 of 1835 introduced the terms of apprenticeship at the Cape, including the appointment of special magistrates.

1836

Start of the Great Trek by 12 000 frontier farmers, who demonstrated their unhappiness about the government’s policy to release slaves from the control of Free Burghers as slaveholders.Non-Whites were finally accorded similar treatment like White colonists in their interaction with the public institutions of the local authorities.

1838

End of slave “apprenticeship”. About 39 000 slaves are freed on Emancipation Day, 1 December 1838. Only 1,2 million pounds paid out against the original estimated compensation amount of 3 milion pounds which were initially set aside by the British government in compensation monies for the about 1 300 affected slaveholding farmers at the Cape Good Hope.On the day of the actual release of slave apprentices, there was a three day rainy period which was followed by an extremely wet winter season which led to wide scale flooding across the Cape Colony.

1839

The Moravian Missionary Society acquired the farm, Vogelstruyskraal near Cape Agulhas in the Caledon District. The newly established mission station was named Elim. Today, the town of Elim has a population of 2000 inhabitants.

1841

Masters and Servants Ordinance regularising and criminalizing labour relationships between employer and employee in favour of the former slave masters based on the past CAPE SLAVE CODES originally issued by the VOC as Placaaten of India.

*all links provided by dynamic africa.

gillsant:

Memorial for slave market in the Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania by Eric Lafforgue on Flickr.

collective-history:

House of Slaves, Senegal

The House of Slaves on Goree Island in Dakar, Senegal now stands as a memorial to the Atlantic Slave Trade. For many years, it housed slaves before they were loaded onto ships bound for the Americas. (Photo Credit: CORBIS SYGMA)

(via collectivehistory)