Enslavement+and+Race

= = =Enslavement and Race= //Joseph Cornett, A Block//

When we think of the idea of "slavery" and how it has existed in recent centuries, it is safe to say that we almost always associate it with the enslavement of Africans by Europeans and Americans. This assumed view of slavery is, for the most part, historically correct: between the 17th and 19th centuries, Europeans gradually conquered much of Africa and carted away native Africans to other places, mainly the Caribbean and the United States of America; there was virtually no enslavement of "whites" by the Africans. People widely agree that this is a given fact, but there is equally wide controversy about what caused this phenomenon. Some say that Africa was simply dealt a bad hand and that the people living in Africa have nothing to do with it, while others say that the African people, the African "race", is mentally inferior to "whites". So what is the answer to this question? What allowed Europe and America to so easily conquer much of Africa, and did "race" play a part?



Then we should take a look at what other examples from history tell us. And according to history, race was not always split between white and black. People of the same race, **HOW ARE YOU DEFINING RACE???** but different nations, have often enslaved each other in the past. This is particularly evident in ancient societies, especially in Mesopotamia. In the Old Babylonian Empire, for example, the laws of that empire (the Code of Hammurabi) stated that a man could sell himself or his family into slavery within the empire to pay off a debt. Early city-states (such as Isin, Larsa, Uruk, Ur, etc.), often of the same race, conquered and enslaved each other. And there are also examples of when "whites" have been enslaved by "blacks": African Muslims living on the coast of North Africa, between the mid 16th and mid 18th centuries, enslaved possibly more than a million people, mostly white Christians. Although they were not what many Americans define as "black", as they lived in the northern area of Africa and were therefore "whiter", they still had darker skin than those that they conquered. These numerous examples point towards the ultimate decision that the color of one's skin does not ultimately decide one's capability to enslave or be enslaved. But this does not make the case airtight. After all, in recent centuries it has been the people commonly referred to as "white" that have enslaved other, darker-skinned peoples. Could this have a time when race did play a part?

To decide with conviction whether or not differences between the personal capabilities of "races" had an effect on enslavement, then we must decide whether or not there is an African "race" and to decide how to define it if it does exist.



It may be surprising to many that the people Americans commonly refer to as "blacks," and the people they think of when they think of Africa and that now inhabit the great majority of Africa, were originally one of only five races that each originally inhabited sizeable portions of Africa. They are, to put them in greatly generalized terms that cover up the differences within each group, blacks, whites, African Pygmies (click for an image), Khoisans (click for a Wikipedia page), and Asians.

(Source: [])

The whites are the relatively lighter-skinned people that inhabited, and still inhabit, Northern Africa, i.e. Egyptians and Berbers (click for a webpage with text and images).

(Source: )

The people we now call blacks inhabited the "middle" portion of Africa (sub-Saharan, while north of lands like modern South Africa). These two groups are the peoples that ruled most of Africa; the blacks owned more of Africa than the whites, and their control of Africa expanded over the centuries as they pushed back the more primitive races that have not been referred to yet: the pygmies and the Khoisans.

(Source: [])

The pygmies were significantly shorter than the other races and had noticeably more reddish skin. They were pretty much always surrounded by blacks, and were eventually "taken over" by the black culture, and very few remaining pygmies even speak the traditional pygmy language.

(Source: )

The Khoisans inhabited southern Africa, and their name comes from the fact that this grouping is made of two groups: the Khoi (referred to more commonly as the Hottentots) and the San (a.k.a. Bushmen). Their skin is much more yellowish, and they, like the pygmies, have decreased in size, especially since European colonization.

The reason that Americans associate Africans with the "black" race is that most all of the slaves introduced to America from Africa came from the west coast of Africa, the area ruled hereditarily by the blacks. The blacks also, in the centuries preceding the European colonization, had expanded greatly throughout the continent, taking over much of the pygmy and Khoisan land.

So is there an all-encompassing African "race" as commonly viewed by Americans, the predominant quality of which is skin color? The answer is "no." However, the colonists encountered mainly Bantu-speaking blacks (Bantu being the predominant language in sub-Saharan Africa) as opposed to the whites or other races. So the evidence from this research could be interpreted in either direction. But this understanding of the background of African history will give us a basis from which to start further research on our topic.

Another question we must ask ourselves is what, throughout history, has given groups of people the ability to enslave one another. The answer has two main parts: having a better military, and having the political strength necessary to govern and manage itself without falling apart at the seams. In turn, these qualities have qualities that must be filled in order to achieve superiority in these areas, and then those qualities must have their respective contained qualities that must be fulfilled…and the line back goes on and on. Eventually, we come back to a few basic abilities that a society must have in order to be able to enslave another society and resist being enslaved itself, and to help us understand this path of logic, we have the following image from the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond:



(Source: @http://slipperybannanapeel.blogspot.com/2006/04/jared-diamonds-state-formation.html)

Through tracing back the footprints of history, it is found that the beginning factor that plays a huge part in deciding which culture is more or less militarily advanced is the period in time when a society becomes a farming society as opposed to a hunter-gatherer society. In the beginning, all humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, following and hunting herds of animals across the African savannahs (as it is widely accepted that humans originated in the African region), and gathering whatever edible plants they discovered along the way. Although this was a reliable way of sustaining human life, it had its limitations. Because they were constantly moving, the hunter-gatherers couldn't carry many non-essential things; they didn't have many family heirlooms, any oversized objects like large vases or paintings, or other large things that weren't absolutely essential to survive. Additionally, the mothers weren't able to carry around many children; it was possible to handle one child, but with the chaos of the constantly-in-motion life of a hunter-gatherer, children were a big hassle and often wasn't very practical to have more than one child. Therefore, population growth was very slow. Hunter-gatherers also did not have much surplus food. The carcasses of their prey were usually quite heavy, and it wasn't practical to carry around excess food; besides, because of the small human population, the animals they were following never died out, so their food sources were relatively constant. Moreover, invention, the father of new technology, is created through necessity or extreme want. Because of their lifestyle, which didn't need many tools at all, and their perpetual nomadic motion, there was no need or extreme want to invent new technology.

Inability to domesticate animals and plants, leading to a lack of reason to become farmers, so smaller population and not as advanced technology. Also smaller tribal groups, so not a unified government among a large number of African peoples. So that's why they were so easily conquered by the Africans. (Just basic notes; will expand on this.)

However, we cannot ignore the importance of culture and individual people in the superiority and inferiority of societies. Obviously, a society with an ingenious person who invents something like the nuclear bomb first will give its society a momentary edge over other farming/food producing societies. A society that has a culture that permits itself to opens its doors to the rest of the world and accepts new technologies to help its own will probably become more technologically advanced than a society that has a culture that makes it bar itself and isolate itself, like Japan for some centuries, and having a culture that greatly encourages technological advancements will obviously become more technologically advanced than a society with a culture that greatly discourages such advancements. But if the society is still a hunter-gathering society, it will still be militarily behind many farming societies. Obviously, the difference between food production and hunter-gathering societies isn't a catch-all thing, but it is a reliable guideline throughout history.

I found a good summary of //Guns, Germs, and Steel// here that is able to quickly summarize while going into good detail. Read this to get an overview.

Click here for my annotated bibliography.


 * Where I want to go now:**

I want to delve more into and explain more about what makes civilizations more advanced/more able to enslave other civilizations; there is a lot more that can be said about this topic, and I've only started to explain it. I would also like to compare Africa and Europe and decide if the same causes for more advanced civilizations applied to Europe vs. Africa; as I'm pretty much certain that the answer is "yes", then I want to explain more about the factors that caused Europe to be more advanced than Africa, as opposed to the other way around. After all, the Roman cavalry would be no match for a horde of Bantu warriors riding on tamed rhinos, and if things had turned out differently, Africa could have taken on the Roman empire and won; why did such a conquering never occur, and why wasn't it possible? There is definitely a lot more that I could explain about this topic.