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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (5316)	10/15/2001 5:00:18 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

The Arabs and the whites did create much of slave market. Nadine, while I agree that Europeans, Americans, and Arabs created the markets, they would never have existed had their not been rulers willing to sell such human "commodities". The reality is that African kings were CONSTANTLY at war with various tribes surrounding them, and LONG before Europeans or Arabs ever contacted them. Once a tribe was conquered, the captured warriors were sacrificed to their gods of the conqueror and the women integrated, and/or enslaved by the conquering tribe. And that's the way it has gone with almost EVERY tribe, African, Barbarian,...etc, throughout history. The Romans were a bit more clever and sent their captured warriors to become gladiators and fight to the death for their entertainment. But they certainly weren't going to set them free to return home only to once again rise up against them. That's just not smart. So I can see the Europeans, seeing these men being slaughtered, and I'm sure they thought to themselves, "why not buy them and re-sell them in the new world where there's a lack of available manual labor?. After all, they are going to killed anyway". And the African rulers, aside from the obvious profit potential, probably didn't mind selling because it would make their female slaves more compliant knowing their menfolk hadn't been slaughtered. I'm sure they even slept very soundly at night, with the self-justification that they were preventing needless slaughter. However, I would acknowledge that some might claim that the promise of such wealth empowered and motivated these African kings to seek out more slaves, and thus made them more aggressive in their conquests. But they still had to possess the power and military might to engage in these conqests. Again, not saying it was right, but given the historical mindset, and the fact that those not enslaved being slain, I would not lay the greatest blame upon the Europeans. After all, even the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians, bore their burden, and eventually were released by the intervention of the good lord above. Hawk