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Friendship: the most expensive habit in human history.
In 1833, the British Empire gave up something no other empire in history had ever given up before: it gave up slavery. With the Slavery Abolition Act, the largest empire the world had ever seen turned its back on one of the most lucrative and certainly the most exploitative industry the world had ever seen.
Contrary to what many might think, slavery did not begin with the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery is as old as human civilization itself. And as a civilization grew, so did its number of slaves.
In his magisterial but problematic account of history, Why the West Rules For Now, the historian Ian Morris relies on four important criteria to measure the capability of the different empires in human history: energy capture, organizational ability, warmaking capability, and information technology. A simpler metric would just have been to use the total amount of slaves. The larger and more powerful the kingdom, the greater the number of slaves required to run it.
The ancient Han dynasty whose descendants remain the dominant ethnic group in China employed about five percent of the population as slaves. There were around nine million slaves in Hindu India and a similar proportion in the Mughal Empire. The historian Orlando Patterson estimates that a staggering twenty percent of the population of the Roman Empire during its famed Pax Romana were slaves.
The enlightened Greeks were no better: their direct system of democracy which required full participation by all Greek men was only possible because a huge number of slaves carried out all the work while the Greeks debated the finer details of political philosophy.
The janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, the most powerful army in the world in its day, was composed exclusively of young white boys forcefully taken from their homelands, converted into Islam, forbidden to pursue romantic relationships, and trained rigorously until they reached adulthood.
We could go on and on and on. And so when the British empire outlawed slavery, it did not just infuriate powerful elements within the empire itself but former allies and slave trading rivals outside of it. To lend force to a noble sentiment, the West African Squadron was established in 1807 as an arm of the British Royal Navy.
The aim behind its establishment was to suppress the slave trade by attacking it at its root: the coast of West Africa. It would be nonsensical to imagine the West African Squadron as a 'white saviour' of enslaved Africans. Corruption was rife, and its resources were vastly inadequate both in men and materiel. Its forces regularly succumbed to malaria for which they had no immunity, so a substantial portion of its personnel were African crewmen from modern day Liberia and Sierra Leone.
It was hard, dangerous work which did not bring with it profit or acclaim. But the impact of the West African Squadron was nonetheless considerable. During its length of operation, it disrupted the slave trading activities of the African and other European empires and rescued, at the very least, one hundred and fifty thousand Africans from slavery. The West African Squadron transformed Britain from one of the biggest beneficiaries of the slave trade to the slave trade's most formidable enemy.
This was a problem for the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Americans, the Danish, the Dutch, and their vast network of African allies. But of all of them, it was especially a problem for the kingdom of Dahomey which today we know as the Republic of Benin.
Dahomey, more than any other African kingdom, was the centre of the African slave trade. It captured and served as the point of exit for at least twenty percent of all African slaves traded throughout history. If the ports of Shanghai are the heart of the global economy today, the coast of Dahomey was the heart of the global economy three hundred years ago.
The problem for Dahomey was for much of that period, it had to pay a considerable portion of its profit as tribute to the Oyo empire. The relationship was an uneasy one. To protect the profits from its own slave trade and avoid economic competition, the Oyo empire often pressured Dahomey to limit both its raids in the West African region and the supply of slaves Dahomey received from those raids.
The Kingdom of Dahomey would comply, then rebel against these instructions, lose to the Oyo empire and comply unwillingly again. In one of these intermittent wars, Dahomey purchased the best guns in the world at the time to match Oyo's traditional and gunless army. Perhaps to the surprise of both parties, Dahomey lost again.
Men do not want to merely taste the fruits of their labour. They want to enjoy them. As long as Dahomey remained shackled to the whims of the Oyo empire, it could not do so. But as the 18th century neared its end, a battle over succession consumed the Oyo empire. No less than four Oyo emperors were forced to commit suicide in twenty years. As the Oyo Empire grew weak, Dahomey gained in strength, and then as is usual with these things, in insolence.
In 1827, the simmering tension boiled over. Dahomey had carried out one of its raids in territory that had pledged fealty to the Oyo empire. This was as good as an attack on the Oyo empire itself.
The times had changed. For Dahomey's transgression, the Oyo empire demanded compensation and an apology. What it got instead was a war. The result of that war was the independence of Dahomey for the first time in over a century.
It could now conquer neighbouring tribes and kingdoms and sell their people without the obligation of tribute or restraint. Those were good times for Dahomey.
Every empire in Africa captured and sold slaves. But Dahomey, like all latecomers, did it best. With brutal efficiency, it carried out countless raids in West Africa, putting an end to livelihoods, economies, and kingdoms. Dahomey sold more people into slavery than seven times the current population of Iceland.
Its formidable army, which bought and employed the latest military technology, was so impressive that European visitors to Dahomey repeatedly marvelled at it. They marvelled even more at Dahomey's select elite of female warriors, unmatched in the continent, known as the Amazons which were so fearsome that they would later serve as the inspiration for the Wonder Woman movies. Freed of the imposition of tribute and the absence of any rival powers, Dahomey prospered off the slave trade.
So when the British finally grew a conscience and outlawed slavery, Dahomey was their first port of call. The British made several diplomatic entreaties to King Ghezo of Dahomey, urging him to move beyond the slave trade and embrace the growing trade in palm oil instead.
There was only the little matter of profit. Ghezo personally was no avid fan of slavery and had taken bold steps to rein the industry in. But trade in palm oil was far less lucrative than the business of selling people. Many members of Ghezo's court had made their fortunes from the slave trade and were in no hurry to let it end. His most trusted adviser was a ruthless slavetrader of brazilian descent.
It had only been a few decades since Dahomey had gained independence and become the preeminent power of the region. Those who campaigned for an economic transition to palm oil at the very height of Dahomey's power were dismissed as fools.
Ghezo did not, could not, consider it long. He rebuffed the british and carried on with the slave trade. If he matched the British in audacity, he could not match them in power. Displeased and angry, the British empire authorized the West African Squadron to attack the port of Porto Novo, an important tributary of Dahomey and the capital of Benin today, commanding them to move beyond merely rescuing the enslaved to cutting off the heart of the slave trade once and for all.
Dahomey had lost a customer and gained an enemy all at once. It was not Ghezo's only political headache. You can only kill and enslave people for so long before they begin to fight back. To safeguard all those who lived in terror of Dahomey, the city of Abeokuta was created as a fortress for those who did not wish to be enslaved. The name was apt. Its very translation: " under a rock" was to signify that its foundational purpose was protection.
It turned out that those who did not wish to be enslaved could fight just as well as those who wished to enslave them. The very existence of Abeokuta was a challenge to Dahomey. It went to war with Abeokuta and lost. It went to war again and lost again. Ghezo himself was murdered in his own city by an assassin from Abeokuta.
So, with powerful enemies home and abroad who would not stand slavery and were taking active steps to dismantle it, Dahomey needed help. It could not win these battles alone. The Kingdom of Dahomey reached out across the continent to the French Empire, who were fully in support of slavery and had plenty firepower of their own.
Until then, the french had actually been a minor presence in the region. Now, they were firmly in the centre. With french assistance, Dahomey was able to resume the slave trade largely as it did before.
But there are no gifts in international politics. There are only postponed repayments.The french were happy to help. Maybe too happy. If there were suspicions, those suspicions were soon confirmed.
The french had terms of their own. They wanted control of the ports of Porto Novo and Cotonou and would enforce custom duties on the flow of goods that passed through these ports.
There was nothing in the history of Dahomey that indicated satisfaction with being told what to do. The kingdom of Dahomey ignored those terms and insisted that they had not been consented to anyway. Maybe Dahomey was trying to cheat France. Maybe France was trying to cheat Dahomey. Most likely, they were each trying to cheat the other.
In 1890, the french declared war against the Kingdom of Dahomey. A century earlier and Dahomey would most likely have won. Half a century earlier and the odds would still have been in Dahomey's favour. Those days had long gone. Dahomey, like all of us, had paid lavish attention to its immediate problems and ignored the longer trends of history.
Europe had industrialized; France and Britain most of all. The African empires which had helped them rob lands and sell people were no longer their equals. France easily won the war and forced Dahomey to surrender the ports of Cotonou and Porto Novo. That should have been that.
But the King of Dahomey and his elite would not tolerate these losses. They disregarded the terms of their defeat and incited the french to war again. This time, there would be no sequel. France returned and conquered the kingdom in entirety by 1894.
Dahomey, the most powerful West African empire of its time, was reduced to a mere colony of the very French it had introduced into the region. Its King was exiled permanently. Its elite became colonial puppets. Its famous all female army was disbanded a decade later. Its people were exploited and killed. French colonialism was brutal and merciless.
Today, Benin Republic is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 166th out of 187 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index. In the West African region it once so inspired fear and awe, it is today neglected, forgotten, and irrelevant. The Kings of Dahomey sold their people's future .......for a port.
RARELY CLEAR AND NEVER SIMPLE
In the event of Queen Elizabeth II's death, there have been an intriguing variety of reactions. The most intriguing of them were and still are demands for reparations and formal apologies from the British crown.
These demands did not come from fringe outlets. They came from the most respectable print media in the world. The Guardian, just this month, ran the statements of Cornell University Professor, Mukoma Was Ngugi,
" If the Queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism and urged the crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad."
Social media platforms for the better part of a week erupted in a frenzy of name calling, history hot takes, some rather good memes, and a renewed debate about the legacy of the slave trade and colonialism.
In the United States of America, calls for reparations have intensified for the crimes committed in the slave trade and thereafter. Reparations represent and continue to represent a core pillar of the Black Lives Movement.
Southeast of the United States, the countries of the Caribbean have also demanded reparations for the legacy of the slave trade.
Some have threatened to pull out of the admittedly pointless commonwealth altogetheYr ( an action they probably should have taken a long time ago).
All economic disputes are moral disputes at the end of the day. They are disputes about reward ( who should earn what and why) and responsibility ( who should we care about and why), two of the most morally loaded terms in existence. Reparations simply straddle these boundaries to a very fine degree.
Unfortunately, reparations are generally not the answer. People have engaged in fiery debates over how much should be paid and the costs of not doing so. Nobody, it seems, has asked the very important question of whether they should be paid at all, and if so, from whom to whom exactly.
Reparations suffer from three important problems: the first is that they misread and contort history into convenient stereotypes. The second is that they are unlikely to do much good and distract rather conveniently from what can. The third is that if reparations are to be demanded, then they must be demanded consistently. We will start with the third.
WHAT'S NOT IN A NAME
Although it's literally in the name, many people and historians act like the slave trade was the domination of Africa by selfish and greedy Europeans. It wasn't. The slave trade wasn't a war between Europe and Africa. It was a trade. In fact, every time European countries tried to outrightly dominate or invade African kingdoms, they usually lost.
In 1589, the Portuguese mounted a full invasion of Luanda and tried to conquer the coastal city for themselves. The Portuguese forces were completely routed. Similar attempts to capture territory in Atlantic and East Africa met with humiliating defeats. By the 1600s, the Portuguese had wisely stopped bothering and limited themselves to the ports. They would not conduct any military expansion well until 1857.¹
With Northern Africa, the situation was far worse. Under the nominal protection and with the tacit permission of the Ottoman Empire, the Barbary pirates of Algiers and Tunis launched raid upon raid of European territory in Portugal, Spain, Norway, Iceland, and Britain among others. One particular raid on Irish territory was so successful that the Barbary pirates took the entire population of that Irish town as slaves.
The historian Robert Davis has estimated, though with much exaggeration, that the Barbary pirates and the Ottoman Empire took at least one million Europeans as slaves.
The Barbary pirates were so powerful that the United States of America and much else paid tributes to them for safe passage of cargo. Before John Adams and Thomas Jefferson became the famous second and third president of America, they were first diplomatic emissaries to the Barbary pirates, entreating them to curtail their raids and slavetrading activities.
This is why Europeans limited themselves to the coast and the ports in a respectful division of labour. The African rulers would tolerate the European presence on the seas given that they had better deepwater technology and would largely concern themselves with ruling their own kingdoms on the land.
There was no imposition of slavery by Europe on the rest of the world, at least until the industrial revolution, except in North and South America which were outmatched to start with and then lost sizable amounts of their population to the smallpox Europeans brought with them.
The transatlantic slave trade was a choice by African sovereigns to sell African people. I would get to why they made that choice soon but the image of an innocent and weak Africa exploited by Europe betrays an incredible amount of historical ignorance. The slave trade happened because African kingdoms wanted it to happen. So, well, why.
ASHES TO ASHES IN THREE GENERATIONS
Today, many Africans and people of African descent all over the world are demanding reparations from the West for the effects of the slave trade. The justification is obvious: conservative estimates are that nearly thirteen million africans were sold into slavery. It represents one of the most repugnant crimes of human history.
But there is a caveat: these slaves were exchanged for something. They weren't just taken. African rulers and african slavetraders exchanged african people for quite a lot of stuff, a detail that conveniently fails to appear in these conversations.
Some of the stuff popularly received in exchange were fabrics. In particular, African rulers and elite loved Indian cloth, which the Europeans had purchased from the Mughals. When I say loved, I mean they loved with a love that was greater than love.
Here is a list of only some of the types of Indian cloth African kingdoms sold slaves to get:
Allejars.
Chintz.
Korutts.
Nicanees.
Gingham.
Guinea cloth
Chercolees.
Cherryderries.
Limeneas.
Pautkes.
Salampores
Caffa.
Birampot.
Sastracundies.
Taffeta.
Boelangers.
Harlequins.
Longees.
Muslin.
Bajutapeaux.
Brawls.
Tajaes
Tapseul.
Pintadoes.
Apple Extract.
Calawapores.
Calico.
Coupis
Cushtaes.
Damask
Cuttanees.
Taffeta.
Cuslees.
Tapanees.
Chicolis.
Photaes.
Nantebas
Taffeta.
Patnas.
Seernickers.
Ettecons.
Neganipauts
Canequin.
Chassela
Chelloes
That list was so long that I put apple extract in there and repeated taffeta thrice, and you didn't even notice. So yea, indian cloth definitely rocked the world in those times and still rocks the world although technically, it would be called Bangladeshi cloth today.
The list above is a small indication that slave ships were the Walmarts of their day, regularly bringing in over eleven thousand kinds of goods to be sold and exchanged at African ports for African slaves.²
If people demand reparations for the 12.5 million African slaves that were sold, should they not also demand reparation from those who sold them for thirty two million brass coins, a million caps, four hundred thousand bars of iron, seven tonnes of pans, two million knives, twenty million guns, hundred thousand tonnes of gunpowder, twenty billion glass beads ( yup, twenty billion), millions of gallons of alcohol, over eleven thousand mirrors in one month sold on the Gold Coast alone, thousands of bushels of salt, ...
That list could run into tens of pages and still leave hundreds of commodities omitted. The umbrellas African elite used as status symbols were imported from Europe in exchange for slaves. The horse hair wielded by royalty was imported from Europe in exchange for slaves. The finest walking sticks were imported from Europe in exchange for slaves.
The elite and royalty of African kingdoms, and the majority of their people to a much lesser degree, lived fabulous lives built on imports from all over the world and all they had to do was sell their enemies and rivals. To us, understandably, it was a despicable crime. To them, understandably, it was a ridiculously good no brainer.
The uncomfortable reason reparations are not demanded from African countries today is that the billions of goods they received in exchange for slaves have no value anymore. The tobacco has been snuffed, the alcohol has been drunk, the coins have been melted, the clothes have rotted into the earth, the knives have rusted, the guns do not work anymore, the glass has long shattered.
When you exchange people for perishable goods, that is what happens. But slaves are perishable too. The distinction was an economy built on consumption was an economy that did not need to learn to produce. Just as a child cannot appreciate the importance of production when maxing out on an unlimited credit card, African countries did not have any incentive to industrialize.
Why should they have? Industrialization was difficult work that would challenge tradition and uproot the entire dynamics of these countries. The only reason you did all the painful, difficult business of industrializing was to get those wonderful, wonderful things that came out of it. The African kingdoms already received those wonderful, wonderful things helped in considerable though exaggerated part with the guns they imported to raid more neighbours and acquire more slaves which were again sold for more wonderful, wonderful things. Would you have industrialized?
African countries have been able to erase their willing and full participation out of history because people look today at the poverty of Africa and cannot imagine that they greatly benefitted from the slave trade. It just doesn't seem like they did.
Perhaps, 100 years from now or less, if the Middle East continues on the economic and environmental trajectory it has so far remained faithful to, people will look at the middle east and wonder where all the wealth went. Perhaps, they will say its environment was exploited for oil by foreign powers without mentioning of course everything it received in return. Those mighty palaces will be like relics from a different time. It could not have been a trade, they will maintain. It was an imposition, a theft. 'They stole all that oil away.' Because, after all, how could it have been any different.
DOUBLE STANDARDS
Africans sold their brothers and sisters into slavery. People say that all the time. It is the unsophisticated sibling of the first illusion already dismissed earlier. If you know enough to know that Africans were completely complicit, a requirement of awareness most don't even bother with, then it becomes a case of moral grandstanding. How could they do that to their own, we wonder. Oh, the cruelty, the greed!
In America, broadcast news networks speak consistently of ' black on black violence.' But there is no such discussion of ' white on white violence.' There is just something fundamentally wrong, it seems, with Africa.
None of this adds up or down for that matter. European countries fought so many wars against themselves that historical research is in significant agreement that this went on to become a substantial advantage in implementing colonialism later on.
The two world wars began in, were mostly fought in, ended in, and happened because of intra European conflict. In China and India and pretty much everywhere else, ethnic violence is just as depressingly common.
When throughout history, Portugal fights Spain or Britain goes to war with Germany or France and Britain fight for 114 years (longest war ever. Also, WTF!), nobody throws their arm up in amazement as to how callous and brutal Europeans are with each other. When Russia invaded Ukraine this year, there were two kinds of shock: the first was shock that the so called pax Americana could be over and the second was shock that this could happen in liberal, enlightened, Europe.
Both kinds of shock were ironic. For one thing, pax Americana is mostly a myth. But it does at least have some truth to it. The second, however, is pure nonsense. Europe's history summed up in one sentence is Europeans fighting other Europeans.
The reason the slave trade beggars belief is because Africa is regarded both by Africans and outsiders as some monolith of black people who went on to betray their own. However, one of the biggest factors in European success in conquering Africa was because they were able to manipulate and support different kingdoms against each other for their own ends.
European conquests succeeded because they understood quite obviously that Africa is not a monolith of black people, that there are different and opposing interests, tribes, and cultures, who were often at war with each other.
The Kingdom of Dahomey did not see itself as African. It saw itself as the Kingdom of Dahomey with an obligation to protect its own interests regardless of the cost. So did every other empire in Africa and beyond. And where and when it served them, African kingdoms wrte often closer to their European allies than their local neighbours.
The Kingdom of Kongo, now in modern day Congo, was the preeminent power of Central Africa in its time and maintained regular and confidential correspondence with Portuguese royalty and the Pope. The Kongo didn't see themselves as African. They saw themselves as the christian brothers of their Portuguese allies. The hundreds of thousands of slaves they captured and sold? Those were heathen enemies from neighbouring kingdoms.
This rich network of transatlantic alliances only came to an end when the power disparaties between African kingdoms and their European friends were too significant. Europe comsequently and conveniently revised its perspective of african empires from equal allies to prospective colonies.
And this change in perspective had to be accompanied by massive amounts of propaganda. From a necessary appreciation of the differences in these African kingdoms came a lumping together of all of them as inferior blacks defined not by their opposing interests and cultures but literally the only thing they had in common: their race.
There is nothing new about this tactic. The Holocaust didn't happen because Germans of that era had always seen Jews as a unique race that needed to be extinguished. Many Jews, including the famous Albert Einstein, saw themselves in fact as Germans first and so did many Germans.
They and their parents and grandparents had lived most of their lives in Germany, spoke German, married Germans, and were loyal to Germany. The concept of a unique Jewishness and the accompanying idea of it as something to be eradicated was largely the work of Nazi propaganda exploiting economic hardship as a weapon.
In the first world war, German Jews in Germany volunteered to fight for the German army in more numbers than any other group in Germany. They saw themselves as German and gave their lives for Germany.
It was only later that they were eliminated by the Nazis out of the army entirely, losing Germany ten of its most well trained fighting divisions. In a delicious irony, historians estimate that ten more fighting divisions, well trained as they were, would have been sufficient to defeat Russia.
The deathtoll of the Holocaust would have been much lower if many German Jews did not stay behind out of misplaced loyalty to their country and the people they considered friends.
Several of the German Jews who eventually had to flee were distinguished scientists who went on to work on the Manhattan Project and develop the atomic bomb, altering the balance of power against Germany permanently and bringing Imperial Japan, Germany's most powerful ally, into submission.
The genius who suggested the idea of an atomic bomb to the American president (Albert Einstein) only left Germany because he was being persecuted as a Jew. The genius most responsible for building the atomic bomb (Enrico Fermi) only left because his wife was being persecuted as a Jew.
If not for Nazism, the Nazis would have won the war.
DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS PREQUEL.
The hardest thing to remember with history is to remind ourselves that the people we are reading about did not see the world the way we see it now or otherwise, things would not have happened as they did.
The moral case for reparations, as we have seen, is clearly not as clearcut as many think. In Part 2 of this newsletter, I will show that the economic case for reparations is also not as clear cut as many think.
This is not to say that reparations cannot and should not be demanded. However, they are not an economic solution and they depend on convenient myths of villainy that are blatantly untrue.
But then again, what is human history but truth being made to make way for a good story.
¹ For more on the relative equality of Europe and Africa before the Industrial Revolution, See Empires of The Weak (Sharman, 2019).
² For a comprehensive and rather chilling list of the commodities exchanged for slaves, See What Africans Got For Their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods ( Alpern, 1995).