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Comment by maceo | Hacker News Reader

The barbarism began 200 years prior when Africans were stolen from their homeland. Slavery in Haiti stood out as particularly brutal, even by Caribbean standards. The white landowners in Haiti were greatly outnumbered so they had to resort to unrestrained barbarism to keep the slave population in order.

L'Overture was admired by many in revolutionary France because of his compassion towards the former slave-owning whites and mulattos. He was incredibly forgiving and humane given the circumstances. Even the former slave-owners couldn't hate him because he consistently stuck his neck out to protect the lives of whites and mulattos.

What you reference happened in 1804. In 1803, L'Overture was arrested and exiled to France where he died later that yet. Also in 1803, Napoleon announced that he would re-introduce slavery in Haiti. The whole episode would have been avoided if Napoleon had a conscience.

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"The barbarism that began 200 years prior when Africans were stolen from their homeland"

Yep, their a lot of guilty folks in this violation, but someone also was selling on the Africa side. I often wonder if the bad shape and tragedy that has visited Africa is the result.

Sadly, this is still current events and not history.

Generally the way slaves were captured was that the Europeans would approach a west African tribal chief and give him an ultimatum. Either you bring us a boatload of slaves from the interior or we'll just take you and your people. The Africans weren't making a profit either way.

The Europeans deserve 100% of the blame for the slave trade.

How would the Europeans have been able to do this? They couldn't field armies in the African interior due to disease and African military resistance. Recall that the "scramble for Africa" happened after the discovery of Quinine and the invention of the Maxim gun.

I grew up learning that they traded manufactured goods (and, according to Roots and 1776, rum) to certain kings who were now able to gain more power by using European-made weapons to expand their territory and capture more prisoners. This led to a sharp increase in warfare as militaries could plunder not just wealth found in cities but bodies of civilians in villages.

Can you link to a source on your account?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

Bullshit. The Trans-Saharan and East African/Indian Ocean slave trade pre-dated and post dated the Atlantic one. Slaves, gold and ivory were the only trade goods Africa had that were worth trading across those distances and the slave trade was an African invention. Slavery has been completely normal for the vast majority of human history.

This is not to say that the Atlantic slave trade wasn't incredibly destructive, unusually pervasive and far reaching, but the idea that the fault was entirely with the West is a ridiculous denial of the agency of every African individual and political unit that took part in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa

> Slaves, gold and ivory were the only trade goods Africa had

Is this bit true? I thought they also traded wood to the Arabian peninsula for instance. Granted, my knowledge here is coming from an episode of CrashCourse[1] and my knowledge of pre-colonial Africa is woeful.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6XtBLDmPA0

I was wrong. I was only familiar with West Africa. I stand by the statement in that context. That's why there was a Gold, Slave and Ivory Coast, all exonyms obviously.

> The barbarism began 200 years prior when Africans were stolen from their homeland

Sure is a lot of presentism and tu-quoque-ing going on here.

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