[KurtFF8]

but then again you're trying to compair Roman and other forms of slavery of antiquity with the "modern" version (17th century and on) which was very different.

If you look at the rise of slavery of the 17th century you will see that it was unique and far far different from the slavery of antiquity (in many ways)

[Potemkin]

I also suppose we require special reminders of the suffering of millions of white slaves in the Roman Empire, compared with which the suffering of Black slaves is rather less than extraordinary. The Roman master could kill his slaves at will; he could even throw them to the lions for his amusement, or force them to serve as gladiators. Nothing of this nature ever existed in the history of Black slavery. By the reasoning commonly urged by the multicultists, whites may be excused for all of their anti-social behaviour because of their history as slaves.

This is unhistorical nonsense. Slaves in the Roman Empire, and in the ancioent world generally, were treated rather differently than black slaves in modern times. For a start, there was no real racial basis to ancient slavery - anyone could become a slave, usually by being captured in war. And the status of these slaves was generally higher than that of black slaves in the South of America. The ancient slaves were often able to buy their own freedom much more easily than black slaves could. And slaves were more valuable to their ancient masters than blacks in modern America - there was a huge influx of slaves into the cotton plantations in the 17th and 18th centuries; slave labour was therefore cheap and expendable. It was economically worthwhile for the plantation owners to work the slaves to death in the knowledge that more of them could be purchased cheaply the next day. Slaves in ancient Rome were rarer, especially after the wars of conquest started to peter out in the first and second centuries. They were less expendable, and therefore tended to be treated better. Having said this, however, the fate of a slave in the mines of ancient Greece or Rome was just as unenviable as that of a black slave on a cotton plantation in the 18th century. The institution of slavery is an abomination, no matter when or where it occurs.

[Ixa]

"Such anarchy also threatened the elaborate mercantile network that enabled European traders to deal with African princes, kings, and merchants who sold slaves for textiles (often Asian), liquor, hardware, bars of irons, guns and gunpowder, tools or utensils of various kinds, and cowry seashells (widely used as currency and brought from the distant Maldive Islands).

There has long been a widespread mythology claiming that Europeans were the ones who physically enslaved Africans - as if small groups of sailors, who were highly vulnerable to tropical diseases and who had no supply lines to their own homelands, could kidnap some eleven to twelve million Africans."

Davis, p.89-90

Some info here on the Zanj.

"Yet it is also clear that regardless of their continuing enslavement and purchase of white Christian infidels, medieval Arabs and Persians came to associate the most degrading forms of labor with black slaves - especially with the so-called Zanj, who, according to Jahiz of Basra, “are the least intelligent and discerning of mankind, with the least capable of understanding the consequences of their actions.” . . .

In fact, the Arabic word for slave, ‘abd, came in time to mean only a black slave and in some regions referred to any black whether slave or free - surely not a sign that many black slaves were considered capable of genuine freedom. Many Arab writers echoed the racial contempt typified by the famous fourteenth-century Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun when he wrote that black people were “characterized by levity, excitability, and great emotionalism” and were “as a whole submissive to slavery, because Negroes have little that is essentially human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals.” The historian Gernot Rotter shows that Arab and Persian writers frequently associated blacks with apes; a thirteenth-century Persian concluded that the Zanj differed from animals only because “their two hands are lifted above the ground” and reported that “many have observed that the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanji.” . . .

For many medieval Arabs, as for later Europeans, the blackness of Africans suggested sin, damnation, and the devil. Despite the protests of free black writers themselves, some medieval Muslims continued to describe the Zanj as being ugly, stupid, dishonest, frivolous, lighthearted, and foul smelling but gifted with a sense of musical rhythm and dominated by unbridled sexual lust (symbolized by the males’ supposedly large penis). Point by point, these stereotypes of medieval Muslim writers resemble those of the later Spaniards, Portuguese, English and Americans."

Ibid., 62-63

When Stanley went upriver to rescue Emin Pasha, he described the destruction that Arab slave raids have brought to the Eastern Congo. He found mile after mile of burned and devastated villages; the bodies of dead men were seen everywhere, both ashore and afloat. In one Arab camp, he found twenty-three hundred slaves, not a single adult male among them. All the related men had been killed."

Robert P. Edgerton, The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo, p.83

"He added, however, that the Arabs' slave raids had so completely destroyed food supplies in the area that many peoples of this region, such as the Malela, and been transformed into "perhaps the most inveterate cannibals on the face of the globe." For their part, the Malela were delighted by their diet of human flesh, describing it as "saltish in flavour, and requiring little condiment." Unfortunately for their neighbours, their search for human flesh led to widespread slaughter."

Ibid., p.83

"But the Basongye, or Zappo Zaps, as they were often known, sold slaves to their neighbours knowing that they would be eaten; they also ate their own dead. Soon after the end of the Arab War, they would work for the Congo Free State and spread cannibalistic terror across the Congo. Other societies, such as the Baluba for example, ate the hearts of virtuous or brave people to gain their strength, but they also ate the bodies of criminals and slaves to prevent them from doing evil to their masters or haunting them."

Ibid., p.84

"In some Congolese societies, people ate human flesh only occasionally to mark some particularly significant ritual occasion, but in other societies in the Congo perhaps even a majority by the late nineteenth century, people ate human flesh whenever they could, saying that it was far tastier than other meat and, perhaps suprisingly, that male human flesh tested better than female. Persons to be eaten often had both of their arms and legs broken and were made to sit up to their necks in a stream for three days, a practice said to make their flesh more tender, before they were killed and cooked. Teeth filed to sharp points werew widely thought by Europeans to be the mark of cannibals, but in some societies whose people actually were cannibals, teeth were not filed at all, and in others that did not practice cannibalism, people nevertheless filed their teeth to sharp points. As Sydney L. Hinde noted during the Arab War, the Batetela were such devoted cannibals that children actually killed and ate their parents "at the first sign of their decrepitude," but they did not file their teeth."

Ibid., p.84

"In 1907, the Bankutu people were seen by a European traveler to hunt people for food as other Congolese hunted animals. They served human flesh in "little rolls like bacon." As late as 1923, American traveler Hermann Norden reported that cannibalism was commonplace. One Congolese man reprovingly scolded him for not eating some human flesh when he was offered it: "You know the flesh of man tastes better than the flesh of a goat." A Belgian companion of Norden's admitted that he had probably been served human flesh and had eaten it unknowingly. In 1925, Hungarian anthropologist Emil Torday reported an encounter with a Muyanzi man who boasted about cooking human brains with a pinch of salt and red peppers, then dipping his bread into it. "Then he would smack his lips and run away like an imp." Missionary and explorer A.L. Lloyd reported that when a European told a Congolese Bangwa tribesperson that eating human flesh was a "degrading habit," the man answered, "Why degraded? You people eat sheep and cows and fowls, which are all animals of a far lower order, we eat man, who is great and above all; it is you who are degraded."

Ibid., p.85

While in the Congo, Livingstone saw human parts being cooked with bananas, and many other Europeans reported seeing cooked human remains lying around abandoned fires. British captain and medical officer Sydney L. Hinde, who would take part in the Free State's war with the Arabs in 1892-93, reported an incident in which a Basongo chief asked a Belgian officer to hand him a knife, which he immediantly used behind the officer's tent to cut the throat of a little slave girl he owned. He was cooking her when soldiers seized him. British adventurer Hebert E. Ward once asked a group of Congo tribespeople whether they ate human flesh. Their immediate answer was "Yes, don't you?" Later, Ward witnessed cannibalism on numerous occasions and was often offered human flesh to eat. He recalled an occasion when a young Bangala slave was killed. Soon after, the chief's son, a boy of sixteen or so, "nonchalantly" said, "That slave boy was very good eating - he was nice and fat." The Arab slavers did not invent cannibalism in the Congo and their defeat in 1893 did not end it. But their brutal raids forced some societies to rely on human flesh to survive."

Ibid., p.88

"While some Free State officials were exploiting Congolese and others tried to care for them, a constant concern of these Europeans was cannibalism. It was not simply the eating of human flesh that repelled them, but that so many people were murdered expressly so that others might feast upon their bodies. Early in the 1600s, Englishman Andrew Battel escaped the Portuguese who had enslaved him, to spend sixteen months among the Jaga people near the Congo's Atlantic coast. He reported that they preferred human flesh to their own cattle. Later, as we have seen, healthy children were stabbed to death to provide a feast for their owners, and men were known to help sick coworkers "die," then smoke their body parts for later consumption."

Ibid., p.108

"None of the Europeans were suprised that Africans on both sides of the war with the Arabs routinely cooked and ate not only the dead they found on the battlefield, but the wounded as well."


"Perhaps predictably, some European visitors characterized the Congolese people as above all lazy, unintelligent, infantile, ungrateful, and lacking in foresight. One Belgium Catholic missionary described them as "laziness incarnate, turning their heads to nothing, becoming drunk, dead drunk . . .whereas the women and slaves, driven with the whip, work pitifully hard. A British Protestant missionary wrote, "The chief characteristics of [the Congolese] people appear to be drunkenness, immorality and cruelty."

Ibid., p.26

"That the Capuchins were anything but enamored of the Bankongo as potential Christians can be seen in these comments made by the Capuchin missionary Antonio de Gaeta in 1669:

Devils by the deformation of their features, devils by the blackness of their bodies, devils in their souls because their wills are always fixed on evil; devils in their thinking, by continually having in mind superstition, witchcraft and sorcery; devils in their speaking, by the great lies they utter; devils in their actions, by so many grave sins which they commit; and finally, devils and more than devils, damned and more than damned, by that bestial pride, that inhuman and barbarous cruelty, which they display all the time and in every action.

Ibid., p.18

"I think we killed between eighty and ninety," M'lumba acknowledged. Sheppard counted forty-one bodies and was told that the rest had been eaten. He noticed that the cannibals had carved steaks off the lower parts of three bodies. The forehead of one decapitated person had been used to make a bowl for rolling tobacco. Sheppard say sixty women prisoners huddled together, awaiting their turn to satisfy the sexual appetites of the warriors."

Ibid. p.135

“The Congo is richer in mineral wealth than any other country in Africa. That wealth has preciously been stolen by the Congo's leaders and their cronies."

Ibid., xi

"Although its volcanic mountains, extensive swamplands, and dark, dense forests are not suitable for farming, many ports of the huge country have successfully been brought under intense cultivation, and its many rivers, including the Congo river - the world's second-longest and deepest - are richly stocked with fish."

Ibid., xii

"Independence under Mobutu brought outrageous corruption. Mobutu became one of the world's richest men while the country's economy collapsed, democracy vanished, and most people went hungry most of the time."

Ibid., xiii

"Much of the Congo basin is crisscrossed by so many wide rapidly flowing mud-brown rivers that together they make up one-sixth of the world's hydoelectric potential."

Ibid.p.3

"The Congo River itself was not only a rich resource for fish and crustaceans, but it also posed few dangers because it neither flooded nor ran dry. Because the Congo's tributaries come from both north of the equator and south of it, when it is the rainy season in one region, it is dry in the other, maintaining the huge river's even flow year-round."

Ibid., p.4

"For the first four days after independence, the cities and countryside alike were calm. Heavily armed, stern-faced, steel-helmeted troops led by white officers were watchful, well-disciplined, and in public view, there was no sign of trouble. However, on the next day, the Force Publique mutinied against its all-white officer corps, and a few days later, the men of the Gendarmerie die the same. Men of both forces inflicted shocking abuses on many of their white officers and humiliated hundreds of European civilians, especially priests and nuns. Some Europeans were tortured, and others were murdered. Scores of European women were raped. . . .

. . .While this panicked exodus was taking place, planeloads of Belgian paratroopers were landing to secure Leopoldville’s airport and to protect the Congo’s Europeans by whatever means they found necessary. There were few left to protect. Of the twenty-nine thousand Europeans in the Congo’s three largest cities on July 1, 1960, only three thousand remained by July 10."

Ibid., p.187-88

“How many of the eighty thousand Europeans who were in the Congo when the violence began were harmed during the mutiny has never been determined. Most fled out of harm’s way before the violence could overtake them, but some escaping cars were fired on, and many abandoned homes were looted and burned. After the Force Publique’s officers had been disarmed, all but a few were detained under guard. Some of these officers were civilly treated, fed, and exposed to few indignities, but others were stripped of their uniforms, beaten, spat upon, and forced to do drink the urine that Congolese had deposited in tin cups. A few were shot and killed. Some European civilians suffered the same kinds of ill-treatment, Flemings being singled out as victims because they were thought to have been especially contemptuous of Congolese. Priests and nuns were particularly targeted for abuse, often being stripped of their clothing and made to parade in public in the nude. Scores of European women including nuns were raped, several of them at least twenty times. Most of them were assaulted in front of their young children. A few of those who were raped were prepubescent girls themselves.

A Belgian government investigation took evidence from many victims of these assaults and rapes. For example, it reported that one man. .


as imprisoned for two days without food, with his wife and three children aged less than 12, under the menace of an automatic weapon. After he was freed, he was arrested again on the 11th of July, around 3 o’clock in the afternoon. He was stripped, like the others, and hit with fists, feet and rifle butts. Two of his companions were mortally wounded. For two more days, they were deprived of food and drink. Soldiers tried to drown him in a barrel filed with water, but a sergeant prevented them.

On the same day (11th of July), his wife was assaulted in her bedroom. She was hit with fists and rifle butts by six soldiers, who got hold of here and made deep cuts in her arms, of which the Commission has found traces. They stripped her of her underwear and raped her. Six soldiers held her tight and motionless, while an undetermined number of soldiers raped her. They stood in line while waiting for their turn. Her three children were present at the scene, crying loudly.

Other soldiers got hold of her daughter aged less than 12 and raped her several times.

Shortly afterwards, three soldiers again entered her room and raped Mrs. Z. . . .in turn. While one of them raped her, the two others held her motionless. Two children were again present.

Shortly after they left, other soldiers came to the house and rapes Mrs. Z. in the same manner.

These scenes continued from dusk til dawn.

Ibid., p.189-90

[Truthseeker]

So it was Africans and their neighbors that placed them in bondage?

Early on, though I think later those sources dried up and there was actual captures, also these tribes were encouraged to attack and enslave others and a need to participate in the trade was created in cases where muskets were given in exchange.

But that slavery was different, in Africa the child of a slave was free, you could be placed in (usually after war) but not born into slavery, in the west the all subsequent generations were also enslaved.

Also I think the type of slavery might have been a harsher variety than that in Africa.