Another look at African economies and the slave trade
Added:
I highly recommend reading "Dahomey and the Dahomans" By Frederick Edwyn Forbes, an abolitionist
"The Commander-in-chief received the offer of my services, and at the same time a request from Mr. Duncan, the newly appointed Vice-Consul, that a naval officer should accompany him to the Court of Dahomey, and was pleased to confer on me the honour of the mission.
A great deal has been written on the state of the slave trade on the coast and at sea, together with the fate of the slaves in the Brazils. It is the object of the author, in giving publicity to the following Journals, to illustrate the dreadful slave hunts and ravages, the annihilations and exterminations, consequent on this trade ; and to bring prominently before the British public the sacred service they are rendering their fellow-men, in prosecuting their increasing efforts to allay those fearful horrors.
I had been often a day or two journeying into various parts of the interior of Africa, and had seen the state of the slave trade in its advanced systematic stage, and had considered the horrors of that division of it disgusting enough. I have visited bara- coons, and seen men so fearfully attenuated, from want and over-exercise in the march to the coast, as to render nature unable to support the frame. I have seen the hold of a slave ship, and the horrors consequent on diseases arising from the crowded state and want of wholesome food to alleviate the cravings of hunger and thirst. I have seen the slave toiling in South America, and known that the labour of these was a matter of calculation to the master, whether, by continual toil and short life, he would gain more money than by light work and protracted miserable existence. But what are all these to the tragic scenes that introduce the slaves to slavery ? A country living in peace with all around, and pursuing trade in the endeavour to become rich, is suddenly surrounded by a ruthless banditti; and how changed the scene ! The old would be rejected if brought to market, they are sacrificed ; the whole nation are transported, exterminated, their name to be forgotten, except in the annual festival of their conquerors, when sycophants call the names of vanquished countries to the remembrance of the victors...."
"Strange and contradictory as it may sound, this great nation is no nation, but a banditti"
http://books.google.com/books?id=CKNEAAAAIAAJ&pg=PP9&dq
Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A new interpretation. John Thornton
http://www.fiu.edu/~ogundira/T....hornton_Early_Kongo_
SLAVERY, COLONIALISM AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN DAHOMEY, 1640-1960. Patrick Manning
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521523073&ss=exc
THE CONSERVATION OF RACES and THE NEGRO By W.E.B. Du Bois
(sourced here because I read from page 92)
http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty..../jmanis/webdubois/Du
Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise. of Dahomey. Robin Law
http://www.fiu.edu/~ogundira/L....aw_Historiography_of
