Today i rant about the slavetrade.

Today is a good day to rant.…But the day is not yet over!!

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On to the rant then!

Or something like that. There are a lot of things in the world today that irritate me, and today (yesterday really, during celebrations for Keti Koti here in my country), one thing just punched through, and it did so at the wrong time. It made me decide to broach the topic and write my view on some issues that are connected to it.

What triggered me?

Yes, I admit it; I got well and truly triggered yesterday. The thing that did it was the speech made by the president of the Dutch National Bank. In it, he apologized for the DNB's (De Nederlandse Bank) role in the slave trade, which lasted from the 1530s until July 1st, 1863. That he apologized was incomprehensible to me and the utterly wrong thing to do.

Disclaimer: I condemn slavery. (PERIOD)!

Slavery is wrong, disgusting, and we should all do everything we can to eradicate it in all its forms! There has never been and will never be a valid reason for one human being to own another human being!

Confusing?

Not really. I am against slavery and I will speak up against it if needed. I am also strongly convicted of taking responsibility for one's actions, and only for ones actions. We cannot hold one man accountable for the actions and deeds of other men. As those involved in, and thus responsible for, the transatlantic slave trade, as well as their victims, are all long dead. People alive today have never owned slaves, nor have they taken part in any activity that caused or benefited from slavery, either directly or indirectly.

The DNB employees of today never owned slaves!

This includes the DNB, and its president. So for him to apologize is just plain absurd. Whom was it he addressed with those apologies? Certainly not former slaves, as from July 1st, 1863, the slaves were freed and slavery was outlawed.

My main concern with the DNB president's apologies is that it implies that i could be held responsible and accountable for any action or activity of any of my ancestors engaged in during their lifetimes. This is so much against my principles and core moral values of taking responsibility for one's own actions that it actually pisses me off.

What about the other slaves?

And isn't it wrong that anytime the topic "slavery" comes up, they're always referring to the transatlantic slave trade of Africans being transported from Africa to the Caribbean or the American colonies during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries? It excludes all other slavery that went on before the first cities formed in the fertile crescent. Most offensively, it totally ignores the European (Caucasian) slaves that were captured and sold by North African raiders and traders from European ships and coastal towns.

To ignore them is more offensive than all the millions of other slaves throughout history because they became slaves and were traded at the same time as those in the transatlantic slave trade. In North Africa, more "Christian-slaves" were traded and kept than Africans were traded in the transatlantic slave trade.

In fact, it was the Islamic North African slave-trade in European slaves that was the inspiration for the transatlantic slavetrade.

*Putting on a helmet and armor, shivering in fear underneath my desk*Now

I know that i will be vilified for stating that last paragraph. Descendents of the African slaves especially hate it when the North African slavetrade of Caucasian Christian slaves i brought up for any reason. Anyone who does so is accused of being a racist and of belittling the plight of the African slaves that were brought to the Americas, without even considering what exactly the person actually said or wrote. With the woke movement of today, those descendents are often overpowered in volume and vehemency by the extreme left woke snowflakes that take offense in the name of the African Negro Slaves.

Speculation

Any speculation on why descendents of African slaves hate to be reminded of the Christian slaves captured and traded by North Africans to the rest of Africa is also an act of suicide, or at least never a good way to gain popularity or friends among the people of African descent or the wokes of the world.

I am going to do it, anyway. I don't care. In fact, let me throw my most controversial speculations on the table first and watch them detonate in offense and disgust.

I think the descendents of the African slaves are afraid that if the world actually learns of the North African Christian slave trade, the number of Christian slaves, and the circumstances in which the Christian slaves found themselves, the attention and severity of the Atlantic slave trade will shrink. They fear they can no longer count on the surrogate guilt factor that their slave history evokes in much of western society.

They would prefer that no one believed the history of the Christian slaves.

But it is true. Check it for yourself.

They fear that when the general public learns that the atlantic slave trade lasted shorter and counted less slaves than the north african christian slave trade their demands for compensation will loose support.

*Ducking down into my basement surrounded by sandbags*

You can then drive them into rage-fits and make them go beserk if you then, on top of that, ask to consider why there are no enclaves or communities in Africa of descendents of christian slaves, or why nothing of the infrastructure for the christian slavetrade survived to this day.

This irks them because the answer is that the conditions of the christian slaves prevented them from forming families and reproduce. Another reason was that the mortality rate after they had arrived at their destination among the European slaves in Africa was almost 20% and also because 8% of those slaves were bought into freedom by either corperations or religious organisations.

The fact that none of the Banjo's (slave prisons) in which most Slaves were held until they were sold have survived also gives cause for thought.

Even the claim that the African slaves were submitted to the harshest and cruelest living conditions could be perceived in jeoporty by their descendants when one considers that most European male slaves became Gallyslaves.

Those poor men were forced to row continuously for days on end, chained to the ores by their arms and to a big heavy chain by their legs.

Their supervisors encouraged them to row faster and work harder by using a whip drenched in tar, or with a dried, streched bull penis. Slaves preferred being put to work in quarries hacking and hauling heavy rocks, than becoming a gallyslave.

One account written by a Dutch former slave (Cornelis Stout) after his escape describes the plight of the European slaves as follows:

‘in sigh selven een aardts paradijs maar voor ons een plaats vol elende; hier proefde wij eerst wat de Turckse slavernij is, lopende en rennende, te hooren roepen en schelden, slaan en smijten, honger en gebreck en al wat ramp voor een elendigh mens kan bedaght werden, was ons dagelijkckx broot.’

which roughly translates to:

In itself the estate was an earthen paradise but for us a place full of misery; here we first tasted what the Turck slavery is, walking and running, to hear shouting and cursing, suffer hitting and throwing, hunger and breaking and subjected to all that can be a disaster for a miserable man, was our daily bread.

Bear in mind that Cornelis Stout wasn't a Gallyslave or put to work in a quarry. He was captured with his family and sold as a family unit to work at the estate of a wealthy muslim.

But all of that doesn't matter. One is just as bad as the other. My point is that I have never held a slave, traded a slave or benefitted from a slave. Therefore i have nothing to apologize for. Neither does anybody else alive, regarding the 16th through 19th slave trades. But now the DNB president apologized, every one expects and assumes the Dutch government has to do the same.

I say NO!!!!

When i meet a slave trader i will give him a stern talking to and explain that slave trade is unacceptable and immoral.

Other than that…don't whine to me about it!

Thank you for reading this.

Stay safe and stay happy.

@anonsunamun