Gbetto Warriors

West African Slave Trade Narratives Need The Vital Context.

More often than not, many Black people around the globe, in Africa and also in the Diaspora, would read about certain “notorious” kingdoms in West Africa that supposedly engaged in the kidnapping and sale of peoples of other ethnic groups, especially during times of war.

You would often read about the Asante Kingdom and its raids into neighboring Akan villages belonging to the Denkyira, the Akyem and the Akuapem.

Perhaps, no kingdom on the West Africa coast has been painted as more notorious in its mentality of war and religion than Dahomey. And for many people who read about chattel slavery from the West African coast, Dahomey has been painted as a beast, a warrior nation built upwards only for war, for the capture of people and for the sale of these people into chattel slavery.

Some western educated historians even say that all of Dahomey’s economy was based entirely on the sale of slaves. Nothing could be more wrong! How could anyone truly account for Dahomey’s economy in 1890s when the World Bank cannot even assess Togo’s economy in the twenty-first century?

In the case of Asante, even Yaa Asantewa’s war has been painted by certain acclaimed historians as a war to re-establish Asante’s slave trade routes to the coast. Nothing could be more insidious and stupid! Yaa Asantewa’s war was only to root out one evil from Asanteman—the same evil that has been responsible for much of the turmoil on the West African coasts: The Abrorfour! The British!

Dahomey’s case is also not difficult to make. But, of course, one has to be willing to see through the chaff, the misinformation and disinformation that has engulfed the entirety of Dahomey’s history. Is it true that Dahomey sold captives into slavery? Yes. Except, that is an infantile assessment if one were to leave the narrative there. What is the point of history if not to give the narrative the proper historical, economic and geopolitical context within which it should be understood?

For instance, is the Middle East a region that is today stooped in barbaric violence, one after the other? Sure, but to give that answer without the necessary geopolitical and economic context of western imperialist nations, particularly the warring proclivities of the United States of America, as the source and guarantor of the violence in the Middle East, will be idiotic.

Make no mistake, western nations were the sources and guarantors of the terrorism of slavery that befell the hitherto peaceful West Africa. How come the Asante Kingdom had no need to attack the Ewes up until at the height of the slave trade?

How come the Gbetto warriors of Dahomey had no need to raid enemy towns and villages in Oyo and beyond until at the height of the slave trade? Even more specifically, how come Dahomey and Anlo for instance, did not find a reason to build up their military prowess until it became necessary at the height of the kidnapping and sale of peoples by terrorist groups?

These are the questions, and the context, which African historians, if they have any brains, should rather assess and narrate. However, most of our African historians, because they are western educated, and are educated to hate nothing, but themselves, are busy memorizing the Judeo-Christian narratives of European imperialist historiography of West Africa. This is what they are taught, and ultimately this is what these African historians must regurgitate to pass their “hard” examinations in school, and to further their inconsequential research in academia.

The West African chattel slave narrative needs its proper context. The context of Europe’s Judeo-Christian terrorism against Africa.

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~ Success is a horrible teacher. It seduces the ignorant into thinking that he can’t lose. It seduces the intellectual into thinking that he must win. Success corrupts; Only usefulness exalts. ~ WP. Narmer Amenuti (which names translate: Dances With Lions), was born by The River, deep within the heartlands of Ghana, in Ntoaboma. He is a public intellectual from the Sankoré School of Critical Theory, where he trained and was awarded the highest degree of Warrior Philosopher at the Temple of Narmer. As a Culture Critic and a Guan Rhythmmaker, he is a dilettante, a dissident and a gadfly, and he eschews promotional intellectualism. He maintains strict anonymity and invites intellectuals and lay people alike to honest debate. He reads every comment. If you enjoyed this essay and would like to support more content like this one, please pour the Ancestors some Libation in support of my next essay, or you can go bold, very bold and invoke them. Here's my CashApp: $TheRealNarmer

37 COMMENTS

    • Nana Afia Serwaah Bonsu No, he doesn’t want to read this as it conflicts with his colonial western academic rhetoric.

    • Hahahaha… that’s a lot of bla-bla-bla… with only argument ‘western educated’ historians while the writer himself is educated in western culture and live not in Africa

    • On the contrary, you don’t think your response is “bla-bla-bla with only argument ‘the writer himself is educated in western culture and live not in Africa'”? Come on!

  1. We can’t read everything from those whose actions and inactions has somehow brought us to our knees as hook, line and sinker.

  2. First time reading what seems like a caritcature from Narmer Amenuti -no tail or head.

    1. His Thesis is that these “Kingdom” obviously built on slave-raiding have been unfarly or inaccurately presented by Historians. IT’S NOT TRUE. IT’S A LIE. And puts forward no substance than an unreasonable demand on readers to SPECULATE he has a point.

    2. So-called Yaa Asantewaa war was never to root out any evil the British represented. It was an Asante CIVIL war which escalated. Indeed the label “Anglo-Asante War” some Historians put on it is inaccurate to some of us because it was an attack on Kumasi and MOST OF THE POLITIES FORMING ASANTE TODAY FOUGHT ON THE SIDE OF THE BRITISH and their allies. The local allies of the British were also ESTINGUISHING a lethal evil against that stability! The ASANTE!

    This Yaa Asantewaa woman was ally of the British and she gave them Obuase lands to mind Gold even without the consent of her People. She was considered a corrupt Queen by many of her People up to the outbreak of the war.

    3. And look at this, after saying All that he shoots himself in the leg by TURNING to these rhetorics: “Make no mistake, Western Nations were the sources and guarantors of the terrorisn of Slavery that befell the hitherto peaceful West Africa. How come the Asante Kingdom had no need to attack the Ewes up until at the Bright of the Slave trade?”

    If the logic is that the guarantee Western Nations gave it absolves our People of their roles then it’s warp logic. In one breath he alleges “stupid… narrative” and in another concedes it’s true Asante and Dahomey raised and traded Enslaved Africans but People are forgetting or that should be blamed on the Western involvement. Nobody has ever made such mistake of ignoring Western role in TAST.

    4. Indeed, in circa 1874 when the British ended their trade Asante declared war on them for ending Slave trade. Subsequently they diverted their trade East through Volta to Dahomey. 1901 pacification of Kumasi (Yaa-Asantewa) was indeed part of military Campaign to end Asante evil -SLAVE RAIDING SND TRADING.

    WE can never be emotional about the Slave Trade. Nobody hadms yet misrepresented the narrative as it Stands now.

    The context he asks for ALREADY EXISTS and Is basic to any First Degree History student at University of Cape Coast.

  3. You have a few points Abeku, albeit ones that barely address the point of the Narrative.

    Let me illustrate my point with a simpler example in the twenty-first century. Some Libyans, today, are kidnapping other Libyans and selling them into slavery in North Africa and Southern Europe. Some Libyans, for this matter, are slave traders.

    That is your point. Is it not? I give you that. Take it.

    My point is that the real gangster, slave trader and money-maker of the slave trade in Libya is former President of the USA, President Barack Obama. I am saying that the context of the American invasion is the “vital context” whether or not some Libyans have become slave traders.

    You think a lie? Build a swimming pool, a nice big pool, on one of your several acres. Don’t build a wall around it, and leave unattended. Children who can and can’t swim will find this swimming pool. Some will drown in it.

    Europe’s Imperialist nations are not just referred to in Russia as “Chaos Managers” for nothing. The reason is what I have shown: Provide the context for suffering, and let the children go to play in it. The fault of the children is really because they are children, and they are ignorant of the intent of the swimming pool.

    African states were ignorant. Make no mistake. They were ignorant of the stagecraft of the unattended to, un-walled, swimming pool.

  4. Yes, Narmer Amenuti, I get what you miss!!
    With Asante and Dahomey it was never some people in Asante and Dahomey kidnapping others to SELL; with the two Slave-raiding was the stem of the NATIONAL Economics. So yes Asante and Dahomey were Slave-raiding Kingdoms. In fact, looking at the emerging point of Asante, 1698, it’s not entirely inaccurate to say ot was full-blown Slave-raiding Kingdom. If the Normans raided for treasures as Profession, Asante and Dahomey raised for humans as Profession.

    All this present-day illustration you seek to rationalise what make events from over 400 years ago is what Historians call “Anachronism”. It’s contextually chaotic and distorting.?

    The Ancestors of someone like Daasebre Kwebu Ewusi VII is on record to have created a military barricade West of Mankessim against Slave raiders and “Asante Karikari”, warlords of Asante sent to raid for slaves close to Mankessim is recorded in Mankessim tradition to have been defeated and dismembered.

    When we talk of the intermediary roles the Coastal States played in the trade then we can discusss individuality of the middlemen and not generalise. For this History has indelible record of the “Merchant Princes” whose notoriety was legendary.

    We cannot by any massage of our historiography, absolves Asante and Dahomey of the ‘legacy’.

  5. Abeku, All HISTORY, by your standard, is then Anachronistic! Or is it not? You ever seen a history book written on the battle field with a gun/sword in one hand and the pen in another?

    My point remains, the history you and I have read was written also out of memory. No one was there! Your interpretation cannot, on any ground, be more valid than my assertion, and indeed my supposition that the terrorism of the Judeo-Christian West in West Africa provided the whole chaotic context for the ignorance into which much of West Africa descended.

  6. Narmer Amenuti
    No, I am not talking of History written from memory, unless you are talking of the memories of the Primary writers who wrote the pieces of sources some 400 years ago. But of course without memory there will be no History to talk of now. History is primarily about the HUMAN FACTOR in the changes we see around us. So yes, it’s Memory matter.

    I am speaking from Primary sources Otumfour Asanehene himself verify what I say of Asante?

  7. Dear Abeku,

    Which one of the Otumfours? Is he alive or dead?

    If dead, please provide a goat (white fur), hen, twelve eggs, Akpeteshie from Sogakofe proper, one calabash, one gourd of Palm wine, and since it is an Otumfour I have to summon from the dead, I will need a an Adope (a dwarf, proper), a cow, an elephant and a lion, all for the ritual.

    Again, specify which Asantehene will corroborate this tale of yours.

    Yours,
    Narmer.

  8. Narmer Amenuti
    You ara not Dead, right? He is alive and closer to the History than you.

    I am no talebearer ?

  9. Narmer Amenuti

    “”… the terrorisn of the Judeo-Christian West in West Africa provided the whole Chaotic CONTEXT for the ignorance into which much of West Africa descended.” is not a mere supposition but uncontestable fact and truth we are at consensus on.
    It’s the basic thesis every 1st year History student at University of Cape Coast is taught.

    In fact in my final year during undergraduate I did a special paper on this matter and one of the books I fell is love with is Conrad’s “CHILDREN OF GOD’S FIRE: DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF BLACK SLAVERY BRAZIL ” which deals with how Enslaved Africans were acquitted in West Africa. It goes into how the Europeans started kidnappings long before locals joined them.

    The fact remains, however, that having that your post is self-defeating since you mix this truism with a dishonest conjecture which seeks to Project Asante and Dahomey as West African Kingdoms of mindless People without WILL so should be absolved of their roles.

  10. Abeku Adams Ekumfi. To be ignorant about a common enemy is not to be mindless. It is exactly because these Kingdoms had their own separate minds that they were ignorant about their common enemy – the Abrorfour. You cannot be ignorant about something without a mind to begin with. There’s no contradiction. In fact, quite on the contrary, accepting ignorance is the recipe to create the room for growth. We have yet to accept our ignorance about the Abrorfour in Nana Yeboah’s own imagination.

  11. I respect the opinions espoused in this piece but
    I beg to disagree in a few regards. Slavery is a shared responsibility between these kingdoms and the whites. Kingdoms like Akwamu for instance, had a lucrative barter system where they supplied the Danes with slaves in exchange for weapons, until their defeat by the Northern Ewes.

    While we must celebrate our own civilisations (indeed, I have written a piece on my page about the brave amazons), and while it is true that slavery was not the sole motive of these kingdoms (Asante had gold and Dahomey had plantations of palm), we must also acknowledge the embarrassing parts of our history, which has contributed to the tribal rhetoric infesting all aspects of our national life, including politics.

    You seem to suggest, for instance, that the Asante attempt to conquer Ewes was at the height of the slave trade, hence, motivated by the western demand for slaves. This, I believe, was not the case.

    The Asante invaded Eweland in 1869, about 60 years after slave trade was abolished by Britain. Asante’s motives were not slavery per se but an attempt to help their Akwamu allies conquer the Ewes as well as gain a new route to the coast.

    Despite wrecking havoc in Eweland the Asante were eventually defeated and fled in 1871. However, they managed to take slaves of their hosts and also villages that they passed on their way out. These slaves were not sold to the whites but menant to be kept and used by the Asante themselves. This motivated the Ewes to assist the British in the Sagrenti War. The defeat of Asante in this war paved the way for most of these captured to come back home.

    Western slavery, thus, cannot be blamed for Asante slave raids in the Kreppi war.

    The painful truth is, colonization and oppression were not introduced by the White man; they existed among us before he came. This explains why the so-called Anglo-Asante wars were actually fought by local tribes who sought to throw off Asante’s oppression with the aid of Britain.

    It’s time we dealt with our own past so we can have clear conscience to deal with the white man.

    • I would say that is unfair. But, it is actually unnecessary. At worse, if one would like to even play the Devil’s advocate about Asante within the historical paradigm of the western narrative, I would have taken it more seriously if you had said that Asante were like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or even like the United States of America. Perhaps we could have had a debate about the Judeo-Christian European influences there of or not.

  12. Interesting, Hubert Agamasu. Your points are taken. Your reiteration of the current school of thought is that Africans sold Africans into slavery. Sure, I give you the point. Take it.

    My essay is not about who did what and who didn’t do what. My essay is not about the actors and their actions. My essay is not about the 20 soccer players, and the 2 goal keepers.

    My essay is about the goal posts, the referees and the large field in between. Along that terrain, there are builders, grass, dirt, water, potholes, mud, net, etc. My essay is about how the game was refereed on that pitch and why the game had to be played even in the first place!

    I did not say “the Asante attempt to conquer Ewes was at the height of the slave trade, hence, motivated by the western demand for slaves.”

    I said that the attempt to attack Ewes even by Asante standards only became evident at the height of the slave trade. Meaning, there would have been no need for it without the chaotic milieu of Judeo-Christian European terrorism within which even Asante had become distrusting of Ewes.

    Your other points need proper response in detail but let me clarify the point of the essay briefly:

    All wars have victims, captives and the dead. What you need to appreciate is that war is business. There are captives, and then there is the loot. Because war is business, we need to trace the loot. Specifically, we need to trace where most of the loot goes. Where the loot ends up is where we need to first point the heavy finger. My point.

  13. Narmer Amenuti Well noted. I am sorry for having misquoted you.

    I only sought to clarify that the slave trade ended long before Asante attacked the Ewes. Hence the “chaotic milieu of Judeo-Christian European terrorism…” or Asante becoming distrusting of Ewes has little to do with it.

    This position is further reinforced by the fact that the “loot” in this case was traced to Asante, not the slave ships; the same loot that was recovered and restored to its human dignity after 1874.

    But if we are to agree that war is business, then what does it matter where the loot goes? If we must appreciate the immorality of the reduction of human dignity to loot, why then are we concerned with the economics of where the loot goes? Are we making the problem of slavery an economic or moral one?

    Finally, that we sold each other into slavery, I believe, is a fact of history corroborated by our own traditions and not a school of thought. I am told the president of Benin recently apologized for the role of Dahomey in the slave trade. This is a great example and I hope other states in Ghana will follow suit.

  14. Hubert Agamasu your thread is very interesting but sadly it appears to fit into one of those who passed the oppressor’s “hard” examinations. It was sad to see Prof Akosua Perbi of the University of Ghana going along with your rhetoric about Africans selling their kith and kin into slavery when she was interviewed in Dr Henry Louis Gates’ documentary ‘ Slave Kingdoms’. If you take the story from 1869, then it is little wonder that you see Asante invasion of Eweland as pivotal in the story. Your claim that western slavery can not be blaimed for Asante raids is fanciful and lack any factual foundation but rather upholds the oppressor’s narrative of this dark chapter of our history. To go on to say that colonialism and oppression were not introduced by the white man reminds me once again that truly some of the oppressed are really in league with the oppressor. Nevertheless, the tale of the hunter is no longer the tale of the hunt, because the lion is now telling its story. The president of Dahomy does not know his history otherwise he wouldn’t be apologising but rather fighting for reparations and reparative justice.

  15. Hubert Agamasu, for now, and respectfully, you are beating about the bush. It is clear what your point is, and so there’s no need to twist my words to make yours.

    For instance, when you say my “position is further reinforced by the fact that the “loot” in this case was traced to Asante, not the slave ships,” you engage in the kind of pharisaism I am deconstructing. No, the loot did not end up in Asante! Can you identify slaves in Asanteland today? Can you identify which edifices in Asante were constructed with slave selling money and labor?

    The loot, if you would like to actually trace it, can be found in the west. Go to the USA and Brazil, and Haiti, you will find for yourself at the Airport, the descendants of African slaves treated in much the same manner as their African ancestors, although without the chains.

    Plus, are you actually asking the question: “if we are to agree that war is business, then what does it matter where the loot goes?” Of course it matters. If it didn’t you wouldn’t be tracing the “loot” short-sightedly to Asante. Or would you? What grounds would you have to say Africans sold Africans? You would have to trace the money.

    The fact is there’s nothing in Africa to show for the thesis that Africans sold Africans! None. All the Judeo-Christian narratives have served only to label Africans complicit in the slave trade without any evidence. Show me the money. You cannot.

    And that is my point. War is business. The Judeo-Christian terrorism of Africa by European nations was a business in much the same way that they fund terrorism in the Middle East. For the oil. And of course, you would say the Middle Easterners are the ones killing their own people and selling the oil for cheap. Sure, that is your point. But it lacks context. It lacks comprehension!

    Where the loot, whether it slaves or oil, ultimately ends up is the biggest shareholder in this business of war. Euro-America. We can talk all we want about the African labor used in extracting that wealth, and acquiring the loot, but that is beating about the bush.

  16. I’m sorry but I think you should did not follow my argument carefully from the beginning else if you would have placed my Asante example in proper context.

    My answer concerning the Asante raids was in direct response to a claim that ‘their attack on the Ewes was motivated by the European slave trade’. I merely showed that this could not have been true in this particular case since the slave trade ended years before the war. I pointed out further that in this case, the enslaved people were not sold to the white man but kept in Asante.

    If you disagree, please feel free to offer your evidence that the 1869 raid was motivated by Europeans. But to take my answer out of this particular context and conclude that I said “western slavery [in general] cannot be blamed for Asante’s attack would be an unfortunate inrerpretation of my words (I noticed this was a great part of your writing).

    My conviction hitherto has been that both the slaving kingdoms and the White man are culpable. We must not unfairly shift all blame onto the buyer and exonerate the seller because ‘we are showing african solidarity’. That would be extremely ideological and hardly moral.

    But I find it also interesting, (if not arrogant?), that you know more about Dahomey history than the Dahomeans who upon consultation at several levels with their political and historical authorities, decided to do such a humbling but honest thing by owning their share of the blame.

    Surely the arrival of the white man added a new dimension to the trade but we cannot deny that it existed long before he came. Taking the story back as you suggest even before the arrival of the white man would not clear these kingdoms of their share of guilt in any way.

    We do our best to extricate ourselves from our share of blame, using convoluted arguments that exonerate the seller and pin all blame on the buyer, arguments that even reduce the issue from a moral one to an economic one as I have shown earlier. This is certainly not a fair interpretation of our own history.

    When I speak of these things, I do not do so as one who has only read foreign history and got brainwashed, as you seem to suggest. I was not told this story by the “hunter” but by the “hunted”; It is part of the oral history and even daily life of my own community.

    Right in my village there are families whose ancestors were wrestled back from slavery from Akwamu and Asante. During chieftaincy disputes, fingers are pointed at others because they are said to be “amedzro” brought back from Asante.

    Indeed, my desire to study the histories of the Asante and Akwamu invasions of my people was an attempt to understand these puzzles in my own community.

    So you see, the hunter in my case is not the white man but the politically correct ghanaian historians who have suppressed the truth of my own Northern Ewe history ostensibly for the sake of national unity. It is from him that I am wrestling my history.

    Amevor, the politically correct history we have developed in this country is hinged on three pillars:
    1. Africans were free before pre colonial times.
    2. The white man came and introduced slavery and oppression.
    3. Some kingdoms fought this whiteman and became the harbingers of your freedom.To this end tribal heroes are tauted as national ones.

    But the truth of our history shows the opposite, that oppression and imperialism existed before the white man. Indeed, the fight for independence did not start with UGCC but with Osei Tutu who freed his nation from Denkyira at Feyiase, Akua Darkowaa who freed her Akyem people from Asante at Akatamamso and Howusu and Kojo De who freed the Nothern Ewes from Akwamu at Peki, as well as gallantly defeated 40000 Asante- Akwamu troops to preserve their sovereignty. In some of these cases like Akatamamso the white man was an ally to these oppressed tribes!

    At some points the British were actually protectors of local people. Indeed, the reason Gold coast became a colony in the first place was because the southern tribes sought British to protection from Asante.

    In our rendition we portray Asante as the African kingdom fighting the Imperial white man ith Prempeh at al as heroes when in reality, most of the British troops were actually oppressed tribes seeking to throw of the yoke of Asante. Rempeh was actually captured by the king of Akualim and handed over to the British!

    Clearly our conquering kingdoms were the villains at a point but these are the truths that we hide because we fear they may not engender inter-tribal unity.

    The truth is, iur history is a complicated one in which the oppressor has always changed faces, from slaving kingdoms to the british and today, I dare say the greedy politician. Our inability to identify this changing oppressor may well be the reason we re still not fully emancipated.

    The politically correct and seemingly panafrican narrative in which the white man is the only oppressor in our history and deserving of all blame is not I’m keeping with the facts of our past and has not liberatee us nearly seventy years after independence. An Ewe proverb loosely translated as ” it is your own pocket knife that cuts you”. We need to approach our history from an honest, introspective perspective, own our share of responsibility and foster genuine tribal reconciliation. This is what true panafricanism must be all about.

  17. Narmer AmenutiI think you are the one veering off point by throwing my argument out of context and displaying a repertoire of Whiteman vocabulary.

    A strong point in your first submission was the false assertion that the Asante attack on Ewes was at the height of the slave trade and, hence, was motivated by the demand for slaves. What could be more misleading? This was the basis of my response in which I pointed out t to you that the slave trade ended over sixty years before the Asante came to fight in Eweland. I further showed that the slaves in this particular case were not sold to the British but kept in Asante until their rescue by British-Ewe troops in 1874.

    In your second write-up, you excused the very process by which humans with dignity were reduced to goods. Instead, you argued that what was important was tracing the loot. I responded that we cannot accept IMMORAL dehumanization of human beings to goods, and be concerned about the ECONOMICS of where the goods went and who had the money.

    Then, granting your loot-tracing hypothesis, I applied it to the case at hand- Asante-raids in Eweland-to show that the loot ended up in Asante, not the West. Here, I was only using your own idea of loot tracing to make my point. I was not the one who introduced it so why do you now turn around to hold it against me?

    If you say that Africans did not sell each other into slavery, could you tell us who did? Who raided the people that were sold to the Dutch on the Gold Coast? Who caught those that were purchased by the Portuguese on the Slave Coast? Or are you one of those playing semantics with the meaning of Africa by asserting that there was no overarching African Identity at the time?
    Failing to adduce any historical evidence for your position you resort to references to the Middle East, thereby committing the fallacy of blaming the usual thief for whatever gets stolen.
    Let us be honest with history and leave our ideological leanings for once.

  18. Hubert Agamasu my brother I think you are confusing the type of slavery we are talking about here. Chattel slavery is different from the slavery that existed before the Portuguese led the European onslaught on our shores. Captured prisoners of war who were enslaved in various dominions pre the 15th century were treated humanely and with respect. In fact since biblical times history tells us that some slaves who excel in the conquerors dominion rose to positions of eminence. The advent of chattel slavery dehumanised the African, making him sub-human, a property that can be discarded like a piece of torn clothing into a garbage can, Therefore I think this discussion can only continue if we agree that we are talking about chattel slavery. Africans were not sold but captured by the Europeans. When you start the story in the late 19th century as you have done then you are bound to be swayed by the oppressor’s narrative of that time. Even the oppressor’s records in the 15th century do not support the apologists contention like the president of Benin and his eminent advisers. If there was a willing buyer and a willing seller why were slave owners compensated by the British to the sum of £20,000 each when slavery ended? You may call me arrogant for putting the case against these apologists, but truth be told some of these current heads of state are worse than the monarchs who collaborated in this obnoxious trade. Look at the Francophone states in this day and age and their position of the dreadful Colonial Pact. What is president of Benin’s position on the Colonial Pact that ensures the continued exploitation of his country by the Colonial Power, France. I am astonished but hardly surprised by your position that colonisation and oppression were not introduced by the white man. Tell that to the marines. I must be living in a parallel universe to you. The present day politicians who you mistakenly assume to be oppressors are just mere agents of the oppressor. They lack the mental capacity to oppress. They just do as they are told. They are serious gaps in your knowledge of our history. When did King Osel Tutu of Asanteman ascend the throne? Once again you don’t go back to the beginning of the story. By the late 17th Century that he was enthroned slavery which started in the late 15th century had already done immense damage to west and other parts of Africa. This equalisation of blame that modern day euro-centric historians and their cohorts have been pushing does not stand up to critical academic scrutiny as we find in in ‘BARROS: The Portuguese Land at Elmina {1552}’ or ‘TOWERSON’s English Impressions {1556}’. The Portuguese has landed at Elimina in 1479. Why don’t we start there and learn what took place, but rather we leap forward 2-3 centuries when our scientists, architects, engineers, priests, doctors, bakers, artisans, chefs et al have been captured and transported to unknown lands. For the record Pan Africanism is not an African continental ideology but rather a diasporan one. The fight for independence did not start with King Osei Tutu as you falsely claim. This is pure historical revisionism and oppressorspeak. The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his ‘Back to Africa’ movement with the mantra ‘Africa for Africans’ and before him Hubert Humphrey and alongside Du Bois, Amy Ashwood and Amy Jacques Garvey, Padmore, CLR James in collaboration with their African brothers and sisters in the motherland were the leading lights in the fight to remove the oppressor from the motherland and gain independence. True talk as you say our history has been a complicated one but what we should not do is to distort it any further. It is the agents of the oppressor that keep changing but the oppressor has n’t changed. Dr Nkrumah warned us to be aware of Neo-Colonialism, the last stage of Imperialism, sadly we did not listen and it is here with us today

  19. Some of the comments here make for great concern.

    The speed with which the “Metha” jumps to point out the complicity of Africans in the horrible machinations of the western judeo-Christian slave industrial complex is just amazing.

    They are quick to find the words to describe the participation of their fellow kinsmen while conveniently dodging the elepahant in the room. It’s just amazing!

    Thank you Narmer Amenuti for always sticking the needle where it must!

  20. informative and interesting.I will review it.Dahomey nee Benin my favourite place though i have not been to West Africa.

  21. Well, well, well – this is something SIR!
    Tell this this to our BRAINWASHED brothers who have been injected with WESTERN WHITEWASHED ACCOUNT OF SLAVERY IN WEST AFRICA- they are fighting each other to uphold the account of the very people who enslaved us – apologising ‘for our (the African’s ) part in ‘selling’ our own into slavery.

    They believe the account given because it was written by The WHITEMAN.

    https://youtu.be/Jw2f7IRcTrM

  22. Well done Brother Narmer Amenuti. The be all and end all of this long disputation is the impetus came from without. Why is there no mentioned of the Chiefs and Kings of polities that fought against this nefarious trade especially Afonso of the Congo, who actually wrote to the King of Portugal decrying the effect this nefarious trade had on his people. I have read apologetics by those that Hamid Dabashi calls “comprador intellectuals” who talk about African participants of the trade creating inter generational wealth for their families! Unlike the Europeans that were compensated for their loss of property after the abolition of slavery and invested their compensation money in Industry, the trade destroyed the productive capacity of Africa. Apart from a few faded elite names, the descendants of those participants are today flat broke whilst the European descendants of those that received compensation flourished……

    • The problem with our “comprador intellectuals” in Africa is that their very education insists on no other interpretation of the historical data before them but the one that has been supplied to them by their superiors in the west. I cannot stress how much you would find in our universities the weird inability of students to appreciate disparate interpretations of the same data. Let alone to appreciate that some interpretations are better than others in certain circumstances and that not one interpretation of data is correct at all times.

      We look at the same data of chattel enslavement of Africans by Europeans and it seems to me that no matter how hard one tries to get through to these students, just on the theoretical level alone, they ultimately fail to appreciate the existence of philosophy of their own narratives. Since they cannot see that their narrative is ideological, they are incorrigible when it comes to recognizing that other ideological interpretations also exist. How can these students even understand the Paradigm under which they offer their rehearsed interpretations?

      For these students, for instance, the “Planetary Structure” of the Atom is the Atom, if you get my Physics drift. It doesn’t matter what else you offer them! They have no idea that other theories describing the same historical data of the behavior of the Atom exist. These students cannot fathom that a theory like the “Electron Cloud” can exist also to explain away the same effects of the Atom.

      So, we have work to do. Either these students, these “comprador intellectuals” are just plain stupid, or they are stubbornly ignorant. The latter can be fixed, to some extent, but the former cannot.

  23. Slavery and colonization were historical accident. We didn’t have slaveships captained by Africans to bring Africans as slaves to America. Africa never benefitted from slave trade. This type of thinking that Africans sold each other is very divisive. It is taught in the black schools here! Black people here hate Africans because they believe that we sold them in slavery. We have to get over it. South African blacks sold nobody in slavery!

    • Sentiman Lekgothoane the reality is that in West Africa Africans did play part in facilitating the slave trade. Dahomey did play a role, I did not know about the Akans. The author here offers a mitigating viewpoint. History is never a one way street.

    • The African role is insignificant and minimal compared to what happened. No wonder we are not free till today!

    • What I really mean is that European govts and their settler colonies gained from the African Holocaust. Look how Europe and settler colonies (Canada, US ,SA Australia, New Zealand) prosper. It reminds me of the book ” How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by Walter Rodney

    • Sentiman Lekgothoane This is exactly the argument that the author is making here. The issue has been raised and like you he is responding.

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