(October 27, 2019 at 8:53 am)AtlasS33 Wrote:
(October 27, 2019 at 6:49 am)Athene Wrote: Untrue.
Europeans (primarily the Portuguese, British, and Dutch) did conduct slave raids along the West African coast; Especially in the early phases of the of the TST.
In regards to the captives who were sold to slavers by African middlemen--Africans did not subscribe to the notion of a homogeneous "African" or "Black" ethnicity--No reason why they would considering the sheer amount of ethnicity/genetic diversity among people living on the continent. That's a box Eurocentrists invented and tossed them all of them in.
Worth noting, when running with the "they sold themselves" narrative. For the most part, leaders and merchants were selling and trading captives/POWs they regarded as foreign; Not subjects of their own tribes/kingdoms.
The "they sold themselves" narrative is used to mask one's own acts; or Tu Quoque argument:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
One of the arts of bellydancing in debates and discussion; like saying "why care about African slaves? they brought slavery upon themselves"; very unethical if you think about it.
Interestingly enough, I have yet to see anyone suggest that the white victims of the Barbary slave trade "brought slavery upon of themselves"--Despite the fact that Barbary pirates couldn't have waged nearly as successful a campaign without the expertise of English and Dutch privateer captains who elected to become corsairs.
But I presume that's because it's perfectly reasonable to expect that European subjects would have had their share of betrayal and opportunists among their ranks, right? Of course?
Of course.
Not Africans, though. Oh, no.
That was different...lol
Point blank: The narrative “Africans did it to themselves!” is nothing but a regurgitation of centuries-old Eurocentrist rhetoric aimed to mobilize public opinion against Africans and justify oppression of them--as were the false narratives that Africans barely resisted the European slave trade, and that no African civilizations existed pre-colonization and the continent was populated with but nothing mindless, amoral, black savages.