<beepsie@worldnet.att.net>

Lowe's thoughtful response to my earlier posting requires a bit of
clarification, I think. First of all, I think it is appropriate to separate
three issues historically: the question of the slave trade as an event in
African history, the question of colonialism, and the issue of slavery in
the Americas. The one most frequently and easily addressed is that of
slavery in the Americas, which has much less "muddiness" about it than the
slave trade. I did not address the issue of colonialism, though there I
think a reparations argument (without saying anything further about
mechanism) is warranted. Had Europeans extended to Africans whom they
conquered in the late nineteenth century the basic rights and priveledges
their own citizens had (freedoms of press and religion, right to organize
labor, right to vote and be represented in the highest body of government
making decisions that affected them) the issue of reparations would be more
difficult. But they consciously did not extend any of these rights, and in
spite of their rhetoric turned Africa over to be despoiled by a group of
crony commercial outfits, covered by guarantees that their workers would not
be covered by any of the troublesome rights that workers in Europe enjoyed.
The distortions that resulted could easily be made into a case for
reparations.

When Lowe argues that the racialization of slavery and its subsequent
impacts on European thought was important I agree. The actions of colonial
governments, and the support that metropolitan citizens gave them were
anchored in ideas of racial superiority and inferiority that originated in
the enslavement of Africans in the Americas. As such, American slavery
reflected back into the misdeeds of colonialism. If one takes modern claims
of descendants of former slaves and links them to claims originating from
colonialism together, one can make a reasonable argument for "racial
redress."

The question of the African slave trade is more problematic. Lowe suggests
that I make a case against Njinga and her descendents (which I have to
admit, I wrongly did in the posting). I would not want to make this an issue
of "deserving" versus "undeserving" claims, suggesting that perhaps Njinga
or her descendants are "undeserving". This is not a question of whether or
not African rulers benefitted from the slave trade personally. It was not
Njinga as a person, or her descendants that might be held culpable for some
of her actions, but rather it was Njinga as a head of state of Ndongo and
Matamba. Decisions about the slave trade from the African side were made by
states, as were decisions about warfare and the fate of prisoners, and it is
in this capacity that we should examine the African side of the equation.
This explains the continuity of the slave trade from African states through
changes of government and leaders.

Blaming Njinga for selling the 69 pieces (and many others as well) is
roughly the same as blaming Charles II of England for the Royal Africa
Company. Heads of state don't make decisions as individuals but as heads of
state. No government is so capricious that one person genuinely makes
decisions, and there is a class of people that do so. In Ndongo as ruled by
Njinga and her predecessors, slavery was legal, as well as selling slaves, and
therefore she was doing nothing which was illegal or in the conceptions of
ethics current at that time and place, immoral. The act of enslavement was
also governed by law, and illegal enslavement was possible. Later, Njinga
confiscated and freed slaves being brought through her country en route to
Angola because she believed they had been illegally enslaved, and she
explained this position in a letter to Antonio de Oliveira de Cadornega.
There is considerable other evidence that African rulers in central Africa,
and I believe, others parts of Africa held similar positions about the slave
trade.

Where people were enslaved by bandits or other illegal activity, African
leaders and states cannot be held responsible except to the extent that they
or their officials "winked" at the transit and sale of these slaves. But in
this case, we can also hold European buyers responsible for failing to make
proper inquiries about the origin of their purchases. Afonso I of Kongo
complained directly about this in his letter to the King of Portugal in
1526, not about the legality of slavery and the slave trade in general, but
about the failure of buyers to ensure that the particular slaves they
purchased were legally acquired.

In his disagreements with me concerning _Africa and Africans_ Lowe argues
that in the end, during the high tide of the slave trade, the demand side
took over, and in effect, African decision makers simply became agents of
European traders and interests. I don't agree with this statement, and
continue to believe that Europeans possessed no effective instruments to
make this conversion, and that the continuation of the slave trade rested
with the decisions of African heads of state, their agents, and those who
affected their decisions most effectively. This is not to say that the
presence of European traders, and the offers they made to purchase slaves
did not influence the decisions, nor that the military effect of the
munitions trade did not shape decisions, but only to say that such forces
were not in themselves enough to turn sovereign rulers into agents of
foreign merchants.

The exception to this rule of state interests is in those areas where
banditry had run out of control of state officials, for example, perhaps in
Igboland, and at times in other areas where civil wars and other violence
had weakened the state to the point where it could not control banditry. In
these cases, we may look at a Euro-African collusion of an illegal sort.

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