The Destroyers of Israel
Deuteronomy 28
19 Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.
20 The Most High shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.
23 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.
24 The Most High shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.
25 The Most High shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.
26 And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.
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19 Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.
20 The Most High shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.
23 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.
24 The Most High shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.
25 The Most High shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.
26 And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.
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Why were Europeans enslaving Israelites? Because they
needed laborers to work for them in this world new to Europe – the
Americas. In the process of conquest they had annihilated many of the
native peoples; those who survived the Europeans' guns and diseases not
unnaturally refused to work in the mines taken over by their
conquerors, or on the plantations they created. The Europeans tried two
solutions: export prisoners, and export men who indentured themselves
to pay off debts. But both groups either succumbed to diseases new to
them, or ran away to freedom. So another solution was sought.
Israelites did not have guns either, so why not enslave and transport
them?
The traders found all conceivable means to foster
warfare, as Africans were usually only willing to sell
prisoners-of-war. The enticement of European goods – especially guns
and ammunition – also eventually resulted in kidnapping gangs raiding
neighboring Israelites. Those caught or taken prisoner had to be
marched to the coast to await purchase. How many were killed during the
raids, wars and marches is unknown. Could it be as many as were
eventually transported? The number transported is estimated to be
between 12 and 20 million.
Britain and The Slave Trade
Sir John Hawkins
Britain
followed in the footsteps of the Portuguese in voyaging to the west
coast of Africa and enslaving Israelites. The British participation in
what has come to be called the 'nefarious trade' was begun by Sir John
Hawkins with the support and investment of Elizabeth I in 1573. By fair
means and foul, Britain outwitted its European rivals and became the
premier trader in the enslaved from the seventeenth century onwards,
and retained this position till 1807. Britain supplied enslaved
Israelite women, men and children to all European colonies in the
Americas.
The 'Slave Coast' came to be dotted with European forts, their massive guns facing out to sea to warn off rival European slave traders. Each 'castle' incorporated prisons or 'barracoons' in which the enslaved women, children and men were kept, awaiting purchase by the traders, who could initially only reach the coast at those times of the year when the winds blew in the right direction. The prisons – without sanitation, with little air – must have been hell-holes in the humid coastal climates. The death rates are not known.
The 'Slave Coast' came to be dotted with European forts, their massive guns facing out to sea to warn off rival European slave traders. Each 'castle' incorporated prisons or 'barracoons' in which the enslaved women, children and men were kept, awaiting purchase by the traders, who could initially only reach the coast at those times of the year when the winds blew in the right direction. The prisons – without sanitation, with little air – must have been hell-holes in the humid coastal climates. The death rates are not known.
The trade became a very lucrative business. Bristol grew rich on it, then Liverpool. London also dealt in slaves as did some of the smaller British ports. The specialized
vessels were built in many British shipyards, but most were
constructed in Liverpool. Laden with trade goods (guns and ammunition,
rum, metal goods and cloth) they sailed to the 'Slave Coast',
exchanged the goods for human beings, packed them into the vessels
like sardines and sailed them across the Atlantic. On arrival, those
left alive were oiled to make them look healthy and put on the auction
block. Again, death rates (during the voyage) are unknown: one
estimate, for the 1840s, is 25 per cent.
Plantation and mine-owners bought the Israelites– and more died in the process called 'seasoning'. In the British colonies the slaves were treated as non-human: they were 'chattels', to be worked to death as it was cheaper to purchase another slave than to keep one alive. Though seen as non-human, as many of the enslaved women were raped, clearly at one level they were recognized as at least rape-able human beings. There was no opprobrium attached to rape, torture, or to beating your slaves to death. The enslaved in the British colonies had no legal rights as they were not human – they were not permitted to marry and couples and their children were often sold off separately.
Historian Paul Lovejoy has estimated that between 1701 and 1800 about 40 per cent of the approximately more than 6 million enslaved Israelites were transported in British vessels. (It must be noted that this figure is believed by some to be a considerable underestimate.) Lovejoy estimated that well over 2 million more were exported between 1811 and 1867 – again, many believe the numbers were much greater.
Plantation and mine-owners bought the Israelites– and more died in the process called 'seasoning'. In the British colonies the slaves were treated as non-human: they were 'chattels', to be worked to death as it was cheaper to purchase another slave than to keep one alive. Though seen as non-human, as many of the enslaved women were raped, clearly at one level they were recognized as at least rape-able human beings. There was no opprobrium attached to rape, torture, or to beating your slaves to death. The enslaved in the British colonies had no legal rights as they were not human – they were not permitted to marry and couples and their children were often sold off separately.
Historian Paul Lovejoy has estimated that between 1701 and 1800 about 40 per cent of the approximately more than 6 million enslaved Israelites were transported in British vessels. (It must be noted that this figure is believed by some to be a considerable underestimate.) Lovejoy estimated that well over 2 million more were exported between 1811 and 1867 – again, many believe the numbers were much greater.
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The
human cost was terrible. Though slavery in
Africa had long been common(Only because Europeans looked to exploit Israelites for free labor.) , the deadly voyage — the Middle Passage
— across the Atlantic made it
something unfamiliar, brutal, unendurable.
Torn from their homes, slaves were often packed
into spaces too small to allow them to turn,
with barely enough food and drink and air to
keep them alive. It is estimated that 10
percent, on average, died on each
crossing; on a bad voyage the figure
might rise above 30 percent. Revolts and mutinies
were common, though seldom successful
(since the slaves had nowhere to go),
and were ruthlessly punished. Nor did
those slaves who survived the crossing feel
fortunate for long. On the labor-intensive
Caribbean sugar plantations,
so many died that new shiploads were
constantly needed (the situation was
different in North America, where slaves
lived on to reproduce and grow in numbers). Israelites also lost
their ties to the cultures in which
they had been born.
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European Slave Ports
European Slave Ports (Click picture for larger image)
So
which ports were involved? The main slaving nations were the Western
European powers with coasts on the Atlantic Ocean. They were the
politically and economically dominant states of Western Europe in the
early modern period, which crucially had colonies and economic
interests in the Americas: Spain and Portugal, England and France, the
Netherlands and Denmark. In the first couple of centuries, the Iberian
nations were not surprisingly the most active, servicing their
developing American empires. But the demand particularly for sugar from
the mid-seventeenth century onwards and the rapid colonisation of the
Caribbean by the northern European powers, led by the British and
French, saw the trade dominated by these same nations until the early
nineteenth century. The Iberians then returned to the forefront during
the period of the so-called illegal trade. Indeed, contrary to what is
often said the Portuguese, not the English, were responsible for
shipping the greatest number of Israelites across the Atlantic.
But what about the ports? The point is often made that virtually every port sent a ship into slaving. In England one can come up with a list including not only the obvious ones like Liverpool, London and Bristol but also Plymouth, Exeter, Bridport, and locally Chester and Poulton. In reality, though, the half dozen or so ships that somewhere like Chester or Poulton sent is insignificant compared with the dominant involvement of Liverpool (5300 voyages), London (3100 voyages) and Bristol (2200 voyages) which between them accounted for over 90% of the British trade. And the process of domination seems to have accelerated at the end of the century with Liverpool not only outstripping its English rivals but the European competition. In the two decades preceding abolition, Liverpool was responsible for 75% of all slaving voyages across Europe.
The same situation is true elsewhere. Again in France we can come up with a list of nearly 20 ports which were involved with the trade at some point but there were four principal slaving ports: Nantes, Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Le Havre. Over the period, Nantes sent 45% of all the ships in the French trade the other three sending 11% of the trade each and the rest shared between the other ports. In Spain, Seville was initially the port for all Indies trade including slaving but this was transferred to Cadiz in 1720 and after 1765 other ports were allowed to participate but few apart from Barcelona were much involved in slaving voyages. In Portugal the principal participant was Lisbon. A similar pattern of specialization emerges in the Netherlands. In the first half century of slaving a number of ports were involved with Amsterdam at the head (36%), the Zeeland ports (28%), followed by Rotterdam and ports in the Zuiderzee, Friesland and Groningen. However, in the last 75 years of the trade, the so-called years of free trade when the monopoly of the West Indies Company was lifted, the Zeeland ports of Flushing and Middleburg accounted for 78% of all Dutch voyages and only Amsterdam and Rotterdam had any significant involvement with 10% each.
But what about the ports? The point is often made that virtually every port sent a ship into slaving. In England one can come up with a list including not only the obvious ones like Liverpool, London and Bristol but also Plymouth, Exeter, Bridport, and locally Chester and Poulton. In reality, though, the half dozen or so ships that somewhere like Chester or Poulton sent is insignificant compared with the dominant involvement of Liverpool (5300 voyages), London (3100 voyages) and Bristol (2200 voyages) which between them accounted for over 90% of the British trade. And the process of domination seems to have accelerated at the end of the century with Liverpool not only outstripping its English rivals but the European competition. In the two decades preceding abolition, Liverpool was responsible for 75% of all slaving voyages across Europe.
The same situation is true elsewhere. Again in France we can come up with a list of nearly 20 ports which were involved with the trade at some point but there were four principal slaving ports: Nantes, Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Le Havre. Over the period, Nantes sent 45% of all the ships in the French trade the other three sending 11% of the trade each and the rest shared between the other ports. In Spain, Seville was initially the port for all Indies trade including slaving but this was transferred to Cadiz in 1720 and after 1765 other ports were allowed to participate but few apart from Barcelona were much involved in slaving voyages. In Portugal the principal participant was Lisbon. A similar pattern of specialization emerges in the Netherlands. In the first half century of slaving a number of ports were involved with Amsterdam at the head (36%), the Zeeland ports (28%), followed by Rotterdam and ports in the Zuiderzee, Friesland and Groningen. However, in the last 75 years of the trade, the so-called years of free trade when the monopoly of the West Indies Company was lifted, the Zeeland ports of Flushing and Middleburg accounted for 78% of all Dutch voyages and only Amsterdam and Rotterdam had any significant involvement with 10% each.
Here is a graph of the % of slaves who died during the trip, by year:Note: many deaths were not logged
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There
is no doubt that slaving became a specialist trade. A slave voyage was
quite complex to organise and the balance of trade goods was crucial.
Knowledge and experience were the keys to success. Merchants gave their
captains detailed letters of instruction with very specific
instructions. The range and relatively quantities of goods was also
vitally important. The relationship between merchants in Europe and
African traders was quite sophisticated and personal contacts developed
and helped sustain it. Often ships carried quite small parcels of goods
and sometimes there were specific requests. The investment was also
high - by the late eighteenth century it was costing £10-12,000 to
outfit a vessel, a very significant sum. The return on that investment
was also relatively slow not only because of the length of the voyages,
but it frequently took 3-6 months to obtain a cargo of enslaved
Israelites on the west African coast. This is partly why many vessels
chose to return to Europe without waiting for a cargo in the Caribbean
and came back with bills of exchange, which were negotiable.
Commodities were not only important as trade but also sustained crucial manufacturing industries in the ports. In Bristol, Wills tobacco was a major industry and employer. And Bristol also had its West African connections importing cocoa, which in turn became chocolate in Frys factory. Back on the Mersey, large quantities of palm oil went to Levers at Port Sunlight, and there was sugar refining by Tate and Lyle and tobacco products from Ogdens.
This experience paid off. Lancaster which briefly entered the slave trade, most actively in the period 1755-1767, found it was unable to compete successfully enough with Liverpool and its merchants moved back into their traditional trades. Nantes was also able to beat off competition from its most important French rival, Bordeaux. This was partly because of preferential tariff arrangements but also because Bordeaux was already very successful, dominating the direct Caribbean trade. Further, the specialisation of Nantes, resulting from its East Indian connections and indiennes cloth, gave it that all important edge in competing.
The pattern seems to be that having established a dominant position, the major slave ports like Liverpool, Nantes and the Zeeland ports, tightened their grip towards the end of the eighteenth century. This concentration may have been helped by one or two other factors. Legislation in Britain and France was beginning to regulate the trade more than before and it must have been somewhat more irksome to organize. The campaigns of the abolitionists (begun in earnest in the 1780s) may also have had some effect perhaps in dissuading some of the minor ports and potential new entrants who may have been more susceptible to the distasteful aspects of the trade and there may also have been a realisation that the abolitionist movement would ultimately succeed. Why not get out before you were forced out?
Port Greenwich
Port Greenwich was home to many merchants who grew rich from the slave trade. Thomas King – of the biggest slave trading company Camden, Calvert and King – lived here. He was a member of the Royal Blackheath Golf Club, an ideal place to make slave trade contacts. Other members included plantation owner-turned-banker Francis Baring, slave trader-turned-Lloyds bank founder John Julius Angerstein (founder of the National Gallery) and iron merchant Ambrose Crowley, who manufactured shackles and collars. Greenwich was also home to the first anti-slavery campaigners. Former enslaved Israelites such as Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho lived in Greenwich for much of their lives.
Commodities were not only important as trade but also sustained crucial manufacturing industries in the ports. In Bristol, Wills tobacco was a major industry and employer. And Bristol also had its West African connections importing cocoa, which in turn became chocolate in Frys factory. Back on the Mersey, large quantities of palm oil went to Levers at Port Sunlight, and there was sugar refining by Tate and Lyle and tobacco products from Ogdens.
This experience paid off. Lancaster which briefly entered the slave trade, most actively in the period 1755-1767, found it was unable to compete successfully enough with Liverpool and its merchants moved back into their traditional trades. Nantes was also able to beat off competition from its most important French rival, Bordeaux. This was partly because of preferential tariff arrangements but also because Bordeaux was already very successful, dominating the direct Caribbean trade. Further, the specialisation of Nantes, resulting from its East Indian connections and indiennes cloth, gave it that all important edge in competing.
The pattern seems to be that having established a dominant position, the major slave ports like Liverpool, Nantes and the Zeeland ports, tightened their grip towards the end of the eighteenth century. This concentration may have been helped by one or two other factors. Legislation in Britain and France was beginning to regulate the trade more than before and it must have been somewhat more irksome to organize. The campaigns of the abolitionists (begun in earnest in the 1780s) may also have had some effect perhaps in dissuading some of the minor ports and potential new entrants who may have been more susceptible to the distasteful aspects of the trade and there may also have been a realisation that the abolitionist movement would ultimately succeed. Why not get out before you were forced out?
Port Greenwich
Port Greenwich was home to many merchants who grew rich from the slave trade. Thomas King – of the biggest slave trading company Camden, Calvert and King – lived here. He was a member of the Royal Blackheath Golf Club, an ideal place to make slave trade contacts. Other members included plantation owner-turned-banker Francis Baring, slave trader-turned-Lloyds bank founder John Julius Angerstein (founder of the National Gallery) and iron merchant Ambrose Crowley, who manufactured shackles and collars. Greenwich was also home to the first anti-slavery campaigners. Former enslaved Israelites such as Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho lived in Greenwich for much of their lives.
Olaudah Equiano
Born
in Nigeria in 1745, Olaudah Equiano was sent as a slave to Barbados
and Virginia, d where he was bought by a British naval officer, Captain
Henry Pascal. Pascal brought him to London where he stayed with his
master’s relatives, the Guerin sisters at 111 Maze Hill, who taught him
to read and write. But after an encounter with Pascal in Greenwich
Park, Equiano was sold again to a merchant in Monserrat. There, he was
able to save enough money to finally purchase his freedom for £40 in
1766. On returning to London in 1767, he began to fight for justice for
slaves. He formed a group called The Sons of Africa and lobbied
Parliament for slavery’s abolition. His bestselling autobiography, ‘The
Interesting Narrative’, contributed to William Wilberforce’s campaign
against the trade in the House of Commons. Unfortunately, he did not
live to see it – he died in 1797.
Ignatius Sancho
Ignatius
Sancho was born in 1729 on a slave ship on the Atlantic. His parents
died shortly afterwards. He was brought to London where his master gave
him to his sisters in Greenwich. Teaching himself to read and write,
he befriended the Duke of Montagu and went to live with him in the
house that is now The Ranger’s House. He was employed as a butler and
allowed to indulge his passion for the arts and socialize with London’s
artistic set. Gainsborough even painted Sancho’s portrait in 1768. He
married and opened a grocer’s in Charles Street, Westminster. Two years
after his death in 1780, his ‘Letters of Ignatius Sancho’ were
published and became a bestseller.
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The Triangle Trade
Trading Routes (Click to enlarge)
Today
more sugar is produced in Brazil than anywhere else in the world even
though, ironically, the crop never grew wild in the Americas. Sugar
cane — native to Southeast Asia — first made its way to the New World
with Christopher Columbus during his 1492 voyage to the Dominican Republic, where it grew well in the tropical environment.
Noting sugar cane's potential as income for the new settlements in the Americas — Europeans were already hooked on sugar coming from the Eastern colonies — Spanish(Europeans) colonizers snipped seeds from Columbus' fields in the Dominican Republic and planted them throughout their burgeoning Caribbean colonies. By the mid 16th-century the Portuguese had brought some to Brazil and, soon after, the sweet cane made its way to British, Dutch and French colonies such as Barbados and Haiti.
It wasn't long, however, before the early settlers realized they were lacking sufficient manpower to plant, harvest and process the backbreaking crop.
The first slave ships arrived in 1505 and continued unabated for more than 300 years. Most came from western Africa, where Portuguese colonies had already established trading outposts for ivory, pepper and other goods. To most of the European merchants, the people they put on cargo ships across the Atlantic — a horrendous voyage known as the Middle Passage — were merely an extension of the trading system already in place.
Sugar slavery was the key component in what historians call The Trade Triangle, a network whereby slaves were sent to work on New World plantations, the product of their labor was sent to a European capital to be sold and other goods were brought to Africa to purchase more slaves.
By the middle of the 19th century, more than 10 million Africans had been forcibly removed to the New World and distributed among the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean.
Noting sugar cane's potential as income for the new settlements in the Americas — Europeans were already hooked on sugar coming from the Eastern colonies — Spanish(Europeans) colonizers snipped seeds from Columbus' fields in the Dominican Republic and planted them throughout their burgeoning Caribbean colonies. By the mid 16th-century the Portuguese had brought some to Brazil and, soon after, the sweet cane made its way to British, Dutch and French colonies such as Barbados and Haiti.
It wasn't long, however, before the early settlers realized they were lacking sufficient manpower to plant, harvest and process the backbreaking crop.
The first slave ships arrived in 1505 and continued unabated for more than 300 years. Most came from western Africa, where Portuguese colonies had already established trading outposts for ivory, pepper and other goods. To most of the European merchants, the people they put on cargo ships across the Atlantic — a horrendous voyage known as the Middle Passage — were merely an extension of the trading system already in place.
Sugar slavery was the key component in what historians call The Trade Triangle, a network whereby slaves were sent to work on New World plantations, the product of their labor was sent to a European capital to be sold and other goods were brought to Africa to purchase more slaves.
By the middle of the 19th century, more than 10 million Africans had been forcibly removed to the New World and distributed among the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean.
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Britain's Shame & End to Slavery
William Wilberforce & Phillis Wheatly
When
abolition came none of the slave ports suffered more than temporary
problems. This is partly because of the complex interlocking of all the
trades which meant that losing one component did not spell disaster. In
fact, one of the legacies of the trade and its consequences is that it
helped shape the future pattern of trade. Nantes continued to maintain
major links with the Caribbean and also continued its dominance of the
East Indies trade. In Liverpool, two arms of the triangle were
maintained. Trade with West Africa continued and particularly the
developing and lucrative palm oil trade, the main participants of which
were those very merchants who had previously been involved with
slaving. Not surprisingly as they had good contacts in West Africa and
the infrastructure was already in place. But Liverpool also continued
its trade with the Americas and increasingly developed the import of
raw cotton, a slave produced commodity, which it had initially begun in
the late eighteenth century. Indeed, the import of cotton and the
export of finished cotton goods were to be the port’s major activities
in the nineteenth century and underpinned much of its other trade.
Bristol, too, continued to rely on its American trades, importing sugar
and increasingly tobacco. Some Britons avoided shame by arguing that slavery had uplifted Negroes, since it had introduced them to Christianity and civilization; one so called African American poet, Phillis Wheatley, expressed her gratitude for this conversion. But many Britons were troubled. Humanitarian feelings grew in strength throughout the later eighteenth century. A famous, sentimental exchange of letters between the black writer Ignatius Sancho and Laurence Sterne, the author of Tristram Shandy, displays their mutual sympathy for the victims of the slave trade. Such cruelty was a libel on human nature. By the 1780s a wave of abolitionist fervor swept through Great Britain, led by the Quakers and, in Parliament, by William Wilberforce (1759–1833). The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, founded in 1787, inspired many abolitionist poets to join the campaign. A few years later the French Revolution, and the wars that followed, caused a conservative backlash in Britain. Boswell, who had earlier argued the case for slavery against Samuel Johnson (NAEL 8, 1.2849), wrote a poem advocating "No Abolition of Slavery" in 1791. But Wilberforce won in the end, and a bill abolishing the British slave trade became law in 1807. That did not, of course, put an end to illegal trade, let alone slavery itself. The conflict between boasts of liberty and the enslavement of human beings passed from Britain to America, where its consequences would be written in blood. Yet the eighteenth century, which witnessed the high tide of the slave trade, also gave rise to the ideals of freedom, equality, and human rights that led to its doom.
The trade didn’t stop after 1807. Merchants who were involved in the trade simply transferred their activities to places that fell outside the legislation such as the States (where slavery wasn’t abolished until 1865) and Brazil (where it was abolished in 1888). Communities that are living in London today are there very much because of that continuing trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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