Elliott Reid's video: Fighting the Slave Trade Black History Project Video 35

The Fight Against the Slave Trade (img) Imagine your mother, your cousin, your brother. They have been hit around the head with a club and have been dragged out of town. You know you will never see them again unless you move quickly. What would you do? The answer is obvious. You would do everything in your power to find them and bring them home to safety. Yet, for some reason the impression many historians give is that Africans just sat idly by and watched their relatives be forced or sold into slavery. This isn’t the case. (img) Once again Sylvan A Diouf in his book, “Fight the Slave Trade” produces extremely detailed accounts of the fight against the trade. There were more African uprisings against the Slave Trade than there were in the Caribbean which itself saw uprisings on a regular basis as the Africans fought for their freedom. Walled villages were common almost everywhere that slave raiding posed a threat and they were effective. The only weakness was that people had to leave to work the land. Defense was thus often coupled with major changes in the ways people lived. Most important in some coastal areas was a change in cropping patterns. Crops were planted close to the village and worked collectively (ref) (img) In Yorubaland, the Oyo Empire illegalised the trade of slaves and put great effort into stamping out the widespread kidnapping in its territories. However, the daily threat of being forced into captivity completely changed West African priorities. Where once great civilisations would invest huge quantities of time and gold into building magnificent universities, palaces and cities, effort was instead made to build short term settlements which were easy to abandon in a hurry. West Africa was regressing into a lesser version of its former self. Oyo’s banishment of the slave trade created political complications leading to the first of the series of wars in Yorubaland in the nineteenth century. With the collapse of Oyo no other state emerged to keep the peace in Yorubaland in the face of growing demand for captives by the European traders. The Yoruba became the largest single source of captives for the Atlantic trade in the nineteenth century. (img) And it is important to note that not all resistance happened on land. Around 10% of all slave ships experience an uprising of the enslaved Africans on their enforced voyage from the African coast to the Americas. Some Africans were even able to overthrow their oppressors and navigate their ship back to Africa. (img) Unbeknown to the Europeans, some of the Africans which they were buying would become their greatest adversaries. Many of the Africans they purchased were prisoners of war, skilled in guerilla warfare. As soon as these African Guerrilla Warriors could, they would escape even if it meant killing their oppressors in the process. We shall read more about them later Task: a foreign invader threatens to invade and capture your family and friends and sell them into slavey. You are outgunned but not outnumbered. What are your tactics for survival? Be careful! Your community leaders may have been paid off by the invaders. How do you think this would change how your community behaves?