markellion's video: Old World Order

From "The Wesleyan-Methodist magazine" http://books.google.com/books?id=7w4EAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA4-PA511&dq= =onepage&q=&f=false ""Sir Bartle Frere's visit to the principal ports in the Sultan's dominions, the Portuguese settlements, and the neighbouring islands, brought to light the fearful extent to which the whole coast is involved in the slavetraffic. At Eilwah Kavinja, described as "the real hotbed of the trade," he had to encounter some of the difficulties and learn the dangers of even official investigation into its operations. " We had been foiled in our attempts to see it on the way down, having been misled and sent to other places of the same name many miles off. It turned out to be a very large town, even more thriving than Zanzibar, not marked on our chart, and placed out of sight of cruisers, among unsnrveyed reefs, difficult of access to any but Arab dhows. À very large trade, especially in slaves, has its seat here, where Europeans are very rarely seen ;but a Banian emissary, we were told, had been there and to other places on the coast, warning all slave-traders to send their slaves inland, and to tell us nothing.... .....a considerable trade in slaves was carried on within the Portuguese possessions," chiefly in Arab dhows, with Madagascar, and lamented he had not the means of stopping it." The Portuguese have hitherto failed to attach to themselves either the respect or affections of the natives of the mainland The very rich colony of Mozambique is undeveloped,— the result of over three centuries of occupation, and which will continue till slavery and slave-trade are effectually stopped." (Continued) http://books.google.com/books?id=7w4EAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA4-PA616&dq= =onepage&q=&f=false "Then the European and American commerce to Africa has been almost a secret monopoly in a very few hands. The greatest pains have been taken to keep everything quiet, and though some of the houses traded on a great scale, and employed quite a fleet of merchant vessels, the extent of their business was known to none but themselves, and was not fully realized by any but the most observant of their neighbors at Zanzibar." We commend to the consideration of our merchants the strange facts brought to light in these investigations. A single Indian house, we are told, employs a capital of half a million sterling in advances to slaveowners and slave-dealers, mainly in Zanzibar alone! No less than £140,000 is lent to European and American firms, Indians being the creditors, and the great commercial peoples of Europe and the new world the debtors. Nothing gives us so startling an idea of the gigantic proportions and the strange ramifications of this horrible trade as these monetary transactions. Well may Sir Bartle Frere say, " I know nothing like it in the history of commerce ;" and well may the British Indians take the greatest pains to conceal their transactions in " black pepper and " soiled ivory." The common objections urged against our interference with the slavetrade are disposed of in a few sharp and pointed sentences. " Specious arguments have been urged for withdrawing from all attempts to stop the slave-trade, and ' leaving it alone to cure itself;' and our cruisers have been charged with enhancing the sufferings of the slave by increasing the difficulties of the passage. I am satisfied that there is not a shadow of foundation for this argument. I never heard a single fact or argument which could justify the faintest hope that it slavery or the slave-trade were let alone, they would cure themselves in any number of ages." " Again, a vast amount of nonsense has been talked about the impossibility of stopping the slave-trade, because slavery is an ancient institution, interwoven with all the usages of Arab society, and the Arabic domestic slave is always well treated. It would be just as reasonable to permit domestic servants in England to be recruited by the murder of parents and the kidnapping of children, because domestic servitude is a time-honored state of life and the servants often fare as well as the masters and mistresses in England." " It seems to be forgotten that the East African slave-trade in its present shape is the growth of the last half century. "