The Slave Trade

As Europe came out of the Dark Ages, having survived the Black Death plague, it was the sailors who led the enterprise of expansion. Lisbon became centre of this expansion and in the mid 15th century was the biggest city in the world.  

To facilitate this expansion, extra manpower was required, especially as the plague had decimated European population. The first slavers went East and it was Eastern Europe which supplied the original slaves. Hence probably the word Slave (out of the ethnicity of Slavs). There are official scribes who described the first slave auctions in the first half of the 15th century in Lisbon. 

 

A major historical event changed the history of the Slavs of Eastern Europe. Sultan Muhammad Fateh, conquered Constantinople in 1453 and the Byzantine Empire collapsed. The ensuing change, shut down the Mediterranean for these Portuguese sailors. They needed to go elsewhere. These sailors must have been tough, daring, hardened people. They went South and the need to open up the Atlantic became imperative.  

    

Along the coast of North Africa they encountered black people, who were generally Muslim. In search of trade and gold, they had discovered people. People meant slaves; and so the blacks of Northern Africa Atlantic coast, became the slaves. But the sailors needed legitimacy, and so Portugal applied to the Pope for approval. This was given. The authority allowed that in the battle of the Crusades, the sailors were allowed to ‘enslave the Muslim blacks of Africa for perpetuity’. Perpetuity. No hope, no freedom, a life spent serving at the wish of others. 

The rest is common knowledge. The Portuguese went South. They made friends of Kings along the coast, traded and at the same time bought or captured humans. Lisbon in the next 50 years became the hub of all trade. It became the gateway to Europe and very soon, as the Portuguese conquered Brazil, the slaves were also sent there, to expand the outpost of the Empire.

The Portuguese who entered as traders, soon set up plantations of sugarcane, coffee, dug gold mines and raided deeper and deeper lands to find more slaves. In just a few years, they found the blacks were actually not Muslims, as the reach of Islam was not that deep. So the actual authority of the Pope was itself irrelevant. Hence, a new ideology was coined, which has prevailed through the centuries till to-date. The mantra of the West! These people are backward savages, and we are bringing ‘civilisation’ to them. 

 

Armed with this ideology Portuguese adventurers and slavers could advance with impunity. They even turned on most of the agreements with local Kings. This of course sounds familiar. We saw the same with British in India. And yes, very soon, France, England, Dutch and Belgians would join in this trade. As early as 1595 in Sao Tome, the slaves revolted, burned and pillaged the plantation and factories. So, the Portuguese the ultimate masters of the seas of the 16th century, moved their industry and slaves to Brazil.  

This was the first century of slavery and of colonisation. They go hand in hand. The wealth of European nations (and later American) was thus built on illegal human slavery, who were in turn used pre industrialisation to be the work engine. An edifice built for centuries on the back of human bondage. It is also quite coincidental, that the slavery numbers declined (and disappeared) just as mechanical factories became cheaper than human bondage. Had that not happened would we have had an Abraham Lincoln and American Civil War?

* picture from monthlyreview.org

A pivotal point in History

As Gollum struggled with Frodo at the edge of Mount Doom the world stopped. The armies of Aragorn and those of Sauron already engaged in deadly battle, heard Gandalf call out the time of reckoning is here. Hold still. A pivotal point in history had arrived. So it goes in the Lord of the Ring.

In our present real world, one has been waiting for just such a moment for decades. There have been pivotal points in history before. The moment when the world changed.  Imagine the people living at that particular time, mostly unaware that life was going to change.     

As Julius Caeser looked across from Gaul at an island which he was heading to conquer, would he have thought that his were the first steps to a British Empire on which the sun would never set? Or when Muhammad Fateh dragged his ships across land, past the Bosporus into the Black Sea, to conquer Constantinople, would he have known this was a four plus century event, which would culminate in the destructions of the First World War? Or when Archduke Ferdinands carriage trundled down the street of Sarajevo in June 1914, would the on-lookers have known that within seconds his assassination event would occur, leading to two world wars and death of a 100 million people?    

This feeling of a pivotal point in history is here and now. One feels it. Hold your breath, this world is about to change. Sadly enough, it's been coming these past three decades, but we have been blind and insensitive not to have seen it earlier.    

It is a complex matrix and the variables are many. But they are all coming into play.

- A global elite has led an economic onslaught, which has marginalised the 99%. Poverty prevails and the majority do not belong. So the poor majority are flexing their power to bring in leaders who will reverse the trend of 70 years and bring the world back to 1945.

- The baton of leadership of the West is passing and a new challenge from the East is coming. Never has the baton of domination been passed on without armed conflict. A conflict in the South China Sea is brewing. Not to mention the trade wars.

- A further conflict is shaping up in the old world. A clash of civilisation, where a secular ideology is at loggerheads with religions of the books. This presently manifests itself in the Islam versus West struggle, but actually can mutate into a Middle East conflict.    

- The various conflicts are causing refugees and starvation. Ten million refugees and twenty million starving are the highest such figures in history. 

- A technical advance which started in the late 60s with Moore's Law, is now coming to a point where artificial intelligence threatens to take over humanity's role.

- The social consequences of technology, materialism, a breakdown of traditional family structures are leading to many social challenges and the urban centres in the world are heaving with rancour, unrest and substance abuse.

- A combination of over population and material needs is driving man to produce and consume more. In five decades we have consumed 400 million years of resources. The pace of consumption is increasing and we are bordering on resource scarcity.

- The above has led to an environmental degradation which has tilted the balance nature has maintained from the beginning of time. The very existence of all beings is being threatened at the hands of rampant heat on our Earth.  

So what is coming? Maybe the best place to look at is eschatology. That seems to indicate that all the signs are pointing to an Armageddon (Malhama in Islam). A mother of all conflicts, which will lead to major destruction. This is so in all three religions of the book. The difference is that for the Jewish faith the Messiah (saviour), is considered the imposter in Islam. So even here, the religions are looking at the same events from opposite sides.  

History too is not encouraging. Civilisations last an average of 250 years. The West is reaching that. A Dominant Currency lasts approximately 90 years; the US Dollar is reaching that time frame. So a change is on the cards. A pivotal point in history is visible. Only problem is, this is the first time in recorded human history, that Man has the power to destroy the world. 

So all one can do is pray that better sense prevails and humans resort to talking and mutual agreements to resolve these conflicts.

*image is downloaded from Getty Images, as a free picture.