Dahomey, West Africa, 1784
Work in the fields has ended for the day and these young men are skylarking on the banks of the great river that flows to the far distant ocean.
As they wrestle one another, they are blissfully unaware of the danger lurking in the nearby trees. Hidden from their view, a group of Arab slavers are observing them and waiting for an opportune time to seize them to add to their slave coffle.
The slavers wait patiently and as the young men grow more boisterous they become oblivious to their surroundings and the lurking danger.
Wrestling and grappling with one another, they don't hear the soft whirring of the weighted, rope nets hurled by the Arabs to capture them. Too late, they find themselves enmeshed in the nets and as they struggle to free themselves, they are overpowered by the slavers who waste no time in securing them for the trip back to the Arabs' camp some miles downstream.
The youths have made the slavers' task easier by being naked and there is no need to strip them. With their hands tied securely behind them and roped together at the neck, they begin the first leg of their long journey to the slave-markets of the New World.
Their howls of protests and pleas to be set free leave their new Arab masters unimpressed and any resistance is discouraged by the liberal use of their captors' whips. For the six, unfortunate youths their trip from freedom to slavery will be a long and painful one.
Source of picture unknown; text is mine.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteyour prose is always beyond all praises;and in few lines you are able to synthesize a whole story !
Just an observation: I think you most likely chose this supposed year – 1784- of this short story fully by chance.
However let me notice that, by chance, this year 1784 actually contained two important events related to the North-African Barbary pirates, the most ruthless and most active among the Arab slave-hunters and traders:
- In July 1784 a Spanish fleet bombarded Algiers, one of the vastest ports of the Barbary Pirates …… and one of their greatest Slave Markets for European white slaves. This was mainly caused by the fact that Algerian and Moroccan corsairs just in the previous year 1783 and just on the coasts of Spain, had kidnapped and sold into slavery more than 3,000 Spanish young men and women. On top of this, in attacking even Spanish military ships, they had enslaved also about 800 Spanish soldiers and sailors, most of which had ended up as galley slaves, the most atrocious fate that could occur to a slave.
- In 1784, in an attempt of good will the USA Congress started to try to negotiate with all the North Africa Barbary States, treaties of peace and amity.
These useless efforts led to the so-called “First Barbary War” 1801-1805. That war is famous, in addition to various other reasons, for one of the most disastrous defeats for the glorious US Marine Corps. In the year 1803, at least 320 US Marines were captured by Arab Pirates and, as established for the infidel prisoners of war, these gallant soldiers had to suffer the dishonor of climbing the auction blocks of various North-African Slave Markets. Most of them were sold to the highest bidder, were auctioned to Arab and African Masters in the Slave Markets of Tripoli and Tunis; but some of those poor American war captives were even “exported” to Morocco and sold in the rich market of Marrakesh, after a horrible, painful and shameful march by foot of almost 2,000 kilometers (about 1,240 miles !) through the desert, under the scorching sun and the restless whips of their Arab and African capturers.
So, what around 1784 and the beginning of 1800, was happening in Central Africa, with black Africans as the victims of Arab slave-hunters and traders, was also happening somewhere else with white Christians as the “hunted prey”.
Arab slave hunters and traders did not do any difference of skin color !
Karel
Hi Karel, you are correct and 1784 is a random year I chose. I had thought of using either the late eighteen or early nineteenth centuries because this was the period when Dahomey was deeply involved in the slave trade. The Dahomeans were prolific slavers and raided deep into the interior capturing slaves and selling them to the Europeans.
DeleteI am aware of the other conflicts between the Barbary pirates and the Americans and Spanish and that many of them were sold as slaves in North Africa and elsewhere. Unfortunately this aspect of slavery is overlooked - quite deliberately i feel - and the fact that probably millions of white people were enslaved by the Arabs over the centuries. I also thing we tend to see Europeans as the villains and don't acknowledge the roles played by both Africans and Arabs in the infamous slave trade.
And even worse is the fact that the East Africa slave trade was every bit as brutal and even more barbaric but who talks about the slave trade of Zanzibar conducted by the Arabs over many centuries.
Slave Toby,
Deleteyou are absolutely right.
The "politically correct" attitude restrains Western people from talking, in correct historical terms, of "white" slavery in Arabic and African countries ..... certainly in the past ( at least until the years '40's of 1800, this was done openly, "above board" ..... and most likely (even if more secretly) today.
Karel