Found this interesting given the citation of a naive African writer....and a previous conversation about minorities having their own voice from this past Friday...
(and understanding that Africans are not really the "minority" in this instance)
"
Slavery was practiced in some parts of
Africa,
[16] Europe,
[16] Asia[16] and the
Americas
before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade. There is evidence
that enslaved people from some African states were exported to other
states in Africa, Europe and Asia prior to the
European colonization of the Americas.
[17] The
African slave trade provided a large number of slaves to
Europeans.
[18][19]
The Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa,
although it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo
wrote in
Le Monde diplomatique: "The
African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the
Sahara,
through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the
Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the
Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the
Red Sea, another four million
[20] through the
Swahili ports of the
Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the
trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the
Atlantic Ocean."
[21]
According to John K. Thornton, Europeans usually bought enslaved people who were captured in
endemic warfare between African states.
[22]
There were also Africans who had made a business out of capturing
Africans from neighboring ethnic groups or war captives and selling
them.
[23] People living around the
Niger River were transported from these markets to the coast and sold at European trading ports in exchange for
muskets (matchlock between 1540–1606 but flintlock from then on) and manufactured goods such as cloth or alcohol.
[24] However, the European demand for slaves provided a large new market for the already existing trade.
[25]
Further, while those held in slavery in their own region of Africa
might hope to escape, those shipped away had little chance of returning
to Africa."
via,
wikipedia
