Maafa

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This article discusses the African Holocaust (Maafa), the history and effects of the collective atrocities upon Africa. See also Atlantic slave trade for the trans-Atlantic trade, and Arab slave trade for the Trans-Saharan and Arab slave trade.

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The word Maafa (also known as the African Holocaust or Holocaust of Enslavement) is derived from a Kiswahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. The term collectively refers to the 500 years of suffering (including present times) of people of African heritage through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, invasions, oppression, and exploitation.^[1]^[2]^[3] Maafa can be considered an area of study within African history where both the actual history and the legacy of that history are studied as a single discourse. Thus the paradigm is on the legacy of the African Holocaust on African people globally. The emphasis in the historical narrative is on African agents, as opposed to the normal Eurocentric voice; for this reason Maafa is an aspect of Pan-Africanism.

[edit] Beyond slavery

Whipped slave, Baton Rouge, La., April 2, 1863

The Maafa (African Holocaust) when referencing the slave trade, morally distinguishes domestic slavery in Africa from the commercial ventures of the European and Arab trade in captive Africans. The Maafa also focuses on the legacy (consequences) of these foreign relationships in Africa. The term is not limited to demographic significance, in the aggregate population losses but also in the profound changes to settlement patterns, epidemiological exposure and reproductive and social development potential.^[4] Also, in dealing with legacy the Maafa includes the academic and social forces which categorized Africans into color labels and the policies of invalidating African historical contributions to humanity.

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[edit] Curse of Ham

The curse of Ham, provided one of the "moral pretext" upon which the slave trade grew and flourished. ^[5]. Early interpretations of the Bible led many Western scholars to believe that all of humanity was descended from Noah. Chapters 9 and 10 of the Book of Genesis deal with the branching off and splitting up of Noah's sons into the world. The name of Cush, Ham's eldest son, means 'black' in Hebrew, and "Caanan" means 'trader,' 'trafficker' or 'lowland.' The word "Ham" in Hebrew moreover means "hot" or "multitude", and is thus not necessarily a racial reference.^[6] See article Curse of Ham.

[edit] Arab views on Curse of Ham

Islamic theocracy refuted this myth but this prejudice still filtered into the non-religious writings of some Arabs. ^[4]. Writer Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah al-Kisa’i’s book ‘Tales of the Prophets’ (Qisas al-anbiyâ), written in the 6th century AH, expounds on the curse with Noah reputedly calling blackness on Ham for his offences. Other Muslim historians such as al-Mas'udi describe blacks as being the accursed progeny of Ham, "stricken in his semen because of his sexual relation with his wife in the Ark" and marked by "kinky hair, thin eyebrows, broad noses, thick lips, sharp teeth, malodorous skin, dark pupils, clefty hands and feet, elongated penises and excessive merriment". (see Akbar Muhammad, Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, vol. I, p 68).^[7]

[edit] Early European interpretations

In the middle ages, European scholars of the Bible picked up on the Jewish Talmud idea of viewing the "sons of Ham" or Hamites as cursed, possibly "blackened" by their sins. Though early arguments to this effect were sporadic, they became increasingly common during the slave trade of the 18th and 19th Centuries. ^[8] The justification of slavery itself through the sins of Ham was well suited to the ideological interests of the elite; with the emergence of the slave trade, its racialized version justified the exploitation of a ready supply of African labour. This interpretation of Scripture was never adopted by the African Coptic Churches.

[edit] Curse of Ham and Racism

Historians believe that by the 19th century, the belief that blacks were descended from Ham was used by southern United States whites to justify slavery. ^[9] According to Benjamin Braude, a professor of history at Boston College, "in 18th- and 19th century Euro-America, Genesis 9:18-27 became the curse of Ham, a foundation myth for collective degradation, conventionally trotted out as God's reason for condemning generations of dark-skinned peoples from Africa to slavery."^[9]

Author David M. Goldenberg contends that the Bible is not a racist document. According to Goldenberg, such racist interpretations came from post-biblical writers of antiquity like Philo and Origen, who equated blackness with darkness of the soul. ^[10]

The Jewish involvement in the trade is a controversial one due to the publishing of work by the Nation of Islam and Dr. Tony Martin, which have both been accused of anti-Semitism. However, Arnold Wiznitzer states in his book Jews in Colonial Brazil that Jewish people were involved in aspects of the trade. ^[11] The presences of Jewish Slave owners is also echoed in the work of Jewish author Cecil Roth, Who stated: "The Jews of the Joden Savanne [Surinam] were also foremost in the suppression of the successive negro revolts, from 1690 to 1722: these as a matter of fact were largely directed against them, as being the greatest slave-holders of the region"^[12]

[edit] Slavery in Africa

In most African societies, there was very little difference between the free peasants and the feudal vassal peasants. Vassals of the Songhay Muslim Empire were used primarily in agriculture; they paid tribute to their masters in crop and service but they were slightly restricted in custom and convenience. These non-free people were more an occupational caste, as their bondage was relative.^[4].

There is evidence of many cases of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Ashanti of Ghana and the Yoruba of Nigeria had economies depending solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as intermediaries or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans. Extenuating circumstances demanding exploration are the tremendous efforts European officials in Africa used to install rulers agreeable to their interests. They would actively favor one African group over another to deliberately ignite chaos and continue their slaving activities.^[13].

[edit] Slavery in Ethiopia

Ethiopian slavery was essentially domestic. Slaves thus served in the houses of their masters or mistresses, and were not employed to any significant extent for productive purposes. Slaves were thus regarded as members of their owner's family, and were fed, clothed and protected. They generally roamed around freely and conducted business as free people. They had complete freedom of religion and culture.^[14]. It was said that this practice was only abolished with the coming of Haile Selassie at the beginning of his reign in 1924.

[edit] Slavery in Songhai

In most African societies, there was very little difference between the free peasants and the feudal vassal peasants. Vassals of the Songhay Muslim Empire were used primarily in agriculture; they paid tribute to their masters in crop and service but they were slightly restricted in custom and convenience. These people were more an occupational caste, as their bondage was relative. In the Kanem Bornu Empire, vassals were three classes beneath the nobles. Marriage between captor and captive was far from rare, blurring the anticipated roles.^[4].

[edit] European slave trade

Main articles: Slavery in Christianity, Curse of Ham, and Atlantic slave trade

Many Europeans saw Ham as the progenitor of the African race and subsequent translations were stirred to reflect the biases and prejudice of the era.^{[citation needed]} Islamic theocracy refuted this myth but this prejudice still filtered into the non-religious writings of some Arabs. ^[15] The most profound manifestation occurred in imagery, which constantly portrayed white as God, and black as the Devil.

[edit] Legacy of European enslavement of Africans

The depiction of God, and subsequently the divine ethnic social dynamic, placed Whites as masters, Blacks as Slaves. These images single-handedly upheld a system of subjugation and oppression: Christianity became the context for the cultural prevalence of European culture, European names became Christian names and those who adopted or were forced into Christianity automatically adopted European culture in an attempt to become more "Christian."

[edit] Arab slave trade

Main article: Arab slave trade

13th century slave market in the Yemen

The oriental slave trade is sometimes called Islamic slave trade, but religion was hardly the point of the slavery, states Patrick Manning, a professor of World History.^[16] Many Arabs were Christian, Jewish and also indigenous Arab faiths. Also, this term suggests comparison between Islamic slave trade and Christian slave trade. Furthermore, usage of the terms "Islamic trade" or "Islamic world" implicitly and erroneously treats Africa as it were outside of Islam, or a negligible portion of the Islamic world.^[17] Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn points out that the Arab trade was rarely a chattel trade and some argue more "humane." ^[13]. In both African Slavery and Arab enslavement of Africans, the enslaved were allowed great social ascension. In the 8th century Africa was dominated by Arab-Berbers in the north: Islam moved southwards along the Nile and along the desert trails. The Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia often exported Nilotic slaves from their western borderland provinces, or from newly conquered or reconquered Muslim provinces. Native Muslim Ethiopian sultanates (rulership) exported slaves as well, such as the sometimes independent sultanate (rulership) of Adal (a sixteenth century province-cum-rulership located in East Africa north of Northwestern Somalia).^[18] The Arab (African identifying as Arab) Tippu Tib extended his influence and made many people slaves. After Europeans had settled in the Gulf of Guinea, the trans-Saharan slave trade became less important. In Zanzibar, slavery was abolished late, in 1897, under Sultan Hamoud bin Mohammed.^[19] The rest of Africa had no direct contact with Muslim slave-traders.

The primary boom of the trade in African slaves by Arabs was during the 18th century. The Portuguese had destroyed the Swahili coast and Zanzibar emerged as the hub of wealth for the Arabian state of Muscat. By 1839, slaving became the prime Arab enterprise. The demand for slaves in Arabia, Egypt, Persia and India, but more notability by the Portuguese who occupied Mozambique created a wave of destruction on Eastern Africa. 45,000 slaves were passing through Zanzibar every year.^[20].

[edit] Legacy of Arab enslavement of Africans

Islam like Christianity became the context for the cultural prevalence of Arab culture. Arab names became Islamic names and those who adopted Islam automatically adopted Arab culture in an attempt to become "Islamic." The Afro-Arab relationship was riddled with complexities lined in a cultural nexus. Some Arabs were Arab linguistically but racially African (see definition of Arab. Thus, the Arab trade in enslaved Africans was not only conducted by Asiatic and Caucasian Arabs, but also African Arabs: Africans speaking Arabic as a first language embracing an Arab culture.^[20] Focus on the Arab slavery has previously been low due to the fact that most descendants of enslaved people are as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade; for this reason the impact of the Arab trade on people of the Americas is negligible. Another reason is the legacy of the Arab Slave Trade is far less impacting than the European trade in enslaved Africans, as there are no ghettos or prison complexes in Arabian lands overflowing with African people. The African Diaspora in Arab lands has almost disappeared through inter-marriage. The resurgence of Islamaphobia, some argue, has brought this aspect of history to the foreground.^[21]

Tippu Tip was considered Arab because his father was Arab

According to Dr. Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's Universidade do Estado da Bahia, Afro-multiracials in the Arab world self-identify in ways that resemble Latin America. Moore recalled that a film about Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had to be cancelled when Sadat discovered that an African-American had been cast to play him. Sadat, considered himself white, according to Moore. Moore claimed that black-looking Arabs, much like black looking Latin Americans consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry.^[22] Similarly, 19th century slave trader Tippu Tip is often identified as Arab^[23] despite having an unmixed African mother, in part because of the Arab tradition of assigning race through paternal descent. Tip, whose Arab father raped his mother, was concieved in violence against Africans, a tradition he continued by earning a reputation for being merciless to his slaves.^[24]

According to J. Phillipe Rushton, Arab relations with blacks whom the Muslims had dealt as slave traders for over 1000 years could be summed up as follows:

“ Although the Koran stated that there were no superior and inferior races and therefore no bar to racial intermarriage, in practice this pious doctrine was disregarded. Arabs did not want their daughters to marry even hybridized blacks. The Ethiopians were the most respected, the "Zanj" (Bantu and other Negroid tribes from East and West Africa south of the Sahara) the least respected, with Nubians occupying an intermediate position^[25] ”

[edit] Scale

The academic downsizing of human loss that occurred during the Transatlantic Slave Trade is another feature of the legacy of African Holocaust (Maafa). The widely accepted view of the arrival of 10 million neglects to state how many left. Estimates range from 40 million to 100 million from both the Arab Slave trade and the Transatlantic trade.^[26] It has been estimated that the population of Africa in the mid 19th century would have been 50 million instead of 25 million had slavery not taken place.^[26] But many more died in the villages fighting their enslavers; many more died in the dungeons and many died aboard the ships. Many Africans either committed suicide or were thrown over board to lighten the ship or to make insurance claims. It is estimated that the Portuguese trade was underestimated by half and the British trade by 1/3. Then there were those who died by the indirect actions of the slavers--those left to starve, and those who died of European diseases.

An often-neglected study within history is the value of population demographics as a function of time. 30 million people 500 years ago is not equivalent to 30 million people today because the percentage of the world population represented 500 years ago is far greater than what it represents today. It is estimated that by the height of the slave trade the population of Africa unlike the rest of the World had stagnated by 50% ^[26] Not only was the trade of demographic significance in the aggregate population losses but also in the profound changes to settlement patterns, epidemiological exposure, and reproductive and social development potential.^[4].

[edit] Effects

Few scholars dispute the harm done to the slaves themselves. African scholar Maulana Karenga states "[it is] important to make a distinction between collaborators among the people and the people themselves." Karenga continues by adding "Every people faced with conquest, oppression and destruction has had collaborators among them, but it is factually inaccurate and morally wrong and repulsive to indict a whole people for a holocaust which was imposed on them and was aided by collaborators."^[27]

Maulana Karenga states that the effects of slavery where "the morally monstrous destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among peoples." He cites that it constituted the destruction of culture, language, religion and human possibility.^[27]

[edit] Economics of slavery

Slave trade routes

Slavery was involved in some of the most profitable industries in history. 70% of the slaves brought to the New World were used to produce sugar, the most labor-intensive crop. The rest were employed harvesting coffee, cotton, and tobacco, and in some cases in mining. The West Indian colonies of the European powers were some of their most important possessions, so they went to extremes to protect and retain them. For example, at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, France agreed to cede the vast territory of New France to the victors in exchange for keeping the minute Antillian island of Guadeloupe.

Slave trade profits have been the object of many fantasies. Returns for the investors were not actually absurdly high (around 6% in France in the eighteenth century), but they were higher than domestic alternatives (in the same century, around 5%). Risks—maritime and commercial—were important for individual voyages. Investors mitigated it by buying small shares of many ships at the same time. In that way, they were able to diversify a large part of the risk away. Between voyages, ship shares could be freely sold and bought. All these made slave trade a very interesting investment (Daudin 2004). Historian Walter Rodney estimates that by c.1770, the King of Dahomey was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling captive African soldiers and even his own people to the European slave-traders. Most of this money was spent on British-made firearms (of very poor quality) and industrial-grade alcohol.

By far the most successful West Indian colonies in 1800 belonged to the United Kingdom. After entering the sugar colony business late, British naval supremacy and control over key islands such as Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados and the territory of British Guiana gave it an important edge over all competitors; while many British did not make gains, some made enormous fortunes, even by upper class standards. This advantage was reinforced when France lost its most important colony, St. Dominigue (western Hispaniola, now Haiti), to a slave revolt in 1791 and supported revolts against its rival Britain, after the 1793 French revolution in the name of liberty (but in fact opportunistic selectivity). Before 1791, British sugar had to be protected to compete against cheaper French sugar. After 1791, the British islands produced the most sugar, and the British people quickly became the largest consumers of sugar. West Indian sugar became ubiquitous as an additive to Chinese tea. Products of American slave labor soon permeated every level of British society with tobacco, coffee, and especially sugar all becoming indispensable elements of daily life for all classes.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Colonialism and the "scramble for Africa"

Main article: Colonization of Africa

Map showing European claimants to the African continent at the beginning of World War I

In the late nineteenth century, the European imperial powers staged a major "scramble for Africa" and occupied most of the continent, creating many colonial nation states, and leaving only two independent nations: Liberia, an independent state part-settled by African Americans; and Orthodox Christian Abyssinia (known today as Ethiopia). This colonial occupation continued until after the conclusion of World War II, when all the colonial states gradually obtained formal independence.

Colonialism had a destabilizing effect on what had been a number of ethnic groups that is still being felt in African politics. Before European influence, national borders were not much of a concern, with Africans generally following the practice of other areas of the world, such as the Arabian Peninsula, where a group's territory was congruent with its military or trade influence. The European insistence of drawing borders around territories to isolate them from those of other colonial powers often had the effect of separating otherwise contiguous political groups, or forcing traditional enemies to live side by side with no buffer between them. For example, although the Congo River appears to be a natural geographic boundary, there were groups that otherwise shared a language, culture or other similarity living on both sides. The division of the land between Belgium and France along the river isolated these groups from each other. Those who lived in Saharan or Sub-Saharan Africa and traded across the continent for centuries often found themselves crossing borders that existed only on European maps.

In nations that had substantial European populations, for example Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, systems of second-class citizenship were often set up in order to give Europeans political power far in excess of their numbers. In the Congo Free State, personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium, the native population was submitted to inhumane treatments and a near-slavery status assorted with forced labor. However, the lines were not always drawn strictly across racial lines. In Liberia, citizens who were descendants of American slaves had a political system for over 100 years that gave ex-slaves and natives to the area roughly equal legislative power despite the fact the ex-slaves were outnumbered ten to one in the general population. The inspiration for this system was the United States Senate, which had balanced the power of free and slave states despite the much-larger population of the former.

Europeans often changed the balance of power, created ethnic divides where they did not previously exist, and introduced a cultural dichotomy detrimental to the native inhabitants in the areas they controlled. For example, in what are now Rwanda and Burundi, two ethnic groups Hutus and Tutsis had merged into one culture by the time German colonists had taken control of the region in the nineteenth century. No longer divided by ethnicity as intermingling, intermarriage, and merging of cultural practices over the centuries had long since erased visible signs of a culture divide, Belgium instituted a policy of racial categorization upon taking control of the region, as racial based categorization and philosophies was a fixture of the European culture of that time. The term Hutu originally referred to the agricultural-based Bantu-speaking peoples that moved into present day Rwanda and Burundi from the West, and the term Tutsi referred to Northeastern cattle-based peoples that migrated into the region later. The terms described a person's economic class; individuals who owned roughly 10 or more cattle were considered Tutsi, and those with fewer were considered Hutu, regardless of ancestral history. This was not a strict line but a general rule of thumb, and one could move from Hutu to Tutsi and vice versa.

The Belgians introduced a racialized system; European-like features such as fairer skin, ample height, narrow noses were seen as more ideally Hamitic, and belonged to those people closest to Tutsi in ancestry, who were thus given power amongst the colonized peoples. Identity cards were issued based on this philosophy.

[edit] Academic legacy of the African holocaust

An aspect of the African holocaust are the anti-African sentiments expressed in scholarship. It isolates the tradition of prejudicial study of African societies, cultures, languages and peoples by Western scholars (including other African Western scholars). It by default gives an inferior voice to all aspects of African culture and history. Writer Owen 'Alik Shahadah articulates that the pattern of scholarship emerged during slavery and colonialism to remove any form of noble claim from the victims of these systems, thus reducing them and justifying their position as “natural” and a continuation of their historical “worthlessness.” The first expressions of this academic trend appeared in the claim that "Slavery was a natural feature of African, and that Africans sold each other everyday." Though its roots started to justify what was one of the largest commercial exploitation in the history of humanity the legacy did not end after enslavement or colonialism ended. ^[28].

While the denial of the Jewish Holocaust remains illegal in some European countries, and bodies such as the Anti-Defamation League exist to protect the history of Jewish suffering, no such laws or institutions exist for the African Holocaust. It is subjected to all forms of deformation and denial^{[citation needed]}. The most recent of these are blame reassignment and statistical downsizing of the numbers of people trafficked^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Problems with terminology

The term African Holocaust is preferred by some academics, as it implies intention as pointed out by Maulana Karenga.^[27] He stipulates that the translation of the word Maafa is slightly flawed as it can also mean accident, and the holocaust of enslavement was clearly "No accident." The term holocaust, however, can be misleading as it is primarily used to refer to the Nazi genocide and etymologically refers to something being "completely (ολος - holos) burnt (καυστός - kaustos)".^[29]

The term Transatlantic Slave Trade is also often erroneously used where the category trade tends to sanitize the high level of violence and mass murder that was inflicted on African peoples and societies. It thus becomes more of a commercial dilemma than a moral one. And since trade is the primary focus, the greater tragedy can be conveniently accepted as simply collateral damage of a commercial venture gone bad. On the other hand, without an economic incentive, it can be questioned whether the atrocities committed by Europeans on Africans would have occurred. Given this clear financial incentive, it is therefore not altogther unreasonable to see the Maafa in terms of trade.

It is generally accepted that the term is used exclusively to detail the relationship between African and non-African people (consequences directly or indirectly of non-African actions on African people), and hence does not include African-African wars, enslavement, etc. For this reason the term is seen as an "ethnically biased" area of study as it excludes for the greater part African to African atrocities.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Further reading

Muslim Bahia Slave Revolts by Muhammad Shareef {limited publication}
Tarikh Ul Sudan (ancient African document) Arabic only
Kebra Negust (Glory of Kings) (Ancient Ethiopian document)
Powell, Eve Troutt, and John O. Hunwick, ed. The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton Series on the Middle East)
Van Sertima, Ivan. ed. The Journal of African Civilization.
The Negro Writer and His Relationship to His Roots, in The American Negro Writer and His Roots: Selected Papers From the First Conference of Negro Writers.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press. 1974.
World's Great Men Of Color. Vols. I and II, edited by John Henrik Clarke. New York: Collier-MacMillan, 1972.
The Negro Impact on Western Civilization. New York: Philosophical Library. 1970.
Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro and the Making of the Americas.
United West Africa (or Africa) at the Bar of the Family of Nations. Ghana: Privately published. 1927.
Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience Cambridge, Ma.: Belnap Press, Harvard University. 1970.
The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam by John Hunwick
Let The Circle Be Unbroken, by Marimba Ani