A European observer once wrote about how Africans came to be hooked on European goods such as guns and gunpowder, tobacco pipe and liquor, linen and silk cloths, mirrors, sewing needles and threads, among others, and how this appetite for the European enticed Africans to sell their kith and kin to Europeans as slaves. I quote him here:
"Once accustomed to having these different articles from Europe, the Africans on the coast as well as those farther inland could not and would not do without them and thought incessantly about how to obtain the things which could be exchanged for the desired goods. Therefore, the entire land was from then on divided into small regions which were hostile to one anther, and all prisoners which they took were sold either to the black slave traders or were immediately taken away to the European slave ships. sometimes, if such spoils of war were lacking, and they needed new supplies of goods, their chiefs, who exercised despotic power over their subjects, would seize which of them was most dispensable. But it often happened that a father was dragged away from his son, a man from his wife and a brother from his brother to be sold at the slave market. One can easily understand that all these lands found themselves in a most miserable state."
I often wonder whether this is why most of our leaders still adore foreign goods to the extent that they often steal from their people to buy these things. I wonder whether this is why many African leaders continue to kill their peoples to this day so that they may have the opportunity to indulge in these things which they hardly attempt to develop in their own countries. could it be that the logic of the slave trade still has a role to play in African politics today? Could African leaders and the elites who work for them be suffering from addiction to European goods?
"Once accustomed to having these different articles from Europe, the Africans on the coast as well as those farther inland could not and would not do without them and thought incessantly about how to obtain the things which could be exchanged for the desired goods. Therefore, the entire land was from then on divided into small regions which were hostile to one anther, and all prisoners which they took were sold either to the black slave traders or were immediately taken away to the European slave ships. sometimes, if such spoils of war were lacking, and they needed new supplies of goods, their chiefs, who exercised despotic power over their subjects, would seize which of them was most dispensable. But it often happened that a father was dragged away from his son, a man from his wife and a brother from his brother to be sold at the slave market. One can easily understand that all these lands found themselves in a most miserable state."
I often wonder whether this is why most of our leaders still adore foreign goods to the extent that they often steal from their people to buy these things. I wonder whether this is why many African leaders continue to kill their peoples to this day so that they may have the opportunity to indulge in these things which they hardly attempt to develop in their own countries. could it be that the logic of the slave trade still has a role to play in African politics today? Could African leaders and the elites who work for them be suffering from addiction to European goods?
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