Bellow is from John Newton (ex slave trader and guy who wrote amazing grace) read 227-252 "Thoughts on the slave trade"
http://books.google.com/books?id=OjI3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA245
"I verily believe, that the far greater part of the wars, in Africa, would cease, if the Europeans would cease to tempt them, by offering goods for slaves"
Sorry I couldn't fit the whole thing on the descriptions box. This is for those who can't download the article the video shows pages 19-25
Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections of the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey 19-25
http://www.fiu.edu/~ogundira/Law_Historiography_of_the_Rise_of_Dahomey.pdf
Given the coincidence in time between this process of militarization and the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the two developments are in some way linked. Dahomey itself, as has been seen, was known as the coast as source of slaves by the 1680s, and its military organization was geared towards the collection of slaves, soldiers being obliged to surrender all their captives (as well as the heads of slain enemies) to the king in return for a money payment. The fact that the king paid four times as much for a live captive as for a head created an incentive for the capture rather than the killing of enemies. Dalzel, it is true, claimed that since many of those captured were sacrificed, slave-gathering could not have been a source of profit to the king, but the statistics do not support him. Slaves were not, of course, gathered only for export, since (quite apart from those sacrificed) many were retained for use within Dahomey itself. The king distributed some of the captives in reward to his chiefs, and kept others for his own use. Of especial importance was the use of slave labor on the royal farms, which supported not only the king and his palace establishment but also the standing army, thus, facilitating the professionalization of the military forces? The large-scale use of slave labor on the royal estates in Dahomey is already attested in the 1720s, and may well (since it is not reported in the earlier Slave Coast kingdoms) represent a Dahomean innovation: in Whydah earlier, it appears that the royal estates were cultivated rather by corves labor contributed by the chiefs. But the undeniable importance of slaver within the Dahomean domestic economy is quite compatible with the supposition that it was the growth of overseas demand for slaves which was the principal stimulus for the militarization of societies such as Dahomey.
Another aspect of the link between warfare and commerce was of course the role of European firearms, which began to be imported in considerable numbers into the Salve Coast in the 1680s, to supplement and ultimately replace the javelins and bows which were the traditional missile weapons of the area. The effective use of firearms on the Slave Coast was probably pioneered by the Gold Coast mercenaries employed there: certainly, the first war in which firearms are known to have played and important role was that in which Ofori, a refugee chief from Accra established at Little Popo (west of Great Popo) on the western Salve Coast and hired by the king of Allada, attacked Whydah in 1692. The Dahomean tradition suggests that the Dahomans, despite their inland situation, had obtained firearms (presumably in exchange for slaves) before the end of the seventeenth century, and certainly by the 1720s they were in the forefront of arms technology, their forces being equipped exclusively with muskets and swords, and having abandoned the javelins and bows in use earlier. This adoption of firearms may well have some bearing upon the professionalization of Dahomean military organization, the creation of a regular army being designed to produce the superior standards of drill and discipline required for effective use of the new weapons....
But even if we ignore these contradictions, and accept that the conscious motives of rulers in waging war were normally noneconomic, this does not dispose of the issue, since the dominance of noneconomic values encouraging war itself may have had economic causes. As Christopher Wrigley has pointed out, in response to Fage:
War is a habit, an institution War-boys naturally believe in war, but the question remains: What brought the war-boys to the fore? It is of limited sense to invoke Dahomean militarism as an explanation of Dahomeys aggressiveness, when it is precisely the historical origins of Dahomean militarism which are at issue.
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@hmghosthost
great to finally read a sensible posting , i personally think we should concentrate or efforts on modern day slavery .
google Anti-Slavery International Today
twinman009 9 months ago
@SiegHeil2010
shut your ASSHOLE ITS LEAKING
diyonisha 10 months ago
WHITE POWER!!!
SiegHeil2010 1 year ago
Interesting that the mention of the sale of white slaves to African kings by European kings is always conveniently left out of most public references to Slavery. NO ONE was safe from slavery. Muslims were capturing blacks and whites and selling them as slaves, European kings were selling white Europeans (typically those who were in debt) to black kings, and African kings were selling both their own people and captured enemy tribes to Muslims and Europeans. Everyone needs to stop pointing fingers
hmghosthost 1 year ago