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The article implies that slaves in Haiti were "ripped from Benin" (known then as the Kingdom of Dahomey) by the French. In fact, chattel slavery was a long-esta

The article implies that slaves in Haiti were "ripped from Benin" (known then as the Kingdom of Dahomey) by the French. In fact, chattel slavery was a long-established practice in Dahomey which made noble families there very rich. It was practiced in tandem with ritual torture and murder. These practices continued until around 1900 when the French, in response to slave raids conducted into French protectorates, finally fought and deposed the last King of Dahomey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin#Pre-colonial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin#Pre-colonial >The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery. They had a practice of killing war captives in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs. By about 1750, the King of Dahomey was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling African captives to European slave-traders. The area was named the "Slave Coast" because of a flourishing slave trade. Court protocols which demanded that a portion of war captives from the kingdom's battles be decapitated, decreased the number of enslaved people exported from the area. This history's still a very sensitive subject in Benin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/an-african-country-reckons-with-its-history-of-selling-slaves/2018/01/29/5234f5aa-ff9a-11e7-86b9-8908743c79dd_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/an-african-count...

enkid 4y ago
I don't see your point. The quote in question in no way implies slavery didn't exist in Africa at the time, and the fact that slavery did exist in Africa in no way alleviates the immorality of the transatlantic slave trade. (I guess you could make an argument that capturing slaves is morally different from transporting and owning them, but I don't think it is substantially.) The article also doesn't say who ripped them away from Benin. Certainly political systems in existence in Benin at the time were involved. But that doesn't mean the horror or impact to the slaves was lessened. So, overall, I don't see what the purpose of your comment is unless it's an attempt as European slave trade apologia.
- refurb 4y ago
  "Ripped" would infer they were taken by force. I think "purchased from Benin slave traders" would be more accurate.
  - gumby 4y ago
    The article doesn’t care who took them by force.
    - refurb 4y ago
      It's not accurate. The exact quote from the article is "In fact, many Haitians are descendants of slaves ripped from Benin...". That statement makes me think they were citizens of Benin who were taken into slavery. But they weren't. They were slaves owned by the Kingdom of Benin and sold to the French.
      - enkid 4y ago
        Benin wasn't a political entity at this point, so the only possible reading is they are talking about the location, not the polity.
        refurb 4y ago
        OK, but if they were purchased as slaves, they weren't ripped from Benin. They were ripped from somewhere else, and sold in Benin. Pedantic, but hey, it's important to be precise.
  - enkid 4y ago
    Do you think the slaves were willing participants in this exchange?
- deepdriver 4y ago
  The involvement of Africans in the slave trade is conspicuous in its absence from the article. Whenever that fact is obscured, we promote the false perception that slavery is the fault of one race in particular. This feeds into modern attitudes, especially in the US, of innate racial good or evil and inherited guilt or grievance based on skin color. Teaching the full history of slavery, i.e. it was practiced with all its cruelties by every race of people who ever lived, is a necessary building block to healthy race relations. I think it is important to share this knowledge wherever it is clearly absent.
  - lkrubner 4y ago
    "The involvement of Africans in the slave trade is conspicuous in its absence from the article." Because it is completely irrelevant to the article. "Whenever that fact is obscured, we promote the false perception that slavery is the fault of one race in particular." This is untrue, and it is ridiculous thing to say. You do yourself no credit, trying to drag racial politics into a situation where they do not add explanatory power.
    - deepdriver 4y ago
      Racial politics are central to the article because they are central to Haiti's history and development. Discussing racial politics in a wilfully blindered manner has serious harmful side-effects.
      - gumby 4y ago
        Central? Can you point to an example, apart from one of imagery wrt refugees crossing the US border?
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        You are bringing up the racial in a way that is irrelevant to the political. The Kingdom of Dahomey did not profit from the Republic of Haiti via reparations post-independence. They do not have any relation to the continued immiseration of Haiti, unlike France did.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  It is sort-of like writing an article about the horrors of totalitarian concentration camps, spending a lot of time on Nazi Germany, meanwhile quickly mentioning the Soviet Union as a country next door, but studiously avoiding any mention of the gulags or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In that situation, one does not have to be a Nazi whitewasher to be somewhat suspicious about the author's agenda. Not every story can cover every detail, but some omissions are glaring.
  - lkrubner 4y ago
    By this chain of logic, no article is complete unless it mentions all of the other related topics that it could have mentioned, if it didn't mind being infinitely long. When writing a book about the Holocaust, one could also mention genocide in the USSR, or in Turkey, against the Armenians, or the Italian brutality in Ethiopia, or the mistreatment of Africans under British rule, or the widespread massacres that occurred in the Philippines when it was initially conquered by the USA. One could go on and on, mentioning more and more genocides. Or one could simply stick to the subject that one is writing about.
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      The unfortunate souls shipped to the New World as slaves were directly bought from Benin slavers, though, not taken in some kind of hostile pirate-like raid, which is the mental picture that the word "ripped" conjures to mind. When writing, there is always a question of where the related references stop. There is no clear criterion. But the word "ripped" here indicates a certain unwillingness to address the fact that slavery was, until fairly recently, a rather widespread phenomenon in Africa. Ignoring this fact does not make European slavery worse and acknowledging it does not make European slavery better. The only thing it would do would be a certain refinement of currently politically popular stereotypes. History should be told as it was, not as we want it to look like. And slavery existed because it was immensely profitable to all sorts of people, from native kings in Africa to the white (and sometimes Native American) slavers in America. Only by understanding this can you prevent reemergence of slavery in the future. Arguably, sexual slavery works on a similar background.
- throwawayacc2 4y ago
  > So, overall, I don't see what the purpose of your comment is unless it's an attempt as European slave trade apologia. I am not OP but I take issue with this. I feel like this is the whole thing. Why did you feel the need to write “European”. That’s wrong and denigrates entire ethnic groups in a very ignorant way. The poles for example surely you would agree are european but did not participate in the slave trade. But, this is not my main point. My main point is, the slave trade was a multicultural, multiethnic affair. In different periods of times, different peoples were enslaved by different other peoples. Just so you don’t mistake my comment, this is not an apologia of slavery. It was a horrible institution worthy of condemnation and I am happy it was ended. I just find it very annoying when I see this automatic assumption “europeans were slavers”. No, not all of them practiced slave trading, some of them were enslaved as well, the ones that did practice slavery collaborated with non europeans to create the supply chain and there were other non european peoples also actively engaged in the slave trade. Slavery is not the sin of Europe, it’s the sin of all man kind.
  - phasersout 4y ago
    If Spartacus wouldn't have been enslaved there is a good chance that he might have ended up with Slaves on his own at one point or another in his life.
  - enkid 4y ago
    Are you really going off just on the words "European slave trade?". How did the slaves get to Haiti? Who steered the boat? Who profited from their transportation? It's the European slave trade because it was Europeans who bought slaves in Africa and sold them in America. Yes, Africans participated in the slave trade. Yes, Africans did terrible things. No, not all Europeans participated in the slave trade directly. In fact the vast majority didn't. There were also (and terrifying still are) lots of other forms of slavery. I never said anything different from that, neither does the article. The evils of one group of people doesn't lessen the evils of another group of people. We aren't having an argument about morals here, we're having an argument about discourse. If every time you talked about slavery, you had to include all of the sins of all of the individuals involved in that trade, discourse would become so burdensome as to be impossible. The post I was replying was setting this as a standard that must be met without thought about the implications of such a requirement. The only possible outcome of advocating such a position is that destruction of our ability to discuss the issue at all. The only type of person that would want that outcome is an apologist who simply wants the topic dropped, even when talked about tangentially, such as occurs in this article.
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enkid 4y ago

I don't see your point. The quote in question in no way implies slavery didn't exist in Africa at the time, and the fact that slavery did exist in Africa in no way alleviates the immorality of the transatlantic slave trade. (I guess you could make an argument that capturing slaves is morally different from transporting and owning them, but I don't think it is substantially.) The article also doesn't say who ripped them away from Benin. Certainly political systems in existence in Benin at the time were involved. But that doesn't mean the horror or impact to the slaves was lessened. So, overall, I don't see what the purpose of your comment is unless it's an attempt as European slave trade apologia.

refurb 4y ago
"Ripped" would infer they were taken by force. I think "purchased from Benin slave traders" would be more accurate.
- gumby 4y ago
  The article doesn’t care who took them by force.
  - refurb 4y ago
    It's not accurate. The exact quote from the article is "In fact, many Haitians are descendants of slaves ripped from Benin...". That statement makes me think they were citizens of Benin who were taken into slavery. But they weren't. They were slaves owned by the Kingdom of Benin and sold to the French.
    - enkid 4y ago
      Benin wasn't a political entity at this point, so the only possible reading is they are talking about the location, not the polity.
      - refurb 4y ago
        OK, but if they were purchased as slaves, they weren't ripped from Benin. They were ripped from somewhere else, and sold in Benin. Pedantic, but hey, it's important to be precise.
- enkid 4y ago
  Do you think the slaves were willing participants in this exchange?
deepdriver 4y ago
The involvement of Africans in the slave trade is conspicuous in its absence from the article. Whenever that fact is obscured, we promote the false perception that slavery is the fault of one race in particular. This feeds into modern attitudes, especially in the US, of innate racial good or evil and inherited guilt or grievance based on skin color. Teaching the full history of slavery, i.e. it was practiced with all its cruelties by every race of people who ever lived, is a necessary building block to healthy race relations. I think it is important to share this knowledge wherever it is clearly absent.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  "The involvement of Africans in the slave trade is conspicuous in its absence from the article." Because it is completely irrelevant to the article. "Whenever that fact is obscured, we promote the false perception that slavery is the fault of one race in particular." This is untrue, and it is ridiculous thing to say. You do yourself no credit, trying to drag racial politics into a situation where they do not add explanatory power.
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    Racial politics are central to the article because they are central to Haiti's history and development. Discussing racial politics in a wilfully blindered manner has serious harmful side-effects.
    - gumby 4y ago
      Central? Can you point to an example, apart from one of imagery wrt refugees crossing the US border?
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      You are bringing up the racial in a way that is irrelevant to the political. The Kingdom of Dahomey did not profit from the Republic of Haiti via reparations post-independence. They do not have any relation to the continued immiseration of Haiti, unlike France did.
inglor_cz 4y ago
It is sort-of like writing an article about the horrors of totalitarian concentration camps, spending a lot of time on Nazi Germany, meanwhile quickly mentioning the Soviet Union as a country next door, but studiously avoiding any mention of the gulags or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In that situation, one does not have to be a Nazi whitewasher to be somewhat suspicious about the author's agenda. Not every story can cover every detail, but some omissions are glaring.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  By this chain of logic, no article is complete unless it mentions all of the other related topics that it could have mentioned, if it didn't mind being infinitely long. When writing a book about the Holocaust, one could also mention genocide in the USSR, or in Turkey, against the Armenians, or the Italian brutality in Ethiopia, or the mistreatment of Africans under British rule, or the widespread massacres that occurred in the Philippines when it was initially conquered by the USA. One could go on and on, mentioning more and more genocides. Or one could simply stick to the subject that one is writing about.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    The unfortunate souls shipped to the New World as slaves were directly bought from Benin slavers, though, not taken in some kind of hostile pirate-like raid, which is the mental picture that the word "ripped" conjures to mind. When writing, there is always a question of where the related references stop. There is no clear criterion. But the word "ripped" here indicates a certain unwillingness to address the fact that slavery was, until fairly recently, a rather widespread phenomenon in Africa. Ignoring this fact does not make European slavery worse and acknowledging it does not make European slavery better. The only thing it would do would be a certain refinement of currently politically popular stereotypes. History should be told as it was, not as we want it to look like. And slavery existed because it was immensely profitable to all sorts of people, from native kings in Africa to the white (and sometimes Native American) slavers in America. Only by understanding this can you prevent reemergence of slavery in the future. Arguably, sexual slavery works on a similar background.
throwawayacc2 4y ago
> So, overall, I don't see what the purpose of your comment is unless it's an attempt as European slave trade apologia. I am not OP but I take issue with this. I feel like this is the whole thing. Why did you feel the need to write “European”. That’s wrong and denigrates entire ethnic groups in a very ignorant way. The poles for example surely you would agree are european but did not participate in the slave trade. But, this is not my main point. My main point is, the slave trade was a multicultural, multiethnic affair. In different periods of times, different peoples were enslaved by different other peoples. Just so you don’t mistake my comment, this is not an apologia of slavery. It was a horrible institution worthy of condemnation and I am happy it was ended. I just find it very annoying when I see this automatic assumption “europeans were slavers”. No, not all of them practiced slave trading, some of them were enslaved as well, the ones that did practice slavery collaborated with non europeans to create the supply chain and there were other non european peoples also actively engaged in the slave trade. Slavery is not the sin of Europe, it’s the sin of all man kind.
- phasersout 4y ago
  If Spartacus wouldn't have been enslaved there is a good chance that he might have ended up with Slaves on his own at one point or another in his life.
- enkid 4y ago
  Are you really going off just on the words "European slave trade?". How did the slaves get to Haiti? Who steered the boat? Who profited from their transportation? It's the European slave trade because it was Europeans who bought slaves in Africa and sold them in America. Yes, Africans participated in the slave trade. Yes, Africans did terrible things. No, not all Europeans participated in the slave trade directly. In fact the vast majority didn't. There were also (and terrifying still are) lots of other forms of slavery. I never said anything different from that, neither does the article. The evils of one group of people doesn't lessen the evils of another group of people. We aren't having an argument about morals here, we're having an argument about discourse. If every time you talked about slavery, you had to include all of the sins of all of the individuals involved in that trade, discourse would become so burdensome as to be impossible. The post I was replying was setting this as a standard that must be met without thought about the implications of such a requirement. The only possible outcome of advocating such a position is that destruction of our ability to discuss the issue at all. The only type of person that would want that outcome is an apologist who simply wants the topic dropped, even when talked about tangentially, such as occurs in this article.
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