How did a few boats/ships full up with pampered establishment?

Question

type's, manage to go to africa and after months at sea,set about capturing thousands of athletic natives and enslaving them?

did someone spike their spinach or something?

Answer 1

I suspect that you are talking about the period of slavery in America, if so, you misunderstand what happened.

Those who came on ships to Africa didn't cqapture them, rather, they purchased them. Slavers already existed in Africa. Primarily they were of Islamic cultures and viewed native "black" Africans as people less than themselves. Once they captured them used them as slaves in a number of areas, one of which was to sell them to others. Some of those others were people who came on ships and some of those purchased slaves were taken to the Americas and some of those were taken to North America.

Keep in mind, while slavery in the Americas ended about 140 years ago, it continues in Africa.

Answer 2

Ummm--most of the crews on slave ships (or any other sailing vessels of the time) weren't "pampered establishment types." It wasn't an easy life at all, so they were pretty robust, physically speaking. They had to be in order to survive the voyages.

There was collusion between the slavers and certain powerful leaders in Africa at the time (and, I suspect, Europeans who had set up shop in Africa who kind of acted as middle men and purchased the human cargo and sold them to the slavers).

Read Alex Haley's ROOTS for some insights on the slave trade--while it's true that some slave ships docked and did their own "hunting" (and remember that the slavers had superior fire power and were not above using tactics such as attacking sleeping villages) there was also the element of African rulers selling prisoners from other groups than their own (or even their own people who had, for whatever reason, displeased the ruler) into slavery.

Answer 3

I notice someone gave negative ratings to all the answers that mentioned the non-politically correct but historically acurate answers that Africans captured Africans, held them in slave pens and then sold them to slave ship drivers......as Randy was first in witht the corrct answer, give him the points.......

and "Roots" has a scene where the hero is captured after running thru the bush chased by the white slavers..........sorry folks, didn't happen and is disingenuous of Halley to imply it did.......

oh, yes the responses that Africans......mostly Islamists on the east coast...... are still in the slave business today is unfortunatly correct

Answer 4

Randy is right.

Slavery had existed in Africa for centuries. In fact it still exists, one of the reasons the Janjuii (sp?) raid the Christian vilages in the south of Sudan is to get slaves.

http://www.csi-int.org/sudan_csi_press_release_sep.php

Alex Haley's Roots notwithstanding, it was way to much time and effort for white slavers to go capture slaves themselves. A slave ship could hold several hundred people, and it would take far to much time and effort to capture all those people themselves.

So the white slavers would go to the African coast and trade with the local African chiefs for slaves, they wouldn't capture them themselves .

The African Kings would raid neighboring
African tribes and capture slaves to trade for things like iron, cloth, beads, liqour, and guns. The vast majority of black slaves were captured by black people, and then sold by their fellow black people to the white slave traders.

Answer 5

Greed, Hate , and the American way.

Answer 6

guns