Since I\u2019m a cheerful unbeliever, like most people in Britain now, there\u2019s no reason why I should be more than marginally interested in the C of E\u2019s expensive guilt-trip for its historic links to the slave trade. Except that I have a fondness for ancient architecture and language that, as with Richard Dawkins, includes old churches, old liturgies and the music that goes with them. I contributed to the renovation of the bells of the fine Norman church in my village because I like the sound they make. Like the liturgy, it\u2019s an important facet of British history and the church\u2019s bells are actually much more prominent in village life than its church services. For several years, they have only happened when a peripatetic vicar can include us in his rounds every few weeks.\u00a0As to the slavery issue, the villagers, who only enter the church in large numbers for services at Christmas, Easter and harvest-time, seem to feel much less guilty than the new Archbishop of Canterbury. I agree with them for a reason that hasn\u2019t been mentioned in the recent beating of ecclesiastical breasts or even in newspapers and journals that are unhappy with the idea of compensating the descendants of slaves and the governments of the present-day countries where the slaves were captured.<\/p>\n
Many people have pointed out that Europeans didn\u2019t invent African slavery. Though rarely conceded by the grievance industry and the campaigners for compensation, slavery was an ancient and widespread African custom, established many centuries before Portuguese and Spanish sailors hesitantly began to explore the coasts of West Africa. If the locals weren\u2019t actively hostile, trade was likely and what the local traders were keen to exchange for European products were other Africans who had been enslaved. Some of the sailors may have had doubts about the morality of the exchanges. Not so the African traders, or the tribal chiefs who pocketed much of the proceeds. The slaves mostly came from tribes living several hundred miles inland. The sailors never penetrated beyond the coasts, partly because they didn\u2019t know what lay beyond it and partly because anyone who tried to make his way through the thick forests quickly returned, if they returned at all, suffering from tropical diseases or spear-wounds.<\/p>\n
One of the first Europeans who did go far inland and returned to report his findings was Mungo Park, a young Scotsman sponsored by The Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa. European ignorance about those \u201cInterior Parts\u201d was almost total and Park\u2019s mission was to find the source of the River Niger. It was successful but he was very lucky to survive disease, robbery, kidnapping, imprisonment and injuries. His diaries, freely available at Project Gutenberg<\/a>, contain many observations and reflections on the local slave-trade, including that Islamic traders from north of the Sahara were more feared than local captors because their methods were even more brutal. However, two of his observations really surprised me. One was the sheer scale of the enslavement of Africans by other Africans. I had assumed it might run to 10 or at most 20% of the population but Park reckoned it was nearer two thirds. As in America, slave-owners ranged from the relatively kind to the vicious and slave status was inherited. Some Africans sold themselves into slavery to pay off debts but most slaves were captured in tribal wars. Freedom could sometimes be bought but Park noted that a few ceased being slaves when their owners ate or sacrificed them.<\/p>\n The second and most surprising feature and the one most closely related to the C of E\u2019s guilt-trip was that slaves became more expensive the further from home they were at the time of purchase. That was because being unable to speak the languages of the intervening tribes and empires, they were less likely to escape and more easily identified and recaptured if they did. Naturally, when European traders offered to take slaves even further away from their homes and across an ocean, the traders were doubly pleased. It is that feature that has had little attention on both sides of the debate, though it is discussed in some recent academic books about African slavery.<\/p>\n On the whole, Europeans had stopped enslaving other Europeans for several centuries by the time they came across the African trade. The English system of villeinage<\/a> wasn\u2019t as ruthless or all-embracing and largely stopped after the Black Death. Russian serfdom was the main persisting exception and might have lasted beyond its abolition in 1861 had not Russia\u2019s defeat in the Crimean War revealed the deficiencies of Czarist Russia\u2019s social structures. If Africans thought it acceptable to capture and sell other Africans, was it surprising if 16th century Europeans agreed with them? The equivalence is not exact, of course. When warlike tribes such as the Mongols and Zulus invaded their neighbours, it was often customary to kill all adult males of fighting age. Most women and their young children would be enslaved but there were important exceptions. Some women would end up as the wives or concubines of their captors. Those of the highest rank might be formally married off to the conquering chieftains as part of a peace treaty. That sort of arrangement is much more likely when the defeated tribes are not very different in appearance and customs to their neighbouring conquerors. It is much less likely when the invaders arrive not on horses but on boats after journeys of several thousand miles and therefore looked and sounded very unlike their captives. That, in turn, made it easier for the captors to \u2018other\u2019 their slaves and regard them as not quite human.<\/p>\n
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