The People’s Republic: How they came

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WINDHAM was followed in 1562 by John Hawkins. He was more successful, but did not come as far as the Bight of Benin. He stopped at Sierra Leone from where he took away 300 slaves. For his exploit, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, who nonetheless described the traffic in slaves as ‘a detestable act which would call down the vengeance of heaven upon the undertakers. ‘

It must be remarked, in passing, that no hypocrisy can be imputed to the Queen for her ambivalent reactions to Hawkins’s adventure to West Africa and his participation in ‘a detestable act’. A progressive nationalist herself, the Queen had a reputation for inspiring and encouraging the spirit of adventure in her subjects. She had to do so partly because it was then the fashion among the enlightened monarchs of Europe to foster in their people the growth of the spirit of the Renaissance which demanded to know more and more about the truth of the world in which man lived; and partlyand this was of exceeding and crucial importance from her point of view – because the spirit of seafaring adventure in particular, with the skill in seamanship resulting therefrom, was indispensable to the defence of what she herself referred to in her speech before the Battle of Armada as ‘the borders of my realm.’ She did not, and it would have been impolitic and overscrupulous for her in that age

to, concern herself with the motives of her subjects’ adventures.

Not only did Hawkins repeat his exploit in slave-trade; his example was followed by many other Englishmen. By the close of the seventeenth century, a lucrative business in slave traffic had developed between England and the whole of West Africa.

At the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, a series of treaties were signed by the belligerent nations at Utrecht. As one of the defeated nations, Spain gave a number of concessions to Great Britain, one of the victorious powers in the war. Among other things, Spain gave to Britain a 30-year monopoly for the supply of slaves to her possessions in America and the West Indies. Hitherto, because of the Papal Bull conferring monopoly of trade in West Africa on Portugal, Spain had had to obtain her supplies of slaves through Portugal. The Anti-papal Protestant movement, generated by the Reformation, did not alter or improve the position for Spain. She had remained loyal to Rome.

In addition to meeting the needs of Spain under the Treaty of Utrecht, Britain had to meet the ever-growing need for slaves in her American and West Indian possessions. By the middle of the eighteenth century, more than half of the trade in slaves was done by her.

And so, during the second half of the sixteenth century, and as a result of a concatenation of historical landmarks of Catholic and eternal significance – namely, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the discovery of the New World – England established a contact with Nigeria which, through various metamorphoses, subsists to this day and shows promise of unending continuance. From that first contact to about the middle of the nineteenth century, enterprising British citizens bartered arms, spirits, and other merchandise to our people, in exchange for slaves, ivory, pepper, and palm oil.

In other words, whilst the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the discovery of the New World were liberating the people of Europe from the spiritual and intellectual bondage of the Middle Ages – and enriching the coffers of European nations, the nobility, and the middle class – these historic events were laying for us the foundation of 300 years of spiritual and mental darkness of physical barbarity, and of human degradation much darker more barbarous, and worse degraded than anything previously known in our part of the Dark Continent. n the words of Dr Norman Leys m hIS book Kenya the slave-trade generated an ever-widening circle of cruelty and destruction that at length wrecked African civilization everywhere.’

With a little draught of imported spirits, our people quickly acquired a Dutch courage which they could not have come by without virtually drowning themselves in a river of palm wine or locally-brewed beer. Thus dangerously stimulated, they then went out duly armed with their imported weapons which were more powerful and more lethal than machetes, spears, and bows and arrows, to hunt down and capture their less fortunate brethren, with a view to selling them into permanent servitude in distant lands.

Undoubtedly, slavery and slave-trade had existed in our land, as in other primitive lands, centuries before the advent of the first white slavers in the sixteenth century. And our ancestors must have waged innumerable wars against one another before that epoch. But even the best apologist for this period will readily admit that nothing in our so-called inter-tribal wars could compare with the ferocity and carnage which accompanied slave-raids under the stimulus and audacity of English spirits and arms. As for slave-trade and slavery, they were not only, in actual fact, strictly circumscribed and comparatively humanized, they were circumstantially insupportable on any large and inhuman scale by a primitive subsistence “economy and an insecure and immobile community such as prevailed in our land before the advent of the white slavers.

gal traffic till 31 March 1808, when the British Act of Parliament abolishing it, and forbidding every British citizen from engaging in it, came into force. But illicit traffic in slaves continued till much later. The reason for this was that though the slave-trade was abolished in 1808, slavery remained legal in British overseas possessions until 1833, when this too was abolished.

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