THEThe attitude of Africans in this matter is a subject that has not yet been studied very much, but which has already been falsified on many occasions. Slavers and racists falsified it then, and nowadays it has been the turn of bourgeois historians of colonial and neocolonial orientation. It is a complex subject, and it seems to us that Africanists do not yet have sufficient material to proceed to its definitive study. Like many other regions of the globe, Africa experienced slavery and the slave trade before the arrival of Europeans, as we have already specified in this book. That is why when, in the beginning, Europeans began to buy slaves, entering into commercial relations with Africans, it was considered as an ordinary commercial arrangement.
However, from the start, the meetings between Europeans and Africans were seldom friendly. Armed sailors threw themselves on the Africans coming in confidence or with fear to meet these white men whom they had never seen, they killed those who resisted and took the others, tied up, on their ship.
Despite an obvious superiority in armament, the colonizers could not break the Africans, inspire them with permanent fear. The "local telegraph", that is to say the smoke signals or the tom-toms, may have announced the appearance of the terrible strangers, but the fact is that they more and more often ran into not a resistance, because an open resistance to the Portuguese armed with firearms was impossible, but a permanent and daily hostility, when the slightest possibility was taken advantage of to attack them. Sudden attacks, poison arrows greeted Europeans more and more frequently.
Gonçalo de Cintra, one of the first Portuguese captains to set foot on West African soil, was killed on the outskirts of the island of Arguin.
Do you like the website ?
Access all our Premium content. More than 2000 articles and ebooks
The Slavery Routes: History of African Trafficking XNUMXth-XNUMXth century
12,49€ IN STOCK
Release Date | 2018-05-02T00:00:01Z |
Language | Français |
Number Of Pages | 288 |
Publication Date | 2018-05-02T00:00:01Z |