The
benefits of the Africa trade were well understood at the time that
it was in full swing. In 1745 Malachy Postlethwayt, an economist
writing in support of the Royal Africa Company stated that the British
Empire was "a magnificent superstructure of American commerce
and naval power, on an African foundation." 9 A contemporary
historian, Professor David Dabydeen shows that the unprecedented
wealth creation based on the slave trade was "the hinge between
medieval Britain and the modern state." 10
Another
little known fact is that by the early nineteenth century the slave
trade had become primarily a trade in children. By that time, traders
had discovered that children survived the rigours of both the inland
and sea voyages better than adults and they could pack more of them
in the holds.
The
history of the slave trade is full of ironies and glaring inconsistencies
for those who call themselves Christians. The trade involved people
of all the major denominations. In France, Huguenots were proportionately
more involved than Catholics in ports like La Rochelle, Bourdeaux,
Nantes and Le Havre. In 1642, the Protestant Synod in Rouen censured
"over scrupulous persons who thought it unlawful for Protestant
merchants to deal in slaves." 11 In New England, before
the Quakers became prominent in the cause of abolition, they both
kept slaves and financed voyages to obtain slaves. So we have the
contradiction of ships like the Reformation sailing for slaves from
Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love!12 The Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel kept slaves on the Codrington estate in
Barbados and branded them with the name "SOCIETY."13
The
names of slave ships often bore testimony to the distorted theologies
prevalent at the time. One of the first slave ships from Liverpool
was the Blessing and the blessing of God was sought in many a slave
trading voyage. Foster Cunliffe, a successful slave trader and three
times mayor of Liverpool, was decribed on the plaque to his memory
in St Peter's Church as "a Christian devout and exemplary in
the exercise of every private and public duty, friend to mercy,
patron to distress, an enemy only to vice and sloth."14 Hugh
Thomas mentions a director of the Royal Africa Company, Richard
Craddocke, who was said, "...to live with his prayer book in his
left hand and a company prospectus in his right, without letting
either know what the other held."!15
In
1751, after the Duke of Argyll had left Africa with its cargo of
slaves, the captain wrote home to his wife: I have lost sight of
Africa, innumerable changes and difficulties, which, without a superior
protection, no man could escape or surmount, are, by the goodness
of God, happily over.....I am going to walk on deck and think of
you; and, according to my constant custom, to recommend you to the
care and protection of God." Two days later he had to deal with
a slave rebellion which emergency he overcame with "Divine assistance."16
Later
that former slave trader John Newton was to see the error of his
ways and he reflected on the degradation of the trade and the way
that participants were blinded to the true nature of what they were
doing: "The real or supposed necessity of treating the Negroes
with rigour gradually brings a numbeness upon the heart and renders
those who are engaged in it too indifferent to the sufferings of
their fellow-creatures."17 In using the term "fellow-creatures",
Newton showed that the most fundamental change of heart had occurred,
because the rationalisation for the trade was largely based on the
assumption that the African slave was in some way sub-human.
In
the light of all this evidence, what is an appropriate response
from the Christian community today?
First
of all surely it is important to tell the truth. How many schoolchildren
in Britain today would know that this was the greatest crime against
fellow human beings which this nation has committed? It is good
to tell the story of abolition, but not before our responsibility
for the slave trade has been well understood. It is important too,
to educate about the legacy of the slave trade and to understand
the reasons for the anger which many Afro-Americans still feel.
James Walvin perceptively comments on the fact that the major race
riots in England in the eighties occurred in the former slave ports
of London, Liverpool and Bristol. "Was it mere accident that
those cities should be plagued, long after slavery had died, for
the sins of their fathers?"18 These are the kinds of questions
that should exercise our minds and hearts.
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