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Originally Posted by AlexMack
I'm not even sure that I'm exactly arguing with breathegelatin...we've just had different sources. I guess I'm not naive enough to think any civilization can ever be peaceful. I just wish I could believe humans are innately good...
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I actually wasn't arguing with you on anything but the fact that A) there was conflict, violence, and war in African before European contact and B) there were "tribes" or political and cultural groups that resembled "tribes in early modern Africa. Our area of disagreement is really pretty small.
I'm working a Ph.D. in early modern European history (1450-1800) but my secondary field is early modern Atlantic history--thus Africa's role in Atlantic exchange.
Thornton's book is a classic and should be widely available on Amazon and other sources. If you're interested specifically in slavery, his
Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas is also a good choice (co-written with Linda Heywood who is his wife).
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Originally Posted by SECdomination
I refrained from putting in my own two cents, but this pretty much sums it up. But I sure haven't seen any of those books fueling capitalist agendas.
Without using the fancy terminology, I find it ridiculous that people think all of Africa's problems come from "the white man". Good grief. Are these not the same African's that were capturing each other to sell to Europeans and Americans as slaves in the 18th century? Good thing there were no problems before whites interfered.
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Very few history books written by academics in the West are fueling "capitalist agendas." I would add that Marxism is definitely way, way, way out of vogue in academic circles. It's basically the crusty old guard that's Marxist. Not that "capitalism" is the preferred ideology these days... Just that pure Marxism is pretty well discredited, although many of Marx's concepts (commodity fetishism etc) are still really helpful to people analyzing history.
In terms of Africans & slavery, you seem to be somewhat misled there. It's true that slavery was predominant in African society even before European contact. But it was not the type of slavery called "chattel slavery" that predominated in America and it was not racialized. In fact, in many cases, it could actually be more beneficial to you in African society to be the slave of a elite, powerful person, than it would be for you to be a free, low-status person. The slaves were incorporated into the family unit of the master, often had a fair degree of autonomy, and in the case of elite masters would often serve as bureaucrats, jobs like that. Africans (at least at first) probably did not understand the type of slavery they were selling their captives into. By the 18th century that's arguable. Littoral African societies that were involved in slave trading basically mobilized their whole economies to participate in slave trading. But this type of trade, feeding into the Atlantic slave trading system and the more oppressive chattel slavery was created by European markets. That much is unarguable.
One of the things Thornton argues actually is that pre-contact African societies had as their basic unit of property slavery--because they did not have land ownership or feudal society as we see in medieval Europe.