SOME THINGS IN COMMON Part II b

NIGERIA

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND  PRE -MODERN 

NIGERIA TOPOGRAPHICAL

The historical background of Nigeria is infinitely different to that of Australia because of the geographical realities. Though moderate in size by Australian standards, Nigeria is only part of a much greater whole - Africa  - which could swallow Australia two and a half times. We can easily identify substantial evidence of developed human settlement across most of Africa and certainly in Nigeria. 

But Africa sits on the "doorstep" of Europe, which has driven much - though not nearly all -of the development in much of the world. Unlike Australia, Africa was not "to be found" or in any sense "lost". Nor did it seem in any way unworthy of attention like Australia. Rather, it demanded attention!

By virtue of its immense reality in size, exotic riches in animal, plant and human activity. Africa could not be denied or even ignored, without peril. At different times it posed threats with its Carthaginians, who competed with, and invaded Europe, and its Barbary Pirates who raided Roman and later colonies and trading activities. But most of this interaction took place on and from the Mediterranean coastline, whilst at the Eastern end, it involved the exotic, ever troublesome Middle Eastern Kingdoms.

Through much of this evolution, what is to-day Nigeria, remained largely responsive only to African external stimuli. The earliest external trading influence came from North African Carthaginians with whom, from about 400 B.C. according to Herodotus, these pre-Nigerians were trading gold, metal, cotton and leather in exchange for copper, salt, textiles, beads and horses. In fact, since about 1,000 B.C. these people had been producing iron and creating metal artworks and such weapons as axes and arrowheads. From around A.D. 700 Mohammedan Slave Traders, using the overland route into the West of sub-Saharan Africa, entered the scene. These traders were Arabs.

So modern-day Nigeria was, from a very early period significantly impacted by foreign intervention in the form of the Mohammedan Slave Traders. But this was not invasion. No. These men were traders. they came and went away with their wretched human purchases.

With whom did they trade? Without doubt Chiefs and others who had access to prisoners, tribal captives defeated in war AND their own traditional slave population. It would have been an impossible task for the slave traders to have mounted an invasion force, take it across the Sahara, find, fight, defeat and make captive potential slaves. No. They bought them from those who already held them in their African homeland, and were thus free to take them away to market across the arduous Saharan route without let or hindrance or fear of loss.

They were not racially prejudiced in this business. They gladly enslaved very many Europeans in the same period but in total numbers only a fraction of the African trade. Why?  Simply, European slaves were not available, they had to be caught - taken prisoner in battle or in piratical raids on shipping. It is thought that in total the number of European slaves would have been approx. 1.5 Millions. Many of the European slaves were bought back with funds raised by pious societies in Europe. The traders remained content - they had turned a profit. 

 Their African activity lasted for 1,000 years from the inception of Mohammedanism until the arrival of the Europeans. But this arrival did not herald a deliverance from slavery. No. All that changed was the direction in which the slaves were sent, the mode of transport and the type of slaves required. For the Europeans sent them by sea across the Atlantic to the Slave Markets of the Americas and the Caribbean instead of the overland trail of misery to the Mohammedan Slave Markets of Cairo, Tripoli, Algiers and Morocco. In addition, the Mohammedan Slave Traders had sought roughly two female slaves to every male slave, as they wanted many females for concubinage and domestic service. The Europeans, on the other hand, sought the reverse of those proportions – two males to every female, for they were looking for workers for the cotton and sugar plantations and the mines more than domestic servants.

It is very difficult to truly appreciate the extent of this great human tragedy. We are accustomed to being sickened by the thought of 4.5 Million to 6 Million Jews dying in the Holocaust. But in this protracted horror, the trans-Saharan Slave Trading Mohammedans carted away between 8 and 17 Millions of people. It should not be thought that their dealings were limited to this part of West Africa. On the contrary, their activities in West Africa were overshadowed by their dealings in East Africa which were enormous and often seaborne.

When we reflect on this phenomenon, we are driven to cry out "How did this go on?  For a thousand years!"  It is not hard to see how it might have begun. After all, the sale of captives in war into slavery was simply a part of life in the ancient world be it European, Middle Eastern, Asiatic or African...it was normal.   But, we are inclined to see that this was something entirely different. as different as normal grazing and sale of cattle is, to feed-lot raising and export. Yet these are human beings - men and women - who in the normal course would strenuously defend, and resist intrusion upon, their personal freedom. 

NIGERIA - ETHNIC MAP

What structures in the African societies inhibited resistance to all this? Or prevented an overthrow of such a monstrously evil situation?  Was it the case that the evil of those in control was just so monstrous that for a thousand years it suppressed the human spirit so completely as to reduce the populace to mute acquiescence? Could that really be so?  

Even in the ruthlessly efficient and totally pagan Roman Empire, we have the example of several Slave mutinies - not least that of Spartacus which lasted for two years and finally took eight Legions of the Roman Army under Crassus to suppress. Apart from the thousands of slaves killed in battle, Crassus crucified another 6,000 -lining the Appian Way from Capua to Rome with their crucifixes.

Could it have been the case that in some way the practices and beliefs of traditional religion - "odinani" and its variants had been used/abused to condition the people to accept this situation? Whatever the case, the result was certainly diabolical and seems logically improbable. 

The answer is not often, or ever, made explicit. But it becomes obvious as we examine the patterns of governance which had evolved throughout pre-Nigeria over the centuries. If we cast our minds back once more to contrast the Australian situation, we find that as the people of pre-Nigeria were commencing their trade with the Carthaginians in 400 B.C. the aboriginal people of Australia were hunting their next meal. 2,100 years later, when Captain Cook arrived in pre- Australia, they were still hunting their next meal. Meanwhile, in pre-Nigeria, a vast history of governance, war, trade, art and invention had taken place and a very active international trade across the Atlantic was being carried on with the Portugese, the British, the French, the Spanish and the Dutch.

Across pre- Nigeria we find a highly- evolved pattern of governance and organisation. There is not much point in trying to penetrate the mists of time to go back too far. But let us choose the convenient date of 400 B.C. We can plainly see that the society which began trading with the Carthaginians must have been self-confident, organised and stably- governed in order to initiate and sustain the production of gold etc. and the trading activity. As we move forward in time, we find clear evidence of numerous de-centralised self-governing cities in the sub-Saharan  Sahelian grasslands. These cities were significant and assertive and governed the trans-Saharan trade. Later still, we see the Ghana Empire arise. From around A.D. 400, it became quite substantial until succeeded by the Sosso in 1230 and the later Mali Empire. Under Mohammedan influence, the Songhai and the Sokoto Caliphate came into being. The Songhai’s collapse led to the formation of a number of lesser kingdoms.

To the South, and in and around the Niger delta, there developed several forms of governance among the remarkable Igbo peoples. These included several kingships and a much more extensive web of independent groups of villages with what might be called a republican style of government. In this perhaps surprising pattern of government, control on a day to day basis rested with a council of elders, but full power rested with consultative councils of all the people from the network of villages. The living operation of the system even as late as the arrival of the colonial British is well shown in the novels of the late, great Chinua Achebe. But there were Igbo kingships. Prime among these for influence, though not rule, was the Eze Nri (King of Nri) who was in effect a Priest-King with responsibility for the determining of matters arising from the sevenfold Taboo system which influenced all of the Igbo native religion – odinani and its variants. Apart from the Eze Nri, there was in the later stages, the Arochukwu Kingdom and the Kingdom of Onitsha.

The Benin Empire became by the mid-1400s a very significant political force and the fortifications of its capital Benin were formidable and among the largest man-made structures in the World. It was not a major trader in slaves, but very active in trading pepper, ivory, gum and cotton cloth. It included in its embrace Dahomey which was notorious for its barbarity- including in some years- at the whim of its King - the mass beheading of over 100,000 slaves at the Annual Custom events.

Also significant in the area of present-day Ghana was the Ashanti Empire.

What we see over the entire region is a varied pattern of strongly developed and governed states. Inevitably their multiplicity led to wars. These wars produced victors and vanquished and the vanquished very often became slaves in the traditional manner. In the times of the Mohammedan Slave Traders – that long period of 1,000 years, this activity was sufficient to feed the trade in slaves.

But the arrival of the European slave traders and their requirement for far more male slaves to satisfy the demands of their particular markets seems to have created an accelerated demand which by all accounts, led to a growing number of wars essentially designed to generate supplies of slaves. In this war-making, the Arochukwu Confederacy became prominent.

SUMMARY

In considering this Historical Background, we come to a puzzling issue: how is it that whilst slaveholders and slave traders and slave carriers - all European are rightly condemned and despised, slave makers and slave vendors - all African - are not a subject for consideration or comment, let alone condemnation? How could these men SELL their brothers into often (but not always) cruel slavery? Worse still how could their evil activity go uncondemned, or even unconsidered? Or am I missing out on something? I want to understand.

Is it in any way connected to the fact that there are to-day hundreds of thousands of Slaves within Africa? - Mali alone has 200,000, and Mauretania up to 600,000 all of these are legal in these Mohammedan States. There does not seem to be any continent-wide move to free them.

There is no real comparison in the historical background of Australia and Nigeria up to the pre-modern period. In our next section - the Historical Background - Modern Period

, we will see broad similarities, striking differences and different results.