When one of the world's richest men says; "The trouble with America is that it keeps helping people like me, and I don't need any help." - Warren Buffett - it's not a good sign. The increasing concentration of wealth in too few hands has historically led to disaster, collapse and dissolution. The American Empire will be no different. On the bright side, events like this trigger re-birth and hopefully the widespread adoption of decentralised organisation.
"In addition to the backing of e-groups like MoveOn.org, Obama is rolling up personal endorsements from all kinds of tech/geek influentials: danah boyd, Larry Lessig (Creative Commons), David Weinberger (Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined), Dave Winer (Media 2.0), Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)--there are plenty of others and I've just lost track. (The only influential tech blogger backing Hillary that I know of is Jeff Jarvis.) And perhaps most importantly, Obama's supporters are net natives." TechPresident.
Can they do it this time? Can the power of networks overcome 'the centre'?
Time will tell.
This is not a post title I thought of, although I wish I had! My brilliant friend and occasional mentor Frank Dunn coined the phrase as a chapter description of a book he's writing to explain life, the universe and everything - mathematically. It describes cogently and succinctly why "Winning by Sharing" is fundamental to human survival and opens with;
One of the key discoveries so far of Complexity Theory is that co-operative processes in general seem far more likely to survive than isolated, rampantly selfish entities. This moves successful evolution away from the original 'principle of natural selection'; which was rather reductionist in that it placed the key stress on individual survival; to a more holistic, symbiotic view of adaptability, wherein survival is a group or team effort.
The examples most often quoted to illustrate this are typically a biochemical feature: an autocatalytic process. There are many groups of proteins within our bodies and those of many other organisms that depend on each other for synthesis and production from their simpler component parts. In other words, they simply cannot survive in isolation; but need to co-exist with each other.
In fact, with hindsight our social history is almost embarrassingly about collective effort, rather than individual triumph: all primates form tribes and engage in degrees of communication; the family 'unit' in primates invariably involves the male as much as the female; ancient civilisations worshipped their ancestors as symbols of the 'collective wisdom' of their culture.
I so hope this book is published. It will rank amongst the most disruptive and thought provoking discoveries in recent times, not unlike Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science.
Recent ground breaking research at the Max Planck Institute used the Ultimatum Game with chimpanzees, the result, reported in Science, is a telling outcome. "A number of researchers in the field of human evolution think that a sense of fairness—and a willingness to punish the unfair even at some cost to oneself—is humanity's “killer app”.
The Economist article goes on to say; "It is what allows large social groups to form. Without it, free-riders would ruin such groups, because playing fair would cease to have any value. Dr Jensen's previous experiments have shown that chimpanzees are willing to punish actual thieves. But his new data add weight to the theory that the more sophisticated idea of fair shares, which underpins collaborative behaviour, appeared in the hominid line only after the ancestors of the two species split from one another."
In other words an individual's sense of fairness is genetic. Of course this is dangerous ground to tread but reading this reminded me of the experiments carried out by Bob Altemeyer described in his book The Authoritarians. This is a fascinating account of the analysis and results of a game he devised for small teams to represent a country or region. The teams choose leaders and negotiate deals for their people. It's a sort of offline version of Microsoft's Age of Empires where 100 years is played out in less than a day. The experiment, carried out hundreds of times in US universities and colleges pitches two distinct types of group against each other; Right Wing Authoritarians (think politicians, leaders, businessmen, petty tyrants) and Liberals (everyone else). With few exceptions, RWAs always end up completely destroying the world. In many cases, the game was stopped early to advise RWAs their course of action would lead to global destruction, and given the chance to restart the game. Guess what? Yep, they destroyed the world again.
So perhaps the future is about Survival of the nicest?
My sister, Chantal Benjamin-Badjie, is the Project Director for the BBC's Abolition Programme. She talks here about her experience of directing the activities that delivered the BBC's micro-site on abolition and its supporting television output being broadcast over the next few months. She says in a recent interview;
"Oh, God! Not slavery!" I choked with dismay on my cappuccino outside the BBC's Media Centre in West London. It was late summer 2006 and the BBC had just asked me to consider project directing the BBC's season to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Act of Abolition of the Slave Trade (1807).
"Not a title that exactly trips off the tongue," I added acidly. "And it sounds like a terrible night in front of the telly!" This was my immediate, ignorant and prejudiced response to a project that I had no idea would change my personal and professional life for ever.
At the time, what I knew about slavery could be written on the back of an envelope. I had grown up (ironically) on 7 William Wilberforce Road in Freetown, Sierra Leone – a former British colony – the daughter of a British mother and a Sierra Leonean father.
Last week, Chantal received a citation from the Deputy Prime Minister on the floor of the House of Commons.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. John Prescott): Today, the House commemorates the 200th anniversary of its legislation to abolish the appalling and unacceptable slave trade. This indeed is an historic moment for the United Kingdom, which led the world in legislating against the vile trade in the slavery of human beings. I welcome the participation of the right hon. Members for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) in this debate, and I thank them for their support for this year’s commemoration.
Today is also an opportunity for me to thank publicly the members of the bicentenary advisory group, as well as my ministerial colleagues, the Leader in the other place, Baroness Amos, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy), the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Events for this year are to be found in the commemorative booklet to be launched on Thursday, which will be made available to Members of both Houses. The events can be found in more detail on the BBC website, along with a superb set of programme discussions of the highest quality, which I am sure Members will have noticed have already begun. On behalf of the House, I congratulate the BBC on its efforts, especially Chantal Badjie, the project director of the BBC’s season on the abolition of the slave trade.
The House will be aware of the launch of this year’s commemoration by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, followed by a wider series of events over this weekend. There will be a national memorial service at Westminster Abbey next Tuesday, and a parliamentary exhibition will open in Westminster Hall from 23 May to September.
Apparently civilians are rarely commended "in da house", and so how appropriate, and even ironic, that a Sierra Leonean who grew up in Freetown, is responsible for the government's formal commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade. The Benjamin's (Sierra Leone) and the Badjie's (Gambia) are all very proud of you!
The BBC has launched its slave trade abolition season of programmes. They've been promoting the season with a series of clips that are subtle, outrageous and highly provocative.
Clip 1 - Compensation
When slavery was finally abolished, Her Majesty's government paid £1 billion worth of compensation. To slave owners.
Download compensation_generic_email.mpg
Clip 2- Property
When 132 slaves were thrown to their deaths from a slave ship, the captain was immune from prosecution for murder because legally slaves were treated as property. It was dealt with as an insurance claim.
Download ripples_generic_email.mpg
Clip 3 - Society
On one Caribbean plantation, slaves had the word SOCIETY branded into their flesh. The average life expectancy of these slaves was just 3 years. The owners of this plantation? The Church of England.
"This website allows all peoples, individuals, groups and organisations to make an open and visible sign that acknowledges the horror of the transatlantic slave trade, with a personal commitment to address its legacy".
Pictures of supporters and their comments will launch around 24th March. I've loaded a picture with the comment:
It is important to understand that the focus of this commemoration is as much about the 500 year struggle of African slaves as it is about the British political 'heroes' who liberated them. Despite their subjugation, slaves continued to resist and their uprisings made as big a contribution to their freedom as their supporters and politicians of the day.
Africa as a nation continues to be subjugated economically and geo-politically, and is the largest net 'beneficiary' of global warming generated by the countries of its former slave masters. The African holocaust remains.
To have survived all this, Africans are by far, the finest runners in the 'race'.
The last few days of 2006 are marked by the execution of Saddam Hussein on the day of Eid, the last day of Islam's Ramadan. "Eid is a time to come together as a community and to renew friendship and family ties. This is a time for peace for all Muslims in the world to devote to prayers and mutual well-being." Interestingly, Britain will commemorate 200 years since the abolition of slavery in July 2007. Both these events remind me of the cry of the androids in the American TV series, Lost in Space; "Crush, Kill, Destroy".
I submit an 'internal memo' passed to me a few months ago. I'm biased because I was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone - the first country to be 'freed' from slavery. Three hundred years of free labour ending in the deaths of 10 million Africans (an 'African Holocaust'?) was a pretty good headstart for the British & American economies. With air and sea attacks planned for Iran in 2007, the atrocities of 9/11, and the 'Allied' response with Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, renditions, torture, depleted uranium, and the continuing prosecution of "the war on terror", you decide if this (Crush, Kill, Destroy) mentality still exists in the British and American psyche.
The article ends with; "Specifically, it was the church's missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, whose governing board included the Regius Professors of Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The estate's brand, burned onto the chests of African people with a red-hot iron, was 'SOCIETY'. Whilst the average life span of a male slave on plantations elsewhere could be up to nine years, the average at Codrington was just over three. The Church literally worked people to death."
The Slave Trade or ‘Maafa’ - In the
Beginning
The term "Maafa" ( a
kiswahili word for "disaster") is the term used by increasingly by people of
African descent to reclaim their right to tell of their own history of abolition
and experience of enslavement and legacy. Black audiences in particular feel
that the story of slavery has been told by white historians with a vested
interest in ramping up the role of the English in Abolition and downplaying the
role of the English in the transatlantic slave trade.
1441 - The Portuguese Trade
In 1441 Portuguese sailors started to explore and undertake
raids on the coast of West Africa and to ship enslaved Africans to Europe. The
Portuguese also enslaved African people on sugar plantations that they
established on islands off the coast of West Africa. At the same time they had started up colonies
developments in the Americas, and needed labour to work on plantations
there.
1492 The Pope sanctions
slavery
On 8 January, 1455, Pope
Nicholas V in his Papal Bull or Charter titled "Romanus Pontifex" authorized the
Portuguese "to subject to servitude all infidel peoples." In other words, Roman
Catholic Church legalized, authorized and sanctioned the European Slave Trade
and the enslavement of African people.
1492 The Europeans join the slave
trade
Years later in 1492
the Italian adventurer Christopher Columbus made the first of his visits to the
Caribbean, arriving somewhere near the Bahamas. His aim was to gain wealth for
himself and his patrons, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain. In 1518 the
first slaves were dispatched across the Atlantic.
Soon Britain, the
Netherlands and France were competing with Spain and Portugal for a share of the
profits of exploitation. Along the West African coast, European merchants
established forts and trading posts - known as "factories" or "castles" - to
serve as centres for collecting slaves.
The beginning of mass commercial enslavement of Africans via the trans-Atlantic slave trade was very different from the kind of slavery that had existed before.
Triangular Trade: A Business unlike any other Before
The sale the enslaved at auctions of was one element of a three-part economic cycle—the Triangular Trade and its infamous Middle Passage. Ships would leave Britain with cargo of cheap manufactured goods from Liverpool and Bristol and travel to West Africa where they would be exchanged for ‘black cargo’. The enslaved Africans were then taken to the Caribbean (across the Atlantic – the Middle Passage) where they were exchanged for sugar coffee, cotton, and tobacco that was then brought back to Europe and sold for a very large profit.
The huge monetary gain made sure slavers were not overly concerned with the humanitarian aspect of the enterprise or even the ethical issues. They were making money that would enable them to buy more ships, build and sustain grand lifestyles and advance their interests in cultural, social and political spheres of influence and power.
The Middle
Passage, the Journey.
The Middle Passage was a huge endurance test. To maximize their profits slavers carried as
many Africans as was physically possible on their ships. The captive children, men and women were packed into every
little space on the slave deck of the ships spending up to 6 to 8 weeks in this
position which was usually the time it took to complete the journey.
During this journey many Africans died. A large number of slaves suffered from diseases such as smallpox and dysentery, while others just went completely insane. Many of the enslaved were crippled for life as a consequence of the way they were chained up on the ship. Also, on many occasions there were revolts on board, where the Africans overpowered their captors. A popular example of this is told in the Amistad story about a revolt by enslaved African on a slavers ship
Why Africans?
Expanding European empires in
North and South America and the Caribbean lacked one major resource -- a work
force. In most cases the indigenous peoples had proved unreliable (most of them
were dying from diseases brought over from Europe), and Europeans were unsuited
to the climate and suffered under tropical diseases.
African slaves were cheaper and more readily available than white indentured labourers from Britain and Ireland, and because they already had some immunity to European diseases. Africans were also less likely to die from those diseases than were Native Americans. Second, slavers feared for their own safety if the were freed rather than captive in the demanding regime of the plantation.
Africans were considered by slavers as excellent workers: they often had experience of agriculture and keeping cattle. The plantation owners profited from the considerable agricultural knowledge extracted from captive Africans.
White Labour
Between 1607 and 1783 over a quarter million "white" indentured servants arrived in the British colonies alone where they were set to work in the agricultural and industrial processes of the time. The shipping companies, ports, and trading routes established for the transport of the poor and criminal of European society were to form the backbone of the future slave trade of Africans.
Young Irish peasants were hunted down as men hunt down game, and were forcibly put aboard ship, and sold to plantations in Barbados. Henry Cromwell, Oliver's son, seized a thousand "Irish wenches" to sell to Barbados. Henry justified the action by saying, "Although we must use force in taking them up, it is so much for their own good and likely to be of so great an advantage to the public." He also suggested that 2,000 Irish boys of 12 to 14 years of age could be seized for the same purpose: "Who knows but it might be a means to make them Englishmen."
It was racism that made Englishmen see the Indians and the Irish servants as useful for enslavement and exploitation. It was racism, class and colour consciousness that demanded that white people be released from this type of bondage and black people remain it.
A World of
Difference
The
beliefs of racial hierarchy had been introduced by numerous Europeans as a way
of explaining difference, even difference between Europeans, prior to the height
of the European enslavement business.
After the 18th century
the arguments were used to explain and justify the mass enslavement of Africans.
10
million Africans?
With the approval of Queen Elizabeth I, John Hawkins became the
first English merchant slaver to inaugurate the British venture into enslavement
of Africans and the economic development of imperial
interests.
Taken into account numerous sources of data some 10 to 12 million Africans were taken from Africa to Europe, North, Central and South America and the Caribbean Islands by European colonial/imperial powers. Some estimates suggest that up to two million of these where white indentured servants. Between 1701 and up until the 1807 Act of Abolition British ports transported into bondage over 2.8 million people. At a peak 45,000 Africans are transported annually on British slavers ships, leading the world in the trafficking of ‘black gold’.
Royalty and
Slavery
The
English Royal families have had a long connection with enslavement. Elizabeth I.
The Duke of York used to get his initials, 'DY', branded onto the left buttock
or breast of each of the 3000 captive slaves. Now his branded property they were
then shipped out to the Caribbean.
In 1672 King Charles II’s Charter of the Royal Africa Company of England (RACE) ensured that London would be the only City to profit from the slave trade. By 1680, the Royal African Company, transported 5000 African captives annually but rival English merchants were not happy. It gave the company’s 250 London-based trustees and members great powers and influence. Between 1660 and 1690, 15 Lord Mayors of London, 25 sheriffs and 38 aldermen of the City of London were shareholders in RACE. The company’s logo was an elephant with a castle on its back.
In 1698, Parliament yielded to their demands and opened the slave trade to all. With the end of the monopoly, the number of slaves transported on English ships would increase dramatically.
Banking on
Profits
Many well-known and respected British institutions including
banks, insurance companies were either founded or built from the proceeds of the
African holocaust. One bank that provided credit to slave traders was run by
Alexander and David Barclay and carries their family name. Another was Barings
Bank, whose founder Sir Francis Baring is alleged to have made his fortune as a
16-year-old slave dealer. John Julius Angerstein, one of the founders of Lloyds
Bank and the National Gallery, bought and sold slaves, provided insurance for
slavers and owned estates in Grenada.
Humphrey Morice, the Governor of the Bank of England between 1716 and 1729, owned six slave ships. Sir Richard Neave, who held similar positions to Morice at the bank, was chairman of the Society of West Indian Merchants. Familial and other ties connected these people to fruits of African enslavement. In this elite world, Africans were sold on the London Royal Exchange - many of them young people.
The legality of
the TST
British slavers in the Americas were dependent upon the enslaved
to ensure high profitability. In Britain, 18th-century laws were designed to
reinforce the commercial exploitation were again sanctioned by the king and
parliament. A decision by the Solicitor General stated that 'Negroes' ought to
be 'esteemed goods and commodities within the Trade and Navigation Acts'. Such a
ruling permitted slavers to use property law with regard to the enslaved 'to
recover goods wrongfully detained, lost or damaged' as they would any other
property. As chattel slaves had the same rights as animals - no
rights!
The use of property law meant that the enslaved were considered not humans, but commodities that could be bought and sold and disposed of when necessary. The historian James Walvin concluded that 'the State, as an institution, dehumanized African men, women and children for its own ends'.
Britain’s Ports: Trafficking Human Cargo
Initially the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch were the main slave traders but by the 1730s the British Atlantic slave trade was in full swing.
British traders by far were the most important suppliers of enslaved Africans for the entire Caribbean zone. London was the leading British slaving port in the 17th century, with control over the trade until 1698. Bristol overtook London in the 1730s. The supremacy of London and Bristol ports was soon to be superseded by Liverpool. These three ports are the ones commonly associated with the slave trade, but many of the smaller ports around Britain also joined in. Between 1750 and 1780 almost three-quarters of the British slave trade was financed by Liverpool merchants.
Of the 27,000 slave trading voyages, about 11,000 were British (or British colonial) and of those almost 6,000 originated from Liverpool, by then the largest slave trading port in the world.
Seasoning the Captives
The captive workforce were herded
into "Seasoning Camps" located throughout the Caribbean. Jamaica had one of the
most brutal of these camps operated by the British. Before being shipped off to
the mainland or even local plantations on the islands, the slaves were tortured
into submission in an attempt to break the will to
resist.
The Christian Church:
The Christian
church's main justification of the concept of slavery was based on the
"curse of Ham (or
Canaan)" which appears in the Hebrew
Scriptures (Old Testament) in Genesis 9:25-27. "Cursed be Canaan (Ham)! The lowest of slaves will he be to
his brothers. He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be
the slave of Shem. Christians at the time
believed that Canaan also know as Ham settled in Africa and that his descendents
were black.
Many slavers legitimised the commerce using this biblical
justification.
Many
Church of England (CofE) Bishops of the time were slavers themselves. The
missionary wing of the CofE, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
(SPG), was a major slave
plantation owner in Barbados in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
CofE owned
plantations
The Codrington plantation on the island of Barbados, operated by
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, exemplifies the somewhat
hypocritical attitude of the Church. Slaves were kept compliant and submissive
through systematic semi-starvation and a harsh routine of brute tasks. The
landlord was the Church of England. Specifically, it was the church's
missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,
whose governing board included the Regius Professors of Divinity at Oxford and
Cambridge and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The estate's brand, burned onto the
chests of African people with a red-hot iron, was 'SOCIETY'.
Whilst the average life span of a male slave on plantations elsewhere could be up to nine years, the average at Codrington was just over three. The Church literally worked people to death.
Plus c'est la meme chose, plus ça change" which translates as "The more things change, the more things stay the same". A French phrase, partially assimilated into English.
It's often used in a cynical sense to imply that although the
outside surface appearance of things may appear to differ, underneath
the system is basically the same.
"In both the short and even more the long term, any economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment". Sir Crispin Tickell, director of the Policy Foresight Programme, James Martin Institute at Oxford University and chancellor of the University of Kent at Canterbury, England.
See Business-as-Usual on Climate Change is Not an Option
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