Were the French the most brutal of the slave traders?

mountainannie said:

Also, aside from Haiti and the United States and the Antilles, where did slavery exist, which empires participated, where do the descendants live, how are they treated?

Let us see if we can keep this civil and reasonable and not have to take it off topic.

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Well, sources say that it would be the Portuguese the ones to start the traffic, via the war captives some of their merchants received from African princelings of the Mohammedan faith. Seeing the success of the trip, the thing would take a life of its own so to speak. It was the year 1446, I believe.

French? Most brutal slave traders?


Absolutely not! When the Catholic Church blessed the Treaty of Zaragoza they assigned the African slave trade in the Northern Hemisphere to the Spanish and the Southern Hemisphere to the Portuguese. Before Columbus the Portuguese pretty much had the slave trade cornered. These are the nations which established this trade and through series' of negotiations, swaps and buyouts the French, English and Dutch got involved. In the meanwhile, the Spanish colonies were having trouble keeping their slaves on the farm. They gave up as many of their plantation ventures because of unprofitability and inability to control their slaves as they lost in war and trade. There have been many reports from archaeologists and sociologists who have found entire communities in the Americas whose language and culture were so true to their West African roots that the language and cultural traditions were more accurately studied there than in the countries of origin which had been equally devastated and depleted of originality by the slave trade and European colonialism in West Africa.

There problem was that when they shipped slaves they took entire tribal villages and when the slaves landed they worked until no one was looking and ran off into the jungle' That is why there is a Maroon Town in Jamaica and similar enclaves in Belize, the Guyana's and even parts of Guatemala and Yucatan Mexico. When the British 1st took over Jamaica they sent troops by the 1,000's into the bush to flush the independent Maroons out and lost many patrols to the point where a treaty was made basically agreeing to "you don't come out and get us and we'll leave you in peace".

The Portuguese, on the other hand had a different take on the slave trade and running plantations and mines, altogether. Their shipments of slaves to Brazil were a mixed bag from different tribes, different languages and different religions (the Americans would pick up on this tactic in time and perfect it). The Portuguese were pretty much Kings of the slave trade and ran slaver ships long, long after this transport was internationally outlawed (go watch "Amistad"). They also were efficiency experts of a sort when it came to management of their slave labor intense operations. They amortized their slaves. They bought them young and planned to get 7 years of work out of each one and simply replace them. They didn't feel the need to breed them (except with their concubines of course) so they undernourished and overworked them until they dropped dead.

Many slaves, facing no hope but certain death ran off into the jungle. This was the Amazon, not today's Amazon but the primordial one before the gold rushes and logging devastations to follow. They were simply replaced. No one was ever as cruel as either slave owner in the Old World or the New World (1st 2 worlds) but also as colonial rapists, thieves and murderers in Africa.

Portuguese Empire - GhanaNation News

Portuguese slavery | Brazil Portal


Ovi Magazine : The Portuguese and Spanish Slave Trade - Part 1 by Ana & Alexandra Pereira


Compared to the Portuguese, Spanish and Americans the French, Dutch and British were amateurs at the slavery business.

Maybe the French were not the MOST brutal. 1804 Haiti Massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Naked_Snake said:

Well, sources say that it would be the Portuguese the ones to start the traffic, via the war captives some of their merchants received from African princelings of the Mohammedan faith. Seeing the success of the trip, the thing would take a life of its own so to speak. It was the year 1446, I believe.

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Expanding on the above, they (Portuguese) were the biggest importers of Sub-Saharan slaves, which was aided by the fact of their having fortresses in Angola and Mozambique, without mentioning their pit stop at Cape Verde, a group of islands which they used as a place to "season" the captives before sending them to the New World. Of course, the inmigration policies that the Brazilian country would enact, as well as the massive mixing of the newcomers with the black and mulatto populations of the country, would be enough to change the face of the country in such a way that, by the early XXth century, some visitors to the country, like Teddy Roosevelt, would get to remark that "the Brazilian negro is in danger of disappearing".

Luperon said:

Maybe the French were not the MOST brutal. 1804 Haiti Massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Yup.

Chickens coming home to roost.

You reap what you sew.

What goes up must come down.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

They were all brutal! No research needed...the Portuguese, French, Spanish, British, Belgians, Americans, Germans, etc. Sorry for not contributing a thesis but no slave would like to be enslaved by either of the latter.

They're all burning as we speak; I assure you that. They left all their worldly possessions behind for the opportunity of a life in hell.

Slavery and brutal slave lords goes way way back to biblical times...Pharoh had to have a pyramid!

Spanish slavery was brutal in south america. Specially in the northern part of SA. Almost all towns on the coast of SA are black towns. With time, local descendants used slaves very much the same as in the US. Independence movements in south america usually grossed their armies with slaves from plantations. African religions are still very common in the northern coast of the subcontinent.

Naked_Snake said:

Expanding on the above, they (Portuguese) were the biggest importers of Sub-Saharan slaves, which was aided by the fact of their having fortresses in Angola and Mozambique, without mentioning their pit stop at Cape Verde, a group of islands which they used as a place to "season" the captives before sending them to the New World. Of course, the inmigration policies that the Brazilian country would enact, as well as the massive mixing of the newcomers with the black and mulatto populations of the country, would be enough to change the face of the country in such a way that, by the early XXth century, some visitors to the country, like Teddy Roosevelt, would get to remark that "the Brazilian negro is in danger of disappearing".

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Teddy Roosevelt said that? Brazil, as you know, has the largest black population outside of Africa. Remember also, that when Portugal was sending slaves to Brazil from Angola, already her population was one fourth black.

We are all a bunch of "gumbos".

delite said:

Teddy Roosevelt said that? Brazil, as you know, has the largest black population outside of Africa. Remember also, that when Portugal was sending slaves to Brazil from Angola, already her population was one fourth black.

We are all a bunch of "gumbos".

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Yep, I think he went to an expedition on the Amazon and all. I found it noteworthy, since at his time Jim Crow and the one drop rule were at their heyday. But it seems that not all Americans believed in such. Brazil only have the largest black population outside Africa if you use the one drop rule, cuz' if one uses the Latin American narrow definition of blackness (as in, racial purity doesn't go only the white way), then its actual black population would be less than 10%, give or take.

mountainannie said:

Also, can anyone cite how many slaves there were in the DR vs How many in Haiti at the time of the Haitian invasion?

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Not from the time of Boyer, but according to Moreau de Saint Mery, Lepelletier de Saint Remy, Antonio Sanchez Valverde and others, the population stats for both colonies at the eve of the Haitian Revolution (1791) were as follows:

Saint Domingue Francais (Haiti):

African slaves = 500,000
Whites = 40,000
Mixed race = 30,000


Santo Domingo Espa?ol (DR):

Mixed race = 75,000
Whites = 25,000
African slaves = 15,000

mountainannie said:

the article posted by Luperon says that 3000 to 5000 White Haitians were killed.. by which I am a bit confused.. does that mean French? It must, right? or were the free creole children of the French also massacred under Dessaline? no, they could not have been.. there would not have been any Haiti.. they were the ones who were the most educated, right? the ones who had been to France?

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It means the former colonial blancs, since by the time most of the French military forces were either dead or fled that part of the island, with only 4,000 or so remaining on this part under the command of Louis Ferrand and Kerverseau. If with creole children you mean the so called gens de couleur, affranchi, mulattoes, etc., then no, they weren't touched. But then, their numbers had already been ravaged way before the Leclerc expedition. Namely, during the so called War of Knives between Toussaint and Rigaud, in which it's believed that 10,000 would perish during the "pacification" of the southern region by Dessalines. Of course, some of the Rigaudins like Lamartiniere would be spared after their switching sides.

Naked_Snake said:

Yep, I think he went to an expedition on the Amazon and all. I found it noteworthy, since at his time Jim Crow and the one drop rule were at their heyday. But it seems that not all Americans believed in such. Brazil only have the largest black population outside Africa if you use the one drop rule, cuz' if one uses the Latin American narrow definition of blackness (as in, racial purity doesn't go only the white way), then its actual black population would be less than 10%, give or take.

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This is where I am confused because Teddy Roosevelt, an American president, would use the "one drop" rule to denote race as opposed to the benchmark used by Latin Americans. Obviously, as you know, he wouldn't confuse a mulatto with that of a white person.

I, per se, am not casting judgement because I believe in only one race. How the Brazilians define themselves is their affair. Too many intelligent people waste time arguing about this social construct which has claimed countless lives due to hatred and ignorance.

Naked_Snake said:

Not from the time of Boyer, but according to Moreau de Saint Mery, Lepelletier de Saint Remy, Antonio Sanchez Valverde and others, the population stats for both colonies at the eve of the Haitian Revolution (1791) were as follows:

Saint Domingue Francais (Haiti):

African slaves = 500,000
Whites = 40,000
Mixed race = 30,000


Santo Domingo Espa?ol (DR):

Mixed race = 75,000
Whites = 25,000
African slaves = 15,000

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I read after the revolution and before they occupied DR (1822), their population was around a million. Ten times larger than that of the DR.

delite said:

I read after the revolution and before they occupied DR (1822), their population was around a million. Ten times larger than that of the DR.

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I find that hard to believe. At most, the farthest they could have gone is replenishing their original (pre-revolutionary) numbers, since the population at war's end (1804) was counted at 300,000. Not only the white and mixed race numbers would get to be depleted by that genocidal war.

Naked_Snake said:

I find that hard to believe. At most, the farthest they could have gone is replenishing their original (pre-revolutionary) numbers, since the population at war's end (1804) was counted at 300,000. Not only the white and mixed race numbers would get to be depleted by that genocidal war.

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Here's a similar article, not the one that I've read though...http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/fo...56/Haitian-Invasion-of-the-Dominican-Republic

Luperon said:

Maybe the French were not the MOST brutal. 1804 Haiti Massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Only 3000 is small potato in the history of massacres. The french massacred a much larger number of negros during their stay in st-domingue.