In 1324, Mansa Musa, King of Mali and by historical accounts a devout Muslim, sold fourteen thousand female slaves to finance his journey to Cairo. In the early 1400's, Muslim salesmen regularly trafficked slaves and sold them throughout much of Africa. During this same time period, the Portuguese were expanding their maritime trade routes in the region. In 1454 a Portuguese sailor named Gil Eannes, a pupil of Prince Henry the Navigator at the Prince's school at Sagres, brought back the first shipload of 200 African slaves to Portugal. Meanwhile, just one year earlier in 1453, the Ottoman Turks (who were Muslims) had conquered Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) after several prior attempts had failed. With the Ottomans being in control of the strategically vital city - Constantinople was located in between the Mediterranean and Black Seas, making it an excellent center for trading of spices and other commodities of the time - European traders were essentially forced to conduct business with the Ottomans in order to get many of their luxury trade items.

The importance of these events with regard to the point I'm making here is that it was these interactions between the Portuguese and the Ottoman Turks which laid the foundations for the trafficking of black Africans as slaves into North America years later. In short, these events and decisions made between Europeans and Muslim Ottomans laid the foundations for the slave trade that would mar the history of the United States, which was still more than 300 years from coming into existence.

It is important to mention that the institution of slavery was not a new concept at this point in history. It is well documented that at least several prominent civilizations which had come long before the Ottomans and the Portuguese had slavery as an accepted practice. The Ancient Egyptians and the Persians are several such civilizations. However, this time period of the middle to late 1400's is really the first historical example to my knowledge of "white" Europeans engaging in the practice of owning black African slaves.

I want to also address a typically ignorant viewpoint of the political left that I have often heard thrown about in the halls of academia - that Christopher Columbus brought slavery to the New World. My response to those who would level that accusation at Mr. Columbus is that slavery was an accepted practice among Arabs, Europeans, Asians, and even American Indians themselves at the time. In short, Columbus did NOT bring slavery to America, slavery was here before Europe even knew that such a place existed.

Further, I would like to argue that it is precisely Mr. Columbus' -  (though it undoubtedly would have been someone else had it not been him) - discovery of America which eventually led to the abolition of slavery on a worldwide scale. Historically,  as Bill Bennett so eloquently put it "the very experience of administering a far-flung empire led Spanish scholars to begin elaborating universal doctrines of human rights which ultimately led to the abolition of slavery in the West." So, from this viewpoint, it is precisely BECAUSE of the discovery of the New World and the subsequent travails and difficulties in managing their interests across the Atlantic, that led to the ideas of human rights percolating and gaining widespread acceptance across European cultures. From European cultures, these ideals eventually spread throughout the world.

The whole point of this article is to illustrate that the practice of "white" Europeans owning "black" Africans as slaves did NOT originate in the United States, or even because of the United States. While no person with an ounce of common sense, dignity, or decency would advocate the practice of slavery in the modern day, I feel that in order to bridge the culture gap between "white" and "black" in the United States, both sides need to make an effort to better understand the root causes of the practice. "White guilt" and "black victimhood" are both dangerous and counter-productive to society at large and should be stamped out with enthusiasm by those of us who wish to stop playing the blame game about bygone eras and look to the future with positive eyes.

Sources of Information for this blog:

Bennett, William J., America: The Last Best Hope, Nelson Current, 2006
Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870, Simon & Schuster, 1997