We have to know our roots as African’s, though we are all over the world, how? All blacks are from Africa that’s plain to see. You get your black colour because you’re related directly or indirectly to Africa. And so the likes of US music singers like Lil Wyne, Chris Brown, Drake, Riccky Ross and Co are all Africans in this context, they are not alone many popular black figures outside Africa are in too.
They have to understand what made them Africans, there are many thing that makes one an African, one of those is their fore fathers anccestors if you like. What where the forefathers doing in America, Europe? Why so many blacks all over the world? Those answers lies in the slave trade business, how it was stopped is of great importance to us, not just Africans but to others
How The Slave Trade Was Abolished In Africa
Not long after the slave trade began, some religious people started to attack the trade and insist that it should be stopped. In 1514, Las Casas, a priest who was interested in the welfare of the Indians, had suggested that the Spaniards should buy slaves from Africa to work on the plantations and in the mines instead of using native Indians. But when he saw the cruel treatment of the African slaves, he spoke out violently against the inhuman trade.
From time to time, some kings had protested against the trade in human beings. As early as 1526, King Nzinga Mbemba of Congo wrote to the king of Portugal and requested him to stop his men from buying slaves in his kingdom. Two centuries later King Agaja of Dahomey sent a smilar protest to the British government.
All this protests fell upon deaf ears. Indeed, in 1713 an agreement called the Treaty of Utrecht was signed by certain European powers. By this treaty Britain had the sole right, called the Asiento, to supply 4,800 slaves per year to Spanish America.
Untill the nineteenth century, those who had the power to stop the slave trade did not listen to pleas or protests. It’s not hard to discover the reason for this. The wealth of Europe at that time depended largely upon the slave trade, Parliaments had the power to stop slavery but some of their members were themselves owners of rich plantations and mines.
In 1772 Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice of England, gave judgement in a case in which a slave, Jamer Somerset had escaped from his master. Mansfield ruled that it was against English law to keep slaves. This decision meant that any slave brought to England was to be set free, and so withing five years over 80,000 slaves were set free in England).
Although Lord Mansfield’s decision was very important in the attempts to stop the slave trade, it was nonetheless not enough. The British parliament had to pass a law against the trade before final victory would be won.
Men such as Gransville Sharp, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson kept on urging the British parliament to do so, between 1776 and 1805 eight attempts were made in the British parliament to get a law passed against the slave trade, sadly all failed.
At last in 1807 two years later the British parliament passed a law to abolish, or end, the buying and selling of slaves. Britain used all her sea power in the Atlantic to stop ships carrying slaves across the sea.
In 1833, Great Britain passed a law which freed all slaves owned by British subjects, and paid £20 million in compensation to the slave owners. Gradually, one after another, other European countries stopped the slave trade, but it was until 1865 that slavery came to an end in the United States of America.
Where are the slaves now?
One is with you now! If not look around you’ll find one. There are so many blacks all over the world because of this slave trade, the slave trade back then opened the doors for blacks to many countries, though they arrived as slaves in many countries due to their “can do spirit” they were able to find freedom and so their children were able to settle down in those countries. Infact many blacks has gone on to become very important individuals in those countries one such example is US president Barack Obama, whose father is from Kenya.