The Bella Miquelina affair: The transatlantic slave trade, British suppression and one African’s quest for liberty in the Bay of All Saints, Salvador, Brazil in 1848

this was such a fascinating read. Yes, there was slavery in the UK but to its credit, it was perhaps the first to fight very hard against slavery as well. Here's a story of how the UK fought for ending slavery in Brazil.

In the late afternoon of Saturday 22 April 1848, the British cruiser H.M.S. Grecian gave chase to a suspicious-looking ship it encountered off the coast of Bahia, Brazil. By midnight, the Greciansucceeded in seizing the slave ship Bella Miquelina. One week later, the Bella Miquelina sailed into the Bay of All Saints at Salvador, Bahia, Brazil under the direction of a British prize crew. The appearance of this captured vessel with 517 Africans on board “set off alarms” all over the city. Many Bahians feared that disembarkation might cause the spread of disease and increase slave resistance in the city. As negotiations unfolded during the next 48 hours between Bahian authorities and British representatives, a group of 80 men attacked the Bella Miquelina in hopes of gaining control over the ship and taking the Africans. The British prize crew successfully held of this attack. In the midst of this turbulent milieu, a fugitive African slave named John Freeman rowed a small boat to the side of the Grecian and asked for assistance. Commander L.S. Tindal allowed Freeman to remain on board. Six weeks later, the Bella Miquelina returned to Sierra Leone and the Africans were freed by the British Vice-Admiralty Court at Freetown. One year later, Freeman returned to Sierra Leone on board H.M.S. Adventure as a free man. These events shed light on British strategies to suppress the slave trade to Brazil in 1848 as well as Brazilian and African responses.

Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula.

this book review was an eye opener

talks about the prevalence of Arabian slavery for African Males...and the genetic footprint says that African DNA has now been included in the Arabian footprint...that will make them all upset, eh?

but interesting book review, will have to read it

Indian Cotton Textiles and the Senegal River Valley in a Globalising World: Production, Trade and Consumption, 1750- 1850

this was a fascinating phd dissertation

This thesis addresses how and why West African consumers, especially those along the Senegal River valley, imported and consumed Indian cotton textiles from the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century, despite the fact that they produced textiles of various kinds. Using quantitative and qualitative sources collected from France, India, Senegal and the United Kingdom, the thesis fulfils this gap in the existing literature. Throughout this study, it will be shown that local textile production and consumption in West Africa based on factor endowments and natural environment shaped consumer demand and preferences for Indian cotton textiles whose quality was perceived to be more suitable to the life of inhabitants in the region (especially in the savannah and desert areas) than European textiles. In addition, Indian textiles not only suited conspicuous consumption among Africans but also regional economies in which cloth was used as an exchange medium. In the eighteenth century, West African demand for Indian cotton textiles of various types was central to the purchase by European merchants of slaves along coastal areas of West Africa. In the early nineteenth century, which witnessed the transition from the Atlantic slave trade to the trade in commercial agriculture, dark-blue cotton textiles produced in Pondicherry, called ‘guinées’, were of essential importance in the trade in gum Arabic in the lower Senegal River as a currency that replaced a domestically-produced cloth currency. The gum from the region was indispensable in the development of the textile industry in Western Europe at that time. This regional demand influenced the Euro-West African trade and the procurements by Europeans of cotton textiles in India. The thesis argues that historically constructed consumer agency in pre-colonial West Africa had global repercussions from the eighteenth to midnineteenth century. 

Most fascinating story of Indian Ocean trade in textiles and interconnections with slavery

Mark Twain on Slavery, How Religion Is Used to Justify Injustice, and What His Mother Taught Him About Compassion

Kids

I just love his work. Mark Twain is one of my hero's and his works are just so amazing. Even so many decades after he wrote them, his words echo and touch chords. 

But this is the amazing thing. He's talking about slavery. The feeling of discrimination against somebody else. We all have it kids. You may discriminate against a person with tattoos.  Or with a darker skin. Or with a different religion. Common. Very common. But it's horrible. Imagine what Mark Twain's mum correctly identified. The little boy was torn away from his mother and will never see her again. 

But despite that, he's smiling and singing and laughing and happy. And that's what I want you kids to learn. Be happy. Laugh. Have hope. People clutch on to their bad experiences. Their horrible memories. Their painful times. And many simply cannot move on. I've got so many that it can make 10 lifetimes sad but you have to rise above bad memories and experiences kids. Sing. Be happy. Help others. If somebody discriminates against you, smile and walk away. You're the bigger person. 

But all that pales in comparison to the fact that you've got to read mark twain. All of them. Many times. 

I'm sitting here on a bench overlooking the English Channel just on the right side of Eastbourne on Beachy Head. And I can see the lovely sun dappled waters. The bees are buzzing all around, hopping from flower to flower. And there's a nice little breeze. And I can watch the ships and sailboats below me. An extraordinarily peaceful sight. And just letting the atmosphere wash over me. And I'm writing to you both. Pretty lovely time indeed. 

Love

Baba

Mark Twain on Slavery, How Religion Is Used to Justify Injustice, and What His Mother Taught Him About Compassion
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/24/mark-twain-on-slavery-empathy-compassion/
(via Instapaper)

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“She never used large words, but she had a natural gift for making small ones do effective work.”

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, is celebrated as America’s greatest humorist — from his irreverent advice to little girls to his snarky stance on creativityto his masterwork on masturbation. But underpinning his winsome wit was piercing insight into the human spirit and all its perplexities. From The Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1 (public library) — which also gave us Twain on how morality and intelligence hinder each other — comes a moving anecdote about how his mother taught him the essence of empathy.

Half a century before “African American” came into popular use as a politically dignified term, Twain recounts his childhood friendships with black slaves:

Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition.

Here's an interesting book review son, on the slavery issue around the Indian Ocean. This area actually saw greater numbers of slaves and for longer compared to the Atlantic side and that wasn't anything less. It's just that we know more about the slavery trade to the Americas than we know about the Indian Ocean trade, the Arab trade, the intra-African trade. That was brutal as well. India has a huge slavery market and elements of that in terms of indentured servitude still survives to this day! 

But still this book gives some perspectives on the slavery trade in the Indian Ocean despite the lacunae. 

Look forward to seeing you tonight son. 

Love

Baba

H-Net Reviews
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=45247
(via Instapaper)

Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. 264 pp. $35.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-300-16387-2.

Reviewed by Marina Carter (Research Associate, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh)
Published on H-Slavery (November, 2015)

Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition, edited by Robert Harms, Bernard K. Freamon, and David W. Blight, is the latest of several publications that help to address the comparative neglect of the Indian Ocean vis-à-vis the Atlantic in the literature on slavery and the slave trade, while emphasizing that the two are not readily comparable. As Harms notes in his introduction, "the older Indian Ocean commercial economy never lost its identity. Underneath the dominant European capital and shipping, networks of indigenous traders travelling in traditional vessels remained vibrant and even expanded in the nineteenth century" (p. 3). The collected essays in this volume navigate carefully through these choppy waters of complex identities and competing spheres of influence and cover much ground.