It is very hard to watch, but I got some of my friends to watch it and some questions came up that I never thought about like:
Why did the Africans help enslave their fellow Africans for so long?
Why were they so trusting of the Europeans?
Why did the slaves continue to procreate (aside from the rapes) and bring children into slavery?
Did the Europeans try to enslave the Native Americans? Why or why not?
Why didn't the first slaves off of the boat fight to the death?
thoughts....
1. africans had slavery before encountering arabs and christians, so the practice lasted because they had been doing it and made it a part of their way of life. of course, all being black, there was no racial component (nationality was the deciding factor), and lacking a robust local production economy, their value was primarily in personal service to elite africans until contact with non africans occurred. once muslims and christians started dealing with africa in a substantial way, african slavers had a new economic incentive to start capturing more slaves than usual so they could trade them for the types of goods that you couldnt get in africa. in both the christian and islamic slave trade, slave trading lasted long because it was lucrative, but in terms of the islamic slave trade, it was further fueled by increasing racial consciousness of muslim africans who claim arab ancestry, wheras the europeans kept it strictly business until their countries banned the importation of new slaves.
2. it was not a matter of trust. it was opportunism.if you capture a person and trade him to a foreigner for rifles, you clearly dont care about his fate.
3. slaves procreate because most people are not nihilists. some managed to kill themselves on the way to the americas, a small number did manage to kill their own children (see margaret garner), but just like jews in the holocaust, most people keep trying to live until somebody else finally snuffs out their life.
4. yes, they tried to enslave natives but two things happened: the mortality rate was incredibly high due to the lack of immunity to disease; and the catholic church eventually came to see the natives as too noble for slavery (see bartolome de las casas).
5. some slaves tried to battle on the ships in the atlantic, others tried to kill themselves and some even succeeded in doing so by starving themselves or drowning, but ultimately you cant fight if you are shackled, in poor health due to a hellish time on the ship, have no idea where you are, and were not a fighter to begin with back in africa. the ship was a better place to fight, once you land at a slave port, there will be heavily armed white men everywhere. since i already established that most people are not nihilists, you are most likely going to see those rifles and start behaving.
...I only cared for the ending!
