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Throughout the course of the Atlantic Slave Trade approximately 12.5 million slaves had been shipped from Africa, and 10.7 million had arrived in the Americas. However, the culture and traditions amongst each African slave were hardly the same as each slave expressed their own ethnicity through their appearance, religion, and familiarity of town life. Within Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country’s Marks, the author reveals the complexity of African tribal politics. What I found interesting was Gomez’s discussion on the trade relations between coastal African nations and European traders. Beginning with the Portuguese arriving to Sierra Leone in the middle of the fifteenth century and their relations with the Sapes, or coastal African population who throughout the sixteenth century had experienced a series of invasions by interior nations referred to as the Manes or Southern Mande speakers from the Gold Coast. Looking back at George E. Brooks, “Ecological Perspectives,” we know that the migrating patterns and cultural strategies of the Mande speaking people expressed intelligence and cunning similar to that of European powers of the time. However, even the Mande speaking people were overwhelmed with the amount of warfare being brought upon them by numerous rival African nations within the area. The resulting Mane Wars would initiate the process of supplying African slaves for the Atlantic Trade. I thought it was insightful that inter group hostilities would be motivated by the Atlantic Slave Trade. This constant conflict would lead to enhanced trade relations and a mass number of African slaves being forced to migrate to the Americas.
It is an interesting concept that these coastal Africans were not always captives, but also at times willing participants/partners. As control over Sierra Leone switched from Spain/Portugal to France to finally the English, trade agreements would be created amongst local African rulers. The British would operate out of different sections of Sierra Leone (the Bunce and York Island) only after agreeing to pay fees/taxes for land use to the local Temene ruler. The British would also utilize African Portuguese to be negotiate for them, in turn they would provide wealth for the negotiators services. It is revealing then that the approximately 380,370 African slaves taken out of Sierra Leone from 1750 to 1799 would still be treated as absolute inferiors within the Americas, incapable of possessing unique identities or expressing intelligence. The truth of the matter being that the Africans were uniquely separate from each other through enthincity, yet they developed a community amongst themselves which still possessed reminiscences of their cultures. In the words of my colleague, Marissa Cervantes, “the African communities had no choice but to sacrifice their individuality to only be generalized in America.” In the end their concepts of township and community would develop a unique African American culture under oppression.