AFRICA UNTOLD STORY

When the Europeans arrived Whydah, in what became Dahomey, they were given the traditional African hospitality, and welcomed as guests of king Agaja(1708 CE-1740 CE). The Europeans came with the promise of trade, but they had nothing of worth to give in exchange for palm oil, ivory, pepper(pimenta-del-raba) that was brought into Dahomey from the Benin empire by large trading boats, and other produce of Dahomey. However, what they had that the king and members of royal court of Dahomey found useful was firearms; rifles and gunpowder.

 The royal court of Dahomey was built on the grave of a rival king known as Da. The name Da and the city Abomey gave the name Dahomey to the kingdom. It had initially meant "on the stomach of Da" in the Fon language. It meant that the royal palace was built on the stomach of Da. This was in the 17th century CE after Dahomey broke away from the domineering rule of the Oyo kingdom in what later became western Nigeria. 

 The European began demanding for captured men and women in exchange for firearms in addition to the produce of the Dahomey kingdom. The king declined and the Europeans began bringing in horses instead of firearms. This, the Dahomey kingdom found useful too. The only other source of horses for the royal court and armies could only be gotten from the Hausa merchants in the northern parts, from the distant kingdom of the 16th century queen, Amina of Zaria and the commercial city-state of Kano. In the 17th century CE, merchants from the north also began to demand for captured men in exchange for horses; 15 captives were needed in order to obtain one horse. 

 The capturing of free men, who were chained and taken as slaves along the trans-saharan trade routes and sold in slave markets by the Arabs in Tangier, sale, Fez, Marakesh, Tunis and cairo was well entrenched, and had been in existence from the 7th century CE, even before the Europeans(Portuguese at first) arrived west African Coast, known then as the Guinee, while the west African sahel was known as the Soudan. 

 This ugly trend intensified from the 8th century CE to the 14th century CE. These years of Arab slave trade also affected Europeans from the 7th century CE to the 15th century, even up to the 18th century CE, to a little extent. To this effect, European coastal towns were deserted as a result of Arab slave raids. In order to understand the extent of this, king George I, in 1721, once lamented of how most of his subjects were taken into north Africa as slaves(source: 'Nature knows no color line' by J.A. Rogers). Leo Africanus was also enslaved and taken to Rome as a result of this trend of slavery. 

 This form of slavery affected more Europeans than the people of the Soudan. In 'The golden age of the Moor' by Dr Ivan Van Sertima, it is stated that, Mulai Ismail of Merknes, Morocco, "had 25,000 European slaves who participated in the building of his colossal stables." There "were some people of the Soudan that were enslaved, but not as much as the Europeans before the 15th cen. CE". Europe became organized along national lines in the 15th century CE, and slavery became focused on the East and western parts of Africa, initially, by the Arabs. 

 European countries of Portugal and Spain became more advanced, much more than all other European city-states(rivalled only by Byzantium), as a result of some African Maghreb from the Senegal river and later Arabs, who had gone into the Iberian peninsula and taken over the land of the Visigoths that became Spain (and Portugal); bringing about material civilization and learning that spread into most of Europe from 711 CE. Spain and Portugal were the first European nations to brave the oceans as a result of Moorish influence in learning, but the know-how in ship building was gotten from China; the maritime nation of that time. With this knowledge, also came the know-how of making "firing sticks'" which developed into muskets and rifles. 

 The sea-faring know-how sent Portugal out on the ocean as European countries were seeking ways to develop Europe out of the dire conditions of the "dark ages," when most of Europe degenerated back to primitive life (565 CE- 1095 CE) after the fall of Rome. Writing on this period, Historian, Will Durant in the 'Lessons of history' said, "The Mohammedans"[as the islamized Africans were called], "could list the the rulers, Artists, poets, scientists, and philosophers who had conquered a substantial portion of the white man's world from Baghdad to Cordova while western Europe groped in the dark ages." This era for the Africans was to end abruptly on February 2, 1492, and the western European era that was to later birth the industrial revolution began.

 In the sahel( Mali, ancient Ghanah in what's today Mauritania, part of Mali and the Senegal etc), Arab slave slave trade became so intense that the native west Africans on the trans-saharan trade routes began engaging in what was known as "silent barter;" where the seller and buyer never met each other, face-to-face, for fear of being taken as slaves.  The Arab merchants would come close to settlements of the natives, place heaps of goods along the route, and then beat repeatedly on a drum and blow a horn, then disappear down the horizon. The natives will come over and place a heap of gold beside the goods they needed and then disappear. The merchants returned. If the amount of gold was okay for the goods, the merchants took the gold and left the goods. Otherwise the circle was repeated till all sides were satisfied and then the transaction was brought to a close.

 ...But the west Africans on the coast didn't think of the Europeans as the people in the sahel thought of the Arabs. Hence Europeans, especially Portuguese, were warmly welcomed in all the coastal kingdoms. But all they could offer that was something of worth to the Dahomey princes was firearms (the technology from China), and of course the bible.As well as an invisible enemy they brought with them: smallpox, syphilis and gonorrhea. And so, there were Arabs in the north and Europeans on the west African Coast. With this situation, Dahomey soon excelled in slave trading.

  With firearms from the Europeans, Dahomey began raiding its neighbors; Ashante in the west and Ketu, a town of the rival Oyo kingdom in the East. With these wars, came captives that were exchanged for more firearms from the Europeans. In 1720 CE, King Agaja and his 'all female fighters' (the Mino), raided and destroyed all European slave trading posts on the coast, when he discovered that slavery was in direct conflict with the development of Dahomey. But by 1730 CE, Dahomey's old rival, the kingdom of Oyo, attacked some towns of the Dahomey kingdom and Agaja had to resume trade with the Europeans in order to obtain firearms to fight-off the Oyo warriors.... And the process of obtaining more captives to be exchanged for more and more firearms and nothing else from the European, went on again. This vicious circle continued, unabated, up to 1894 CE, when the French took over Dahomey after a four-years war that ushered-in colonialism. The British took over Oyo and other kingdoms to the East of Dahomey as well as Ashanti kingdom and other Akan tribal groups to the west of Dahomey. It was the same situation all over Africa, except in the modern polity of Ethiopia in East Africa. This was because, from as early as the 4th century BCE, ancient people of this region of Africa knew and had their own bible. Besides, their emperors were aware of the origin of Islam in the 7th century CE and had it recorded in geez writing; hence it was difficult to use religion in manipulating the population. The Ethiopia bible is available till date and is more detailed than king James version of the bible, that was written in 1611 by a team of 47 men from the newly founded oxford and Glasgow mostly European Jews. King James himself could not read or write. And by the 18th century CE, rifles were a household souvenir among Abyssinians. As a result, no European nor Arabs had a hook dropped on their polity until much later, in the north among the denakhil.

  Africa came into a new era of exploitation, a situation that left African leaders as puppets of puppeteers, to this very day. Dahomey(now Benin republic) and over 12 African countries still pay millions to France(descendants of an European barbarian tribe that was known from the 2nd century CE, as the Franks) as 'colonial tax' up to this very day, even after Europeans, formally, left Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. According to former president of France, 'without these colonial tax' from Africa, France would have long become a third world country."

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