PEEP MAGAZINE |
| Written by C. Magbaily Fyle |
| Friday, 12 November 2010 16:56 |
| I happened to be listening to The Morning Show on the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corproation (SLBC) a couple of days ago when I heard the presentation of the Bunce Island project that featured Joseph Opala, the Director of the Bunce Island Coalition, U.S. This, as I understand it, is a project to rehabilitate Bunce Island and develop its touristic potential..
national monument Since Bunce Island is also a national monument, this will also highlight its relevance and importance in Sierra Leone's history, a factor that Americans, particularly African Americans, are keenly interested in. And this I think is the backbone of the project, highlighting the historical links between America and Africa. This is a laudable venture and one I am sure Sierra Leoneans, including myself, would support. A couple of points, however, if we are to put this into proper perspective and make it more positively significant to Sierra Leoneans. I heard Joseph Opala say on this program that since Dr. Easmon paid attention to Bunce Island in the 1940, no other interest has been shown in this Island. It is clear to me that Opala knows better than what he is claiming. over thirty years ago In 1976, the Institute of African Studies, with myself as Director, organized a rehabilitation camp to Bunce Island. It lasted for one week and the resources for the project were kindly provided through the intervention of Ambassador Samuels, US ambassador to Sierra Leone, and the Sierra Leone, and the Sierra Leone Army that graciously provided camping materials for the project. A wooden plaque was left on the Island at the end of the project and the Report on the Camp was published in the Africana Research Bulletin, the Journal of the Institute of African Studies under the title "Institute of African Studies: Report on the Bunce Island Rehabilitation Camp". I was also the editor of that Journal. I am pretty sure there is still a copy of this Journal at the Fourah Bay College Library and should also be at the Sierra Leone Library Board where we donated copies. This 1976 project represented the first time Joseph Opala set foot on Bunce Island. The project team included students in the Honours course in History at Fourah Bay College and Joe Opala was included as an archaeologist in the team. I am not sure he has pursued archeology much further, focusing greater attention on "more productive" fields.
no credit Why Opala has been determined to give no credit to local initiative which brought him into this field is a source of much wonder. Similar refusal to acknowledge credit, is also present in the continued presentation of "Families Across the Seas". As Sierra Leoneans, we will welcome those who come to assist in promoting worthwhile events. It is not helpful to deliberately create an impression that Sierra Leoneans do not have or take initiative except when pushed by developed country interests. A second point. I also heard Joseph Opala (I heard him referred to as Dr. Opala) say, and I paraphrase, that after Sierra Leoneans had been busy selling each other, then the British (white people, I think he said) came here to help them. This was in obvious reference to colonialism. The issue of the responsibility for the Atlantic Slave Trade has been a hot button topic in Africa History and Opala's highly contentious claim has been countered repeatedly by historians, like myself. But many historians on Africa in the Western world like to repeat the line used by Opala as this helps to exonerate the Western world from any sense of guilt about the Atlantic Slave Trade. It much be clear that either Joe Opala is unfamiliar with more recent scholarship on this issue, or he is deliberately touting the kind of line the Western world wants Africans to think about themselves. More of the latter, I suspect. The Atlantic Slave Trade was a "demand driven" trade, meaning that those who wanted slaves used resources and leveraged power to ensure that the slave trade dominated trade on the West African coast, to the extent where all societies had to participate or face extinction at the hands of the White slave traders.
only they got guns By the 18th century, only those African rulers who provided slaves received guns from the European and American slave traders. If any ruler decided to oppose, his neighbors were supplied with plenty of guns so that the opposing rulers and their people would be conquered and sold into slavery. If you want to read more of this look at C. Magbaily Fyle, Introduction to the History of African Civilization, vol. 1. Pre-colonial Africa, Lanham, MD. University Press of America, 1999).
not a trade at all To say therefore that Africans sold each other is therefore doubly misleading. People did not sell members of their own societies, or they too would become extinct. They had to prey on other societies. With guns supplied to all sides, whoever won provided slaves for the European and American slave traders. But also, the literal translation of Africans selling other Africans presents a deceptive picture, when one eliminates the information that they were forced by those who provided the weapons to engage in warfare, and the only people they could capture and sell were other Africans who lived there.
mislead us about history To present this unqualified rendition of the old colonial interpretation of African history, calculated to mislead Africans and get them thinking with guilt about themselves, amounts to stubbornly trying to continue a sense of colonial thinking about Africa and use this to exploit African people. We have to watch out for these problems, often presented in some elegant disguise. Africans worked on plantations for no pay - contributing to development elsewhere Fyle correctly notes that the Slave 'Trade' was demand driven. Walter Rodney, the Guyanese historian, argues that in fact the African Slave Trade was the major force in the development of capitalism in western Europe. |
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