Submitted by Terence Blackett
Historical Fragmentation: The 612 Year “LIE” of African Slavery – Rewriting the Backstory Airbrushed from the Conventional Socio-ReLIEgious Discourse
“Negroes have no rights that the white man is bound to respect…” (Dred Scott Decision 1856 – Roger Taney US Chief Justice)
The diabolical institution of African incarceration and the economic slave trade foisted on the souls of Black men, began as a long-held grudge match between the Roman Catholic Church during the Dark Ages of medieval European domination, and the Judaic-Christian, African churches who were untouched for more than 1000 years from putrid, Papal profligacy and puerile, pagan pugnacity.
For all the reLIEgious scholars whose hubris was to whitewash the Black Presence In the Bible by their insidiousness – a history lesson 101 is required.
In 606 BC, after Sennacharib – the Black Assyrian king dragged off the 10- tribes Northern kingdom of Israel, many who escaped that ruinous debacle made their way to Africa to live as free men – carrying the Law of Moses and their families with them – in migration patterns that stretched from Morocco to Central Africa.
The 2nd conquest of Jerusalem was bulwarked by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, destroying the southern kingdom in 538 – 587 BC and taking the two-tribe kingdom of Judah & Benjamin to Babylonia for 70 years – as prophesied by Jeremiah, but this too has been airbrushed from the records, given the fact that many Black Judahites and Benjamites, escaped the horrendous pillage – making their way to Africa, as a growing community of Black diasporic Israelites had already built thriving communities there.
Then in AD 70, for the 3rd time, before the final rape, pillage, murder and sacking of Jerusalem, many Black Jews who were now Christian converts, had heeded the warnings of the prophets and words of Yeshua Messiah (THE CHRIST), and migrated to the African continent before Roman General Titus left the city in a heap of rubble and ruins.
From 538 AD onward as shown by Papal history, it was during the conquest of Europe by ecclesiastical/reLIEgious Rome, that bishops, cardinals, monks and priests tried to convert the continent of Africa, but in places like Ethiopia, Somalia et al they met with stiff resistance. Many reLIEgious scholars refuse to accept authentic Black facts that although Africa had its traditional culture – there was also a parallel Judaic-Christian culture that was birthed even before the Ethiopian eunuch, who was Queen Candace’s treasurer (a very rich man) was able to proselytize his nation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, after his conversion and baptism by Philip the Evangelist (post his Sabbatical to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish feasts of either Passover, Pentecost or Sukkot). Again, some reLIEgious scholars and albino-centric commentators suggest that the Ethiopian eunuch was a Gentile, when in fact there is no logical basis in fact to support that assertion, given that Ethiopia already had diasporic Jews living there for centuries and today, we see the remnants of those Jewish/Israelite communities – bar those who re-migrated back to what is now modern Israel.
This rewriting of the historical record is not new or is it being purported in any way to obfuscate responsibility for what has been criminally etched in the anthropological, historical and epistemological records, teleologically upending genealogical accuracy – with the burden of proof on those who think that they can somehow try to debunk what was clearly airbrushed from the timeline of ancient records.
So let’s begin!
Gibbs (1988) suggests that “It is not sufficient simply to have an experience in order to learn”, for much of our learning has been skewed with “LIES” “MYTHS”, “HALF-TRUTHS” and a vainglorious amount of historical “SPIN doctors”. Issues of territoriality, the vagaries of mixed up priorities, the frivolous nature of nationalistic politics, based on albino-ethnocentrically based group identity politics and narratives; the pre-eminence of triangulated issues based on ‘how to get to solid truth’, in the negotiation processes of the historical discourse – notwithstanding, the inherently insalubriously complex nature of working within the crosshairs of competing human interests that oftentimes include personality clashes, and the foibles of untangling the psychological conflict that exist between races, is often at the heart of the vortex of fallen human nature, and the spiralling madness we see so evident in our world.
Yet in the beginning of time, the Black man genetic superiority was sacrosanct. A landmark 2016 Scientific Study traced man’s modern migrations after they left Africa, by the utilization of genetic parameters, resulted in mind-boggling findings. Black people were literally found in every nook and cranny of the world, from South to North; East to West – occupying lands that so-called Caucasoid historical scholars cite was not Black occupied.
Most Biblical scholars even patently deny the archaeological as well as the paleoanthropological evidence that our ancient Hebrew Israelite forefathers (most notably) Moses were all predominately Black folks who came into the land of Israel. From the Dura-Europos synagogue paintings (in the above link) shows Moses and the Hebrew Israelites crossing the Red Sea pursued by Pharaoh: (circa 303 BC – 256 AD). The evidence is overwhelming, where images are shown of Moses confronted by the “Burning Bush”; including others like the prophet Jeremiah, and/or Ezra the Scribe & priest along with a myriad of other historical tokens that explicitly prove Black civilization ruled the world from the day JEHOVAH made man upon the earth. It is often asked: “Was Abraham a Black man?” Answer: “Yes”! Yet it does not seem to settle the argument.
So the discourse on historical fragmentation that resulted in the moribund nature of exhausted imperial racist policies, which still tries to raise its necrotic head, in the gesticulation politics of postmodern Western culture, and from the societal seismology that currently rumbles from within the so-called hallowed halls of academia, to the pews of the church – it appears the only way to completely sink this Titanic mess, may very well be through some fundamental social revamp (and/or perhaps, violent tectonic overthrow of a system that is now pass-its-sell-by-date), and the complete re-ordering and restructuring of 21st century capitalist society. However, do not hold your breath!
In his seminal work on slavery and Catholicism, in the book, “Life of Christopher Columbus” by Sir Arthur Helps, he argues: “From the time (1444) Europe may be said to have made a distinct beginning in the slave trade, henceforth to spread on all sides like the waves of the troubled waters. For slavery was now assuming an entirely new phase. Hitherto the slave had been merely the captive in war. Now, however, the slave was no longer an accident of war. He was no longer an accidental subject of barter. He was to be sought for, to be hunted out, to be produced, and this change accordingly gave rise to a new branch of commerce” (p. 19-22).
It must be duly noted that the socio-reLIEgious and evolutionary praxis of slavery began within the Portuguese and Spanish context, as well as in the future American colonies during the 1500’s; however, scant literary treatment and airbrushing much of the sinister roles these Iberian nations played in these amoral commercial wars that were fought over the issue of “discovery”; the malevolent acquiescence of human property (chattel labor), gold, tobacco, cotton, sugarcane and a sleuth of traded goods that made European kings, queens but most importantly, the Catholic Church “Filthy Rich” (operative word being – #Filth) cannot be denied This is why “MIGRATION PATTERNS” into Europe today is really “POETIC JUSTICE”.
Sir Arthur Helps, in another one of his books – “Spanish Conquest of America”, Vol. 4, p. 401 cite: “Some slaves were brought to Europe by the Spaniards in the 14th century and a small trade was continued by the Portuguese… In the next few years, (after 1441), a small amount of Negroes continued to be exported into Spain as servants.”
Statistical scholars estimate that between 1441 and 1521, as many as 156,000 African slaves had arrived on the Iberian Peninsula. For those however, who would seek to whitewash, and try to Photoshop evidentiary proof of the trade in Black flesh began before 1619, with the additional 300,000 Africans who arrived in the Americas between 1502 and 1619 – using it as a prop and cover to limit the impact of England’s nefarious role in the African Slave Trade, by using the common, cultural matrix of racial perception – a photo lens to trade in the commodification in human flesh, as capital – have failed miserably in their quest.
When Pope Nicholas V issued his Papal Bull (CRAP), ‘Dum Diversas’, which granted King Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce to “perpetual slavery” all “Saracens & pagans and other infidels and enemies of Christ” in West Africa – to then follow up in 1454, ‘Dum Diversas’ with ‘Romanus Pontifex’, which gave Portugal the reLIEgiously sanctioned right to conquer and enslave all peoples south of Cape Bojador. Through the ‘Edict of Discovery’, Spanish & Portuguese monarchs could then send out their armies and conquer the lands of Africa, at the end of a sword, musket or cannon, (“REVENGE” and payback as stated at the beginning of this piece), and to bring back the best from these lands, which was indeed human cargo, as slave labor. From the Catholic Encyclopaedia XI, p. 445* and onward can be found the tyrannical, imperialistic, capitalist aggression against other human beings that continues right up until today in the 21st century. (*Above citation wiped)
In the book, “Island of Cuba” by Alexander von Humboldt, p. 51 are these words: “The death of the indigenous peoples due to hardship from mining gold and growing cash crops resulted in their almost extermination.” Also, in the Concise Encyclopaedia of World History by Carlos Ramirez-Faria, “St. Vincent & the Grenadines was sighted by Columbus in 1498. The land was peopled by the Caribs, the Amerindians who contributed the word “Cannibal” to European languages. (This was not historically proven as it may have been a tactic used for indiscriminate slaughter of the native people). St. Vincent was occupied by the British in 1762, seized by France in 1779, and restored definitely to Great Britain in 1783. The Caribs were deported by the British to small islands in the gulf of Honduras.”
To juxtapose the same historical thought from Seymour Dresher – the albino-centric bias in the above statement is nauseating as seen from his book on the same issue: “Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition” which says: “St. Vincent was unquestionably part of the “old” British slave empire in 1797. It was one of the so-called neutral islands, ceded to Britain by the Peace of Paris in 1763 and reconfirmed as a British possession by the Peace of Versailles in 1783. Its peculiarity, before 1797, lay in its retarded development as a slave colony. This was due to the presence of a powerful community of independent non-Europeans. The “Black “Caribs possessed large tracts of territory amounting to one-third of the richest and most cultivated soil on the island… So dangerous was the British situation that the planters allowed troops to be recruited from among their slaves… After their defeat, the Caribs were deported from St. Vincent to the island of Roatan in the gulf of Honduras, leaving the richest land in the island vacant.”
As Europe was emerging from the Black Death (aptly coined) of the medieval period, and economic slavery had not yet taken a foothold, as a means of recouping from the ravages of millions dead, and the abject poverty of lost wealth – post pandemic, Europeans monarchs and the Papacy had to “Build Back Better”. History shows that along the Iberian Peninsula of the Mediterranean, where Christianity existed a certain class of affluent nobles and wealthy reLIEgious persons had already enslaved primarily Jews, Muslims, Gypsies, Slavs, and a few others. The Jews and African Moors however were seen as beyond the realm of redemption and were therefore subject to a form of perpetual slavery, as the end justified the means.
In England however, there was a contradiction of sorts, given that on English soil, any slave during the 1500’s into the 1600’s were actually a “free man”, until Queen Elizabeth I wanted them out of England under the pretext that they were taking food and shelter from the English subjects of the monarch – while, English pirates, marauders and slavers were free to ply the slave trade in the Iberian Peninsula, in Mediterranean waters, the Caribbean, South America and finally, (the ‘Yet-To-Be’ United States of amnesia and paranoia) – and wherever they was a need for chattel labor. The real profiteering came full circle around 1619 and onwards, when AmeriKKKan colonists began their cruel, evil trade in the human butchery of slave labor. The English were quickly followed by the Dutch, French and Belgians who rebuilt their dilapidated countries on the backs of Black blood, sweat, tears & grievous labor! (ENOUGH)
(To be continued)
Semper Fidelis
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