Never forget that the model for the cruelty meted out to slaves

[malaise]

in the British colonies was carved out of the bodies of the captured Africans in Barbados.
Thank you for separating yourselves from them at last Barbados.
Shame on Jamaica for continuing this madness.

[tulipsandroses]

1. As well as Britain became wealthy while descendants

Of enslaved Africans quite often live in poverty in the West Indies. They are owed reparations just like America owes black Americans reparations.

[malaise]

2. Absolutely but not just in the Caribbean

Last edited Tue Nov 30, 2021, 06:12 PM - Edit history (1)

do you know it must have been like for Africa to lose millions of their able-bodied people?
Truth is seaping out

[Evolve Dammit]

3. I never thought of the loss of able-bodied people, but you are absolutely right. Very significant.

I always focused on how abhorrent it was and only one slave ship captain was hung for it.

[electric_blue68]

15. +10000

thank you, malaise for enlightening a different aspect of this long tragedy/atrocity.

[Tumbulu]

4. And don't forget that they stole the keepers of the West African rice technology

The rice breeders, the engineers of the flooding/ water handling systems. Sought out and kidnapped and taken away. Like this would not have devastated their rice production?

This book that I treasured reading entitled “Black Rice” chronicles how these particular people were stolen and sold for higher prices. And then all their work and skill erased by claiming that it all came from Asia. And of course there is the incredible rice tradition and technology from Asia.

But the rice culture of the America’s was from these enslaved West Africans who had the knowledge and the seeds. And the skills to breed the seeds.

[malaise]

6. I need to read that book

I do know that the indentured South Asians who were brought after 1834 were also skilled in rice growning.
These days I laugh when they mention who were the civilized and who were the barbarians - thanks for this post.
Black Rice — Judith A. Carney | Harvard University Press

[Tumbulu]

10. Yes, and she wrote another really excellent book

Describing the many other agricultural treasures that enslaved African’s brought to the America’s.

Not many people are plant ( rice) breeders, so commandeering the breeders ( and their seeds) was a particularly dastardly thing to do. And then add the insult to the injury.

I worked in The Gambia on rice and groundnut pests and diseases back in the late ‘70’s and currently there is a Gambian rice breeder ( who I have some of idea that I might have known, but my elderly brain plays tricks on me) heading up a research station in Senegal that is working on reviving the West African Rice varieties, there was a good article in The NY Times about the work.

Her books are illuminating. And I appreciate them, having had the incredibly fortunate experience of living and working with Mandinka rice farmers along the River Gambia.

Who gave to me this name I use on DU.

[malaise]

11. I learn something new here

almost every day

[Celerity]

12. In the Shadow of Slavery : Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World

https://www.bookdepository.com/Shadow-Slavery-Judith-Carney/9780520269965?ref=grid-view&qid=1638319283297&sr=1-1



The transatlantic slave trade forced millions of Africans into bondage. Until the early nineteenth century, African slaves came to the Americas in greater numbers than Europeans.

"In the Shadow of Slavery" provides a startling new assessment of the Atlantic slave trade and upends conventional wisdom by shifting attention from the crops slaves were forced to produce to the foods they planted for their own nourishment.

Many familiar foods - millet, sorghum, coffee, okra, watermelon, and the 'Asian' long bean, for example - are native to Africa, while commercial products such as Coca Cola, Worcestershire Sauce, and Palmolive Soap rely on African plants that were brought to the Americas on slave ships as provisions, medicines, cordage, and bedding.

In this exciting, original, and groundbreaking book, Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff draw on archaeological records, oral histories, and the accounts of slave ship captains to show how slaves' food plots - 'botanical gardens of the dispossessed' - became the incubators of African survival in the Americas and Africanized the foodways of plantation societies.

[malaise]

13. Thanks sis

[Celerity]

14. yw!

[electric_blue68]

17. Looks fascinatng, and informative

Millet is quite tasty, and quick to cook - about 20+ mins.
And it's a whole grain, too. Cooks quicker than even white rice. 👍
To me it tastes like a cross between rice, and corn.

[Tumbulu]

18. Thank you- both books are must reads

I think. But I am a plant breeder, so I am biased.

[iluvtennis]

7. Wow. Thanks for adding to my "learn som ething new everyday".

[electric_blue68]

16. wow... never really thought of rice and African countries...

Good to hear that research, efforts are increasing in Africa.

[tulipsandroses]

8. There was so much to love about Black Panther

The director Ryan Coogler was dropping gems all through this movie. I got chills and actually teared up at his presentation of Wakanda. It got me thinking about what could have been if these lands had not been robbed of its people and resources. What would have happened had people been left in their homelands, untouched like the people of Wakanda.

[malaise]

9. Precisely

We rightly think about slavery but our lands were depleted of people and resources

[Dan]

5. There must be a recognition.

But everything is not valued in $.

[crickets]

19. K&R for the post and the discussion.