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1. 
   David

   And would contend that those numbers are pretty conservative.

   And not only the kidnapping… The atrocities that befell those that were kidnapped were unimaginable…

   The destabilization, exploitation and outright destruction of Africa and several other countries is no less immoral.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNA3JuGtaOs

   Apr 14, 2009 @ 5:12 pm
   

2. 
   Oliver

   I don’t see how you can compare the actions of nameless slavetraders centuries ago to pirates today. A much better comparison is the Somalian pirates and Western trawlers or nuclear waste dumpers. As a German-Canadian, I don’t feel obliged to redress injustices committed by compatriots centuries (or decages) ago, but to address those that continue today, regardless of their origin.

   Apr 14, 2009 @ 6:42 pm
   

3. 
   AmericanException

   I’m glad you raised that point. The entry before this one touches upon that and I have another piece going up on cnn.com later in the week on that subject.

   Apr 14, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
   

4. 
   M

   Thank you for posting this!

   I agree that the numbers are likely conservative, and there are plenty of critiques of the methodologies of those who constructed this database. Particularly under-reported are the early (1500s) and late (post-1808) Portuguese and Brazilian voyages…

   Regardless, however, your point about parity needs to be made and made and made again. Even the language involved…What makes someone a “slave trader” rather than a “pirate”? And the slavetraders are hardly nameless. Eric Williams was able to trace very specific connections between these pirates and industry in the UK (and he was writing in the 1940s!). It’s not difficult to piece this together, and to find that those who trafficked in our ancestors continue to benefit from that, on a structural and individual level both.

   I think one of the (all-too-often unmentioned) wages of whiteness is the ability to live with no reference to history. The very simple question of “Who am I and why am I living this way?” inevitably leads myself and every other Black in the Americas to a real confrontation with the slave ship, shackles, sugar cane, cotton, whips, brands, and so on. There is simply no other way for us to answer that question, and no reasonable way to pretend that it’s over or unimportant (see: incarceration rates; see also: dispossession from land).

   If I were more cliometrically inclined, I’d love to match up a graph from the table you posted with some sort of GDP table…

   Apr 15, 2009 @ 4:15 am
   

5. 
   Winslowalrob

   I dunno, I go back to my last point about where you are going with all of this, but I would love to talk to you more about it via email instead of ‘jacking the thread.

   And how come you and everyone you know gets that cnn love? Who do I have to sleep with :)?

   Apr 15, 2009 @ 5:33 am
   

6. 
   We’re always concerned about the wrong things « cmfn - beats, bits n’ bitches

   [...] We’re always concerned about the wrong things A quick calculation yields this result: African pirates will have to kidnap one Westerner per hour f… [...]

   Apr 15, 2009 @ 6:21 am
   

7. 
   JJay

   I don’t see how you can compare the actions of nameless slavetraders centuries ago to pirates today. As a modern American, I don’t feel obliged to redress injustices committed by anyone centuries ago as a false reminder.

   Further the Islamic theology that drives the pirates is a major factor of their behavior. The tired arugment of poverty as motivation just doesn’t apply. Really.

   Apr 19, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
   

8. 
   deshi

   Dear Prof. J. Cobb

   Ye-e-es! You have hit the nail squarely on the head. Where did all this Somali piracy come from? Here is my ‘pet’ theory on the tendency of any thing to tend towards a golden mean. When you find a situation taken to one extreme(eg, illegal fishing and nuclear waste dumping)an equal opposite action must happen to try to bring this extreme to the ‘golden mean’ or middle. This piracy is yeat another example. Kinda like Newton’s laws of motion.
   Most people say the best way to “solve” this piracy problem is to sent naval armadas and blow the pirates to smithereens. It is the same, endlessly repeated band aid solution. Well, we did send the US army to invade Iraq and Afganistan to blow them terrorists out of this world. That was like 7-8 years ago, and we are still at it with no end in sight and no reduction of violence.
   So, when you do not address the root causes of the problem, a band aid will just keep it concealed temporarily.
   Yes, to avert piracy hijackings, naval patrolling and other preventive measures be taken. It must also be shown to Somali pirates that this is not the way to resolve the problem since they can easily be blown to bits. Concurrently, there must be other solutions put in place that dissuades the young teens from being attracted to piracy on the high seas. This ain’t no swashbuckling adventure & romance like the Pirates of the Carribbean for these young Somali kids.

   Apr 19, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
   

9. 
   Ian

   I’m not really sure what you’re saying by bringing up these statistics. Any country that was involved in the African slave trade has no right to complain about the actions of Somali pirates? What do the numbers mean (apart from reminding us of the abject horror the was the slave trade)? If pirates kidnap 305,326 Americans do we then have the moral right to object? Does East Asia, who had no part in the African slave trade have more moral authority than the US, even though it is largely Asian fishing fleets that have laid waste to the Somali fishing industry? Do Middle Eastern countries have the right to object since they’ve been conveniently left off this chart, despite their own horrific part in human trafficking?

   I’m a white American, and I do believe we have a long way to go before repaying our debt to the descendants of those we kidnapped and forced to help build this country, but bringing up moral equivalency for Westerners kidnapped by pirates seems odd.

   Although I disagree with this particular entry, I really appreciate your blog and the discussion you’ve started here, and I loved your piece on CNN. Keep it up!

   Apr 19, 2009 @ 4:17 pm
   

10. 
    marcus

    Africans aren’t the only ones expoited in human history. We we’re all exploited by the stronger enemy. What I like to see is more successful selfless American Blacks heading to Africa and doing something about all the poverty and corruption. You can start some where instead of the bitchin and moaning. Let go of the past. Let’s get something started . Let’s look for a day when Africans can stop waiting for the ship load of foods sent by the white man. Let’s wait for a day when blacks in America stop waiting for that monthly check. If you find my opinion to hold some value instead of simply writing it off as racist.

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
    

11. 
    Can'tHaveItNoWay

    “Westerners” did not kidnap the africans from Africa; it was the various african tribes and the arabs as middlemen who sold captured african as slaves to the “Westerners.” However, in the 18th century the European colonialist did kidnap land and resources from the various african tribes, eg, Rhodesia, South Africa. etc, but did not export african slaves to “Westerners.” There were various middlemen such as the arabs and native african traders who exploited the tribal warfares for slaves. Today, in the Sudan you can see evidence of the Arabs attempting to subjugate or evict the native Sudanese from oil rich southern Sudan. Back in slave days, the arabs or some african tribe would have easily sold the Sudanese refugees of the Dafur camps. To be fair to all those involved in the slave trade, the middlemen, as well as the buyer and initiator have to be held accountable.

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
    

12. 
    Qbert

    “To be fair to all those involved in the slave trade, the middlemen, as well as the buyer and initiator have to be held accountable.”

    Who living are we holding accountable, and what reparations? There is no ethnic group in existance that has not been subjugated and enslaved at one point or another.

    Just thinking about who owes what to whom along these lines in the balkans alone is enough to give you a migrane.

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 5:47 pm
    

13. 
    Tubers

    It is 2009 - Not much we can do about what happen during the slave trade. Terrible as it is/was get over it. You act like we as westerners owe Africa something. The issue with these people is that they just dont care about their country. They are not running around helping feed the poor masses in Somalia. Two wrongs dont and will never make a right! They are even holding ships hostage that as food for Somalia people that are starving. They rape woman - use children to fight. They need to get their act together this is not the way to get the world to notice their plight. I feel awful about the USA and the slave trade but I didnt have anything to do with it. I am only 57 years old. I didn’t do it honest!

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
    

14. 
    M

    For crying out loud.

    Why do Africans have tribes when white folks have nations? Could it be because your racist education and lack of engagement with the political realities of the African past makes you incapable of acknowledging African political development? Could it be because of the apologist narratives that whites began forwarding in the sixteenth century, if not earlier (check out all of the Portuguese and Italian missionaries at that time who gloried in writing about the savagery of the Africans, about how they were cannibals and the slave trade was a mercy, as it supposedly saved us from being eaten), and the fact that white people still believe this kind of fuckery?

    We did it to ourselves? While I am the last to deny the culpability of elites in Africa, I would like to point out who has gained, overall, from slavery and colonialism. It ain’t Black folks.

    Oh, I love, too, the comments about Blacks being inherently lazy in dependent. It’s wonderful, and historically ignorant, and ignores the fact that it is the labor of enslaved Africans that advanced capital accumulation, the development of industrial capitalism, etc. All of that wealth? Is grounded in our blood. Don’t fool yourself on some sort of mertiocratic fairy tale that makes white people hard workers and Black lazy. That is the worst kind of ahistorical ignorance.

    The net flow of wealth in the world continues to be from the so-called Third World to the so-called First World. But hey, don’t trouble yourself asking why.

    It’s amazing to me how it is only whites who say “I don’t feel like I am connected to what whites did in the past and I bear no responsibility today for what happened during slavery.” Ah, the luxury of whiteness: never having to say sorry, and certainly never having to pay for the way in which you continue to benefit from oppressions past and present. Must be nice to be able to imagine yourself outside of history.

    Also, the boogeyman of Islam? Nonsense. It’s such bullshit, how Black and Brown people only engage in ethnic/relgiously motivated actions, where white folks have politics, apparently. You see this when I tell my students that World War II was a tribal/religious conflict, and they freak out.

    I am an uppity, educated Negra and I approve this message.

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
    

15. 
    Qbert

    M What fantasy world do you live in where it is rational to punish someone for what people did 200 years before they were born.

    Following this logic to it’s inevitable conclusion I was talking to a Russian Jewish friend of mine, and it occurred to me that her ancestors were slaves to Nubian Africans. Should she not be compensated also?

    The Jews were also repressed by the Romans, forerunners of the modern Italians. But the Romans were subjugated by the Celts in 390BC. The Romans returned the favor, and then oppressed Christians as well, before becoming Christians themselves and forcibly converting the Pagan Celts. Later Christianized Celts were oppressed by other Christianized Romans, and the two combined, which is where we come to the African issue. However, certain Africans enslaved other Africans, so perhaps the Central African Republic should be footing part of the bill.

    The Pagan Norse oppressed the Slavs, predecessors of the Russians, which brings us back to my Russian Jewish friend. On the other hand, the Germans have subjugated the Balts and Danes and Norwegians, as did the Russians, who also hurt the Finns and the Andronovan steppe people of Central Asia. Sweden claimed Finland and Norway for some length of time, and there were atrocities in Germany during the Thirty Years War by them, the Germans, the Austrians, the Scots, the English, the French and the Spanish. Then there were Norse-descended Norman French (coming back to England), who oppressed Jutes, Angles and Saxons from the German region who were in England to repress the Romano-Celts, and became English, but whose descendants were oppressed themselves under Henry II, and during the Hundred Years War by France or England, depending on whose land claims one believes. The later English oppressed the Irish, and Scots, who were Irish who earlier moved across the sea and displaced the Picts, who themselves oppressed the Celts and the Irish, as did the Phoenicians, which brings us back to the Greeks.

    The French and Germans, besides the Franco-Prussian War, WWI and WWII, went at it over the African-exploiting Belgians a few times, and made their own incursions into Africa and the Far East, as did Portugal. Portugal and Spain maltreated large numbers of American people, except for those oppressed by the English, French, Russians, Old Norse and each other. On the other hand, the early Celtiberians were themselves subjugated by the Romans, so they can’t entirely bear the blame. Spain also subjugated the Netherlands during the Thirty Years War mentioned previously. On yet another hand, Spain was invaded by the black Moors, who also enslaved many white African Berbers. The Barbary pirates made raids on Cornwall. The Sudan has slaves to this day. This would mean that black Africans have their own debts to pay.

    The Muslims also oppressed the Jews, as did the Persians, so it seems that the Middle East and Africa are liable once again. But then there’s the way Israel and the Palestinians treat each other. There’s the native Kurds, who play both sides against each other, and subjugate the local people north of them. Those from the former Soviet Southern Border states were oppressed by the Russians and the Turks, who have had go rounds with the Greeks, who also oppressed the Semitic peoples. And yet, those same Southern Asians made inroads into China and Tibet. And China is now IN Tibet, which puts me in an uncomfortable position, China being the last bulwark of the Marxist socialist utopia. And China has oppressed also Southeast Asia, Korea, Mongolia, which also oppressed them, and has been oppressed by Japan, who also mistreated the Pacific Islanders and it’s own Ainu people, as well as the Inuit and Alaskans and Americans in WWII, who were at that time good for fighting Nazism, but bad for nuking Japan. Then the US again oppressed Southeast Asians and Pacific people and Inuit.

    The English usurped power in India, who has had incursions into Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan (as did the Russians), and there were various operations against the Bengalis, the Thais and Cambodians, and on into the Indian Ocean nations as far as Madagscar, which is African, at least currently, despite having Indonesian and Indian language groups. African nations under the British also had Indian slave laborers.

    I tried thinking about the Balkans, but it made my head hurt, what with them killing Nazis, helping Nazis, killing Italians who oppressed them previously who had themselves been oppressed by Alexander of Macedonia, who also oppressed Africans. Also, the Huns went through there from Central Asia, and the Muslims came north. Then, the Christians went through there during the Crusades. The Vatican should likely be treated as a direct descendant of Rome, and charged separately from Italy itself, which includes the descendants of the Etruscans. The Etruscan descended Italians have a separate claim against Rome, I would guess. Also during WWI, the British Royal Family, the Saxe-Coburgs, were actually German but changed their name to “Windsor” to sound more British. This deception should not go unnoticed.

    Back to Germanic peoples, there were the Dutch in South Africa, oppressing the Zulu and Bantu, who themselves oppressed the Bushmen and Hottentots, who harassed the Pygmy cultures. The Australian Aborigines were shoved aside by the Dutch and English, however, those Dutch and “English” (including many Irish), were themselves prisoners of their own regimes and in dire straits.

    This brings me to my question: I’m an immigrant to the US from Canada, and before that came from Britain, where my mother is Anglican English of German and Celtic extraction, my father Norse-descended Presbyterian Scottish with some Spanish ancestry from after the wreck of the Armada, and my stepmother an Irish Catholic. My wife is English and Austro-Hungarian in origin, with some Macedonian. Which of us owes money to the other and why?

    I am an uppity educated white and I laugh at your allegations of guilt.

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 8:27 pm
    

16. 
    Jeff Barnett - Austin, TX

    Slavery was/is abhorrent. But what nation has done more than the United States - since abolishment - to advance the cause of freedom? None more so than the United States. We fought a civil war over it, and at the cost of over 500,000 lives. Most of whom didn’t even own slaves.

    It wasn’t me, but my ancestors who were guilty of owning slaves. And it was your ancestors Mr. Cobb, not you, who suffered under it. Both of those peoples - your ancestors and mine - have paid the price for our freedom.

    If a new day has truly arrived, then let’s move on. Until the day comes that we can work in the present without dwelling in the past, we will never see a brighter future.

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 8:32 pm
    

17. 
    M

    It’s astounding how any discussion of Black history is inevitably met by a white deluge of details about white history and an almost breath-taking ignorance about African history. There are so many errors it’s impossible to know where to begin, and I don’t actually get paid to teach you. But let’s start here:

    “Back to Germanic peoples, there were the Dutch in South Africa, oppressing the Zulu and Bantu, who themselves oppressed the Bushmen and Hottentots, who harassed the Pygmy cultures.”

    Um…There’s no such thing as “Zulu” people before the nineteenth century. Bantu aren’t people, it’s a (incredibly large and diverse) family of languages. “Bushman and Hottentots” is the kind of colonial nonsense that it doesn’t surprise me that you use, but nevertheless reveals a profound lack of engagement with African history. And if by Pygmy cultures you mean BaTwa people, um, let me know when they were in what is now South Africa, mmmmkay?

    But hey, just keep playing fast and loose with the facts. Combine that with your Oppression Olympics narratives and your inability to answer the most rudimentary of questions demanded of any person with any conscience at all (Who continues to benefit? Who continues to pay), and you are in a camp with colonial apologists and the writers of textbooks who believe that colonialism and slavery have been beneficial.

    No need to actually * study * history, right?

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
    

18. 
    Sophie

    You, sir, rock. As for those of primarily European stock today who don’t want you introduce this point, ignore. No one is blaming the whites of today directly for the African slave trade, but when they claim that as modern nations, white governments have no piece of culpability, then they are perpetuating the historic injustice and racism, which surely makes any “affronts” by African and other developing countries against the modern white imperialists pale in comparison.

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 8:51 pm
    

19. 
    Dantresomi

    I don’t think Cobb is implying that we should let Somalians continue piracy (If you read any of Cobb’s work, you would realize that).

    He is making a historical comparison (that’s what we historians do right?).

    He is also pointing out how those in power, white folks, continue to paint everyone else as evil and depraved while they (white folks) are some defenders of freedom when history has shown time and again, that they aren’t

    I think it’s called white privilege?

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 8:54 pm
    

20. 
    Soul Pundit

    There was a comment that this conversation is ultimately about how those in power paint others as evil and depraved. It was chalked to white privilege.

    While I have and still do shed tears at the thought of my ancestors and the degradation and injury placed upon their shoulders, are black folks just sore losers? Although this is not my point, it’s kind of an interesting way to interpret some of the comments here.History is a continuum. Not a beginning and not an end.

    At the end of the day, I believe that other than geographical location, the parallels between pirates off the coast of Somali and retribution for slavery are wholly incomparable incidents.

    These acts are not sanctioned by any government, there is no country from which to seek redress for grievance.

    I can understand it roots, but I believe there is a sinister cynicism that plagues the argument. This argument has an emotional root that absolves any wrongdoing because of injustice of slavery. An historical wrong from Arab and European merchants to blacks in Africa and the diaspora. In essence, it’s a get out of jail free card whenever some misguided black disasporian somewhere gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

    The fruits of this argument are waged daily in Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, New York, LA. Anywhere that history has witnessed an injustice.

    So, I get the argument, but I not really feeling it.

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
    

21. 
    Qbert

    M, Thanks for the corrections. But history is history, the point was really that all our histories are intertwined.

    You still didn’t answer the question though.

    Let me guess, you don’t get paid to do that either?

    Apr 19, 2009 @ 10:23 pm
    

22. 
    anon

    Its not only the western world - The arabs are a larger part of this equation - in fact, their role is the worst.

    from elsewhere,

    
    As Slavery, Terrorism and Islam documents, at least 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. As at least 80% of those captured by Muslim slaver raiders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is estimated that the death toll from the 14 centuries of Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been over 112 million. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the Trans Sahara and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 million people.

    Apr 20, 2009 @ 3:33 am
    

23. 
    AmericanException

    I’m just getting in from a cross-country flight and all kinds of jet-lagged but let me make two quick points. One theme of the comments is about culpability or lack thereof for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.

    I believe one luxury of the West in general, but the US in particular is that of living outside history. For the rest of the world there is no reset button. To paraphrase Samuel Huntington, the West has virtually forgotten the route it took to economic supremacy but the rest of the world never has.

    More recently, colonialism ended scarcely a half century ago and the economic shackles of that system remain intact. In short, we have historical amnesia that gives us a false sense of innocence.

    On the other side, I want to clarify that I do not believe the Somali pirates are heroes but I certainly don’t believe they’re any worse than the people who have been raping the African continent for eons.

    Jelani C.

    FYI: I’m not absolving the Arab trade either — it just so happens that we are talking about a conflict between Western states and Africans on the high seas.

    Apr 20, 2009 @ 4:16 am
    

24. 
    Waryaa

    To my sight pirates are heroes. Just as good as NJPD or even better because they are welling to die for the sake of family and enviroment.

    Seek the truth.

    Apr 20, 2009 @ 7:27 am
    

25. 
    kgc

    Pirates, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, European tribalism, and reparations aside… I find it odd that so many [certain] posters keep suggesting we “forget about the past” and move forward.

    Keep that same advice in mind on the 4th of July, or the next time you find yourself about to make a comment about the greatness of America’s “founding fathers.”

    Apparently, its okay for SOME people to commemorate or acknowledge SOME aspects of America’s so-called distant past, but not others. Who gets to decide when to have historical amnesia, and what incidences to ignore or avoid?

    Apr 20, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
    

26. 
    bob

    African pirates will have to kidnap one Westerner per hour for the next 1,431 years to equal the number of Africans kidnapped by Westerners between 1501-1866.

    non sequitur: a comment which, due to its lack of meaning relative to the comment it follows, is absurd to the point of being humorous or confusing.

    Apr 21, 2009 @ 12:09 am
    

27. 
    Unity in Action Magazine

    Read an article written by an Independent writer from the UK. posted on our blog.
    http://www.uamag.biz

    Excerpt from “They are lying about the pirates.”

    Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”
    At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

    Apr 21, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
    

28. 
    AmericanException

    Bob, have we not learned anything about non-sequiturs? They are usually one-way streets. I hate to reiterate, but again it is a particularly American arrogance to believe that you can exist outside history.

    So at what point does history expire? And who decides? Certainly, you seem to imply, those on the receiving end of it don’t.

    Apr 22, 2009 @ 12:16 am
    

29. 
    Some Guy

    I never really thought of the problem in Somalia as historically noted as the slave trade, but I see that you are just making a point about people’s attitudes towards Somalian pirates.
    Why make that point? My view of the whole situation is that some poor people are stealing from rich people. Why bring up the past at all?
    Somalians need money too and that’s why they’re doing this. I’d be a pirate if I lived in Somalia, it was a childhood dream of mine.

    Apr 22, 2009 @ 2:32 am
    

30. 
    Proper Talks » Blog Archive » Pirates, Children and Justice.

    [...] final thing to consider, from Jelani Cobb: [...]

    Apr 22, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
    

31. 
    Bob

    Bob, have we not learned anything about non-sequiturs? They are usually one-way streets. I hate to reiterate, but again it is a particularly American arrogance to believe that you can exist outside history.

    It still fits the definition. The real american exception is the fact that blacks in America seem to think that their treatment by history makes them the exception.

    Really we could use this line of reasoning to justify anything less onerous than the Stalinist purges of the Soviet Union. From which my family were refugees.

    Would you really say that we have no business opposing the nuclear program of north korea or trying to unseat their government because we once had american concentration camps?

    Would you count the number of times I would have to go over to Vladimir Putin’s house and take his family members hostage before it would equal the treatment of my family by Russian Bolsheviks?

    History doesn’t expire but culpability for the actions of an individual goes with them to the grave.

    Apr 26, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
    

32. 
    hespilimaip

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    Apr 26, 2009 @ 9:17 pm
    

33. 
    CaraApavabe

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    Apr 28, 2009 @ 5:34 pm