SAPID UNITY OF MANKIND FROM AFRICAN AMERICAN PARADIGM
I would be bold to propose, suggest, even to hypothecate, that the African sojourn into the Americas, that was occasioned by the naval excursions of curious European adventurers, like Christopher Columbus, was ordained by God, as part of an unfolding order of nature to renew, to fertilize earth.
Any undertaking of that extraordinary depth, dimension, duration , was not simply a whimsical idea about trade. Too many parts cohered for that. The final military expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492, by the Spanish monarchs, was certainly one big part.
Moors were an integral part. These black or dark-skinned North Africans had early invaded, civilized, occupied Spain and Portugal for over seven hundred years, entering Andalusia as they called it, 711 A.D. from Morocco.
Portugal has preceded Spain as a great naval power with its great global circumnavigations. The first was "Prince Henry the Navigator," who, following the conquest of Ceuta, in Morocco with his father at age 21, became most familiar with the artifacts and legends of Africans.
Navigation skills of the Portuguese and the Spanish were refined from the Moors' Hindu-Arabic numerals, longitude-latitude measuring tools instruments, astronomical and tidal knowledge. Their 'caravel' ships were adopted from the lateen sails of the Moors and were used for the west African slave trade and for the Asian spice trade. This latter lucrative trade for spice produced an Iberian rivalry that was only settled by the Pope, who drew the line of demarcation around the globe in 1494 as curator. Under this, Portugal got the lands to the east of the line; Spain to the west.
In process of time the indigenous people of the Americas were either slaughtered or decimated by disease, in the European rapacious quest for gold. Their decline necessitated the importation of the more robust Africans, to mine for gold and to labor as slaves for the Spanish. This expedient substitute was proposed by Bartholomew de Las Casas, a Spanish priest, who grieved the mass murders and dislocations of the indigenes, whom they called Indians. It was adopted by Spanish rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella as proper.
The trade winds , ocean currents , and previous trading patterns favored the mass importation of Africans to the Americas in the 16th century.
Consequently, the triangular slave trade fattened the coffers of Spain and Portugal, only, for over 100 years before the Dutch, English, French, entered the foray in the 17th century.
African labors, know-how, creativity, and capabilities for adapting, created the brave new world from wilderness.
Many tens of millions of Africans died during the 400-year long triangular slave trade, which enriched Western Europe while simultaneously depopulating and impoverishing Africa. The forced migrants died of all manners of distress, disease, starvation, exposure, brutality and despair; in Africa, in the Middle Passage, and during chattel slavery.
The Africans in America who survived and reproduced are the forebears of each present day African American. These remarkable people were the ones who chose life over death, who chose slavery over extinction, whose faith in God, love of life, fidelity to the precious memories their forebears from whom they were torn, and sold, carried them through hell and back.
To them we are indebted ; to them we owe our very lives, fortunes, liberties!
Our forebears include not merely the African captives, but also the Moors who preceded them; and the fabled predecessors of the Moors, of whom Shakespeare wrote so glowingly in "Othello " and "Titus Andronicus" and "Antony and Cleopatra." And sooner still, we descend from those saints, who developed the principles and credo of Christianity itself in Latin Africa and in Greek Alexandria, Egypt. Farther back we are the "blameless Ethiopians" of whom Homer and Herodotus sung in the "Iliad" and "History." We are those Egyptians of whom Plato wrote in "The Timaeus" and in "The Laws." We are in short the produce of that primal, original people who first populated the Earth.
Those who enslaved us came from us. They who slew us were imbued by us. Be they Arab or European or African, they are ours phenotypically, genetically, historically, culturally, philosophically, anthropologically.
Recursively, discursively all humans who preceded us are from us, are of us, however they may look or speak, ours. We are one species: mankind!
Inscrutable, immutable are the ways of the One, Amen! We are all one.
Friday, July 8, 2016
SAPID UNITY OF MANKIND FROM AFRICAN AMERICAN PARADIGM
SAPID UNITY OF MANKIND FROM AFRICAN AMERICAN PARADIGM
I would be bold to propose, suggest, even to hypothecate, that the African sojourn into the Americas, that was occasioned by the naval excursions of curious European adventurers, like Christopher Columbus, was ordained by God, as part of an unfolding order of nature to renew, to fertilize earth.
Any undertaking of that extraordinary depth, dimension, duration , was not simply a whimsical idea about trade. Too many parts cohered for that. The final military expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492, by the Spanish monarchs, was certainly one big part.
Moors were an integral part. These black or dark-skinned North Africans had early invaded, civilized, occupied Spain and Portugal for over seven hundred years, entering Andalusia as they called it, 711 A.D. from Morocco.
Portugal has preceded Spain as a great naval power with its great global circumnavigations. The first was "Prince Henry the Navigator," who, following the conquest of Ceuta, in Morocco with his father at age 21, became most familiar with the artifacts and legends of Africans.
Navigation skills of the Portuguese and the Spanish were refined from the Moors' Hindu-Arabic numerals, longitude-latitude measuring tools instruments, astronomical and tidal knowledge. Their 'caravel' ships were adopted from the lateen sails of the Moors and were used for the west African slave trade and for the Asian spice trade. This latter lucrative trade for spice produced an Iberian rivalry that was only settled by the Pope, who drew the line of demarcation around the globe in 1494 as curator. Under this, Portugal got the lands to the east of the line; Spain to the west.
In process of time the indigenous people of the Americas were either slaughtered or decimated by disease, in the European rapacious quest for gold. Their decline necessitated the importation of the more robust Africans, to mine for gold and to labor as slaves for the Spanish. This expedient substitute was proposed by Bartholomew de Las Casas, a Spanish priest, who grieved the mass murders and dislocations of the indigenes, whom they called Indians. It was adopted by Spanish rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella as proper.
The trade winds , ocean currents , and previous trading patterns favored the mass importation of Africans to the Americas in the 16th century.
Consequently, the triangular slave trade fattened the coffers of Spain and Portugal, only, for over 100 years before the Dutch, English, French, entered the foray in the 17th century.
African labors, know-how, creativity, and capabilities for adapting, created the brave new world from wilderness.
Many tens of millions of Africans died during the 400-year long triangular slave trade, which enriched Western Europe while simultaneously depopulating and impoverishing Africa. The forced migrants died of all manners of distress, disease, starvation, exposure, brutality and despair; in Africa, in the Middle Passage, and during chattel slavery.
The Africans in America who survived and reproduced are the forebears of each present day African American. These remarkable people were the ones who chose life over death, who chose slavery over extinction, whose faith in God, love of life, fidelity to the precious memories their forebears from whom they were torn, and sold, carried them through hell and back.
To them we are indebted ; to them we owe our very lives, fortunes, liberties!
Our forebears include not merely the African captives, but also the Moors who preceded them; and the fabled predecessors of the Moors, of whom Shakespeare wrote so glowingly in "Othello " and "Titus Andronicus" and "Antony and Cleopatra." And sooner still, we descend from those saints, who developed the principles and credo of Christianity itself in Latin Africa and in Greek Alexandria, Egypt. Farther back we are the "blameless Ethiopians" of whom Homer and Herodotus sung in the "Iliad" and "History." We are those Egyptians of whom Plato wrote in "The Timaeus" and in "The Laws." We are in short the produce of that primal, original people who first populated the Earth.
Those who enslaved us came from us. They who slew us were imbued by us. Be they Arab or European or African, they are ours phenotypically, genetically, historically, culturally, philosophically, anthropologically.
Recursively, discursively all humans who preceded us are from us, are of us, however they may look or speak, ours. We are one species: mankind!
Inscrutable, immutable are the ways of the One, Amen! We are all one.