Raiders And The Raid Summary

The actions taken by Africans to defend themselves from slavery is largely disputed in exactly how they defended themselves in their native lands amongst Africa. It is known however that Africans took many defensive countermeasures to reduce themselves from being captured into slavery. Martin A. Klein discusses these measures taken by African nations and tribes. Klein begins with crediting Patrick Manning with dividing the African populations into two populations, The Raiders and The Raided. Raiders will raid other African tribes and capture many of its people and sell them to slave-trading nations in exchange for weapons. The Raided, as a reaction, had developed many defensive strategies in order to counter the raiders. Two Stanford historians,

He discusses the general defenses taken by many African tribes, such as a dispersed settlement pattern to be perceived as being much smaller, keeping the land around villages as unkempt as possible to make the village seemed abandoned, walling in compounds that only contain a single door with locks and no windows that opened to the outside, and even as far as hiding homes in the forest. He starts with the large fortified villages among the Balanta of the Upper Guinea Coast. These came to be due to many small villages disappearing due to safety concerns of slave trading. The people sought safety in larger and better protected villages. He then moves on to the Gurunsi, whom was credited by a French scholar as being a heavy influence to both the Songhai and ancient Egypt empires. The Gurunsi people were victims to ruthless slave raiders so they sought out easily defendable hilltop locations with entrances to villages sometimes being as low as 70 centimeters. These hilltop locations were chosen by many as a safe location. Many tribes, Chamba, Kabre, and inhabitants of the Birim Valley built their villages on hilltops and mountains due to the extreme safety. But there was a cost the safety of the higher elevation, there was a limited amount of land available for expansion and the quality of land was much poorer at the higher elevations. However, the Kabre of the Northern Togo was able to overcome these issues which

These revolts were so large that they disrupted the politics, the economy, and society of slavers in Africa. Africans resisted the actions taken by slavers. There are numerous descriptions of 18th century European accounts in the Upper Guinea Coast of violence resistance taken by Africans. In 1720, chief of the Rio Nunez, Tamba, organized his people against African and European slave traders. He and his people would interfere with their trades and execute the middlemen he captured. Tamba was eventually caught, sold, and enslaved. But he later organized a revolt among the captives on the ship that resulted in his death and the death of the other captives. Africans took many approaches to the dehumanizing conditions they faced. Unfortunately, another common counter to the slavers were for the Africans to commit suicide so they would not have to face the hard life ahead of them. According to an account from the son of Naimbanna, an 18th century ruler in Sierra Leone “It is common for them to cut their own throats, or otherwise destroy themselves. He is persuaded, he has known above an hundred commit suicide before they could be got to the ships” (p.