WEST, NATURAL RESOURCES AND POPULATION CONTROL POLICIES IN AFRICA IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, THE

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2005 by Martin, Guy

From the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 19th century, millions of Africans were forcibly uprooted from the continent and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean, and to North, Central and South America. The lower estimates vary between 11.8 and 15.4 million slaves exported during this period.7 A higher and more realistic estimate is derived by the West African historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo from various French sources (including Frossart and Monens): "One may safely conclude that 100 million men and women have been uprooted from Africa since the 15th century, 50 million being an absolute minimum."8 Assuming (following Frossart) that for each African slave exported, five died in the process of capture, travel to the coast, awaiting embarkation, and transportation, the total death toll directly resulting from slavery may be estimated at about 500 million. This explains the massive de-population of the African continent observed by Walter Rodney, who showed that while the population of Africa was practically stagnant between 1650 and 1900 (increasing from 100 to only 120 million), that of Europe increased from 103 to 423 million, and that of Asia from 257 to 857 million during the same period.9 Inikori has argued that there would have been "112 million additional population in sub-Saharan Africa had there been no export slave trade."10 Zeleza shows that because of the slave trade, Africa's population declined or stagnated between 1750 and 1850. According to him, Africa's share of the world population declined from 13 per cent in 1750 to 11% in 1800 and 8% in 1900." Furthermore, from the 15th until the early 19th century, the mortality rate among the slave population of African origin in the Americas remained as high as 40 per cent.12 We are also reminded that between the beginning and the middle of the 16th century, the mortality rate among the indigenous Indian population of the Americas stood at 90 per cent, resulting in a population loss of some 70 million in the space of a mere half-century!13

In the era of imperialism, Kurtz' infamous injunction "Exterminate all the brutes!" in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness became the rallying cry of the murderous Europeans travelers, adventurers, explorers and soldiers.14 According to Herman Merrivale, the main reason for the "waste of human life" in the colonies has to do with the fact that "civilization" is represented by "the trader, the backwoodsman, the pirate, the bushranger," in other words by whites who can do anything they like with no risk of criticism or control.15 The "liberal" British settlers on a killing and burning spree of African people and villages in the Eastern Cape of South Africa in 1851-53 carried with them flags with a single word embroidered on them: "Extermination."16 Moana Jackson makes the point succinctly:

For hundreds of years, the states of Europe developed a culture which was based on genocide and dispossession of people who lived beyond Europe. They developed that culture before capitalism was invented as an economic theory. They invented it before socialism was concocted as a theory. Its current expression, the resurrect ideology of neo-liberalism, is simply the latest manifestation of the centuries-old culture of indigenous dispossession.17