Diogenes articles from September 1997

Diogenes archives from September 1997

Daily life in western Africa during the era of the "slave route."(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... The slave route from Africa to the Americas is as old as the contact between Europe and the New World itself, and the slave route across the Sahara is older still. Hence to describe the lives of ordinary people in western Africa during the era of...

Interlude: 'Bullwhip Days.' (excerpts from 'Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember' edited by James Mellon)(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... The slaves are put in stalls like the pens they use for cattle -- a man and his wife with a child on each arm. And there's a curtain, sometimes just a sheet over the front of the stall, so the bidders can't see the "stock" too soon. The...

The slave trade and development.(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... When Captain Binger traveled the Niger bend between 1887 and 1889, he saw numerous villages that had been drained of their lifeblood or left in ruins by violent conflicts that had left their mark in the form of fortifications.(1) Above all he was...

Trans-Saharan exchange and the black slave trade.(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... The UNESCO research projects focusing on The Silk Routes and The Slave Routes were launched at just the right time to remind us that globalization is not a novel dimension of the history of humanity. Not only am I among those who analyze...

European slave trading in the eighteenth century.(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... Silences and Guilt The history of the African slave trade, despite its importance and role in world development, was not scientifically studied until 1930, and even since then few books and papers have been devoted to the subject.(1)...

Africa's understanding of the slave trade: oral accounts.(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... Antao Goncalves, a Portuguese explorer, began the slave trade m 1445 with the first purchase of slaves on the African coast: "nine Blacks and some gold powder in exchange for European merchandises."(1) Portuguese sailors continued this trade...

Interlude: 'Bullwhip Days.' (excerpts from 'Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember' edited by James Mellon)(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... Marster neber 'low he slaves to go to chu'ch. Dey hab big holes out in de fiel's dey git down in and pray. Dey done dat way `cause de white folks didn' want `em to pray. Dey uster pray for freedom. I dunno how dey larn to pray, `cause dey warn't...

The European conscience and the black slave trade: an ambiguous protest.(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, change was fast and furious: the exploration of coastal Africa by the Portuguese, the exploration of the West Indies by the Spanish, the extermination of the island Indians, the importation of...

Interlude: slavery and "Americanness." (excerpt from 'Playing in the Dark')(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... For some time now I have been thinking about the validity or vulnerability of a certain set of assumptions conventionally accepted among literary historians and critics and circulated as "knowledge." This knowledge holds that traditional,...

The manumission of slaves in Brazil in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... Freedom was, quite naturally, a dream cherished by every Brazilian slave. The desire for manumission -- a more reliable route to freedom than the path of flight or revolt -- was based on the experiences of other slaves in Brazil, a country open...

Interlude: la lune de Goree. (poem) (The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... La lune Qui se leve Sur l'ile de Goree(1) C'est la meme lune qui sur tout le monde se leve Mais la lune de Goree A une couleur profonde Qui n'existe pas du tout Dans d'autres parts du monde C'est la...

On Congo cults of Bantu origin in Cuba.(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... Black Africans who were brought to Cuba as slaves represented a variety of origins and belonged to linguistic groups that were as divergent as their cultural backgrounds. A huge majority, however, originated in the Congo basin. The last...

Our third root: on African presence in American populations.(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... The recognition of Africa's contribution to American culture involves accepting an inheritance that is both part of the national heritage and part of the identity and cultural profile of each of our societies. By encouraging its complete...

Resistance and struggles. (slave rebellions)(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... For three decades, studies of the African slave trade and the system of slavery have proliferated. Conferences have been held one after another: in Copenhagen (1974), New York (1978), Port-au-Prince (1978), Washington, Harvard University (1979),...

Interlude: "life in the woods." (excerpt from 'Biography of a Runaway Slave' by Miguel Barnet)(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... I have never forgotten the first time I tried to run away. That time I failed and spent a number of years enslaved by the fear they would put the shackles on me again. But I had the spirit of a cimarron in me, and it didn't go away. I kept quiet...

Pushkin between Russia and Africa. (Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin)(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... Born in 1799 in Moscow, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin -- who has been called the "founder of poetic and literary language in Russian" (Belinski, Turgenev), "the first of the Russians" (Dostoyevski), "the first Russian artist-poet" (Belinski),...

Interlude: 'Last Night on Earth.' (excerpt from 'Derniere nuit sur la terre')(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... Je crois que meme ceux d'entre nous qui n'ont aucune idee de ce qu'etait l'estrade de la vente aux esclaves peuvent toujours en eprouver la sensation, comme si son souvenir nous etait transmis par le lait de notre mere. Cette sensation...

Interlude: 'Bullwhip Days.' (excerpts from 'Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember' edited by James Mellon)(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)
September 22, 1997... De nigger used to sing to nearly everything he did. Hit wuz jes'de way he 'spressed his feelin's, an' hit made him relieved. If he wuz happy, hit made him happier; if he wuz sad, hit made him feel better. An' so, he jes' naturally sings his...

The music tree. (musical forms arising out of slave utterances)(The Routes and Traces of Slaves)(Illustration)
September 22, 1997... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]