[Saya]

Originally Posted by Renatus

Well you can at least figure out the region they were from based on the slavers themselves, since they at least kept records of where they bought them from. The slavers most people think about today, were no more than merchants transporting(highly unethical) products from the supplier to where they were in demand, middle men.

Yeah, it was just a pleasant sea journey, yeah?

And no, its not that easy. Most names weren't recorded and when they got to North America they were given new names anyway, its extremely difficult to trace from what ship your ancestor came from, and from then you probably wouldn't know what their African name was.

The African slave trade like the numerous slave trades throughout the ages, was built on capturing enemies during wars, and exporting them to provide further funding for the war effort. Wars are built on the loot acquired during them. Modern wars If anything, are a lot less profitable than they used to be, and that's saying something since our modern wars are worth billions.

Africa isn't a monolith, its a huge continent with tons of different ethnicities and cultures. Slavery to many Africans wasn't slavery as it was in the states, you weren't expected to be a slave for the rest of your life and it had no basis on the colour of your skin. Slavery in America was based on race, to the point where as soon as slavery was banned, vagrancy laws meant that many black people quickly became imprisoned and their labour controlled by prison work. I doubt the Africans who sold Africans into slavery knew what would become of them and their descendants, plus Africa was then largely colonized by European powers who took what they wanted anyway, gosh darn the customs.

That combined with the poor record keeping of the African peoples(I think they kept an oral history), meant that, I doubt families in Africa today have any idea if any of their ancestors were exported as slaves.

Many African cultures did indeed have a writing system, and for a very long time. The more you know!

Btw with that in mind, if anyone passes through Milwaukee and wants to hear more about that, look up the black Holocaust museum here, founded by a man who survived his own lynching(his friends didn't unfortunately), back when lynchings were a thing.

From what I hear in the news, lynching is still a thing.