Long Term Impacts of African Slave Trade on Current African Development

1. Long Term Impacts of African Slave Trade on Current African Development Envs 342

2. Acknowledgements This power point borrows from work performed by: • Henry Lewis Gates, Harvard University • Linda Heywood & John Thornton, Boston University • Edward Miguel, University of California – Berkeley • Nathan Nunn, University of British Columbia and now at Harvard University

3. Unfortunate Truth Slave Trade involved highly sophisticated Global business Slaves themselves were relegated to the role of a type of currency both inside and outside of Africa Bostonian, 2011

4. http://www.bu.edu/afam/faculty/linda-heywood/

5. John K, Thornton

6. Henry Lewis Gates Alphonse FletcherUniversity Professor at Harvard University, where he is director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Selected Books Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.; McKay, Nellie Y (1996). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (First ed.). W. W. Norton. ISBN0393040011.  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (1997). Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (First ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN0679457135.  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (1999). Wonders of the African World (First ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN0375402357.  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (2000). The African American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century (First ed.). New York: Free Press. ISBN0684864142.  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (2003). The trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's first Black poet and her encounters with the founding fathers. New York: Basic Civitas Books. ISBN0465027296.  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (2007). Finding Oprah's Roots: Finding Your Own (First ed.). New York: Crown. ISBN9780307382382.  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past (Crown, 2009) Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary Americans Reclaimed Their Pasts (New York University Press, 2010) Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Tradition and the Black Atlantic: Critical Theory in the African Diaspora (Basic Civitas Books, 2010)

7. Slave Trade as Global Business Citing Heywood’s and Thornton’s research Gates states that … “90% of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African Elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred”Gates 2010 NY Times

8. The Marine Model • Popular culture clings to…”the marine model – Europeans landing on shores and grabbing people”. Thornton, 2011 • … “it is increasingly indisputable that the truth is complex… Slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.” Gates, 2010

9. Shortened version of this video: https://wwumediaweb.wwu.edu/patrickwwu.edu/Envs_342_-_Impact_of_Slave_Trade_on_Africa_-_20190130_115404_11.html or Click Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud2tEfp6t3A

10. Modern Consequences

11. Edward Miguel is Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics in the Department of Economics at University of California, Berkeley and director of the Center of Evaluation for Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 2000. Ted's main research focus is African economic development, including work on the economic causes and consequences of violence; the impact of ethnic divisions on local collective action; and interactions between health, education, and productivity for the poor. He has conducted field work in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and India. Africa’s Turn by Edward Miguel In Africa’s Turn? Miguel tracks a decade of comparably hopeful economic trends throughout sub-Saharan Africa and suggests that we may be seeing a turnaround.

13. Atlantic Focus

14. Indian Ocean Focus

17. Correction Early 1800s

23. The Historical Origins of Africa’s Underdevelopment Nathan Nunn8 December 2007 PrintEmailCommentRepublish Slavery, according to historical accounts, played an important role in Africa’s underdevelopment. It fostered ethnic fractionalisation and undermined effective states. The largest numbers of slaves were taken from areas that were the most underdeveloped politically at the end of the 19th century and are the most ethnically fragmented today. Recent research suggests that without the slave trades, 72% of Africa’s income gap with the rest of the world would not exist today. Nathan NunnProfessor of Economics at Harvard University http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/779

26. Note the country leading this list

28. The Geographic Consequences • Translating the historical data on enslavement into modern patterns of development

29. Higher exposure to past Slave Exports Lower GDP per capita 1998

30. Higher exposure to past Slave Exports Lower GDP per capita growth 1960-2000

36. Did Geography also play into this? • The more rugged and isolated a region • The less it participated in slave trade The analysis focuses on the historic interaction between ruggedness and Africa’s slave trades. Although rugged terrain hinders trade and most productive activities, negatively affecting income globally, rugged terrain within Africa afforded protection to those being raided during the slave trades. RUGGEDNESS: THE BLESSING OF BAD GEOGRAPHY IN AFRICA Nathan Nunn and Diego Puga, 2012. Review of Economics and Statistics. 94(1) 20-36.

37. Conclusions • Slave trade was a global enterprise with plenty of blame to go around to all parties • Precolonial Africa was a much more sophisticate society then is popularly understood • Those regions/countries that were hardest hit by slaving appear to lag the most in modern development • Geography dictated the location of slave trade.

38. Results summed up in two numbers • According to Nunn (2008)  if the slave trades had not occurred, then 72% of the average income gap between Africa and the rest of the world would not exist today, and 99% of the income gap between Africa and the rest of the underdeveloped world would not exist.

39. What if in the US? • In 1863 Gen. Grant noted that the former Davis Plantations south of Vicksburg, MI became sucessfully self-operating and sustaining upon the fleeing of the southern overseers. Eventually these plantations were bought from the Davis family and became profitably run by the former black slaves – until the environment -- flooding ended the use of the land.

40. Davis Landing today Isaiah Thornton MontgomeryManaged the former Davis family plantation after the Civil War with his farther Benjamin

41. What Next – What Will Global Warming do to Africa?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jemGxRn0Ea8&index=16&list=PLsRNoUx8w3rMMpfzZjFJgj9GJypZR0mL1

42. Prof. Nunn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytzr1LbtByM