As uninterested as I usually am about all things African, or cultural for that matter, this picture changed my mind. When I look at this picture, the one thing that stirs inside me is surprisingly not the fact that there are women who are being enslaved(in this case by Portuguese). Sure this picture is a great example of the inhumanity of the Transatlantic Slave trade, especially to women, and also showing no visible mercy to children, as these women are obviously carrying babies on their backs. However, we already know that the slave trade was a brutal business. We obviously have seen the horrific pictures of slaves stuffed inside of a ship. But what we don’t ever contemplate is this theory that “Europeans and other slave trading intruders to pre-colonial Africa saw Africans as being primitive and without order or intellect”, yet we hear it all the time. Of course, judging by the evidence they provided (pictures, literature, and the like) of their encounters with various African natives (for lack of better terminology at the moment), the theory is valid. But what strikes me about this picture is that they’re making Africans do something they would normally do, minus the chains and whips and guns. They’re gathering to provide in a way they know how. However, instead of gathering to provide for their family, the Portuguese are using the Africans to gather THEIR OWN resources to provide for the enslavers. This, to me, is evidence that these people obviously knew that there was potential in the African society and that they were well capable of surviving where they were, or they would not have had them gathering goods as they are in this picture. I cannot let go of the idea (or argument) that maybe the Enslavers were not so ignorant of the potential of the African pre-colonial society after all. Maybe my point makes no sense, and I may be missing some important fact here, but it truly strikes the question in me, if they had not been previously performing this gathering –survival activity, the Portuguese would not know to force them to continue it (and they obviously did), so what is it about the African way of life they can't seem to accept? They obviously trust the method enough to benefit from it.
