Henry Louis Gates of the Beer Summit Fame Exposes Myths about the African Slave Trade

His new book must be really controversial and he will sure be made into an enemy in the "blacks need reparations" camp.

Gates argues that the role Africans played was “considerable” and included the very kingdoms in western and central Africa that are praised as examples of Africa’s historical greatness every February during “Black History Month” celebrations.

How did this African involvement in the slave trade work?

Gates references the historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University — who estimate that 90 percent of the slaves shipped to the New World were captured and enslaved by Africans before being sold to European traders and commercial agents.

In essence, the slave trade would have been impossible on the scale it occurred without African business partners.

I read about this when I read the book Bury the Chains. Most of the white slave traders had no way of getting into the African interior without either being killed or catching a fatal disease. So they relied on their partners in West Africa. Many of those West African chiefs became fabulously wealthy due to enslaving their own fellow Africans.