Slavery and Slave Trade Never Came to an End but Morphed into Acceptable Sophistries of Modernity: A Hindsight Examination of the Historicity of Ancient Africa-Europe Relations to Understand the Present and Projecting the Future

Slavery and Slave Trade Never Came to an End but Morphed into Acceptable Sophistries of Modernity: A Hindsight Examination of the Historicity of Ancient Africa-Europe Relations to Understand the Present and Projecting the Future

James H. Mundende

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.8090171

Received: 25 September 2024; Accepted: 30 September 2024; Published: 11 October 2024

ABSTRACT

Although modernity is praiseworthy for it has brought a plethora of desirables that surely transformed humanity in a big way, socially, religiously, economically and so on, on issues of slavery and slave trade there is nothing praiseworthy. The desirability of modernization cannot be wholly and gleefully accepted without a coordinated and research-backed ridicule if the issue of the subtlety continuance of slavery is considered. Contextually, the breaking point between ancient era and contemporary is seemingly in theory as the orthopraxis of human behavior proving otherwise; there was no break but continuity of these vices which intransigently took up the shape of each historical contexts from past into present and future so that they suit timeous social contexts. This article argues that slavery and slave trade did not end but morphed into socially, economically and politically contextualized desirables of each historical period overtime, notwithstanding the pretentious and fruitless efforts taken to end all these such as enactment of laws and public ridicules by the former perpetrator-countries. Slavery and slave trade were made to lurk deeply into the contemporary social discourses which are within the cocoons and sophistries of modernity but to the detriment of the poverty-stricken folks. The major point worth-noting is that in the 21^st century, slavery and slave trade are insidiously present and they are found in the country to country diplomatic relations as well as between employer-employee engagements. This article also argues and calls it, modernized slave trade and slavery since they are imbued with the current contexts within the enclaves of socio-economic and political influences. The future looks gloomy as slavery is no longer open as it was in the 15^th century; now it has been rebranded into acceptable, perfidious and subtle ways of living.

Key words/terms: Slavery, Slave trade, Modernity, Sophistries, Historicity

INTRODUCTION

After a retrogressive analysis of ancient times with an intense focus on the varying historical events attached to each of the periods, this article argues that approximately 7 centuries ago, the world underwent through historical events which shaped the contemporary social and political economies of the people across the globe (Mundende 2020). The history of European supremacy and innovativeness ahead of other races had left an indelible mark in the conscience of humanity but the occurrence of slave trade and slavery weighed down all the desirable and describable dividends of civilization since these two vices presented Europeans as worse-off as man-to-man attacks are in themselves an expression of human barbarism and a sociology of nonhumans. For various motives, European monarchies found it viable to engage into the business of buying humans for easy labor from the African kings whom they duped along the way for there was no proper transactional procedures followed if modern day trading fundamentals, standardizations and conditions are to be considered. Large number of the African population, over 20 to 40 million (Manning 2013), went into the American plantations and the other fraction went straight to Western Europe; to the societies of the British, French, the Portuguese, Belgians, Italians and the Spanish. Also, there is an unknown figure for those who died along the Atlantic Ocean due to hunger, stress and fatigue and also those who succumbed to slave hunt-related wars. After some centuries, Europeans pretended to be realizing some natural fundamentals of humanity as they worked on the modalities to evolve slavery and slave trade into other forms, more appealing methods of exploitation. The evolution of slave trade has been largely and mistakenly presented as an end of it by a host of Eurocentric historians and anthropologists. This paper totally disagrees with those scholars who concur and believe in such a skewed discourse that there was an end of slavery and slave trade out of Europe’s realization of the key tenets of humanity because my examination of the World History and a closer assessment of social and political economies from 17^th, 18^th, 19^th, 20^th and the 21^st centuries proves otherwise. Some Afrocentric historians, Lumumba (2017); Mundende (2020); Mhango (2018) lucubrate that by then, Europe’s Caribbean Plantation Economy was no longer profitable, so there was need for the then, the world’s largest colonial empire (British empire) to formulate another workable method of exploitation meaning that the morphism of these vices had nothing to do with goodwill or beneficence on the part of the perpetrators, Europeans. This paper strongly argues that the so-called end of slave trade was more of finding a new profitable method to tackle challenges of political economy that had come with Europe’s historical change which was cyclical. Slave trade and slavery are in this paper argued to be among the oldest vices that have been bedeviling humans across the world and they were/are refusing to end as they periodically underwent/undergo through some incubatory stages of metamorphosis culminated into subtle, insidious and blatant forms. This article proffers that, one of the major and inherent impacts of these two is their ability to metamorphize and remain saliently and silently endemic and an albatross upon human actions and relations.  Modernity has always been argued to have been a new realization that came as a mixed package of ripple effects on the socio-political economies. Thus, modernity entails gradual transitioning from sedentary communalism into industrial capitalism beginning in Europe, spreading to Americas, Asia and lastly Africa; it had reached Africa by brutal means of colonization. In the context of this paper, the argument is that, modernization of things (MoT) has had an evolutionary impact on slavery and slave trade for the two disappeared from the pubic in terms of their usage but their aims and impacts are still in continuity despite the fact that they are now ancient. In other words, there was modernization of oppression the same way other facets of the society had transitioned. The two had picked up new forms which hid the brutal and exploitative aspect of them.  Thus, the central argument of this article, that modernity did not come to end slavery and slave trade as purported by the colonial historiography which derived influence from European hagiographers guising as historians whose claim to fame was that of a deliberate skewing of African facts to saintly put Europe ahead and casting the ‘third world’ regions far behind in all respects. This article contends that modernization of the European economy took away slave trade and slavery from common languages and from the then current discourse of the day but it left their intentional sufferings to continue in other forms.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The contemporary Europe-Africa relations still reflect the ancient interactions of the two which were very much complex and negative in all objective assessments as such interactions were characterized by glaring cases of manipulation courtesy of Slavery and Slave trade. Mhango (2018) postulates that the impacts of the aforementioned vices have been shaping the social, economic and political dynamics in many African countries, organizations, families or individuals. These two still affect the poor folks in struggling economies largely in Africa; the former slave suppliers. The reviewed literature and the modern discourses seem to have a concurrence on the fact that Slave trade and Slavery ended back in 1830s following British’s enactment of Antislavery Act. But evidently, there is a glaring and gnawing social problem which is that of human exploitation commonly found both at micro and macro levels; within households, at workplaces and also globally that is, between the First and Third worlds. The continuity of human exploitation remains a gnawing vice which is according to this article, argued to be an inherent vestige of ancient Slave trade and Slavery. Exploitation and inferiority complexities of the African people tend to be the challenges of the 21^st century society and yet their root causes are lurking and obscured by the sophistries of modernity. Slavery relics are carefully and reasonably camouflaged so that common men and women cannot at least get a full glimpse of them. It is with validity to embrace Ian Morris’ Cycle of History theory which is of the emphasis that any social change is cyclical in spontaneous repetition. Repeatedly, Slave trade or Slavery were in cyclical repetition under the mist of unavoidable guises of modernization like any other human aspects since 1830s.  It is against this background that this research was undertaken to unpack the lasting and subtle impacts of Slavery and Slave trade on modern societies which are still common even though there are claims and protestations to the contrary. The study also projects the future using rigorous analysis courtesy of historical tracking of past events since the time of Slavery up to date.

Research Objectives

1. To identify and examine the continuities of Slavery and Slave trade during colonial era.
2. To research on the post-colonial sophistries of modernity that had influenced the morphism of Slavery and Slave Trade.
3. To project the future in the technoscientific world and to proffer recommendations in order to delink the current dynamics from the negative past for a better future.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Economic historians who fall under the category of Afrocentrism notably, Rwodzi (2018); Mundende (2024a); Mhango (2018) concurred as they theorize that the need to increase sugar production in the Caribbean America fueled slave trade as the Africans proved to be more resistant to harsh tropical climates and native diseases of the so-called ‘the new world’.  And the other important motive was that the Black Africans were hard workers and less retaliatory than the Indians whom the British had tried to enslave prior to the beginning of 15^th century. However, their real target and lurking issue was that of a preparatory work or creation of an infrastructure needed for an economic take-off or transition from one political economy into another, (CommunalismàSlaveryàFeudalismàCapitalism) as Marx and Engels (1840) sunctitly and correctly postulates; slavery came to create an infrastructure for the successive economic episodes for example feudalism, which were later followed arguably by the industrialized-ridden capitalism. There is a growing acknowledgement by Pro-Africa scholarship that, Africans themselves practiced internal slavery(absorption) but not slave trade. And Afrocentric scholars are so quick to justify such by propagating the view that it was slavery with a ‘human face’ which means that during such era, people were in a nation-building mode therefore some weaker states or even stateless individuals were to be forcefully absorbed for the sake of identity acquisition because people needed to belong to a certain group. But Transatlantic slave trade came and ruined Africanism in many ways (Manning 2013), it had left a deep scar and permanent inferiorities in the conscience of African humanity (Mundende 2024), and such relics are today attached to the issues of the societies; religion, economy, media, culture and politics.

 It was Britain ahead of other powers that quickly observed that there was no need to continue relying on slave labor rather than depending on motivated labor and machinery courtesy of its famous industrialization accompanied by the exploits of enlightenment and some coordinated inventions. But other powers; Portugal, France and the Kingdom of Netherlands wanted slavery and slave trade to persist because they were too backward as their economies still wanted cheap labor, this was the reason why there was Great Trek in South Africa upon the Anglicization of laws and institutions in the then Cape of the Good Hope, it was so because the Boers felt reduced when equated with the people whom they regarded as sub-humans and in the words of Marxism theory, as ‘infrastructures that bear the superstructure of the societies’.  Great Trek in South Africa reflected the fact that there were some scores in the White Community in Europe and across the world who were appalled by the proposed discontinuation of slavery and slave trade.

The argument is that, since slavery was at the base of the First World’s development; the infrastructure of its economic breakthrough according to Neo-Marxist theorists  under the influence of Leninist-Revisionism Philosophy such as Nhemachena (2023), it was unreasonable for them to wholly discard it but integrated it into the then modern schemes of doing things because Britain, the chief architect of slave trade and the so-called Antislavery Organizations devised a way of surviving after officially or publicly, and of course pretentiously, dropped it meaning that the end of it was not revolutionary but evolutionary. For the former (revolutionary) entails structural deformation that could have happened which did not take place in any way and instead the latter (evolutionary) happened as the systems that were pro-slavery and slave trade never changed but recalibrated and reconfigured to meet the new sensibilities from social contexts at hand. The Western powers that were active in slave trade were those that worked on the modalities to end it (Mundende 2020), but the truth of the matter is that they did not end it, that is if it really ended for the good of the Africans; the point is that, slave trade was now costly and economically imprudent. Mundende (2024); Mhanda (2011); Mhango (2018) note that capitalism in the European powers made them acquire huge capital to advance to machinery-backed productivity overtime courtesy of direct resources from the global south. And this paper argues that the same is visibly in existence in this 21^st century but the only difference is that there are changes in the way such trade is taking place and most importantly, the socio-political contexts of the 21^st century have provided some thick veneer to camouflage these vices so that everything of them looks indescribably good and desirable in the eyes of common men and women. Human exploitation is no longer recorded as exploitation blankly because it is by our newspapers, books and all other forms of the media put in a lighter and much more acceptable manner; it is veneered thickly as employment with nice sophistries such as wages, salaries, fringe benefits among other enticements. Thus, this paper is of the understanding that slave trade and slavery did not end but the two had morphed and slithered into the domains of acceptable sophistries of modernity.

Theoretical Framework, Cycle of History Model

Morris (2014) propounded a theory which in essence demonstrates that human beliefs and methods of survival change in a much more predictable, repetitive and obvious cycles. Ian Morris theory also argues that the cycles of human life are characterized by both conflicts and desirables as his model derives more from old philosophies such as the 19^th century’s Dialectical Materialism of Hegelian’s thesis, antithesis and synthesis. These three propositions seem to be more concisely understandable if one chooses to view them as contrasting and always countervailing one another in a linear progression of time. The theory also emphasized that ideas and methods of social development undergo three phases of growth, decline and renewal; all these are occurring intermittently from one generation to the other through the unidirectional or multidirectional courses seemingly programmed or predetermined. Decisions, relations and overlapping transformative events are shaped by human choices and are predetermined and unavoidable (Overy, 2020). From Symbolic Interaction theory, Bright (2021) echoes similar sentiments by demonstrating that social elements of the past did not change in essence but they assume new frameworks of any political economy of each historical period. In support of the cyclical change philosophy of social events, post-modernists and functionalists hold the view that any change whether a repeat of once disappeared one or a spontaneous beginning of a new phenomenon is necessary for it fosters social stability which is very much promotive to the assumption of an agreed value consensus. And an end product of it is unity in diversity and in vacillatory transit meaning that people may agree to let their varied differences find common points of convergence for the sake of attaining supposed or presumed multidirectional benefits for all. Such is very desirable for peace and coexistence but not durable as the Cycle of History Theory outlines that nothing of human aspect can surpass cycles of change.

 Slavery and Slave trade are among the oldest vices whose impacts have percolated the social dynamics of the post-industrial world. Cyclical theory of history has been selected among others to provide a relevant theoretical backing to this study as its focus on cyclical and predictable progression of societies makes it easier for the researcher to situate his objectives within its confines. Arguing from the viewpoint of this theory, relations among nations or people are predictable and change is common and very much expected but the more things change, the more they remain the same. Thus, cyclical repetition.  The idea of slavery and the trading using humans as commodities came spontaneously and grew exponentially with time until it assumed its zenith and this was the first cycle which Ian Morris (2014) puts as growth cycle. It was followed by declining stage and contextually, that was in the 1830s when there was an enactment of Antislavery laws. Decline preceded renewal and that was the stage when these vices assumed new discourses which were formulated to facilitate the renewal cycle. Arguably, there was no end of slavery and slave trade but renewal that aligned to modernization.

Exploring Data Through Integrated Methodology

 This article was written after a synchronization of the varying data (from both ancient and modern sources) gathered from both secondary and primary sources with a hindsight analysis. In terms of research philosophy, the researcher used Pragmatism Paradigm which emphasizes the merging of quantitative and qualitative methods when it comes to the use of data collection tools as well as sampling methods. That process was underpinned by sequential exploratory design where the quantitative data collection preceded the qualitative one so that the issues that came up during the first phase had to be clarified, which were the extreme issues and outliers that characterized numeric data. Thus, ensuring data reliability and validity.  Pragmatism as a research philosophy was used because it enabled the researcher to explore more into the key issues as it is a ‘middle of the road’ approach which acknowledges the tenets of Social Constructionist and those of Positivism Research Paradigm. In modern research terminology, according to Madondo (2020), Pragmatism Philosophy is understood as, ‘so long it is working’, which means it is utilitarian in nature with an epistemological grounding in the idea of summoning any research tool that enables the attainment of the desirable research outcome. Slave trade and slavery are two historical events which according to this paper morphed into other forms which are appealing to the contemporary communities, so embarking on such a diverse research, required a robust approach laden with diverse techniques for the attainment of relevant history and to have a comprehensive inquiry which is an enabler of historiographical objectivity. The study was relevant because slavery and slave trade are now ancient and seemingly obsolete given their time of occurrence but their impacts are still lingering upon humanity in all facets of social and the political economies globally.

In terms of sample size; for qualitative data, a saturation point was the determinant but expert purposive sampling was used for a group of economists, historians, lecturers and government officials as they were drawn into the study to air out their knowledge pertaining to the study objectives. Their insights were relevantly needed for data analysis. Cochrane equation was also used to determine a sample size for quantitative research that was conducted for the population of this type of study had some variables that are known by a large number of people. Lastly, data collection, document analysis and stenographic work were done in a space of 5 months. Other members of the society were reached through the media sites such as Email, WhatsApp and random dialing among other ICT tools. As usual, the researcher maintained all ethical considerations such as honesty, confidentiality, informed consent, debriefing, bracketing (value-neutrality) among others. All these ethical issues were maintained in order to make this article ethically reliable and credible.

An Assessment of the Continuities of the Slavery/Slave Trade in Colonial era

The major point is that slave trade and slavery did not end but what happened was just a pronouncement of the intension to end them with no tangible gains despite protestations to the contrary from Eurocentric and romanticists who always view Europe in a positive light and casting mist on its negatives. European society has mastered the art of using rhetoric language, the one once described by the veteran Greek Philosopher, Plato (429-347 BCE), as a political language of deceitful intension without a tangible result of its expectations. Therefore, this article has built a strong argument that rhetoric narratives have been surrounding issues pertaining to slave trade and exploitation of the black man and such is among the continuities of the ancient past which have been camouflaged in different guises.  History has it that, the beginning of 19^th century after the French Revolution (FR) of 1789 to 1799, considerations to end slave trade took the central orbit in some government debates and deliberations in Europe (Wilson 2020). In that regard, the ideas of the FR are to be credited for the paradigm shift of thought towards human freedom across the world including the slave zones such as the Jamaican hills, Panama, Bolivia, Chile, Honduras, Guatemalan region, Brazil, Argentina among others. Mundende (2023); Lumumba (2021) concur in similitude that slave trade continued or even increased from around 1800s following British promulgation of its end officially in 1807. Rebecca Shamway (2015)’s account holds the view that, the more they castigated slave trade, the more it increased its pace meaning that they were not genuine in their belief and approach. The pronouncement sounded good but the intention and action were contrary to it. From Shumway’s historical article among others, I observed that, slave trade in both theory and practice took so long to evolve into another form of exploitation because the European countries were at different stages of economic development; the advanced economies were quick to think of remodeling it but guising as ending it because it had benefitted them while underdeveloped ones such as Portugal, Spain and France continued to buy slaves as argued in some sections herein.  The theory of Pan-Africanism avers that Africans built Europe through slave trade and colonization while Mhango (2018)’s book emphasizes similar arguments chronicling that the modernization of Europe found its roots in Africa, and such is an indisputable truth among historians. But the point to note is that; the nature, rate and level of African contribution to the building of Europe was different from country to country so if ending slave trade was inspired by what I can refer to as the “near-saturation point of development”, then some other nations had the right to protest against British’s early pronouncements to end it. Historical events of post 1807, the landmark year in the narratives of slavery and slave trade, show that other European powers did not protest plainly but they seek some underground methods to continue harvesting humans from Africa. For an economy once built on slave labor, it was not easy to resort to civil methods for its sustenance. Thus, this paper is of the view that, the reason for the continuance in slavery even post 1807 was that, other powers had no new economic methodologies that would easily replace slave trade to maintain similar profit margins they used to yield, a natural advantage according to their intensions and modus operandi. Such new methods needed to be tested and remodeled for perfection therefore, slavery had to hiddenly run on since the remodeling and perfection took time to be socially engrooved and accepted. The point in the foregoing is that, Britain was the leading nation in the race to pretentiously end slave trade simply because she was the one that reached the saturation point of development first ahead of others and such variation militated against the end of slave trade which could have been possibly achieved, thus from a generally acceptable viewpoint. But a closer scrutiny into historical events unfolded thereafter from 1800s promulgations, reveals that slave trade did not end but only shielded by modern sophistries and discourses that carefully put it in rhetoric expressions, it persisted under other guises. Its continuity is still inherent upon various economies but lurking into the acceptable and seemingly socio-economic virtues of each century.

The major irony is that, Britain, one of the powers in Europe that regarded themselves as the paragon of democracy, was at the forefront in denouncing slave trade and slavery in the early years of the 19^th century, 1800 to 1850s, yet it was the one that had the largest number of colonies in the world practicing forced labor and other unjust activities for nearly a century (Mlambo 2014). This gives an impression that ending slave trade and slavery was just a matter of ushering in new forms of exploitation but the generalization of the matter is that, there was no better in replacing slave trade with colonization which was equally the same, only that the latter localized its impacts and externalized the benefits as the former took both humanity and resources away. The dramatization of it is that of a hunter killing animals in the forests; the impacts are localized in that particular forests in terms quantity reduction of his target and the meat is taken and enjoyed elsewhere beyond the forests.   In many areas of the colonized world, severe brutalities were recorded in many historical accounts of historians such as that of Mundende (2020) as forced labor, land grabbing, cultural bastardization and abuse of property rights were critical components of the colonial characterization and the question that forms my argument is, with all these colonial vices, did slave trade end or it morphed into another method of human exploitation?  The end of slave trade was not an end in the classic sense of understanding the meaning of the word ‘end’, but it was just an evolution of it and it shifted from the American plantations to African communities; instead of shipping people across the oceans the same labor was freely utilized for productivity in the farms and mines for the same people who were once slave masters now morphed into colonizers. The transition from slave trade to legitimate trade was just a figment of imagination, it never happened in that light but Eurocentric historians romanticized it so that it meaningfully gained justification and sanitization which were desperately needed. It is fact that there was a transition in terms of geography/locations which means that the exploitation shifted from the American plantations to African soils, thus a change, unlike buying slaves from local chiefs, there was now forced labor through imposition of taxes and monetization of the once barter trade economy, thus a change in the methods and locations and not the intension and outcome. This lucidly shows that the intension was the same because, the exploitation was of the same people and their culture, by the same people and for the same purpose, so, there was no discontinuity after the pronouncements and an enactment of laws in 1830s as well as public excoriations throughout Europe.

As this article argues, to say there was transition or an end of slavery/slave trade is among the rhetoric attempts to confuse the world especially the native inhabitants of the so-called the third world by the Western governments and their cohorts, otherwise the more convincing and comfortable argument is that there was an evolutionary process or remodeling of slave trade since exploitation continued. Morris (2014)’s submissions have some reasonable accounts which exposes British’s hypocritical behavior in relation to the purportedly promulgations made to end slavery. British’s Queen Elizabeth the 1^st during her long rule from 1558 to 1603 got interested in slave trade to an extent of providing a ship named ‘Jesus’ to a slave master John Hawkins in around mid-17^th century (Laming, 2021). The British monarchy by then looked like an incubator of liberalism and democratization of human society following the 1215AD’s Ratification of the Magna Carter Bill of Rights and subsequently the Bloodless Revolution of 1669, so, it was unexpectable to have such behavior that aided slave trade from a country that had a rich history in that particular regard. Further, despite all these strides that seemingly looked good, the Queen’s behavior had an irreducible impact which was also promotive to such human suffering in form of slavery (Mundende, 2020).

Also, the history of the Portuguese colonial empire represents a classic case of a power that survived in successful creation of slave ridden political economy as Tidy (1980) argues that Portugal, France and Netherlands were particular powers who by compulsion of contextual realism did not support an end of slavery/slave trade without having another exploitative method. In 1668, the Dutch East Indian Company imported shipload of slaves from Dahomey/Benin, this had made some historians to describe Cape Town as a slave-ridden economy (Leopold, 2022). Even France in West Africa and the Dutch republicans in South Africa have had their sheer survival in slave labor so an abrupt end of slavery was something that they could not accept without formulating another exploitative method which according to this article, they were to sharpen and modify the existing one; slave trade. In another glaring example of Europe’s subtle contradictory behavior on that matter under scrutiny extracted from historical literature, Prime minster Sa Da Bandeira of Portugal assumed office in 1836, three years after British Parliament passed into law an Antislavery Bill, followed the wind in Europe of denouncing slavery but for his Portuguese social and economic contexts, antislavery politics was not a good political capital that would make him an appealing politician. Ironically, during his term in office, Mozambique alone is said to have lost many people of the productive age bracket with a record of 25 000 men to Portugal annually (Tidy, 1980). It was like that because Mudenge (1984); Bhebe (1995); Nhemachena (2022a) have a concurrence that the Portuguese colonial empire relied on slavery which was a full characterization of its assimilation policy entrenched by the prazeros (Portuguese land owner in the colonized territory) in lower Zambezi, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome, Angola and so on.  So, the claimed ‘civilizing mission’ remained an attractive narrative yet in truth it was a knavery discourse throughout history as the abuse of the natives became an acceptable norm. Putting slavery to an end was not really ending it but it was a reformation or developing it into another form subtly; there is a difference between replacement and methodological destruction. Unfortunately, the latter did not happen as the former had an influence in the decision-making because they sought for it to be more human than nonhuman which is a clear characterization of slave trade and slavery.  The argument which is central in this context is that, replacement does not mean total destruction of the vice but it means a change of format, models and methodology which were used to acquire the desirables but the intension remained unattended. Because the coming in of colonization into the picture was a glaring reflection of the fact that the European powers had with them an intension of sustaining Black man’s exploitation in another form. They let the slave trade underwent into cyclical morphism to benefit themselves at the expense of the third world as what it was before. The more things change, the more they remain the same. In historiography, it is called cyclical historicity of the social aspects.

Multinational companies were part of the colonial project, in fact, colonialism was/is transnational in its own nature, form and design, so the two worked together during and after colonial rule and are still working together though the socio-economic terrain has changed. That synchronization of the two makes this paper postulates that slave trade and slavery have lurked into the Western inspired modernity introduced by the whites with a hidden agenda to continuously yield benefits from the blacks. In many fora and various scholars seem to be glorifying colonialism but the truth is that there was a continuance of the preceding event of the ancient times, slave trade. Some writers such as Mhango (2015); Rodney (1972) aver that slave trade ended and was replaced by the so-called legitimate trade, but the latter was more disastrous because of its covert nature, it was legitimate trade without any modicum of legitimacy in it. So, there was no change. The monetization of the economies in the world and industrialization took slavery into other forms in terms of the perceptions but the net effect of it was that of human suffering and with some serious hidden perturbations; meaning that there was no change, thus cyclical historicity of these vices. Such gave European capitalists an advantage over the Africans, so it is true that capitalism was a refined form of slavery as Marxist ideology depicts. Nhemachena (2023b: 5-12) does not mince his words as he postulates that colonial anthropologists implanted into the African mindset the idea of dumbing everything African in preference of the western values. The point is, slave trade bred inferiority complexities among the people of the African descend to an extent that they accepted and still accepting everything European because the ‘self-dumping’ syndrome has become part of our ‘behavioral deoxyribonucleic acid’ (DNA). Families, churches, education, economics, politics, media among others have been morphed and modified overtime into the agents of capitalism to subtly manipulate the weaker and vulnerable peoples. These mentioned societal units have led to a fall of Africanism which for so long had been underpinned by ethnic clientelism established way-back during state/nation formations of 10^th to 17^th centuries (Mlambo 2009), which they replaced with colonial and neocolonial mercantilist economic models. People in any part of the societies across Africa are exploited unnoticed sometimes through the works of education, religion and media which are there to hide the evils of the capitalistic inspired slavery which has been in continuance over the years despite pronouncements and rhetoric languages to the contrary. It is quite evident that, slavery and slave trade are still alive, globally, the rich countries which managed to steal wealth from the poor ones are receiving thousands of immigrants who are now willingly enslaving themselves following the dangled attractions or sophistries of modernity; availability of employment, modern infrastructures and better social amenities included.

Post-colonial Sophistries of Slave Trade, the Hidden Truths

Restive micro-clans dotted across Africa put efforts to end colonialism and such efforts gathered momentum with time especially after the end of World War Two of 1939 to 1945, as that war, to the colonized world, brought a new realization; that was the need for self-rule courtesy of the Atlantic Charter of 1941 (Nyakudya et al 2009; Mlambo 2014; Smith 2014; Mundende 2024; Nhemachena 2020). Liberation wars were fought to remove imperial governments but soon after the attainment of the so-called independence, coups and mutinies became so frequent in Africa which is another reflection of disorder and ingenuity of the Western powers and a continuity of black man’s exploitation. Because such coups and mutinies were according to Mhango (2018); Lumumba (2019) externally choreographed from the Western powers, the former colonizers. Fanon (1972) puts it in a much more lucid manner as he notes that the behavior of Western powers towards African independence was like, ‘get it and suffer’. That alone acted as deterrence to other blacks in their respective ‘worlds’ that had an ambition to achieve self-rule.  Arguably, they wanted to prove to the whole world that Africans were/are not yet mature enough to rule themselves hence they need to be controlled thus, a justification of Europe’s everchanging systematic and knavery approaches now undergirded by subtle perturbations. The governance systems throughout the continent of Africa was westernized in its form and structure; Anglophones were and are inclined towards the Westminster Model Constitutionalism, former Portuguese enclaves had to follow Antonio Ribeiro de Spinola or Marcelo Caetano’s prescriptions, those which were underpinning the post- Salazarism. For the Francophone countries, they had to adopt the Gaullist Model Constitutionalism together with the language and culture itself and so on. Thus, the beginning or intensification of the xenocentrism, that is an inherent and seemingly irreducible avidity in the preference of foreign socio-cultural systems at the expense of the localities.  All these models ensured and are still ensuring that the colonial relics are in subsistence subtly to the detriment of the local citizens. These political models ensure that the formerly colonized world provide an irreducible incubatory condition for the nurturing of capitalism which entails that the proletariat must be kept in the most profound ignorance through indoctrination courtesy of religions, media and education among other forms of rhetoric perturbations.

Hegelian Philosophy of Georg Hegel (1831) lucidly underlined that the society of humans is that of constant transformations inspired by thesis (ideological formulation and actualization), antithesis (criticism of the ideology) and synthesis (which is the unification of the old and the new). African historicity is that of struggles with other civilizations as the continent has always been subjected to manipulations from the era of peopling of the world after humanity’s attainment of bipedalism from quadratic locomotion (Mundende 2020). Talking from Hegelian perceptions, this paper avers that Africans went into major cyclical and historical transformations of the world; the slave trade, colonization and neocolonialism which were/are the tools for synthesis stage meaning that, all the vices of the past are now veneered by the sophistries of the 21^st century. An element of exploitation has survived all the so-called social transformations; so-called because I am arguing that there was no transformation but evolution of the forms of exploitation. This paper argues that the change was in words and in prospect and not in practice.  Pronouncement or promulgation of an intention in public fora without coordinated action is devoid of tangible meanings.

Another glaring case of hypocrisy is that of seeding hatred and elements of divisionism among the Africans for easy control and continuation of black people’s enslavement in another sophisticated form; Portugal’s leader and hero of the Portuguese, Antonio de Spinola danglingly lured rebel leaders in Angola; Holden Roberto, Jonas Maliheiro Savimbi and Daniel Chipenda to rise against MPLA led by Augostino Neto as he wanted to maintain Portuguese rule in the Angolan enclave, Cabinda in Zaire. Putting it bluntly, Kwame Nkrumah (1965: ix)’s preludial remarks demonstrated that neo-colonialism replaced the plain brutalities of slavery and colonial conquest with the silent systems lurking in the intangibles and discourses of modernity. And the way the discourse of modernity is packaged demonstrates Africa as a continent without any contribution to the processes of modernization; European historians appear as if Africa was always a beneficiary of European benevolence but it is a faulty and intentional narrative considering the damage Europe caused to African states through slave trade. Patrick Manning (2013)’s account states that Africa lost 30 to 40 million people during Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The following are the ‘prophetic’ utterances of President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana as he was warning the Africans about the nefarious and knavery shenanigans of the former colonizers.

“The essence of Neo-colonialism is that the State which is a subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all outward trappings, international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside” (Nkrumah, 1965).

Arguing from Nkrumah’s lucid and ‘prophetic’ thesis, this paper holds the view that, what looks as ancient oppression did not end there but it was structured in such a way that it had to undergo the stages of morphism so that it suited the social contexts of any particular historical period. What is important here is to note that, in any human society, an action can be judged not by itself but by the intension or by its outcomes, meaning that the deliberate morphism, guising as an end of slavery into colonialism and subsequently into neo-colonialism, the intension and outcomes are that the black man is to suffer and the suffering is now subtler and unnoticeable as it is coated by the sophistries of modernity  ensured by education, global media indoctrination, religious and cultural secularization and so on.  The modernization of slavery and slave trade is illustrated below.

An outline Sophistries of Modernity and Enhancement of Slave Trade and Slavery

Flow chart created by the author to illustrate an easy conceptualization of the modernization of slavery and its impacts.

Besides political governance, from an economic viewpoint, slave trade and slavery have become more sophisticated and unnoticeable but the idea of exploiting the workforce remains visibly alive across the world. Today a worker is a slave in many respects; taking for instance, a worker produces goods and services but what he/she gets in return annually is far below the value of the machinery he uses to produce such goods. In some instances, in low income countries, the remunerations earned are not enough for the worker to buy that which he or she has produced or he has at least facilitated its production. The modernity of slavery is the one which is socially contextual; slaves are no longer hunted and forced to work physically but the conditions that are set can make one in his/her right mind to decide to go and be enslaved. It is slavery by consent because all forms of coercion have been undergoing through a systematic morphism into an acceptable and contextual reality of the time. Antonio Gramsci (1937)’s Hegemonizing theory talks of two methods of achieving dominance or hegemony by the elite leadership; it is either coercion or consent. Contextually, from aforementioned methods of hegemony by Gramscian theorization, it is the latter which is in use and it is part of the modernization of human oppression. This paper has observed and argues that, coercion is too physical, visible and it can be avoided by physiological means such as running away or resistance like what was said to have been happening during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade era when the Africans in kingdoms such as Oyo, Asante, Bunyoro among others tried to extricate themselves from such vice using physiological means (Tyde, 1998). Suffering by consent is more disastrous and it is psychogenic in which one cannot run away or physically resist, rather he/she cooperates with the slave masters to be enslaved. The cooperation by the victims is carefully worked on to an extent that it makes sense and it would appear a necessity to humanity. The conditions for modern enslavement by consent start with miseducation which is useless to humanity but only useful to the corporate world as Chomsky (2013); Saltman (2013); Levitsky and Way (2010) reason that schools have a function of ideological indoctrination. Other conditions include that of monetization of everything and in reality, societal progression needs that which is termed as ‘everything’ which has been monetized; thus, making employment an important tool regarded as an enabler for good living and wealth creation for people to shield themselves against the intrigues of poverty.

Robert Kiyosaki (2011) in his book, Rich Dad and Poor Dad, scathingly attacks the idea of seeking jobs as nothing more than mental laziness. He further postulates that; the middle-class men and women are always in financial burden for they are vacillating between bills and taxation of which their salaries are always reduced to become a residual value of deductions or income predators; bills and taxes. Salary is a remainder or a meagre residual value! That remainder after taxes is targeted by the monthly bills and it is consumed to the last cent to an extent that workers borrow from banks which doubles their expenditure; thus, outweighing their incomes leading to household budget deficit. The indifferent part with a slave of ancient times is that there is nothing for labor input; in the old days, slaves worked for nothing literally and in the modern days slaves (workers) are working for salaries which is also targeted by the government through taxes as well as by service providers (bills). This paper therefore reasons that the taxes consume some portion of one’s salary which at times is below Poverty Datum Line (PDL) while the bills come to finish it off. Thus, making a worker a slave.  Borrowing from Robert Kiyosaki’s assessment to further understand the intricacies surrounding that ‘food web’ of salary, taxation, bills and the welfare of an employee, this article underscores that, slavery is in existence because employees are getting a residue or a remainder after income taxes and bank charges are taken off too from their earnings after selling skills. Kiyosaki (2011) argues that corporates are owned by the capitalists who have a history of accumulating wealth dubiously and inhumanly and they are still circumventing taxes, this is why they remain on top of the social ladder of any given polity across the world. Corporates are said to have devised a way of evading the impact of taxation either by overt or covert means. In simpler terms, corporates vent-off the taxation to the consumers by using cost-plus pricing mechanisms where all costs are factored in and a mark-up is added in whatever they are selling either goods or services meaning that the one to bear all the tax burden is an end-user, the poor working class. On the other hand, the consumers who are the workers have no option as they are involuntarily configured into the food chain systems of consumerism economic model which has been modernized to become insidiously exploitative. The history of taxation shows that, it was introduced and communicated as the tool to have income equalization and the masses gleefully voted it in Europe and America in the modern days of 17^th and 18^th centuries. That is Robin Hood theory of Economics; robbing the rich to better and enrich the poor. Even though it was argued to be a punishment for the rich, it ended up punishing those who voted for it; the poor and the working class (Kiyosaki, 2011). It is further noted that the rich who own the corporates have enough financial clout and capacity to convince the politicians to create some legal loopholes which they can use as safety valves while poor men and women have no financial knowledge and resources to protect themselves from such diabolical shenanigans. With the nature of humans, it defeats the whole logic that a wealth created fraudulently or fairly, then the same wealth is to be distributed equally among the members of the society only to benefit the poor. Even Italy’s sociologist, Corrado Gini, in 1912 came up with a scale (Gini’s coefficient index) to determine income inequality after realizing that there is no ubiquity when it comes to income distribution in the society. Income variability is endemic and unavoidable despite efforts being taken to ward it off by governments.  If taxation is for income equalization, by now societies should have achieved classless characterization, but the continuance of social stratification and income inequality is a glaring testament to the fact that taxation is for income circularity within the hands that create it. Modernity has many guises and sophistries aiming at hiding the evil intensions from the full glimpse of the majority unlike long ago when vices were paraded plainly.

The position of this article is that, the gulf between rich and poor among people or among nations is historical and it was structurally inherited from the past events; slave trade and colonialism, so, something inherited is endemic and entrenched permanently into the conscience of humanity. Slavery came but it did not go as recorded by some historians whose influence has had full adequacy of skewedness, it has become part of our behavioral DNA and thinking of as people. What had happened was that, slavery morphed into another form of oppression and human control which is different in nature but similar in results and intension. The Africans have adopted the slave-mastery tricks guising as business perspicacity resulting in slavery becoming an accepted norm because it has assumed other new names which are among the sophistries of modernity. A 21^st century slave is earning salary and some are driving good cars but after earning that salary they spend it completely and are left without any savings, thus, a reverse inflow of cash back to business owners. In the ancient past, they were slave merchants and now slaves morphed into workers/employees while slavery is now called employment.  They are taxed as well more than the corporates because the corporates are owned by people who have influence on the decision-making institutions of the states so that the laws made cannot prioritize deformational fundamentals that can remove them from the feeding trough. From a Marxist Historical influence, this article is arguing that, the workers are regarded as part of productivity infrastructure which is factored in for the production of goods and services and they have no share on the profits realized. They are getting salaries instead. Salary is given so that the aspect of manipulation is shielded away from the visible domains and salary itself has no difference with the maintenance cost for machinery used for the production of goods.  Salary in a matter and nature of describing things, is also a maintenance cost for workers so that they remain healthy and fit for continuous exploitation.

Projected Future; Gloomy or Doomy

The future is looking gloomy though with the chances of brightness hanging in a far-reaching horizon. Technology is making life easier but it has no bearing on the reduction of human exploitation mindset that was preset by what transpired in the early centuries of world peopling. With the ever-evolving technoscientific world underpinned by that which is conceptualized as the Internet of Things (IoT), the situation of the poor and formerly slave-supplier nations will remain as such; in the same manner it was during those ancient days. Like what it was when the advanced societies became industrialized, pre-1750s, it was the poor folks who suffered since they had no enough education and skills to sell in exchange for good remunerations. They were regarded as part of production infrastructure, they were paid not to be better-off but it was only for the purposes of maintaining their usability. Therefore, currently and in future, due to the impacts of the IoT, since the poor lacks two critical aspects to fairly and effectively compete in this technoscientific world, they are/will be susceptible to a variety of exploitations. Because they are lacking material needs which are enhancers such as material possessions and accessibility to internet; electrical gadgets such as the mobile phones and computers. And the second one they are lacking is knowledge to use and to circumnavigate internet pressures and cyber perplexities. As it stands, larger segment of the population in the third world regions is computer illiterate as their knowledge cannot surpass the basics of Artificial Intelligence (AI).  In Low Income Countries (LICs) such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Angola among others, there are people in the rural communities which are off-urban zones where there is no internet connectivity, radio and television transmission and that is still a major setback for them to embrace the technoscientific economy. Such inadequacy if it persists unabated, the future for the poor remains gloomy and exclusionary as it is/was. Studies have confirmed that, since industrialization has led to the transition from subsistence economy into consumerism economy which is competition-infested, the safety of humans is in the amassment of skills and relevant knowledge needed by the intrigues of that kind of the political economy. In the words of Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe (1958), writing to awaken his native Igbo people of Nigeria, he stated that ‘since man has mastered the art of shooting without missing, the safety of the naked bird is in flying without landing’. The meaning of this melodramatic words, if used to gauge the future can sound relevant as the point is that, since the world has become more competitive with IoT being the minimum or basic underpinning for proper living, people must embrace the idea of learning new skills, poor nations must work on better ways of conducting trade and exploiting their natural resources. IoT has been a new way of living upon humans, therefore, there is need for the redefinition of things so that the society is configured into these new trenches brought about by everchanging technoscience.

In addition, everything has gone digital including intimacy as the robot ‘wives’ will soon be on the markets and the tragedy is that there is a growing number of the job seekers as the universities and colleges are churning out graduates yearly while the 4^th industrialization is prioritizing automation which demands less human input, thus signaling doom to humanity. As it was before in the third world region, large corporates and the elite individuals will continue grabbing land from the African peasants as the past returns in future according to (Nhemachena et al, 2024), the colonial past is replaying currently, and it will come in a non-colonial future. History has a tendency of repeating itself. The case in point is that, the Westernization or Americanization of the world did not end when USSR crumbled but it also took another twist from open wars that characterized Cold war era (1948-1991). The Westernization drive also morphed into other guises veneered by narratives and efforts flanked by peacekeeping and democratic-promotion-inspired wars engineered by the USA and its NATO allies; the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and Israeli-Palestinian crisis are good cases in that regard. Such diplomatic stalemates can worsen the future of humanity as well in terms of development.  Strategically, African leaders and the general citizens should seek ways to redefine the world order not to get entrapped into the Francis Fukuyama (1971)’s suggested predicament; TINA fallacy (There Is No Alternative). TINA fallacy or illusion has a presupposition that, if there is no option, acceptance of the status-quo is the best alternative. This article is of the view that in any political economy of any given polity, alternatives are there if they are prudently sought, or carefully formulated and subsequently utilized. Therefore, the governments and their people should formulate alternatives to ward off the systems that have permeated societies courtesy of the intrigues of the past camouflaging in the befuddling guises of modernity to bring a better future.

CONCLUSION

Modernization is argued to have started making notable headways in around 1760s to 1840s after the British’s industrialization of the things of the past to suit social contexts of those historical periods. Modernization was/is a continuous process with both praiseworthy and detrimental impacts on humanity and on the environment as argued hereabove in this article. Because modernization is a product of human efforts, its impacts are largely borne by humans directly, indirectly or otherwise. The central argument in this paper is that slavery and slave trade are among ancient vices and the two had been rebranded into the most appealing sophistries of modernity but of course with great inadequacy of sincerity. Back then in the 15^th century, there was this issue of buying and selling of people of productive age who were being sold by the African chiefs/agents in exchange for meagre valuables notably, cigarettes, sugar, clothes and in some instances cash, and when colonization came, the same was practiced but lurking into forced labor supply under strictest conditions. After decolonization, neo-colonization, the last stage of imperialism and the most pernicious and insidious (Nkrumah,1965 :250), was rolled out and slavery continued now circumscribed by flankes such as salaries and wages and other fringe benefits surrounding labor markets which are in place as tool to legitimatize human exploitation. What had changed is the terminology or just names, ‘slave trade/slavery’ into the acceptable rhetoric language of the new age for it is true that every historical period has its own contextual terminologies and thought patterns to define human dynamics and environmental actions. This paper reasons and has demonstrated that, currently, slavery and slave trade are underway but they are veneered by various guises which are termed herein as, ‘suitable, insincere and subtle sophistries of modernity’ and these vices will subsist into the future that would be undergirded by what would be the sophistries of the Internet of Things with similar consequences that the ancient and current communities had/have been subjected to. However, the bleak future can be reversed if there is a paradigm shift in education, social and religious underpinnings of the political economies of various polities across the world. This article recommends that the third world governments and their citizens should prioritize learning of new skills which are technoscientific in nature to effectively and meaningfully compete with the first world.

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