Kroomen: Black Slaver Hunters | Hacker News Reader

Kroomen: Black Slaver Hunters

historytoday.com

63 pointsThevet22 comments

>The connection strengthened when, at some point, probably in the late 1700s, European and American ships started taking the West Africans aboard to serve as pilots, interpreters or scouts.

The fact that the author nonchalantly omits the part about those services being performed originally aboard slaver ships and then fast-forwards a century makes the article seem like an exercise in framing. Which is a shame, the history of Sierra Leone is fascinating stuff.

Framing in what way?

Presumably that the Kroomen were anti-slavery, and more generally black saviors, which are typical themes (along with their antitheses if your beliefs skew a little more anachronistic) of American literature on African culture and history. The author left it conspicuously ambiguous whether the Kroomen previously assisted slavers. AFAICT from a brief Google search, in earlier years Kroomen didn't just trade with slavers but also assisted them in their activities--possibly even going so far as being purchasing agents[1]. Which is unsurprising. Africans' relationship with slavery was different, to say the least, than Americans' comparatively simple, black and white, relationship.

[1] Though I'm a little skeptical. I didn't have the time to dive down deeper into the material. The urge to blame Africans' for slavery arises from the same sort of biased American perspective as the urge to create black saviors.

The Kroomen acted essentially as guns (oars?) for hire but the author tries his best not to let that get in the way of presenting them as "black slaver hunters". They were strongly opposed to their own enslavement, but not the idea of slavery itself. This article paints a group of people with a unique ethno-occupational identity as some sort of old-timey Black Panthers. Unsurprisingly, the author is American.

I'm kind of confused about where you get the comment

"They were strongly opposed to their own enslavement, but not the idea of slavery itself"

The article never really speaks about them being opposed to one and not the other. There seems to be some anxiety on your part concerning the subject matter, and you are reading things that simply aren't there. Especially when you complain about some sort of American-centrism, but then reference the Black Panther which is a US organization.

>The article never really speaks about them being opposed to one and not the other.

"The history of anti-slavery patrolling is at the essence of what made a Krooman a Krooman."

Right.

That line doesn't prove the point you are trying to make. Where does it say they are opposed to one and not the other??

Definitely interesting

> They also negotiated deals with local African rulers, many of whom engaged in war and kidnapping on behalf of slave traders from Europe and the Americas ... <

This seems to imply that African rulers engaged in war and kidnapping only for European and American slave traders. Slavery had been widespread within Africa for centuries, arguably for millenia, and continues there to this very day

The slave trade within Africa and the rest of the world as people ALWAYS like to bring up is a world of difference from the transatlantic slave trade.

You seem upset. The Atlantic slave trade was awful. No one said it wasn't.

It's also exaggerated as somehow "more awful" than other kinds of slavery, which even if true, I suspect is cold comfort to the hereditary slaves of Mauritania, Dubai, Haiti and Sudan, among others. It's a kind of weird American culture imperialism: no, the shameful period of American and European slavery is not "worse" than the suffering of slaves today.

"...as people ALWAYS like to bring up "

All benighted degenerates, slavers, shall be beaten by their moral betters one day, as the Kroomen did, as the British Navy did, as the Union Army did. Let no one be ashamed to talk about slavery and name slavers until the shameful, evil practice is ended for all time

The world hasn't seen slavery to the level of the transatlantic slave trade since the transatlantic slave trade. No one, I assure you, no one compares what is happening in those countries you listed (and why Haiti is there I'll never know) to the scope of the transatlantic slave trade. But alas, you did what I said people do to a tee which is run off and bring in unrelated systems into the discussion.

>> The world hasn't seen slavery to the level of the transatlantic slave trade since the transatlantic slave trade

By any measure, this is untrue.

"In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world despite it being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labor, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy."

40. Million.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-...

Very important words from the article:

> How did British, even American, reliance on Kroomen fit within the general belief in white racial superiority? For one thing, speaking broadly, the Kroomen established their reputation before so-called ‘scientific racism’ made African inferiority a general, predetermined, almost genetic condition. Before pseudo-science proclaimed that Africans were lower on some kind of universal ladder of evolution, Europeans and Americans could more easily accept that a particular African ‘nation’, such as the Kroomen, were a particularly estimable ‘race’.

meh, seems like an opinion not backed up by any content in the article.

I don't think a "general belief in white racial superiority" would ever be an impediment to employing natives who were good at a job. (You can find examples of this in, for example, the armies of the British Empire.)

I think that's true to this day, regardless of the specific races of the employer or employee. If you need a job done, you find the best person for the job.

It's when that person wants to marry your daughter that you truly find out what you are made of.

Well I thought there were actually a few places that it was supported in the article, like for example how they permitted an alternative chain of command for the Kroomen, which was considered sacrosanct by the royal navy. You could of course say that they just did that to achieve the best results, but that would be precisely my point. They employed the Kroomen based on what worked best, by the merits of the circumstances and not some arbitrary racism.

Later on, the use of the Kroomen was abandoned, for mostly non-sensical reasons, to which the author surmises was most likely due to the rise of pseudo-scientific race superiority theories. In other words, they no longer employed people in their navy, despite their usefulness, because the merits weren't enough to overcome their bias.

But I do agree with you about the daughter thing.

White supremacists don't necessarily believe that whiteness is inherently superior to blackness (the existence of black scholars and white numbskulls proves this). They also believe that their culture is superior to black culture.

* Editing the comment for clarity

That's culturalist, then, not racist.

Thank you, terminology updated.

Not true. All historical white supremacy movements have been built on the narrative of genetic superiority. Skull shapes, race theory etc.

Although cultural superiority is entwined in this its only recently this became centre stage as a means to still advance the same old tired bigotry but with a mainstream friendly face.

Why call it white culture if it isn't related to genes (and built on lots of non white cultures)?

A lot of things are blamed on the most visibly present race that shouldn't be.

fun read. thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com