[Mr. Jeeves]

I give him credit for this quote, which no doubt drives the Left insane:

"African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them. If anyone should apologize (for slavery) it should be the African chiefs. We still have those traitors here even today." -- Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda, 1998

[CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC]

Yup. The slave capitol of the world was the kingdom of Dahomey, now part of Benin. Their kings attacked, captured and enslaved huge numbers of their fellow Africans in the weaker tribes neighboring them. They sold them to Muslim slave traders from the east, and later European slave traders starting with Spain & Portugal who sent them to the Caribbean & Brazil, and then Holland and France and England. The wealth they accumulated was partly spent on Western weapons - mostly guns & cannons - which made it even easier to defeat their neighbors.

You can make a case that the primary guilt over past slavery practices belongs with whoever it was who captured free human beings and turned them into slaves, with the secondary guilt belonging to those who bought the already-enslaved peoples. In that case, the nation of Benin owes trillions, no quadrillions probably, of $$ in reparations world-wide. Last anyone checked, over 40% of Benin lives in poverty, but at least they can start making down payments on their global debt, right?

[BobL]

“African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them. If anyone should apologize (for slavery) it should be the African chiefs. We still have those traitors here even today.”

One of the best-kept secrets of slavery. The African interior was extremely dangerous and there was no way that Europeans were going to go there. It was much easier to stay in port and pay locals to round them up.