The toppling of the statue of English merchant, slave trader, Tory Member of Parliament and philanthropist Edward Colston in Bristol is dividing attitudes. There has been pressure since the 1990s to have his statue removed and a museum might have been a better place for it.
Born 2 November 1636 JC in Bristol, he came from a wealthy merchant family, initially traded in wine, fruits and cloth and became involved in the slave trade through his membership of the Royal African Company, which held a monopoly of the English trade in African slaves. He used his wealth to support and endow schools, hospitals, almshouses and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere and his name is commemorated by several Bristol landmarks, streets, schools.
The Times: “Colston was a leading official of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, when it was responsible for the enslavement and transportation of 84,000 Africans, of whom more than 19,000 died en route to the Caribbean and America. He also invested in the Spanish slave trade and in slave-produced sugar. As Tory MP for Bristol he defended the city’s right to trade in enslaved Africans. At the time slavery was generally condoned in England and Europe by the church, intellectuals and the educated classes. John Locke, the celebrated philosopher of liberty, was a shareholder in the Royal African Company.”
He was a determined Sun Neptune in Scorpio with Pluto Moon in Taurus so not one to budge easily and clearly well-designed for money-making enterprises. His Pluto was in a confident and lucky trine to Jupiter in Virgo. He also had a hard-edged Saturn Mars in Capricorn in a brooks-no-interference and autocratic square to Uranus. Despite his charitable good works he wasn’t exactly dripping in sentiment.
Bristol has been around for aeons though it was given a Royal Charter in 1155 (no date) and then another charter to mark it out as a county on 8 August 1373 JC which gives it a stellium in Leo from a final degree Sun plus Uranus, Mercury, Venus with Mars Moon and Neptune spread out through Aries; and Pluto in Taurus widely square Saturn in Aquarius. At the moment Solar Arc Saturn is opposing its Pluto as protests have risen about the slave-trading money used to improve the city.
In Antwerp a statue of King Leopold the former Belgian monarch and colonial ruler was set on fire in protest at his oppressive rule of Congo and then removed. His rule from 1865 to 1909 involved a reign of terror in the Congo, which he ran as his personal property before it became a Belgian colony. In recent days, his statues in Brussels, Ostend, Ghent and other cities have been defaced, set on fire, covered in paint and daubed with the words “I can’t breathe,” the last words of George Floyd.
King Leopold, 9 April 1835 1.30 am Brussels, had a brutal chart with a control-freak Sun Pluto in Aries in an unyielding opposition to Saturn in a cruel and ruthless square to Mars in Cancer. Not a charmer. His Solar Arc Saturn is now exactly conjunct his Sun for a karmic and long delayed moment of reckoning. For more detail on Leopold and the Congo – and Ben Affleck see post November 25 2019.
Jupiter is linked to law and justice and is conjunct Pluto in Capricorn – would this be the specific astrological significator for the spotlight on police brutality and racism (the subversion of law and order and excessive use of police force)? Which signs or planets represent the police? Is the Jupiter Pluto cycle linked to moments when society becomes more aware of racial discrimination or the misuse of power in some way? The last time Jupiter was conjunct Pluto in Capricorn was in 1771, there was a bubonic plague pandemic in Russia. Jupiter will conjunct Pluto later this year for the second time, I think Saturn will be fairly close by just add to the pressure…
*Jupiter joins Pluto three times this year in Capricorn.
Fun!!!
My guess would be Saturn rules the police from it’s energy; restrictive, ordered, concerned with what is right in the long run? When its an abused energy isnt it much heavier, totalitarian, conservative, “my way or the highway” sentiment?
As a black descendant of slaves I want to add just s couple of things: many Africans did not know where their fellows were going and what would be their fate. It wasn’t as if they got calls home complaining of conditions and the traders didn’t explain their plans re: the people they were buying. I saw a documentary where elders in a village say the story that was passed down by word of mouth was that one of their kin was ‘naughty’ and they wanted him removed from the community. I am not excusing, just filling in some blanks. The end date of slavery keeps getting moved around I notice, to put the English in s good light. There’s approx 30 years between the act being signed and slaves being actually allowed to leave the plantations. I will not go into what they faced when they were “freed”. Suffice to say they had no food and nowhere to go! Slavery ended for many reasons, not simply the ‘kindness of Master’. Slaves were rebelling, plz read about the Maroons and the FIRST peace treaty the British ever signed! Re: white slaves: can you point to any white person anywhere in the world and say that they are descendants of slaves? Probably not but you can point to me and say that and that is the element of this that needs to be considered because this is how it became the atrocity it has been. We were treated differently and still are today.
Totally agree . Not to mention, which i was going to say but deleted, the slave breeding farms especially in the Caribbean, that Europeans created to keep their production lines going over those years. No one talks about that. Yet some want to justify. Learn the history and not just the sound bite. Then they wonder why the anger and frustration. Go figure.
I will say though the descendants of Caribbean slaves don’t have the same kind of frustration that descendants of African American slaves have. We have our own problems of course but it is evident to all black people everywhere that African Americans are still in colour oriented bondage that they misinterpret today. If they don’t sing dance or run that’s it for them. They think the constitution was written to include them but actually at the time not at all, only those in the North who were so called free I guess? And still that was iffy. How long does it take? And who gives who the right to dictate? Why can’t we all just live and get along? (There’s a poem in there somewhere) haha. And yes I am a black Caribbean and proud regardless!!!
I will acknowledge however that no matter what the British or English have attempted to make amends, and definitely more progressive steps than their first descendants family of America.
Change is a must..! It’s the only constant in life!!
These times are intense only if you resist the change and defend a position that is out dated, flawed, and serves you and yours and to hell with the others because they should stay in their lane. Sorry just saying.
Peace out..!
I think when all histories are taken into accurate account, we realize this is a human condition. However, as humans in our now more enlightened and progressive state of consciousness we want to make changes that no-one wanted to or could do before. It’s a process.
It may be that statues and monuments that celebrate that time in these societies are offensive as a reminder for many peoples (races). I don’t think, in the long run, it is not productive to burn, bury and pretend it didn’t exist, but instead install them in museums as a reminder to not go there again. They will always be in the history books as part of human history, anyway, regardless (for those who feel a loss).
meant to say ‘ I don’t think… it is productive ….’
We are living through tense times.
Slavery has been part of human existence for as long as all the evidence – anthropological, archaeological and historical can tell us.
The British were enslaved first (as far as we know) by the Romans, then the Vikings and then to some extent by the Normans.
I think there was still a White Slave Trade going on in the 17th century if you were unlucky enough to be caught by Barbary pirates.
I can’t contribute any astrological analysis to do with any of that but it’s worth remembering our ancestors all suffered a similar fate at different times.
Quite agree – the Vikings raped and pillaged, and whatever went before them too.
In answer to Chris’s point about communists – Russia was pretty much an enslaved country before the revolution with the condition of the serfs pretty unbearable and inhumane which was what led to the uprising.
Thank you Marjorie, a case of “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Tsar Nicholas II to Stalin.
Slavery goes back 10,000 years to the very first civilisations in ancient Iraq and Mesopotamia. Nomadic people had no need of slaves but with the first agricultural settlements comes slavery. The Athenian empire was built on slavery, particularly from the rich seams of silver in the region. A life working in the silver mines was horrible and short, you worked until you dropped. The Greeks preferred women and children as domestic slaves as they were considered weaker than men. By the 5th century B.C. there were more slaves in Athens than actual citizens. What we call the making of civilisation cast a dark shadow In its becoming.
And domestic slaves was mainly what the Arab Slave Trade was about too, so predominantly women and children. Women were used for domestic purposes and concubines for their masters. I read that Ethiopian women were especially sought after by the Arabs. There are ancient pictures of children in shackles who were used for domestic purposes. However, when you think about the history of Britain for instance, look how they used to treat children of the poor. Not that different.
Thank you, Jennifer. I looked at slavery in Ethiopia and it’s quite shocking that it was ended in the 1930s and 40s after abolition was made a priority of Haile Selassie’s government. And as you say, young girls in their teens were most valued by the slavers as ‘concubines’. Their ordeal echos that of the young Yazidi women under the ISIS caliphate of recent years.
Thank you Marjorie and Hugh for such an informative thread.
Astrology shows the whole of our personality. The Arabs sold the most black slaves followed by the Blacks Africans selling their own ethnicity – for money. White Slave Trade was very small. Colston was a good man, who transported slaves. If you do a contract for Cargo and you see that BLack Africans treating their fellow countrymen as vermin, as cheap labour to sell; then what should someone think? Yes Colston should have really thought through what he was doing. However, did the Labour Party think through the partition of India? Did anyone one see the truth in Bristol last weekend No. What was paraded around the centre of Bristol were placards stating Black Lives Matters – not one placard had written on it. “We have been treated so badly by our own people and we don”t like the fact the Edward Colston transported us around the world for money. We don’t like the fact that our own countrymen sold us”. I agree with Chris Patten -the hypocrisy surrounding Slavery is appalling. Fake News is the bane of our lives. Yet everyone is allowing a small amount of Colonialism to be blown out of all proportion. The British Colonise Africa in 1870. 60 years after Slavery was abolished. The narrative that has been sown by Political Activist has been brilliant. It would be interesting if Marjorie could do a Left Wing Activist’s chart and we discuss that. Black Lives are being abuse,used for political gain and manipulated even today – which I think is appalling.
Wow, what are you implying apart of excusing the continuation of this atrocity that went on for about 1300 years when you add the Arab Slave Trade and the European Slave Trade together. There is no denying that black slavery begun with the Arabs in collusion with some black Africans and that is another story. However, jumping on the bandwagon does not make it right just because I came and saw it happening already. Further wasn’t it the Europeans that made it into a mass commercial production line where people were sold like a product/ a commodity?
Also, I think the date that the English became involved in the slave trade is much earlier than when they colonized Africa so the date you quote is misleading.
Anyway, we all know that it is a very complex history and many hands are dirty including some African tribes (at the time) more than others, but that’s no different from the world wars fought between white tribes and what they also did to each other. Let’s not get it twisted.
Just saying!!
What a fantastic thread! I’ve learned and had much of my knowledge corrected and expanded by the posts. Thank you everyone!
Google Maps updated the location of the Colston statue to the bottom of the Avon River.
Too funny on the part of Google maps!
Hugh, just stop.
why should he?
Hugh just couldn’t stop for some reason. Only one post was astrologically centered, out of four long posts. When Hugh sticks to astrology, he teaches us something new, and it is interesting. His personal opinions, however, take the clothes off the Emperor.
Thank you, Jess.
Sisi, I really don’t see what your problem is. I and others find Hugh’s post interesting, informative and thought-provoking. I assume you are reacting against what you feel is an underlying bias in his historical analysis – and it might be helpful to say so – and then he or others could pitch in. Comments like emperors and clothes merely muddy the waters to no good end.
I have to say I agree with this sentiment. I, like may others, greatly appreciate and learn from the historical astrological analyses here. However interpretation is never wholly objective, and it probably is not possible for anyone to be free from a degree of hypocrisy.
We are going through a Saturn/ Pluto (demolition themes) conjunction in Capricorn, there are some antiquated stone and metal statues of powerful men being removed (probably long overdue), issues of deeply embedded, structural racism are under the spotlight. Even Churchill is not immune from the Saturn/Pluto upending of the established order – why should he be? No-one disputes his morale boosting role in WW2 but he did hold white supremacist views – he was a racist in words and action.
To be clear, I agree with Sisi.
I think you make some fair and valid points, but how do we gain any perspective of our own bubble if we shut down people who have a different angle on something?
I don’t think there is any shutting down, is there? These statues will still be on view in museums at some point in the future. History is not erased, it will still be debated, probably with greater, renewed vigour. I think BLM is part of a long overdue spotlight on structural racism which coincides with the recent Saturn/Pluto conjunction cycle in Capricorn – so, if not now, when?
No, history, and its evidence, is not erased. Just misplaced to the bottom of the river or else broken apart by jack hammers.
Ooh Nel. I too know Bristol very well. I respect your viewpoint but I’m not comfortable with ‘judging everything in the moment is extremely cruel.’ Surely it is slavery that was/ is extremely cruel? There have been people, past and present, who have made names for themselves by donating to charitable causes with money that has been made from questionable sources. Do we just accept this without question? It would be good for the astrological charts of some of these benefactors to be scrutinised to ascertain whether their motivations are/were as pure as might appear on the surface.
Trish. Morally there is no defence of slavery. That fact was recognised in the late 18th and early 19th century in Britain which was why it was abolished by Act of Parliament. Moreover, having outlawed the institution Britain then spent a lot of public money and the resources of the Royal Navy trying to suppress the slave trade globally. Considering those decisions it begs the questions why the Victorians then decided to put up a statue honouring a man who had made his money from an activity that they had spent decades trying to eradicate. Clearly, they wanted to recognise Colston’s philanthropic contribution to Bristol but surely they must have known the legacy was tainted. Of course, that stricture could also be applied to modern students taking a Rhodes scholarships or to sportsmen happy to be paid or sponsored by corporations involved in exploiting slave labour in the Third Reich. At what point does it become acceptable/unacceptable to make those compromises. Similar arguments could be made with people protesting about Climate Change or poverty who fly long haul on holiday or buy branded products made in sweatshop factories. Unsurprisingly not a few people elsewhere in the globe consider westerners and particularly those who strike liberal or progressive poses monstrous hypocrites on so many subjects particularly because we prefer token gestures to anything difficult that involves real cost.
Enslaving “subjects” was outlawed in England by Magna Carta, and in Sweden, for instance, by Landslag in Middle Ages (some of these laws were unwritten, but there’s a 1340 Codex). Obviously, who these “subjects” would be, was up for debate for Centuries, and Africans were made part of that discussion late.
I also don’t hold your frankly nihilistic view on “white liberal activism”. Maybe because I personally know and interact with younger generation, and see they have the determination some of my generation (since we are talking about ideals, I’d say represented by Neptune, and in my case in Sadgittarius) seemed to lack? The “woke” young people I know mostly avoid flying (and if they have to, they carbon compensate their flights, I know several people who are now bog owners) and go to great lengths checking supply chains when they have to buy something.
Astrologically the current desire to topple statues has echoes of the 16th century Reformation which also saw similar attacks on Catholic images and idolatry. As now the movement was born under a Saturn Pluto Mercury Conjunction in Capricorn in 1518 with Uranus in Taurus. A significant amount of Europe’s cultural legacy was destroyed in the ensuing waves of vandalism. Inevitably the process triggered a religious and aesthetic reaction in the Counter Reformation which started at the Council of Trent 1545 when Pluto was in Aquarius. There was a hardening of attitudes that led to a century of religious conflicts culminating in the Thirty Years war which began after a Saturn Pluto Conjunction in Taurus in 1617 and ended with a Saturn Pluto Conjunction in Gemini in 1648. I wonder whether the current “culture wars” will go the same way.
Hugh, I would be infinitely more concerned about food shortages caused by climate change and economic inequality than “culture wars” as drivers of unrest, since as stated below, what ever the stated cause of Early Modern conflicts was, the real issue was food. For instance, Luther’s Reformation was preceded by and coinceded with peasant uprisings Luther himself condemned. And as mentioned below, Sweden and Denmark, both Lutheran Kingdoms since 1530’s (Sweden even 1520’s) with mutually intelligible languages, fought 11 Wars essentially over arable and thus taxable land of Scania.
Wars over, essentially, food, are of course happening all the time in developing countries. But I think that there’s a real chance something similar may happen in “Developed World” as well. Covid-19 outbreak alone caused some disruptions to supply chain, even if we might have averted the worse in Europe and Northern America. I’m particularly concerned about Aquarius Saturn square Taurus Uranus.
As you are quite knowledgeable about history, Hugh, can you see if there are astrological similarities between now, the Reformation and the Iconoclasm controversy in the Byzantine Empire in the 8th and 9th centuries.
As an aside, when I took my family to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, I pointed out to them that the building was not only fought between Christians and Muslims, but also between Catholics and Orthodox (4th Crusade/Latin Empire) and between Iconoclasts and Iconodules (in all three cases, it was the latter that were the eventual winners). I can be very boring some times.
I think somebody had suggested that the similarity between today and the Reformation is a conjunction of Saturn Pluto, but I’m not sure. If so, did that occur in the 8th/9th century as well?
Also, if the current situation is a result of Saturn-Pluto in Capricorn, then that reassures me. Because in the long-term, most of the changes were reversed to the status-quo-ante. The Iconodules won the iconoclasts dispute. While the Protestants are still around, so is the Catholic Church. Indeed, the Protestant Reformation triggered the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation that defined the Catholic Church for four centuries.
So my reading would be that Saturn-Pluto in Capricorn is iconoclasm and turmoil, followed by a return to the status-quo-ante.
It is worth noting that the statue was put up in 1871 over 150 years after Colston’s death. The Victorians seem to have had a fetish with cluttering up their towns with these memorials to local worthies.
Bristol itself had connections with slavery long before the Royal African company. It was one of the ports through which captured men, women and children from northern England and Wales were traded to the slave market in Viking Dublin in the 10th and 11th century. Dublin was at the heart of the international Western European slave trade at that time. Ironically, it was William the Conqueror who put an end to the traffic after he became King of England in 1066. He was the first ruler to outlaw chattel slavery presumably under the influence of the Catholic Church and it did not reappear until after the Reformation.
As a previous post has so rightly pointed out modern western left wing intellectuals are much more comfortable condemning historical slavery or campaigning about statues etc in the liberal democracies where they live rather than confronting more recent instances of forced labour elsewhere in the world. The same goes for many celebrities such as the F1 driver Lewis Hamilton who has been pontificating about BLM from his tax haven in Monaco. His cheering the fall of Colston’s statue grates when you consider that trades his craft under the Mercedes Benz logo, a company which admitted in 1986 to having exploited 40,000 slave worker in the Nazi era. It is the same with people who want to topple Cecil Rhodes statue but are quite happy to take the scholarships he funded with his tainted money.
I don’t know what is the astrological symbol for hypocrisy but we are certainly seeing plenty of it now.
hello Hugh,
My thinking is that “hypocrisy” still falls under Capricorn…. my understanding is that “integrity” is a core value of this sign. Sooo…. Pluto in Capricorn (amongst other things), would be looking at the rot at the core… hypocrisy would be one thing!
The chart for Canada has the MC at 8*Cap opp natal Sun at 8*Cancer. This country has a world reputation for it’s Nature – parks, animals, forests. “Beautiful British Columbia” and “Wild Rose Country” are on the car plates for BC and Alberta respectively. The 2010 Vancouver Olympic opening ceremonies was all about this – bears, beavers, whales, Nature images everywhere!!!
No mention of the tar sands, the Trans Atlantic pipeline, the Site C dam, the mining, the logging. My aunt says that if you throw seed on the soil of Saskatchewan, nothing grows because the soil is dead. You need more chemicals for something to grow! Never mind that I just read that Canada has DOUBLED it’s sale of weapons to the Middle East even WITH an agreement in place. Our Canada Pensions Plan has “holdings in a tobacco company, a military weapons manufacturer and firms that run private American prisons.”. The majority of Canadians have NO idea about this.
Don’t get me wrong.. I love this country. (I love how the Moon in Gemini is expressed here). But there is a dissonance with what Canada presents publicly and what is really going on. And, since 2010, there is a crack opening.
So, along comes Pluto to help us!! Pluto has been transiting through Canada’s 10th house… and, I think, revealing more of the truth of who we are and what we do. Integrity. Even our PM, Justin Trudeau, who is a Capricorn Sun, seems to be less about the platitudes and the smile lately, and now more honest. Clearly Pluto is affecting him!
Yes, it does seem easier to look at and judge the past and be blind to the same issues now.
And still, the statues do symbolize something very painful.
With regards to the statues coming down, a writer for the Guardian said something like, “this is not against history.. it IS history.”
anyways… long response!
take care,
Canada also has so, so much to address with regards to the entrenched racism in this country. This, too, is being revealed more and more in the past ten years.
nice to read your interesting comments re Canada. We have not deserved our shiny nature friendly image for quite some time and i hope more comes to light. I’m counting on Pluto!
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it “
Omar Khayyam would recognise that throwing Colstons Victorian era statue into Bristol dock will not have saved a single 17th or 18th century African slave from their fate or changed the consequences. We can try to author our future destiny or to rewrite our view of what went before but in reality we are stuck in a present that controls neither past or future.
Astrologically there is a symmetry between current events and those of the 16th century as I mentioned elsewhere. It was an era when similar long accepted religious an aesthetic precepts were challenged and the morally compromised Catholic Church was challenged for selling salvation via indulgencies. It also saw the genesis of the modern world in the European voyages of discovery, the Renaissance and the Reformation which led to among other things to the rise of capitalism, European colonial empires and the Atlantic slave trade. What we now appear to be seeing is a similar process only this time it is the legacy of the era that started in the 16th century that’s is under attack rather than the medieval Catholic Church. As the process gathers momentum it will generate its own dynamic which may trigger further changes not yet apparent. In particular those driving current events may not go unchallenged and could prompt responses that lead the world down paths as yet unknown and unmapped.
“Astrologically there is a symmetry between current events and those of the 16th century as I mentioned elsewhere. It was an era when similar long accepted religious an aesthetic precepts were challenged and the morally compromised Catholic Church was challenged for selling salvation via indulgencies. It also saw the genesis of the modern world in the European voyages of discovery, the Renaissance and the Reformation which led to among other things to the rise of capitalism, European colonial empires and the Atlantic slave trade. ”
Interestingly, since Annales School emerged, all these development have been linked to Little Ice Age causing food scarsity in Europe. I certainly see this happening in Swedish History. Sweden and Denmark fought a total of 11 Wars between 1521 and 1814. None of them was directly linked to religion. Most were over Scania and therefore, arable land.
Obviously, contemporaries would not have seen the connection, if not in some clear cases of peasant uprisings. Fortunately, we have more information and can make more “enlightened” decisions.
“My thinking is that “hypocrisy” still falls under Capricorn…. my understanding is that “integrity” is a core value of this sign. Sooo…. Pluto in Capricorn (amongst other things), would be looking at the rot at the core… hypocrisy would be one thing!”
I’ve always seen faith, and in connection to it hypocrisy, more as Jupiter/Sadgittarius/ 9th house issues. This is also one of the arguments I make for using “Sibly Chart” giving The US a Sadgittarius Ascendant when looking at Mundane Events in The US. Sometimes, different axis may make more sense for separate events, but when looking at the “essence” of America, this seems to hold the best.
Saturn/Capricorn/10th house would be, obviously involved in faith systems, though.
Thanks Hugh – for all your posts. Informative and insightful always.
Edward Colston did not form the East African Company, he became a member of it. He did immeasurable amount of charity work in Bristol – giving a lot of his money to the poor. I was born in Bristol. Bristol was built by Edward Colston. We have mixed feelings regarding him. Yes he did some nasty business deals by today’s standards. However, judging everything in the moment is extremely cruel. Galley ships were used around the world and many drowned. There was an incident where a captain threw overboard his entire shipment of slaves. However, Colston did not do it personally. He was not there. Picking out history to suit the modern day narrative is a very simple way of dealing with life. Many Galley men died at sea. Look at how the Plantegent Kings used them, they were British slaves.
I am in no way condoning the Europeans who carried on the slave trade, certainly not their treatment of the black slaves that they transported. Nor of their treatment in the USA and their descendants after the Emancipation by President Lincoln, but before wholly blaming the white Europeans, I think it would be a very good idea for those who are at present demonstrating so violently to read the history of slavery in Africa.
Especially the fact that 90% of the slaves sent across the Atlantic from West Africa were supplied to the slave traders by their fellow Africans.
“Especially the fact that 90% of the slaves sent across the Atlantic from West Africa were supplied to the slave traders by their fellow Africans.”
Erm.
From what I’m reading online on social media – which is on fire at the moment – most of it doesn’t take into consideration commentary like this. Which is a shame. I would like to see statistics like this addressed within the community, in the same way we’re dissecting everything else at the moment.
Well, we should also factor in the extensive Arab slave trade which existed from around the 8th century to the early 20th century. People were taken from Europe and large numbers from Africa, and sold into slavery in the Arab world and India. Colonel Gadaffi apparently apologised for this trade at a conference in 2010. Slavery is a vile part of human history, and is still going on right now in various forms. There have been recent articles highlighting, for example, the terrible plight of Ethiopian servants in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Djibouti. Many are undocumented and are being thrown out to find their way home, because of Covid 19 fears on the part of their employers. There is also something called the “maid trade”, and reports of trafficking. There is indeed a “symmetry between current events and those of the 16th century” as Hugh says.
While historical wrongs and silent histories must be explored and revealed, I do think there is more than enough to address now, and living people who are suffering who need practical help, and for their voices to be heard. Taking down statues may serve a symbolic purpose for a short time, but then what?
We should be moving to tackle modern slavery, indeed and I do hope during this current wave of protest this issue can be raised. Amnesty have highlighted the appalling treatment of workers during the construction of the Qatari World Cup stadia. How many people who use pornography are aware of the extent of sex trafficking in the industry? How much does our dependence on cheap Chinese imports do harm to those employed on slave wages? We are all hypocrites and we should have the integrity to look within at our own contribution to oppression of others.
“Especially the fact that 90% of the slaves sent across the Atlantic from West Africa were supplied to the slave traders by their fellow Africans.”
While there are no written records on what motivated Africans to participate in Slave Trade, there’s is actually an interesting European parallel from the 18th Century.
Russians invaded and occupied Finland, then a region of Sweden, between 1714 and 1721, after battle in Napue, Ostrobotnia. During the early months and years of this invasion, Russians engaged in systematic slave trade. Cossack and Kalmyk Units would pillage villages. Since Finland was very impoverished by War contributions and famines, the only thing of value for them often were humans. Serfdom had been established in Russian Empire, and Russian also traded with Turkish Empire, where it was not for bidden to enslave Christians. Most people had fled to woods. And this is where local collaborators became a thing. My granddad, born in 1904, would talk about “ryssänrenki”, ‘hand of Russians’ with a derogative tone when someone sold out. Families were betrayed, young women and children taken away and traded by handlers. Estimated 20 000 people (out of a population of under 400 000) were taken to Russia or further as slaves.
However, in the 1720’s, after Treaty of Uusikaupunki was signed and Sweden regained (most of) Finland, trials were held against those found collaborating with Russians. Accounts they gave were chilling. They themselves might have been tortured. Their families had been held hostages. Although they were punished, historians who’ve studied the records find judges have shown pity towards them.
These accounts on structure of slave trade would support those historians who’ve argued, based on what happened in Congo under Leopold II, that much of the African “collaboration” in slave trade was coerced. There were very few, maybe a handful, of African chiefs/kings, who were in any position to truly “trade”, in other words, got any compensation for what they did.
I am not an astrologer and only have a basic knowledge of the subject. My main interest is in the effect that the precession of the equinoxes has had in the past and is having now as we are entering the Aquarian age.
As a result of reading the post above I have a question for those with astrological knowledge. Russia seems to have behaved with cruelty towards both their own populations and those that they have ruled over with a rod of iron.
As far as I am aware this reached a climax in the twentieth century under Stalin and his communist successors. China is another such nation and I was wondering if the combination of the astrology of the countries with that of the Communist Manifesto has had this effect.
Thank you. However, the British did not start the Slave Trade, unfortunately a lot of British Blacks people think we did. Black Lives Matter are now demanding that every statue be taken down. This is now becoming very dangerous, counteractive white groups are being formed. As you state there is no documented evidence to support the coercion and therefore, perhaps demonstrations in the UK should not have taken place, as I think it is going to turn very ugly. Without any concrete evidence anything is assigned to anything. Being a King/Chief of any country, does not mean that you were aware of every business detail being carried out under your name. Ancestral research demands at least three documents proving the truth. Judging by the brutality of black on black violence by African tribes – you cannot rule out that the did not willingly want to be rid of a tribal enemy.
“At the time slavery was generally condoned in England and Europe by the church, intellectuals and the educated classes. ”
Just like the modern slave workforce in China, Bangladesh etc are currently condoned by the educated classes and the millennials ..
Sometimes I feel that we think about historical problems and rage about them, rather than confronting similar issues that happen today.. bcos it is easier, maybe ..
Thank you Marjorie for this post.