The recent speech by Senator Barack Obama raised once more the spectre of race and slavery in the USA and indeed, in other parts of the world. On this anniversary of the Jamaican Slave uprising of 1768 I would like to reflect on this issue from a historians perspective. Race, I must add is too important an issue to be left only to social workers and politicians.

The rise of the Atlantic Slavr trade was made possible by a combination of 3 factors: First, the interniecince watrfare among the African social and tribal groups over pasture rights and clan territories. Second, the expansion of Islam that brought Arab traders to the West coast of Africa and thereby Dahomey became the most prosperous slave port of the Atlantiv. Finally, the intoduction of firearms and commercial agriculture in the West Indies, particularly sugar tobacco and later cotton. Jamaica became the sugar capital of the Western World due to the "industrial" cultivation of sugar by african slaves. I recently read a book on Thomas Thistlewood which gives a good account of the Jamaiccan sugra plantations based on the scripted consciousness of one of the most brutal slave owners of that region--Thomas Thistlewood, whose diaries form a good historical source.

Slaves were captured by raidindg parties which patrolled the African coast, especially the Atlantic coast. The Indian Ocean coast was also prone to slave raids but not on the same scale due to the rough passage around the Cape of Good Hope. The slaves were yoked to the neck and cjhained to the ankles and marched for hundreds of miles. History does not record the mortality at this stage of the passage. On the coast Euroean slave traders like John Newton, who later turned into a staunch abolitionist and penned that beautiful hymn, Amazin Grace, were at hand to purchase slaves at 10 to 20 pounds each. Mles between the age of 15 to 35 were obviously preferred. They were then packed in slave ships for the long arduous passage across the Atlantic. The slaves were arranged like sardines in the hold of the ships and an average slave ship could hold around 650 to 700 slaves. The living conditions were terrible and mortality very high. A 20 to 25 % loss was considered normal and we know the figures because of the famous Llyods Insurance was used to underwrite the insurance. Slave revolts were also comon and the retibution for such acts was swif and terrible.

In the Americas the slaves fetched nearly 4 times the price paid in the coast of Africa. Thomas Thistlewood writes that he purchased 4 for 250 pounds. The slaves were made to work in the sugar plantations and the brutal diary of Thistlewood shows how the female slaves were sexually abused and the males tortured even to the point of death.

With this history it is no wonder that there is anger and I think Conservatives are dealing with the anger more honestly than the liberals who only want to wish it away.