istory is always written by the Victors” – Winston Churchill, once said, and as a result, Muslim Armies conquered a vast empire including Constantinople 1453 CE closing The 1,500-year-old Silk Road inspiring and forcing, European Christian Nations to bypass this embargo by seeking waterways to reach India and China, with Portugal as first seeking gold and Britain as the last seeking lumber to build more ships.
The Importance of Byzantium and its Varangian protected Constantinople, with the Silk Road 225 BCE (to 1453 CE) from China through Samarkand and India representing 65% of the world trade with The Roman Empire, and from there stretching to Timbuktu in Mali where Muslim Emperor Mansa Musa I would become the richest person who ever lived to this day even converted into today’s money – is a story of gold, salt, slaves and how and why the age of discovery and colonialism would create the modern world.
To quote Nigerian Timashem Ashem who wrote: HOW AFRICANS BECAME MUSLIMS
Before the European transatlantic slave TRADE, Arab slavery had already begun in Africa more than 700 years.
The Arab slave trade began when the Arabs invaded North Africa in the 7th century AD for the first time.
Egypt was the first Arab entry into Africa.
The slave trade started when an Arab military general named General Amir Aben Alas invaded Egypt in December 639 AD.
After conquering Egypt successfully, Amir went ahead and conquered other places such as Tunisia and western Libya.
The slave traders imposed tributes of 360 slaves in all regions they occupied and controlled.
This is how North Africans were Islamized by the Arab slave masters.
Today, many Africans pose as Muslims without knowing how the owners of such a religion brutally enslaved their black African ancestors for over 700 years.
How Europeans Joined The Slave Trade
1. Portugal saw a business opportunity in shipping African slaves from one Muslim African Country to another Muslim African country prior to having any colonies of their own
2. Spanish, Dutch, German, French, and Belgians all followed the Portuguese in pursuing colonies after Muslims closed the Silk Road trade with China and India representing more than 60% of world trade.
3. There was no demand for slaves in Europe, Latin America, or India, as the local population could provide cheap labor, but in new colonies in the Caribbean and North America – the Natives – ironically called Indians – had a willingness to fight back and not subjugating themselves to the Europeans, thus importing of slaves started.
4. Biggest slave trader Muslim Emperor Mansa Musa I of Mali – traded alone more slaves than the total trade of slaves with America. On his pilgrimage to Mecca, he traveled with 16,000 black slaves marching ahead of him and his entourage. He also used these slaves to mine for salt (the oil of its day) and gold making him richer than any other person ever on earth.
5. Portugal who colonized Brasil started the export of slaves to the Americas. The tradition was already in place where competing African tribes at war obtained prisoners or as a tribute that they then enslaved. With Portugal offering better prices the tribes collected slaves of competing tribes through raids.
6. The transatlantic slave trade, segment of the global slave trade, that transported between 10 million and 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas from the mid-16th to the 19th century, with some 2 million dying during the voyage and most ending up on plantations and in mining, with some 500,000 on the mainland of North America.
7. After Great Britain outlawed slavery throughout its empire in 1833, the British navy diligently opposed the trade of enslaved people in the Atlantic and used its ships to try to prevent slave-trading operations. Brazil outlawed the trade of enslaved people in 1850, but the smuggling of newly enslaved persons into Brazil did not end entirely until the country finally enacted emancipation in 1888.
8. In 1865 Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves. Europeans from Danish and Dutch, Belgian and French, Germans and Spanish – all guilty of inhumane slavery.
9. In 1861 serfdom, the system which tied the Russian peasants irrevocably to their landlords, was abolished at the Tsar’s imperial command. The Russian system dated back to 1649 and the introduction of a legal code that granted total authority to the landowner to control the life and work of the peasant serfs who lived on his land. Since this included the power to deny the serf the right to move elsewhere, the difference between slavery and serfdom in practice was so fine as to be indistinguishable. (My own great-grandfather Andreas Wilen and my great-grandfather Wilhelm Wilen were born into serfdom and my grandfather Rufus Wilen was a communist incarcerated during the civil war 1917 when Lenin took power in Russia.)
10. Great Britain would colonize 25% of the world becoming the greatest empire there ever was in terms of size, power, and wealth. They justified their colonization by bringing White Christianity to the Dark Heathens. As Henry VIII had split from the Vatican by forming the Church of England subjugated to the King, the clergy of this church would become the first archaeologist and linguists. As the Bible literally told god having created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden less than 6,000 years ago (or 1,000 years before Noah’s Ark) – any research was to be focused on biblical locations only, and also portraying any historical discoveries not conforming to this time and location as myths or primitive folklore to be demeaned or destroyed or hidden away in the British museums or libraries. Also, the whiteness pigmentation was portrayed as superior and as we have seen in our 4 earlier articles, Black Africa and Dark India were the most affected, but the indigenous people in America too, and of course the formerly enslaved.
11. Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Denmark were all guilty and even Sweden ended up with St. Berths as a colony in the Caribbean.
12. African Kingdoms of Nubia, Ethiopia, Buganda, Bunyoro, Zimbabwe, Swahili and Zulu, Benin, Asante, Almoravid, Almohad – lost in time, climate changes and desert sand – histories hidden, cultures not credited and unrecognized.
13. Native Americans recently discovered and recognized, dating to 14,000 years ago.
14. We have here only shown the tip of the iceberg. Finnic people created the first language, Indian Vedic people the oldest civilization, Ethiopia found Pharaonic civilization, Greeks standing on the shoulders of those that came before but added so much more, Native Americans in Peru, Mexico, Canada, and here in the United States still to be recognized for what could have been.
15. Mongols and China had their moment of fame but what about the Silk Road countries like Uzbekistan and Russian Buddhist Lake Baykal and Kalmykia, Uighur, and Tibet with tales to tell? Armenia and Georgia are at a crossroads always. Indonesia and Philippines, Ecuador and Galapagos. Our world is wonderful.
Tom V. Wilen is a former globetrotting President & COO of publicly traded multi billion Jim Beam Co, with experience from more than 150 countries worldwide. After a 30 year career where often also delivering many speeches about diversity and global issues, at distinguished forums to expert audiences, he was asked to join CUNY Baruch College as Professor there teaching MBA students on global strategy and transnational management.
A lifetime devoted and inquisitive lecturer of culture, he commenced his true_history project twenty years ago to pursue in conjunction with his network of professionals, to reveal the true history of humankind, wherever it would take him.
His focus was on climate research, symbols and orally passed down stories by indigenous and other peoples stories who had not been given a fair attention, by the victors and powers who wrote our history, dismissing them as folklore or myth – until Triquet island outside BC in Canada, proved a 14,000 year old, and to-date the oldest presence in North America of indigenous people
