The Balanta resistance and refusal to engage in slavery and slave trading by utilizing b’kindeu (ransoming captives back to their family) is well documented. Concerning slavery in West Africa at this time, academics and scholars of all persuasion are saying the same thing:
1) West African Societies, and particularly Islamic ones, developed their "empires" on the back of slavery (just like the Romans and Americans);
2) this is a neglected theme in the history of the Islamic world - "there is a gap because, among other reasons, scholars have not pursued the efforts of those who pioneered the history of plantations in Muslim societies."
One reason for this gap is due to the conspiracy of Griots from Mali to suppress the history. Consider this from Nubia Kai, discussing in her new book, Kuma Malinke Historiography; Sundiata Keita to Almamy Samori Toure, the first and last leaders of the Mali Empire from the 13th through the 15th centuries:
"Sundiata, the founder of the first and first emperor of Mali overcame a debilitating illness during his youth. He evaded the attempted murder initiated by his father's first wife Sassouma Beret, went into exile for several years with his mother Sogolon Conde and finally vanquished the despot [foreign name spoken] who had ruthlessly conquered and subjected the Manden kingdoms. Under his rule, the Manden kingdoms were reorganized into the Great Empire of Mali. He restored peace, order, justice and autonomy to the Mandinka kings and established alliances and solidarity with neighboring nations who were installed in the empire. [Sundiata's] greatest achievement which until recently was guarded in secrecy by a consensus of Mandinka griots was his abolition of slavery and the slave trade. His numerous conquests in West Africa were launched in order to enforce the oath of the Manden. The Edict officially banning slavery and slave trade in the empire.
UNFORTUNATELY, THE SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY WAS RESUMED 20 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH AND APPARENTLY THE NATIONAL SHAME OF THE BREAKING OF THE OATH COMPELLED THE GRIOTS TO CENSURE THIS SIGNIFICANT EVENT FROM THE ANNALS OF MALI'S OFFICIAL HISTORY, YET THIS EFFACEMENT WAS PUBLIC NOT PRIVATE AND INITIATED GRIOTS, THE [FOREIGN WORD SPOKEN] WERE TAUGHT THE HISTORY BUT HAD TO SWEAR NEVER TO REVEAL IT.
[Foreign name spoken] who was the chief griot of Mali in the 1970s and 80s griot [foreign name spoken], made the decision to break the vow of silence and divulge this hidden history to a Malian historian, a modern Mali historian [foreign name spoken]. [Foreign name spoken] collected and published [foreign name spoken] [foreign words spoken]. Excuse my French for those of you who know the language right and I want to show you and talk about the oath of the Manden or it's also called the Manden Charter in the PowerPoint but I'm going to come back to that. . . . .Now this Manden Charter is as I said before, was a charter or an oath that was constructed at the beginning of the formation of the Mali Empire and with the information that came out, and this information came out in the 1980s, the secret history was revealed through [foreign name spoken].
NOW SCHOLARS ARE TRYING TO LOOK, THEY HAVE TO KIND OF LOOK AGAIN AT THE WHOLE HISTORY OF MALI BECAUSE INSTEAD OF SOME RULER CONTE WHO WAS THE ENEMY IN THE EPIC OF SUNDIATA KEITA, HE NOW BECOMES THE HERO OR IS A HERO BECAUSE HE WAS THE ONE WHO CAME UP WITH THE IDEA TO END SLAVERY IN THE MALI EMPIRE AND WHAT HE DID HE TRIED TO CALL THE MANDINKA PEOPLE TO ARMS AGAINST [FOREIGN NAME SPOKEN] AND AGAINST THE MOOR'S [ASSUMED SPELLING] AND OTHER MANDINKA WHO WERE ALSO TRADING IN SLAVES.
Now this is 300 years before the transatlantic slave trade and it was pretty bad even at that time and I'm not going to go into all the details but if you want to read [foreign name spoken] text that, again, where he's recording [foreign name spoken] you can get the text, but they have not been translated. They're still in French. Anyway, [inaudible] comes up with the idea and when the Mandinka refuse to go along with him and ending slavery because some of the major leaders in the Manden were slavers.
THEY WERE BIG SLAVERS AND SLAVE TRADERS, SO THEY REFUSED. SO, [FOREIGN NAME SPOKEN] THIS IS WHEN HE LAUNCHES HIS ATTACK. HE ATTACKS THE MANDINKA PEOPLE, KILLS 9 OF THE KINGS, IMPALES THEIR BODIES ON SPIKES, MAKES FURNITURE OUT OF THE SKINS OF HIS ENEMIES AND LITERALLY SELLS THE PEOPLE INTO SLAVERY. THAT WAS HIS RESPONSE WHEN THEY REFUSED TO END SLAVERY. THAT'S WHY IN THE SECRET HISTORY HE'S KNOWN AS A SACRED DESPOT. IT SOUNDS RATHER OXYMORONIC BUT HE'S CALLED A SACRED DESPOT BECAUSE THE IDEA TO END SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE WAS REALLY [FOREIGN NAME SPOKEN] IDEA.
So, finally and you probably know the story because the Epic of Sundiata has now become part of the literary canon now, you're reading in colleges almost everywhere. You know the story how he's away in exile because his step-mother is trying to kill him. He's away and the envoys are sent to get him and when comes back he goes into, he has this war with [foreign name spoken] and eventually vanquishes him and then he becomes the emperor. But what happens is, just before his mother passes away, his mother is Sogolon Conde who tells him, look they're going to ask you to be the emperor but before you accept the position of emperor I want you to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the Mali Empire forever and of course he agreed to do this and so this is what he did.
THIS IS WHY HE GOES ONTO THIS CONQUEST OF THE OUTLYING NATIONS LIKE THE JOLOF AND [FOREIGN NAME SPOKEN] AND OTHER PARTS AROUND MALI BECAUSE HE KNEW AS LONG IT CONTINUED IN THE OUTLYING AREAS IT WAS GOING TO INFILTRATE BACK INTO THE MANDEN PROPER. SO, HE CREATES AN EMPIRE THAT WAS SLAVE FREE, YOU KNOW, AN EMPIRE WHERE SLAVERY WAS FORBIDDEN AND WHERE THE TRADE WAS FORBIDDEN AND THIS IS HOW THE CHARTER GOES.
The hunters refers to it because Sundiata was a hunter. "The hunters declare all human life is one life. It is true that one life may appear to exist before another life but one life is not more ancient or more respectable than another life. “
HERE WE HAVE THE TRUTH, BUT FOR THE TWENTY YEARS DURING SUNDIATA’S REIGN, THE MALI EMPIRE WERE THE BIGGEST SLAVE TRADERS BEFORE AND AFTER.
The praise and honor that the kingdom of Mali receives by historians and ignorantly repeated by people today, especially during Black History Month, is based on the idea that such state superstructures are an indication of superiority when, in fact, our Balanta ancestors recognized that the states like Mali created inequality and violated the Great Belief, and thus were resisted. We do not view the Empire of Mali as a point of pride because it was oppressive and continuously tried to dominate and enslave Balanta and other people living in the area. Unfortunately, it was during this period that the people known as “Portuguese” arrived.
Today, scholars have identified Kano, Djenne, Timbuktu, and the western edge between Walata and Niani as the main slave markets in Mali.
This map shows the main slave markets in the territory of the Mali Empire.
SO THE NEXT WAVE OF RESEARCH IS TELLING THE STORY OF WHO ENSLAVED WHO, WHEN and WHY...
This is necessarily going to be a challenge for some people, especially those whose ancestral lineages/ethnicities were complicit as well as for Muslims. As I have previously stated,
“There's no debate among scholars that slavery and the slave trade took place in West Africa during the middle ages. If we are to learn from the mistakes of our past to build a UNITED AFRICA today and for the future, we must discuss these things and be HONEST about them. WHO ENSLAVED WHO, HOW THEY DID IT AND WHY THEY DID IT. Otherwise, petty ETHNIC TRIBALISM and systems that produce social castes and inequality will continue. If ethnic or religious pride causes you to deny, defend, or minimize the injustices of the past, THEN YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.”
Scholars are now re-reading original African sources such as The Epic of Sundiata, The Epic of Kelefaa Saane, the Ta'rikh al Fattash, and many others, with new frameworks and understanding in order to piece together the untold story of people written out of history, Consider this from the Kano Chronicle:
This early document, like many others, provides the early documented evidence that foreign invaders from the east and northeast came and waged war on the people already living there. This would include our Balanta ancestors.
THE WEST AFRICAN SLAVE PLANTATION
"There are many neglected themes in the history of the Islamic world. Few, however, are as neglected as the role of plantations in that history. Yet what bits of information we have on the subject tend to suggest that, contrary to popular belief, plantations were a vital factor not only in the consolidation of some Muslim states, but also in determining some of the ways in which these societies reacted and adjusted to the challenges that confronted them. At least, one can come to such a conclusion on the strength of the evidence provided in some of the works discussed below. Despite this literature, there is a gap because, among other reasons, scholars have not pursued the efforts of those who pioneered the history of plantations in Muslim societies. It is partly to fill this lacuna that the present study has been undertaken."
TRANSFORMATIONS IN SLAVERY: A HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN AFRICA (AFRICAN STUDIES) 3RD EDITION
"This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves."
Here, another researcher has come to the same conclusions as we have previously published:
1) in an early period starting around 500 AD, there was plenty of land, thus migration was the simplest solution for conflict resolution.
2) Metallurgy led to social stratification and exacerbated competition for resources (just as it did THE FIRST TIME IN THE NEKHEN CONFEDERATION with the Mesinu);
3) "warlords" developed slavery for power; some societies resisted this pressure in an attempt to remain/retain their "pure" egalitarian societies.
Now, WHO WERE THESE AFRICAN COLONIZERS and WARLORDS who created the West African Empires??? We have already identified some of them in Mali. See article:
MANSA MUSA WERE IMPERIALIST SLAVE TRADERS: REVISITING AFRICAN HISTORY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE OPPRESSED
For more background, read the article below:
Slavery, Exchange and Islamic Law: A Glimpse From The Archives of Mali and Mauritania
Remember, our Balanta ancestors migrated straight through from Lake Chad to Guinea Bissau, passing through the territory and history of several people and “Empires”. All of this is detailed in the book, Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain, Volume II. Balanta Elder Estanislau Correia Landim is quoted by Walter Hawthorne in Strategies of the Decentralized, (from the book Fighting The Slave Trade: West African Strategies by Sylviane A. Diouf):,
“The origin of the Balanta was in Mali. For reasons involving Balanta thefts, Malianos revolted against the Balanta. For this reason, Balanta left there. That is, some Balanta were stealing some things. When a thief was discovered, he resolved to kill the person who had discovered him. For this reason, Malianos chased after the Balanta. . . . When the Balanta left Mali, they went to Nhacra and then to Mansoa.”
THIS NARRATIVE THAT BALANTA PEOPLE WERE CATTLE THIEVES, HOWEVER, IS NOT ACCURATE. Balanta people were NOT cattle thieves. Domingos Broksas in the video below explains that in reality, when the Mandinka raided the Balanta villages, the Balanta would flee, leaving their cattle behind. Later, they would go and retrieve their cattle. This is called “Reparations”, not theft.