226 Summary report of the meeting of experts
on the African slave tradegenerous gift to absolve the liberators from any further responsibility for the
fate of the former slaves. Irrespective of the status of those who organized their
return—States institutions, churches, benevolent societies—the Africans who
were repatriated to Sierra Leone and Liberia constituted a relatively small
minority. The same was true of the blacks repatriated from Bombay to Kenya,
whose case merits further study.
The experts were generally inclined to conclude that abolition brought
no radical changes, but simply led to the transition from one state of production
and exploitation to another. Abolition made it possible to exploit an expanding
African labour market. At that point, trade with Europe could have served as
an incentive to the development of the domestic economy of Africa. But habits
acquired during the period of slavery appear to have limited the stimulus that
might have been expected.
Before such a stimulus could make itself felt, it was stifled by the colo-
nial conquest which blocked the development of African industry by intro-
ducing foreign business enterprises—and these, once again, exploited the con-
tinent so as to meet the needs of other countries.
There is ample room for further economic study, based on these initial
reflections, concerning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The abolition of slavery by Portugal in 1888 led Brazil to break off its
relations with that country a year later. The Portuguese economy suffered the
ill-effects of this secession for many decades.
Lastly, the experts turned their attention to the effects of abolition on
inegalitarian attitudes towards blacks. They concluded that abolition had led
to an increase in racialist attitudes of all kinds with regard to the Negro world
which was regarded as 'uncivilized', a world that had no right to its own culture
or its own religion. ' Scholars ' were quick to justify this harsh and unjust atti-
tude and to draw a distinction between the 'primitive' Negroes, with whom
nothing could be done, and the 'superior' Negroes, who could be assimilated.
New lines of researchThe experts recommended the following activities and subjects for research:
Exchanges, with assistance from Unesco, of teachers and students from uni-
versities in Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean region, who are
interested in the study of the various forms and consequences of the
slave trade.
The establishment of bilateral research teams of Latin American, Caribbean
and African scholars to make an inventory of African cultural survivals
(linguistic expressions, for example) of African life in the Americas.
The African States should be asked to include the teaching of Caribbean