Appendixe!, 241The most recent research, even that which has made use of the most modern
technology such as computerization, is still far from providing complete information
on the loss of human resources forced upon Africa. The figures put forward so far
remain approximations. Methods of estimation, moreover, vary from one school
to another. You are therefore asked to compare the different approaches followed by
establishing statistics and to suggest a method that might provide more precise results.
But apart from methodological problems, there still remains a question of
scientific interpretation. Here again, your meeting has an important task to perform.
This is to find a way to deal with certain basic questions, from the standpoint of the
strictest objectivity, through use of more varied and more numerous data, drawing
on all the sources that have remained hitherto inacessible or have rarely been con-
sulted, or those containing information which has been wrongly interpreted. Such
sources include oral tradition, an invaluable store of ethnic memories.
In connection with the very substance of your meeting, I should myself like,
in a very personal way, to lay before you a number of questions.
First, what were the circumstances in which the slave trade was carried on in
Africa itself? It is important ot get a clear idea of what is known about the trading
posts and holding areas in which the captives were assembled in conditions such that
some died even before embarkation on the slave-ships. It would, no doubt, be advisable
to have recourse to sources hitherto inadequately investigated, and to cross-check
information supplied by the various documents, such as the records of ship-owners,
slavers, the big monopoly companies and national naval archives. In particular an
even closer analysis should be made of ships' articles which provide valuable evidence
concerning the loading, travel and unloading of slaves; and court records of civil and
criminal proceedings concerning slaves and slave-traders should be more thoroughly
studied.
It is also desirable to sum up present knowledge concerning the way in which
the man-hunts were carried out, the victims captured and reduced to slavery on the
African continent, and to study completely objectively the role both of foreign powers
and of the local authorities.
One of the too little known and yet real aspects of the subject on which fresh
and more thorough research is required is the topic of domestic anti-slavery and anti-
slave-trade movements. The resistance struggles leading to the victorious winning of
independence in America have their early roots in this determination on the part of
the victims of the slave trade to maintain their human dignity and safeguard their
existence.
While new life can thus be instilled into the study of the circumstances of the
slave trade, there is also need for a more precise appraisal of its consequences in Africa.
The foremost of these are in the human context. There was a terrible loss of life, which,
as I have said, literally drained the blood of Africa and also, no doubt, left huge
stretches of land uncultivated, seriously interfering with social and economic life
and hindering cultural development and technological progress.
Thus for more than four centuries, population growth in Africa lagged greatly
behind that in any other continent over the same period.
While these losses, in terms of human life, are, if not precisely, at least with
increasing accuracy, being quantified in all their tragic reality, other, and not the