Ideological, doctrinal, religious and political
aspects of the African slave trade27position of serfs in Russia. The magazine Sovremennik, edited at the time by
the great Russian democratic poet Nekrasov, published H. Beecher-Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin and Life among the Lowly. The outstanding Russian
pedagogue and public leader Vodovozov translated H. Heine's poem 'The
Slave Ship', etc. At that time the Russian press subjected racialist provisions
to severe criticism. The pronouncements of N. G. Chernyshevsky, the Russian
revolutionary democrat, are well known. Neither in the eighteenth nor in the
nineteenth century was a single work published in Russia advocating racism
against Africans.
After 1850, the general development of capitalism, the growing emigra-
tion from Europe and transition to an active colonialist policy reduced con-
siderably the export of slaves from Africa. In the United States the victory of
the northern States in the Civil War put an end to the Atlantic slave trade.
With the emergence of colonies in Africa, Africans began to be more needed
at home than in the New World.HistoriographyA century has gone by since the abolition of the Atlantic European Slave
Trade.^28 The international situation has changed as well as the place of African
countries among other States: former colonies have become independent. A
genuine history of the African peoples is in preparation : The General History
of Africa, the first volumes of which will soon be published under Unesco
auspices. It stands to reason that the slave-trade problem, incorporating numer-
ous complex and often contradictory points, has become in recent years a
subject of particular interest to historians in different countries.
The history of the slave trade is now depicted in different ways and
sometimes receives a new interpretation (Boahen, Curtin, Duignan, Clendensen
et a/.).a7 It is clear that the historiography of the slave trade is a separate,
highly important and interesting theme.
The history of the slave trade is now studied by African historians,
and among them Boahen, Ajayi et al.,^3 * and this is particularly interesting.
African scholars are able to make a much better evaluation of the scale of the
Atlantic slave trade and its consequences in Africa than European historians.
Undoubtedly some questions have to be revised. It is utterly wrong to
assert, for instance, that Africans themselves are to blame for the development
of the slave trade or to speak of equal co-operation between European and
African slave traders, just as it is absolutely incorrect to exaggerate, as has
been done in the last few years, the role of the Arab slave trade in East Africa
while diminishing the role and consequences of the Atlantic trade.
A point for consideration : for many years historians adopted the figures
of Africa's losses from the slave trade given by Dunbar and adduced by