GO rD hIll
aF rIka N s laverY,
aF rIka N r ebellION ,
aND The U.s. CIvIl War
Ostensibly a moral crusade to “abolish slavery”, the U.S. Civil War of
1861–65 was in reality a conflict between the commercial and industrial
development of the North against the agrarian stagnation based on Afri-
kan peoples’ slave labour of the South.
By the 19th century, 10 to 15 million Afrikan peoples had been
relocated to the Americas by first Portuguese, then English, Spanish,
and U.S. colonialists.
These peoples came from all regions of Afrika: Sen-
egal, the Ivory Coast, Angola, Mozambique, etc.—and
from many Afrikan Nations: the Yoruba, Kissi, Senefu,
Foulah, Fons, Adjas, and many others.
Enslaved, these peoples were forced to labour in the
mines, textile mills, factories, and plantations that served
first the European markets and, after the wars for indepen-
dence, the newly-created nation-states of the Americas.
The slave-trade in both American and Afrikan Indige-
nous peoples was absolutely necessary for the European colo-
nization of the Americas. The forced relocation of millions
of Afrikan peoples also introduced new dy-
namics into the colonization process, not
only in the economics of European oc-
cupation, but also in the development
of Afrikan peoples’ resistance.
As early as 1526, Afrikan
slaves had rebelled in a short-lived
Spanish colony in South Carolina,
and after their escape took refuge
amongst First Nations peoples. In
the Caribbean and South America,