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Ticket-fixing and other methods of maintaining immunity from low-level traffic offenses is a common practice in some police subcultures and organizations. I've never worked in New York and certainly not for the NYPD, but my perception (which may be flawed) is that the rank and file officers believe the indicted NYPD members are being unfairly singled out and made examples of. I don't know how widespread this practice of ticket-fixing is or has been at NYPD, but in other police organizations it has gone on for many years with the tacit approval and even participation of police executives and well-connected politicians.Ticket-fixing occurs on several levels. In the police department where I worked, the process began after a citizen with a "police friend" got a ticket from an officer who didn't know the citizen. The citizen went to his police friend and asked him to intercede. The police friend would then call our communications center and ask that the officer who issued the ticket call him on the phone (this pre-dated cell phones). When the call was made, the police friend would tell the issuing officer his relationship with the violator, and then ask an important question: was he an asshole? If the violator had been disrespectful or bragged about how he would have the ticket taken care of, he was on his own. However, if the violator hadn't been out of line, the police friend would tell the issuing officer a sad tale of how he was going through a lot right now, his dog died, a plague of locusts attacked his roses, etc., and if the officer could see his way to give him a break. The police friend would consider this a favor (if the police friend outranked the issuing officer, the owed favor could be quite valuable). If the officer went along with the police friend--and he usually did--the officer would place the copy of the ticket that would normally be turned in at the end of watch in the police friend's station mailbox. The police friend would collect the violator's copy, combine the two, and turn in the now-voided citation. It was very important to get all of the copies (a traffic citation was a multi-part form with four sheets), as citations were serially numbered and tracked, and every one of them had to be accounted for.Time was a critical factor in this process. If the officer turned in the ticket for processing, it was logged into the court system and recalling it became far more involved and difficult. The call from the police friend usually came within an hour of issuing the ticket.This practice ended when an officer called in his marker. A high-ranking police executive had been the police friend for his daughter's boyfriend. Some months later, the issuing officer was disciplined for some minor transgression, and was looking at a brief suspension without pay. The officer went to the executive and asked him to intercede. The chief of police wasn't pleased. The officer's suspension went away, but the executive was suspended for five days.I know it is much easier to "take care of" a ticket in some other jurisdictions, no matter where the ticket is in the processing sequence. I read of a recent case in Illinois where a records clerk in a sheriff's office sent a fax to a neighboring agency, with a copy of a ticket issued by that agency and a note that the violator was the child of one of their employees. The note included directions to cancel the citation. The case made the news because the clerk erred in entering the fax number of the neighboring agency, and instead sent the fax to a local newspaper. This is conjecture: if a records clerk will be that casual about "taking care of" a ticket, it's a common practice.In some places, an officer can have a ticket dismissed by simply not showing up for court when the case comes to trial. Where I worked, officers were disciplined for missing court--a warning the first time, a written reprimand the second, and escalating numbers of suspension days for each subsequent unexcused absence. In some other places, they apparently don't care whether the officer goes to court or not, at least where minor offenses are concerned.Another way of maintaining immunity from traffic laws is the practice of distributing "friend of" or "associate" cards. In some police agencies, shortly before officers complete basic training and go on the street, a representative from the police officer's association (the Police Benevolent Association, Fraternal Order of Police, or other group) will give a presentation at the academy. A part of the session will be devoted to distribution of a fixed number of cards. You might get three or five or ten, but everyone gets the same number and no more. These have the new officer's name and agency name on them, and identify the bearer as a special friend or associate of the officer to whom all consideration should be given in the event of an enforcement encounter. Each officer is free to hand these out as he sees fit to his family, significant other, whomever.When an officer makes a stop on someone who presents one of these cards, he has three options. He can tell the violator to watch his speed, turn signals, whatever, and please say "hi" to your your friend officer so-and-so. This is what usually happens. If the violation is serious or the bearer of the card is disrespectful, he can seize the card and return it to the officer who gave it to the violator with a warning to straighten out his friend. Finally, if the officer making the stop is sufficiently incensed that he is unmoved by the relationship of the violator with a fellow officer, he can make the arrest or issue the ticket anyway. This is called "writing over the card." There are circumstances that justify this, but it's almost as likely that the officer who wrote the ticket will come to work to find his locker filled with dog poop.You may have seen license plate frames, window stickers or other insignia given in return for a donation to the state trooper's association, Fraternal Order of Police chapter, sheriff's posse, etc. My sense is that most people who display these believe they will curry favor with officers who stop them for traffic violations. In my experience, they make little or no difference. The gravity of the violation, the demeanor of the violator, and the officer's work environment at the time of the stop have a lot more to do with whether the violator receives a warning or a ticket. By "work environment," I mean whether the officer is being pressured to write more tickets. No department will set a ticket quota per se, but if, for example, the officer is working overtime on a federally-funded traffic safety grant targeting certain violations, he will be expected to issue as many citations for those violations as he can. If he doesn't, someone else will get the next overtime opportunity.All this doesn't even broach the practice of "professional courtesy," where cops extend consideration to other cops, but that's another essay.To address your question specifically: the brotherhood of the badge is a strong one. I believe these cops feel that their colleagues are being unfairly prosecuted for engaging in a practice that is widespread at all levels of the police department and the city. I believe they would have found it more appropriate to have the department declare this would no longer be tolerated, and then let anyone who tried it again take their chances.

I tend to dislike any statement that uses the term “Native Americans”. It’s like you took a look at Poland and used this example to state generalities about “Indo-Europeans”, whether they live in Portugal or are Indians. As if worshippers of Ganesh were Catholics!Also people tend to project fantasies on ancient indigenous societies and want to find in them the lost Paradise of Eden, “primitive communism”, or “anarcho-primitivism”, or whatever… But the more I read about them, the less pleasant I find these societies, and the XXIst century still is probably more comfortable in many ways.I don’t think any indigenous society had a total absence of property or territorialism, even in the nomadic societies, it’s just that they had very different priorities, that were the product of a different lifestyle.In nomadic cultures speaking Algonquian languages (this is what I will discuss, don’t generalize outside of these cultures), French missionaries would notice that indigenous were often « chapardeurs » (pilferers). In French it would usually imply you’re a petty thief, but that’s not what it means here. They meant that when they left their own personal possessions around, it was likely an indigenous would just pick it up, pass it to someone else, it would circulate among them and they would not have any inhibition thinking that the item belonged to the missionary. This is usually where the notions that they did not have a notion of private property is from and that they shared everything. Several of these nomadic Algonquian-speakers found simply offensive that missionaries would consider certain items were their exclusive possessions, it was regarded as an anti-social behavior; you liked objects more than people. Also, it was common that when a missionary gifted something, the indigenous that received it requested the missionary to keep custody of it, because otherwise he would lose the exclusivity over the object (eventually, indigenous accepted that the French did not like their items to be passed around without their permission).(Map of the Algonquian family of languages, named from the Algonquin nation. This is not a political map and a lot of indigenous polities are missing.)« […] quand vous refusez quelque chose à un Sauvage, aussitôt il vous dit Khisakhitan : Tu aimes cela, sakhita, sakhita, aime-le, aime-le, comme s’ils voulaient dire qu’on est attaché à ce qu’on aime. »“[…] when you refuse something to a Savage, right then he tells you Khisakhitan: You like this, sakhita, sakhita, like it, like it, as if they wanted to say one is attached to what one likes.”(Relations des Jésuites)Paradoxically, this propensity to share everything was the cornerstone of inequality in those nations: social prestige was derived from the ability to gift a lot of wealth to everyone. Europeans had a similar concept, called with the Greek word evergetism, when rich bourgeois were expected, as good Christians, to donate a lot to their city, as compensation for being rich. For the French in America, you have an example of this when the rich bourgeois Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye donated money to relieve people that lost their homes in a fire in Québec City. I would also find a similarity with Soviet bureaucracy: a Soviet official was not supposed to own anything, he had to temporarily use a car or an house issued by the State during his lifetime, but not formally owning those did not mean that their way of life was not superior to most people because in the end the exclusive right to use something can resemble a lot to property when it’s reserved to the elite. Wealth, in many indigenous cultures, was to give every wealth you could capture to the entire nation, as a mean to strenghten political bonds and assert your political power, which would put you in an unequal position as you would have more influence.Because no, these societies were not completely equal. And missionaries paid a lot of attention to how power worked because a common evangelization strategy was to target the most influential people, convert them, and use their influence to convert everyone else, so they were actively looking for powerful figures. While, for example, the offices of what we tend to call “chiefs” in our languages (it can be military chiefs, political chiefs, who are rarely the same people), or as the French said “captains”, were not hereditary, in reality some families were capable to reproduce themselves in these positions and create a quasi-heredity. For example, among the Odawa ogimaag (“chiefs”), you had a chief called Nissowaquet, and the name was transmitted to another individual when the former one died, and it tended to remain in the same family. In short, some people had better contacts, and could achieve more, obtain more wealth for their clans trough warfare or trade, and be more politically influential, despite there was no power as concentrated as anything the Europeans were familiar with.Another factor of unequality was eloquence. If you had better rhetorics and could persuade others with seductive words, you could go far in life in these societies. It sounds awfully like the Roman politicans that cultivated the art of rhetorics precisely for the same goal. Some missionaries studied so well indigenous languages that they became truly eloquent and got the admiration of the nation, and were sometimes even given important responsibilities.(A French drawing of an Illinois nation, with a female Fox slave sat at the lower left corner of the picture. The standing man in the right is not Illinois but an Attakapa.)(An indigenous-crafted halter for slaves)Something leftists often like to overlook and forget is that there was in fact ONE private property in these societies: slaves. And yes, there was a slavery, but often its cultural peculiarities confuse people that grew with the European notions about slavery. First of all, indigenous slaves were pretty much never hereditary. You can’t be born a slave. This is a problem as it’s often part of the definition of slavery for Europeans. Another problem is that there is great variance in the treatment of slaves and so sometimes it can be so soft you wouldn’t want to use the word “slave”:The best-case scenario is that you are a kid captured in a raid, you are a prisoner of war that is enslaved, and you are tortured by cutting you a finger, but you impress the indigenous by remaining stoic. A family among your captors wants to replace one of their dead so you are adopted. Initially, you are a prisoner: you are not free to escape, you will be pursued if you try to escape. But over time, the nation trusts you, you become a full member of the nation, and you may even become someone important. This happened to a few French as well, like Guillaume Couture, who is the only European in history to become a member of the Iroquois Council. Due to this scenario, many historians considered that there was no indigenous slavery, merely adoption. [Yes, I know Iroquois are to be excluded from the Algonquian peoples, but I think that phenomenon may also happen among them.]Indigenous typically torture enemy warriors. It was in fact an honor, it was “manly” to remain stoic in front of pain and indigenous admired that quite a lot and even trained their children to be used to pain. Sometimes they even practiced ritual cannibalism with their enemies (which was otherwise a terrible crime within the nation). This is the fate of those who are not enslaved because they are killed right away.The French hated that custom, because they were from a culture in which officers moved around with their bed and tea set and enemy officers exchanged pleasant conversations before shooting at each other. (« Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers. », Battle of Fontenoy) Despite this, they resolved to do it as well in Détroit, for example, because they found that if they did not torture enemy indigenous, they lost all respect and credibility and were not considered powerful. So the French reluctantly tolerated that sort of torture and would also let their allies burn indigenous enemies alive. The depiction in the series Barkskins that the French would hang Iroquois on a tree to spread terror is outrageously inaccurate and contrary to their entire culture of war of the time.Read more: the criticism of how New France is represented in Annie Proulx’s Barkskins (book and TV) by the Franco-Ontarian historian Joseph Gagné, Barkskins: Dud on Arrival (let’s just say it’s awfully inaccurate)Another possibility is that you are captured, but you resist too much. They kill you brutally and dishonorably, they are losing patience.Or you are too weak to walk, they lose patience, they kill you. Indigenous hate slaves that are slowing them down.You are forced to walk with an halter. When the band stops to sleep, you have to lie down and you are tied to poles so you can sleep while not being able to escape.Your social standing is that of a dog, and indigenous treat dogs very badly. In fact, the word for slave is the word for dog, or any other domestic animal. A dog is malnourished by definition, that’s what they consider good training for a dog. You may regularly be beaten.Their treatment of dogs shocked the French, at least the nobles among them, because for the French the dog was a prestigious noble animal used by the nobles in their hunts in the super prestigious chasse à courre, and there was an entire science of taking care of dogs, called vénerie, with detailed treatises explaining how to take care of dogs. French peasants however, not so much, they regarded them just as tools.Yes, indigenous that practiced agriculture would use you as forced labor for agriculture, but what differs from Europeans of the sugar colonies is that slaves were not really essential for that and their absence was not much of a problem.You would be used as a messenger, run errands.You could be a sexual slave. In the specific case of the Illinois, who were a patrilocal and patrilinear society as opposed to many of their northern cousins, a man could have four “wives”, several of which were slaves. The Illinois, unusually for the nations of their language group, were pretty patriarchal and female slaves had the tip of the nose cut off if they “cheated” on their “husband”.The French punishment for the same offense was to send the woman to a convent for some time and to ban the man she cheated with.As a slave, your life was disposable and you could be killed on a whim for no reason if one of your captors had a moment of anger.Slaves could be gifted to another nation as diplomatic present. For example, the father Marquette learned the illinois language by using a slave that the Illinois gifted to the Odawa, who in turn gifted him to Marquette.The Illinois considered that enslavement was an “ingurgitation” into the nation, and that manumission was “vomiting”.So to go back to private property, a slave was typically reserved to an individual, and you had to ask permission to borrow a slave. So this is totally unlike material possessions which were communal properties. So slaves are a big exception. In Illinois society, social prestige was proportional to the number of slaves you captured in war, and they got a tattoo for each slave they captured.Source for slavery : Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France, 2012.Algonquian-speaking nations didn’t really have a notion of obedience or chain of command. Military leaders were appointed by their peers for a campaign, and it was not a sense of obedience that bounded the people “under” them to them but mere admiration. Indigenous warriors could simply decide to leave a campaign and it was not considered “desertion”. What made a military leader followed was just admiration, and that admiration replaced quite well obedience. They would follow the commander everywhere and sometimes would prefer to die rather than admit to them they did a mistake. Indigenous stopped frequently to debate the next move, military decisions were collegial. So this is very different from Europe, where armies were very coercitive. A form of obedience was obtained but trough persuasion, which is why again rhetorics makes a huge difference. Class is the product of speech. Another difference is that indigenous do not observe “articles of capitulation”. There is no such thing as conditionnal surrender. You can’t capitulate to indigenous, they will take your belongings and kill anyone that resists and you can’t negociate anything, yet another offensive thing for Europeans.As for territory, it’s a difficult thing to address. Algonquian societies lived in a world in which there was no territorial stability for anything. Populations moved, even sedentary villages moved, game and fish moved, etc. Therefore a notion of border was not really possible, and anyways we tend to forget that Europe in the Middle Ages had not borders either but at best “marches” (sort of buffer zones). What complicates things even more is that there was a sort of “expanded territory” used for hunting, which was much bigger than the core territory they regarded their own, and often indigenous disputes are in these territories. Indigenous lived in a world in which spirits inhabited everything and you negociated with them to get meat or maple sap or corn.It’s difficult to understand what conquest means for them. My hunch is that conquest is more about dominating populations rather than territories, but even then I’m not sure. Indigenous did make war on the resources : they sometimes overhunted on purpose on their enemies’ territories just to disrupt their economy (especially once the beaver became a commodity to trade with the French). For the indigenous, it’s not possible to own “land” as for them, “land” is something that cannot be measured and quantified (much like the sea), therefore you can only be a caretaker of the land; there can be attribution but not possession in the sense Roman law understands it. Land is seen as infinite and boundless. So any use of land in the details is necessarily temporary, transitory; only vague regions can be claimed.Yes, there is territoriality. They did not consider that everyone could just pass through their territory and they even enforced “customs” for people that passed trough them for trade. The Algonquins for example watched the circulation of canoes at the île aux Allumettes to charge a toll on passing merchants.L'Isle-aux-AllumettesThere exists a fascinating French document that reveals a lot about how territoriality works between nomads. Let us remember that the French governor, known as Onontio to the indigenous, pretended to become the arbiter that would solve conflicts between all the nations. Some nations took that seriously and asked the French for arbitration in their disputes.In March 1705, a band of Innu indigenous [Montagnais in French] known to the French as Guillaume Chische, Joseph Marachualik and François ȣcachy [ȣ is a Latin ligature of letters that is an O topped with an U, making the sound [u], spelled OU in French], had a camp in the territory where they hunted beaver. They were somewhere around their summer quarters at the Lac Saint-Jean, and they were traveling west to reach their winter quarters. Then, they sighted numerous footprints in the snow. They suspected it was Abenakis, and they considered them trespassers that were “pillaging” their furs.Their suspicions proved correct : they encountered a band of 6 Abenakis led by François Thékȣérimat. The Innu were at a disadvantage, they had numerical inferiority. The Abenaki first sent to the Innu a delegation matching their numbers. They were warning the Innu that they were trespassing, and for now they would not resort to violence, but it was a warning. According to what the Innu told the French :“Thékȣérimat told us that the lands of Lac Saint-Jean belonged to the Abénaquis and that they had come to hunt on them”This claim meant that the Abenaki considered they could “pillage” what the Innu had hunted, as they considered that their property. It’s interesting to note that Innu and Abenaki were military allies. Nethertheless, there is a lot of tension in the situation. The Abenakis are not doing acts of war but they are forceful towards their allies.This Innu band could not resist as it was in inferiority and so gave in : they offered 6 moose hides to be spared from pillage. They also let the Abenaki sleep in their lodge and in the morning, they were intimidated enough to reveal the location of their food caches. They even gave the Abenakis a toboggan to carry their loot.The French were an interested party indirectly: the merchant François Hazeur sold things on credit to the Innu, and now the Innu were not able to pay their debt due to the Abenaki incursions. This is why Hazeur insisted that the French, as arbiters of the indigenous nations, obtain justice for the Innu. Hazeur also suspected that a rival French trader based in Trois-Rivières was backing the Abenakis.All of these people went to meet the French intendant, the highest magistrate for civilian matters, to begin an inquiry. The 3 Innu were interrogated with the help of an interpreter and a clerk recorded their words.The intendant summoned Louis Thékȣérimat, son of the Abenaki chief involved in the dispute, and held a separate interrogation. The Abenaki version said that the lands belonged to his father, and that they visited the Innu camp to lodge a protest.“They [the Abenaki] complained that the Montagnais were hunting on their lands, and that they had so thoroughly destroyed the animals on it, that they could find no food, to the point where they had had to make canoes in order to return [to Saint-François].”The Abenaki complained that the Innu were killing all the moose, even the ones that they had cared to “raise” and “conserve”. Even more scandalously, the Innu would have killed all the beavers.In the Innu testimony, the French asked: is it not a rule among them never to hunt without permission on the lands of another?The Innu answered :“it is a rule for us that each hunter hunts on his own lands.”The French asked to the Abenaki Louis Thékȣérimat : did the Abénaquis usually hunt in this area?“Replied that they go there whenever they want and that no one has ever opposed them. Being presently numerous, they have been obliged to go and seek their livelihood where they could and the land in question belonged to his grandfather who in turn gave it to his father. In killing all the animals that were in this place, the said Montagnais have, in effect, killed the Abénaquis themselves.”Interestingly, neither party uses any landmark and they are not trying to place a boundiary.In the end, the French were baffled, had no idea how to solve the issue, and so did not decide anything for the Innu and Abenaki (presuming both sides would have accepted their ruling) and left them to solve their issue, but ordered new regulations for the French King’s Posts in Innu territory in relation to this episode.So I would say nomadic territories are the hunting grounds used by a band (a hunting party, a fraction of a nomadic nation). They belong to a specific band in the nation. The animal resources on the territory belong to the band. Perhaps when they all meet in the summer, properties are communal, but in the winter it’s to the band. I guess the summer territory is the core territory, less prone to disputes between nations, but the winter territory (hunting grounds, with the nation dispersing) is much bigger and so more prone to disputes.Source for this episode : Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America, 2018, pp. 298–305.So yes, there is inequality (but it’s rather light), there is private property (slaves), there is territoriality. It’s just really not similar to European notions.When I did not quote a specific source, I probably took it in Le Piège de la liberté and in Le Pays renversé. Both these books draw heavily on La Relation des jésuites. There may also be Masters of the Middle Waters as well.What I discussed here is entirely irrelevant to the Mexicas of Tenochtitlán. These people, who built an aggressive empire, had sort of notaries that recorded the information on who owned what, and the lands used for agriculture had boundiaries (in the form of agave plants). In their case you could almost say they had a cadastre, a land survey.EDIT : Since you may want to study the documents pertaining to the territorial conflicts between the nomadic Innu and Abenaki, I will put here what Allan Greer quoted exactly :France, Archives nationales d’outre-mer, colonies (shortened ANOM), C11A, vol. 25, fol. 27–36, Requête du Sr. Hazard [could it be a typo of Hazeur ?] à Jacques Raudot, 3 August 1706, plus attached documents.See also ibid., 25: 82–87v, Déclaration à Messieurs les directeurs general [directeurs généraux] de la Compagnie de la colonie de Canada, 19 June 1705; ibid., 25: 76v; Petition of Sr. Hazeur to Govr. Vaudreuil, 4 November 1705; ibid., 27: 55v, Hazeur to Pontchartrain, 5 November 1707.These were studied in Toby Morantz, “Colonial French Insights into Early 18th- Century Algonquians of Central Quebec,” in Papers of the Twenty-Second Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1991), 213–24; Sylvie Savoie and Jean Tanguay, “Le nœud de l’ancienne amitié: La presence abénaquise sur la rive nord du Saint-Laurent aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Recherches amérindiennes au Québec 33 (2003): 36–41; Nelson-Martin Dawson, Feu, fourrures, fléaux et foi foudroyèrent: les Montagnais: Histoire et destin de ces tribus nomades d’après les archives de l’époque coloniale (Sillery: Septentrion, 2005), 182–84.FR

Nope [by the way, colonization came later after Africans became very weakened by the slave trade]… Black Africans did indeed sell their souls to the devils and they were the devils themselves.The truth is: black African chiefs (kings, generals, etc) sold their own black African enemies initially to muslim-Arab slave traders (during the trans-Saharan slave trade) and then later to European slave traders (during the trans-Atlantic slave trade). What did they get in return? Weakened African enemies and trade goods (guns/arms, crafts, etc) from muslim-Arabs and Europeans. This is the truth. No muslim-Arab or European placed an African chief to hunt for other Africans to be sold to them the muslim-Arab/European slavers. Just no.The African slave traders were as evil (or as guilty) as the muslim-Arab/European slave traders. In Africa, the Black African slave traders were the most evil, more evil than the muslim-Arab/European slave traders.Slave trade along the Senegal river, Kingdom of Cayor. [Do you see who has the whip whipping the others? Do you see the soldiers too? They are all black Africans, paid by the local black African chief to hunt for other Africans to be sold as slaves to either muslim-Arabs or Europeans]Black Africans knew of the harsh slavery that awaited slaves in the New World. Many elite Africans visited Europe on slave ships following the prevailing winds through the New World. One example of this occurred when Antonio Manuel, Kongo’s ambassador to the Vatican, went to Europe in 1604, stopping first in Bahia, Brazil, where he arranged to free a countryman who had been wrongfully enslaved. African monarchs also sent their children along these same slave routes to be educated in Europe, and thousands of former slaves eventually returned to settle Liberia and Sierra LeoneSlavery has historically been widespread in Africa way before both muslim-Arab and European slave trades, and still continues today in some countries. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. When the Arab slave trade and Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. Slavery in historical Africa was practiced in many different forms: Debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa. Plantation slavery also occurred primarily on the eastern coast of Africa and in parts of West Africa. The importance of domestic plantation slavery increased during the 19th century due to the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Many African states dependent on the international slave trade reoriented their economies towards legitimate commerce worked by slave labor.[1]African Slave Owners [2]Many societies in Africa with kings and hierarchical forms of government traditionally kept slaves. But these were mostly used for domestic purposes. They were an indication of power and wealth and not used for commercial gain. However, with the appearance of Europeans desperate to buy slaves for use in the Americas, the character of African slave ownership changed.GROWING RICH WITH SLAVERYROYALTYIn the early 18th century, Kings of Dahomey (known today as Benin) became big players in the slave trade, waging a bitter war on their neighbours, resulting in the capture of 10,000, including another important slave trader, the King of Whydah. King Tegbesu made £250,000 a year selling people into slavery in 1750. King Gezo said in the 1840's he would do anything the British wanted him to do apart from giving up slave trade:"The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…"LIVING WITNESSSome of the descendants of African traders are alive today. Mohammed Ibrahim Babatu is the great great grandson of Baba-ato (also known as Babatu), the famous Muslim slave trader, who was born in Niger and conducted his slave raids in Northern Ghana in the 1880's. Mohammed Ibrahim Babatu, the deputy head teacher of a Junior secondary school in Yendi, lives in Ghana."In our curriculum, we teach a little part of the history of our land. Because some of the children ask questions about the past history of our grandfather Babatu.Babatu, and others, didn't see anything wrong with slavery. They didn't have any knowledge of what the people were used for. They were only aware that some of the slaves would serve others of the royal families within the sub-region.He has done a great deal of harm to the people of Africa. I have studied history and I know the effect of slavery.I have seen that the slave raids did harm to Africa, but some members of our family feel he was ignorant…we feel that what he did was fine, because it has given the family a great fame within the Dagomba society.He gave some of the slaves to the Dagombas and then he sent the rest of the slaves to the Salaga market. He didn't know they were going to plantations…he was ignorant…"Listen to Mohammed Ibrahim Babatu, great great grandson of the famous Muslim slave trader Baba-ato SONGHAYThe young Moroccan traveler and commentator, Leo Africanus, was amazed at the wealth and quantity of slaves to be found in Gao, the capital of Songhay, which he visited in 1510 and 1513 when the empire was at the height of its power under Askiya Mohammed."...here there is a certain place where slaves are sold, especially on those days when the merchants are assembled. And a young slave of fifteen years of age is sold for six ducats, and children are also sold. The king of this region has a certain private palace where he maintains a great number of concubines and slaves."SWAHILIThe ruling class of coastal Swahili society - Sultans, government officials and wealthy merchants - used non-Muslim slaves as domestic servants and to work on farms and estates. The craftsmen, artisans and clerks tended to by Muslim and freed men. But the divisions between the different classes were often very flexible. The powerful slave and ivory trader Tippu Tip was the grandson of a slave.Listen to historian Abdul Sheriff introducing Tippu Tip's autobiography followed by a BBC dramatisation of the slave trader's own writingThe Omani Sultan, Seyyid Said, became immensely rich when he started up cloves plantations in 1820 with slave labour - so successful was he that he moved the Omani capital to Zanzibar in 1840.Find out more about the SwahilisPUNISHED FOR KEEPING SLAVESThe Asanti (the capital, Kumasi, is in modern Ghana) had a long tradition of domestic slavery. But gold was the main commodity for selling. With the arrival of Europeans the slaves displaced gold as the main commodity for trade. As late as 1895 the British Colonial Office was not concerned by this."It would be a mistake to frighten the King of Kumasi and the Ashantis generally on the question of slavery. We cannot sweep away their customs and institutions all at once. Domestic slavery should not be troubled at present."British attitudes changed when the King of the Asanti (the Asantehene) resisted British colonial authority. The suppression of the slave trade became a justification for the extension of European power. With the humiliation and exile of King Prempeh I in 1896, the Asanti were placed under the authority of the Governor of the Gold Coast and forced therefore to conform to British law and abolish the slave trade.SLAVERY DECREED BY THE GODSIn 1807, Britain declared all slave trading illegal. The king of Bonny (in what is now the Nigerian delta) was dismayed at the conclusion of the practice."We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself."See more from Shayn McCallum's answer to I’ve heard “history buffs” say that slaves were purchased from blacks in Africa, but I’ve heard black historians say that blacks were placed there by colonialists to sell black slaves. Who do I believe?Remarkable Facts· In 1462 Pope Pius II declared baptized Africans should not be enslaved. Columbus never saw North America. He visited many Caribbean islands and the northeastern tip of South America, as well as the Eastern coast of Central America, but never the mainland.· The father of Olaudah Equiano, one of the most famous former slaves and leading abolitionists, kept slaves.· An English surgeon thought that two thirds of deaths on the journey were due to melancholy - people captured in slavery just willed themselves to die.· A Sonyo prince from the Congo region was captured whereupon the Sonyo people refused to trade anymore with the Dutch; he was returned with apologies.· In 1726 the King of Dahomey suggested Europeans should establish plantations in his kingdom - he would supply the slaves.· One of the few successful on ship slave rebellions took place in 1840 on the Amistad.· In 1930, the Liberian government was accused by the League of Nations of using forced labour to carry out public works.FURTHER READINGTwenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Free Man: Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, while President of Wilberforce Colony, London, can. By Austin Steward. Greenwood Publishing Group, June 1968.Life of Olaudah Equiano, of Gustavus Vassa, The African. By Olaudah Equiano. Dover Pubns, April 1999.The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870. By Hugh Thomas. Touchstone Books. February 1999.Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar. By Abdul Sheriff. Ohio University Press, September 1987.Black Ivory. James Walvin, Fontana Press.The History of Mary Prince. By Mary Prince. Penguin USA, January 2001.Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave. By Frederick Douglass, Signet, December 1997.Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. By Alexander Falconbridge. AMS Press, June 1977.Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental and African Slave Trades (African Studies Series, 67). By Patrick Manning. Cambridge University Press, November 1990.How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. By W. Rodney. Bogle l'Ouverture, 1983.The African Slave Trade. By Basil Davidson. Little Brown, 1980.Forced Migration. By J. Inikori. Hutchinson, 1982.The African Slave Trade from 15th to the 19th Centuries, UNESCO Reports and Papers 2, 1999.USEFUL LINKSUNESCO Slave RouteThis is an extensive information base linking to a large number of sites concerned with the Transatlantic Slave Trade.Modern Civil Rights MovementLearning Network.Anti-slavery campaignsCurrent reports on slavery around the world. Website by Antislavery International, London.Life story of J.J.Roberts.Columbus's life Lingua Center, University of Illinois, Urbana-Campaign.Site on Frederick DouglassDepartment of History, University of Rochester.American Independence, Native Americans and Slavery Internet History Sourcebooks Project, edited by Paul Halsall, Fordham University, New York.LiberiaAfrican-American Mosaic, a resource guide for the study of black history, The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.History of early firearmsWebsite by David Lazenby, Middelaldercentret, Denmark.On slavery and exploitationdrawing parallels with white on white exploitation. World History Archives site.Eyewitness accounts of slaveryBy Professor Steven Mintz, University of Houston.Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery?By Oscar L.Beard, Consultant in African Studies, World History Archives.African Presence in the Americas 1492-1992, provided by Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.Olaudah EquianoExtract from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. The British Library.Global Slavery Resource Center siteAmerican Antislavery Group.On SlaveryBBC SiteAfrican Ancestry SiteCompiled by Howard UniversityAfricana LibraryCornell UniversityEDIT: Please also read David Maynard’s answer as a good complement to my answer here; David Maynard's answer to I’ve heard “history buffs” say that slaves were purchased from blacks in Africa, but I’ve heard black historians say that blacks were placed there by colonialists to sell black slaves. Who do I believe?. My answer only discussed black African slave owners/traders in Africa. Also, I am/was very surprised to see that many did not know that there were black African slave traders/owners in Africa.Footnotes[1] Slavery in Africa - Wikipedia[2] The Story of Africa| BBC World Service