African-American Historical Notebook/Primer
1436-1877. Volume One
Introduction
In the search for truth one must move beyond the lies and misconceptions that have been taught us and begin to do research to find the hidden knowledge. This little notebook does not pretend to have or reveal all the hidden knowledge. This is only part of the beginning. Before African people's and people of the world can liberate themselves economically politically, socially and culturally they need a new "liberating" paradigm. What is a paradigm? A paradigm is a mental (psyc) picture we have of the world, or world view which is developed more or less by the age of 14, either by our experiences or by what was taught to us since birth. This paradigm deepens as we are socialized in the world. Why do we start off this way? Because it is necessary to be flexible and broad minded to begin to receive aspects of the truth.
Eighty years or more ago Elijah Muhammad made a shocking pronouncement that the original man was the Asiatic black man. Since that time it has been proven that the origins of the species, homo-sapiens evolved out of Africa and that through DNA tracking all of humanity can be traced to the real Eve, the mother of humans; an African woman. Cheikh Anta Diop through his research has proven that the same Africans who built civilizations on the West Coast of Africa, in Carthage, North West Africa and Spain and Portugal and who colonized Sicily and even Italy for years were the direct descendents from the Ancient Kemetians (African-Egyptians) who dominated the known world longer than any people on the planet earth (2,500) years. These same people are the direct descendents of the Kushities, Nubians and Ethiopians. It is recorded that the ancient Kemetians navigationally circled Africa as early as 1,500 B.C. recorded in the book Return of the Ancient Ones is that the Kemetians (Egyptians) reached North America (Louisiana) traded and settled a colony (Washitaws) as early as 1,500 B.C.
Ivan Van Sertima has recorded in his book They Came Before Columbus how Africans traveled and settled in South, Central America before the adventures of Columbus in 1492. Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quick in Deeper Roots: Muslims in the Americas and the Caribbean from Before Columbus to the Present, shows how ancient Black Carthagians from Carthage ventured (navigated) to the Americas and how the Moors followed suit. Africans from the Songhay Empire in 1300 AD did the same. It is noted now that the Chinese had ventured to the West Coast of North America as early as 500 B.C. and that a Chinese Muslim admiral ran a ground in the Caribbean in 1421, recorded in the book 1421. Dr. Quick has also researched the alliance between the Moorish nation (pre-Columbus) and the Iroquios Native American nation which had developed a constitution; the Articles of Confederation from which the Articles of Confederation of the United States was copied. From the Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam in 1991 published an astounding account of Jewish relationship to the slave trade and slavery in The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. Volume One and Charles C. Mann in 1491 goes on to show Native Americans were on a higher level than most Europeans prior to the coming of Columbus in 1492. In this brief notebook we go on to show that Native Americans died from European diseases and also from the forced slave conditions; a combination which led to the genocide of 90 million Native Americans by 1592. Charles C. Mann goes on to show:
• In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.
• Certain cities - such as Tenochtitlan. the Aztec capital - were far greater in population
than any contemporary European city. Furthermore. Tenochtitlan. unlike any capital in
Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately
clean streets.
• The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the
great pyramids.
• Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed com by a breeding process so sophisticated
that the journal Science recently described it as "man's first and perhaps the greatest feat
of genetic engineering."
• Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it - a process
scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
• Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a
hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings.
So this African-American Historical Notebook/Primer 1436-1877, Volume One is just a curtain raiser for what yet needs to be revealed. It is not a totally original written manuscript Much of it is borrowed from different sources, combined with original material; it paints a different picture for those who hear the beat of a "different drummer."
As Salaam Alaikum
African-American Historical Committee 2006
The Racist/Colonial/Imperialist Origins of the World-Capitalist System
These are notes which are not totally developed but lay out question in hopes of eventually developing a New World paradigm1. It is important in this period of world revolution2 toward socialism, emancipation and resurrection of humanity to analyze from a dialectical and historical materialist point of view3 the very "birth" of capitalism (1140 to 1600) which was colonialist and imperialist.4
Within each European nation state which at the time of exploration (1490's-1590's) there was an alliance of the mercantile capitalist, feudalist nobility, peasant serfs with the feudal aristocracy having temporary hegemony.5 Colonialization of the so-called New World became the political economy of material accumulation for each European state, for Europe represented the econicalfy under-developed as well as the cultural underdeveloped sector of the world in the 15* century.6
Thus, the introduction of colonialism and imperialism in the modern period begins in 1482 while Europe is still under the dominance of the feudalist system. The importance of discovery for new trade routes was motivated by the impending entrenchment of Turkish (Muslim) power, which represented a different political, economic and racial/cultural social system of the time.7
The explorations (voyages of 1492 and later were motivated by the need for international trade free of heavy taxation or blockade and the search for gold.8
The impact of so-called "discovery" of a new land mass whose population did not have an organized military force superior to each and/or all the European states opened up new avenues for material accumulation for Europe, to bring it out of economic under development.
GoWand land were the two most things of value for European economy in the 15* century. Gold, because it was the medium of economic exchange; the value of the world market which everything was set by at that time. Gold could buy anything.10 Land, because of its use value; minerals extracted from it (gold, silver) and staples, crops grown on it. Europe lacked both an adequate supply of gold reserve and land rich in minerals, agriculturally as well as a land base. So the so-called discovery of the vast rich land base led to the immediate drive for gold. Had Columbus landed and was met by a Moorish army, he would have probably traded a few things and go back on his ships and immediately sailed back to Spain. Or if Alaska or possibly Iceland were "discovered," there more then likely would not have been any more voyages of exploration.""
The periphery in the capitalist world system in the 19* century had been the basis of establishment of the capitalist center in the 15 and 16* centuries.I2> n'l4
The periphery (New World) had provided Europe with a land mass of the extraction of surplus value (land use value) and human capital for continuous extraction of surplus value. Something internally Europe did not have by way of natural or human resources." So it was the external stimuli rather than internal development that allowed Europe to make the social/economic leap from feudalism to capitalism.16
Not only was the enslavement of Africans in the New World — profits from the slave trade — the primary basis for the primitive accumulation of capital, but the profits reaped from the colonialization of Africans in the 1800's was the basis for the perpetual accumulation of capital.17 This daynamic continues today.
Therefore, the European proletarist was born or formed from Europe's colonial and imperialist relationship to the rest of the world. This colonial and imperialist relationship transformed Europe from the periphery under a feudalist dominated world market to the center of a capitalist dominated world market.18 What is being said is that the discovery of the "Americas" by the Europeans was colonialism/imperialism because historical evidence reveals trade, cultural exchange, commerce as well as colonies existing between native peoples in the Americas and people from Africa and Asia, prior to Columbus' voyage of 1492.19
All of Europe, which was under feudalism in the 15th century20 was on a lower economic level than many parts of Africa and Asia.21
From a "Marxist"perspective in order to apply dialectical materialism the inter-relations and understanding of present and future political tendencies resulting from economic contradictions of the world economic order one must have a firm historical materialist understanding of the general course of the -world, particularly their own struggle from ancient times to the present.22
Thus, if the social theorist/activist is ethnocentric in any approach, he will be off base in his dialectical materialist analysis. For instance, the balance or center of trade and political power has shifted from various regions in the world from the decline of primitive communism, slavery, feudalism mercantile capitalism, industrial capitalism to monopoly capitalism.23
J.
Nations arose before the development of capitalism. Nation states in Europe had fully developed by the 15th century under feudalism.
Racism became an institutional factor in European society as early as 1460 in Portugal and Spain. The bourgeoisie who were the investors (financiers) of European explorations in the 15th century became investors (financiers) of the Atlantic Triangular slave trade because they understood the importance of gold24
Extraction of gold from the mines (land-use value) required the use of slaves; genocide against native peoples. Particularly in Latin and South America, native people had a primitive communist level of collective land consciousness with a high level of culture. This concept of "collective land ownership" was in opposition to the concept of "land for profit value." Thus the European feudalist/colonialist/settler class saw the law of the so-called new world as an avenue for extraction of capital (land-use value). After the literal extermination of native people (genocide) in forced labor (concentration) camps, Africans were brought to the so-called new world (Latin and South America first, the North America) to further extract profits (land-use value) from the "stolen land."
In 100 years of colonialization from 1492 to 1592, 90 million Indians were exterminated from wars of conquest by the Spanish in which whole "nations" were wiped out.25
Those captured and forced into labor camps to work the mines and plantations were wiped out due to over-work, malnutrition and disease. During the years of African chattel, slavery in the so-called new world, beginning in Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1502 until 1865, over 50 million Africans died from the "middle passage, " malnutrition or overwork. The average life expectancy for an African slave was 33 years. That was considered "old age."26
The theory of combined and uneven development, in part, states that there can be uneven development in different parts of the world and even in one nation at the same time; also there can be two modes of production operating in a country or the world at the same time; this was in operation during this period.27
The important thing to understand is the enslavement and trade of Africans 'European Africa.-? Sla*>e Traae - 1460-1592) provided Europe with the primitive accumulation of capital while if was operating under the colonial/imperialist/feudalist system. The primitive accumulation of capital secured by the bourgeoisie (the financiers of the exploration voyages, mining and plantations) gave rise (because of economic power) of the bourgeoisie in European society.28
The first slave insurrection was recorded inside Portugal in 1455 at a time when 40% of Portugal's population was African slaves. Portugal and Spain, thus, had an internal domestic colonial African slave trade beginning in 1444 lasting until 1512.29
Thus, the importation of slaves into Portugal (1444) and Spain (1460) whileit introduced slavery based on skin color occurred while these countries were still operating under the feudalist system.
Racism was not introduced with the establishment of capitalism but was founded under the feudalist system. What did happen, though, was that racism was further institutionalized on a "world scale" by Europeans with the introduction of capitalism. That further institutiolanization made it a "permanent part" of the super-structure of the European state and the "ethos" of European culture, religion, science, economics and politics.
Between 1492 and 1592, the surplus value extracted from slave labor inside Portugal and Spain provided both European nations with the primitive accumulation of capital to finance and maintain dominance over the seas, which was the basis for international trade at that time. Thus, you have the rapid emergence of a mercantile capitalist class with full investment in the Atlantic slave trade.30 In this period, slavery existed as the labor intensive sector of the internal economy of Portugal and Spain, freeing a sector of the feudalist aristocracy and nobility to invest in shipping which led to the emergency of the mercantile capitalist class. At the same time, profits and products produced from the Atlantic slave trade (extraction of raw materials from Latin/South American/Carribbean basin) provided the accumulation of capital for the mercantile capitalist to invest in technological discoveries (sciences)/' The capitalist class freed the dependency of the sciences from the feudalist aristocracy (church/nobility) class. This soon gave impetus for the emergence of the industrial capitalist class and bourgeoisie revolutions in Europe, beginning in Holland in 1600.32