Editor's note: Gerald Horne is a professor of history at the University of Houston and a long-time contributing editor of Political Affairs. He has written and edited well over a dozen books, including Race Woman, a biography of Shirley Graham Du Bois, The Final Victim of the Black List, a political biography of John Howard Lawson, Red Seas, a biography of labor leader Ferdinand Smith. His most recent works include The White Pacific: US Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War and Cold War in a Hot Zone: the US Confronts Labor and Independence Struggles in the British West Indies both out last month. This discussion is about his recent book The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade.
PA: In your recent book, The Deepest South, you recall an embarrassing moment in 2002, when president Bush, in talks with former Brazilian President Cardoso, asked if there were any Black people in Brazil. Can you talk about the relevance of this display of historical ignorance to your book?
GH: Well, as you know, the book The Deepest South deals with the role of US nationals in the African slave trade. That is to say, US nationals played a huge role in creating a situation whereby Brazil today has the largest population of African descent outside of Nigeria. Therefore, it was rather curious, that when Mr. Bush met with then Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, he expressed surprise that there were Black people in Brazil. His then National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, needed to apprise him of this fact. This reveals such a stunning lack of knowledge, that if you go on the Internet, it is listed as an urban Legend, because people find it very difficult to believe. But it’s true, because Mr. Cardoso, who of course was present, retells this conversation in his recently published memoir, The Accidental President of Brazil. I think the reason why many people see it as an urban legend is because they find it hard to believe that a US President, a man who oftentimes is regarded as the most powerful on this small planet, has such a stunning, some might even say baffling, ignorance about such basic facts. But, of course, those who are most familiar with Mr. Bush’s record shouldn't be surprised, given the example of his catastrophic and criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was based on a similar lack of knowledge about the basic facts of Iraqi history, politics and culture, and what would happen once the United States became the occupier of a predominantly Arab country. His ignorance in this regard, should have prepared us for the similar kind of ignorance in his ill-informed question about Brazil.
PA: In general, when we think about the history of slavery, we often forget about the competing international capitalist interests that fought over control of the African slave trade. This is something that your book focuses on, and I’m wondering if you could give us a brief description?
GH: As you now, it was approximately 200 years ago in 1807, that Britain moved to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Strikingly, this event is being commemorated in London even while we speak with all manner of conferences and symposia involving leaders from Queen Elizabeth and the Prime Minister on down. Just as strikingly, this important historical event is not being marked in the United States, although it was right around the same time that the United States supposedly took steps of its own to handicap the African slave trade. Britain then moved several few years later, in the 1830s, to abolish slavery within its empire. But it was fearful that countries like the United States would continue to use African slaves, and thus gain an advantage over British colonies such as Jamaica, Trinidad, former British Guyana, Barbados, etc, where slavery had been outlawed.
Then, of course, there was likewise a fear that capitalists and merchants in the United States, along with other enterprising individuals, would seek to amass untold wealth by trading in enslaved Africans, which is, of course, exactly what happened when US nationals went into the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, and Zanzibar, dragging out Africans, and taking them to Brazil.
Similarly Portugal, a country which is rather small, with a current population of only 9 million, was fearful that a growing US would encroach upon its prerogatives, not only in Brazil but also in colonies such as Mozambique, where as early as the 1840s, because of its aggressive slave-hunting, the United States was establishing a major influence. Similarly in Spain, which then controlled the slave colony of Cuba, there was a fear that the United States would seek to seize Cuba, which it tried to do more than once before the onset of the US Civil War in 1861. So, it is quite striking that, as we look back from the vantage point of 2007, we still see a certain amount of rivalry amongst the leading capitalist powers, the United States, Britain, the European Union, and Japan, since this is really nothing new. It has definite historical antecedents, not least during the period when the slave trade was flourishing.
PA: In your previous reply you mentioned the ostensible outlawing of the slave trade by the United States in 1808. How is it that they continued to get away with it, and what drew them, the US slave traders and US slave owners, to places like Brazil?
GH: Well, certainly there was an abolitionist movement, not least in Great Britain and centered around Philadelphia and Boston. However, for various reasons, the abolitionist movement was not able to put handcuffs on the illicit slave trade, particularly when, in the 1840s, it was at the height of its century-long existence. One of the reasons for this was that the process was just so tremendous. It is very difficult to think of any other business before or since whose profits were so enormous, so gigantic. For example, one could go into the Congo or Angola in the 1840s and procure an African, and based upon that African’s skill levels, age and other attributes, this person might cost $10. However, one could take that person to the Western Hemisphere where he or she could be sold for $500 or $1000, even $1500. And that, of course, was real money in the middle of the 19th century.
This kind of enormous profit helped almost ineluctably to generate a certain kind of criminality, a certain kind of ingenuity, and it also helped to also legions of people to this enterprise, the enterprise of the African slave trade. It was basically a form of capitalism on steroids, that is to say, it was the ultimate form, in a sense, of capitalism, the trade in human beings. I also think that a comprehension of this fact helps us to understand why historically in the US one sees people of African descent in the forefront of the struggle against capitalism, Ben Davis in the Communist Party, for example, or people in the orbit of the Communist Party like W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson.
I think that the history of African people in the United States, where, for example, in 1860, we were probably the major form of capital in this country, has helped to predispose us to struggle against this fruit of capital and capitalism itself. I also think that an understanding of this historical period, the period of slavery and the slave trade in Brazil will pay dividends as we try to comprehend where we go from here.
(Find a sampling of some of Gerald Horne's books published by New York University Press here.)
