A   STORY

Not all stories begin or end with they all lived happily ever after.
Granted, there has been up to this point, a continuity of life and an ever after.
 However, this story neither begins happy and to date has not ended happily ever after.
This one, for us begins with Christoforo, cristobal, christopher.(1492)
According to the stories he was an explorer.
From my position he was a mercenary seeking wealth and power.
He came with his sword and his bible.  His soldiers and his priests.
For his investors and his church he opened up a new world for their expansion and exploitation.
For those that he met he brought pestilence death and destruction.
For those that were used as replacements he opened up the way for the greatest holocaust, genocide
and mental and spiritual destruction ever perpetrated on one people by another, that we know of.
For his church he enslaved the 'heathens" and destroyed their social and cultural way of life.
For his investors he claimed their lands.
The jewel in the crown in this region was was given the name of Hispaniola.
Having decimated the population through warfare disease and slavery, one of the carriers of the book
who went by the name of de la casas,appealed to his Pope to intercede on their behalf.
Story goes, he could no longer tolerate the destruction that he sat by for years and watched.
So he began to plead with his Pope for help.
His suggestion to his Pope.
Replace the almost all dead native slave labour with African slave labour.
And so the story of the devolution of the Afrikan began.
From a free and independant being with a history and a culture thousands of years old
to a nameless object to be bought and sold.
Afika and Afrikans have a long and glorious history of civilizations and empires.
But the way this story is written, the history of the Afrikan began in 1500 as a "heathen" and a slave.
No name, no history, no culture, no knowledge.
Just an object of trade.
The slave trade, as the western story writers call it, was the dominant economic activity in the western world's economic system from 1500 until the late 1800's.
Our story then begins, according to them on Hispaniola.
The People of Haiti and Santo Domingo can tell you how that is going.
The trade in human beings became so lucrative, that the europeans began to fight among themselves
for what in modern day terms would be called control of the market.
The british, french, spanish, portuguese and dutch were the main palyers but all of europe fought,
invested, and reaped huge benefits in the competition, to own and control
territories and people on the continent of Afrika and the "new world".
The all powerful pope, had already divided the "new world" between spain and portugal, because these two countries were his most loyal subjects. "to the end that you might bring to the worship of our Redeemer and the profession of the Catholic faith their residents and inhabitants..."
They were also at the time the two most seafaring nations.
Their mission. To bring all lands and people not already under a christian king under their sway.
For the pope and his empire things were not going so well in christendom.
In germany, martin luther began to protest. In england, henry viii began to challenge. In the netherlands new monies were coming from the influx of a well organised group fleeing the churches inquisition.
The pope and his people, had a lot on their plate.
Martin created a new sect of christianity. Henry created a new christian church.
The dutch under the tutorship of their new monied class created a new economic system.
As europeans fought among themselves to control their new economic reality, slavery and colonialism became the backbone of the system that fueled their wars.
The People and the countries they encountered in their wars and conquests among themselves
became the PRIZE.