Analysis Of Cannibals, Witches, And Slave Traders In The Atlantic World

1: In the piece “Cannibals, Witches, and Slave Traders in the Atlantic World” by John Thornton, Thornton explains the mentality of the native Africans during the slave trade. The mentality of these people is something that Americans and British people have misconceived “The beliefs of slaves from the Kikongo- and Kimbundu-speaking regions of West Central Africa (see Figure I), discernable in a variety of documents from the African side”(Thornton 275). The African people had beliefs of cannibalism and witchcraft. These ideas were instilled into their culture by the way of their religions. The people that were “witches” were those who were very greedy people. Africa was a very community based area and because of this the people all attempted to contribute positively towards the

This created an interesting divide between the people and the government. Another issue that the African people has issues with were the Warlords that would create their own armies and conquer others to sell to Europeans as slaves. Instead of dealing with the prisoners the Warlords created a business of trading African slaves and making a lot of money doing it. Because of this hatred of witchcraft the African people did not think that the Europeans were the bad guys because from the view of the Africans the greedy government and Warlords were the ones that were taking advantage of the little communities and selling them as slaves. This idea of witchcraft was alongside the idea of cannibalism. This was the idea that the whites that were taking the slaves from Africa were eating them. The Africans thought that their red colors that they had on their sails were from different people that were being killed for the point of eating other humans. The ideas that were looked at throughout this piece of writing do a very good job at showing a more accurate view as to what the African mentality was during the times of the slave