>So basically everyone knows that Africans sold other Africans
>into slavery, right?

yup

>And everyone basically knows that some
>people try to use this to justify that slavery shouldn't be
>considered so bad because of this fact, right?

huh ?

>So in my Precolonial Africa class, my professor said that he
>believed that if the Africans had not sold these slaves to
>Europeans that the slave trade wouldn't have been as effective
>as it was. Do you agree with this?

yup.

> He also said that had
>Africa been a more wealthy continent and more technoligically
>advanced, that then also the slave trade would not have been
>so effective.

no

>Now, if you agree with the idea that had the Africans not been
>so willing to sell (by the by I should say that the reason
>they were so willing was because they didn't look at it as
>selling their fellow brother or sister, but as selling
>neighbors and people they didn't know) then would you agree
>with the idea that parts of Africa should be held responsible
>for the atrocity that is slavery in America?

hmmm depends on what you consider the crime.
Is it the middle passage ?
Is it the act of selling ?
Is it the conditions Slaves in America lived under for 400 years ?

> If so, how should they be held responsible?

good question.
i wish i knew.

>A couple of things I found interesting from what my professor
>told us was that the Africans (hard to generalize, I know)
>basically thought as of the Europeans as weak because they
>were always getting Yellow Fever and Malaria, so therefore
>it's not that they were intimidated by the Europeans and felt
>forced to sell slaves to them, it was that they saw the great
>potential profit aspect of it.

is it proven ?

Are the early years really documented ?
Do we know who took those decisions ?
Do we know what game was played ?
Who was in power ? Who got out of power ?

too many questions are unanswered.

>Apparently there were some
>places Europeans wouldn't venture into because they didn't
>know the land, and this is contrary to the idea that they just
>came in and started snatching people up.

no they didn't just snatch people up...
Now WHO ventured into the land ?
Why ? How ?
are questions unaswered too..
on both sides.

>I thought it was interesting that of the Africans that did the
>selling of slaves to Europeans, they not only did that but had
>slaves of their own and sold slaves to other Africans.

We should define slavery.
Because even WITHIN precolonial african societies, there were HUGE differences between the status of people who were yet called slaves.

And the internal slave trade involved every nations.

Now did it involve every person ?
i wish i knew the answer.

>there were Africans who of course were totally against slavery.

Can you prove this ?
I mean it depends on what we call "slavery".
And depends on what you mean by "being totally against it".

I seriously doubt there were that many that were against the idea of a relationship of dominance and submission, whereby one person owns another and can exact from that person labor or other services no matter what level of ownership and the difficulty of the labor and services are.


>"Hey, the it's all the Africans fault, if they
>had been stronger people the Europeans wouldn't stand a
>chance" That's not what I'm trying to say at all...

That's true though.
Useless NOW but still true.

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*TWINNING*