The myth of the 'noble savage' - the idea that until white people arrived, all the indigenous peoples of the world lived in harmony and peace

All cultures have, throughout history, damaged the natural environment and enslaved each other, but only white Europeans are now blamed for such practices

In recent decades, something very odd has happened to discussions and writing about slavery and the trade in slaves. From being considered as a general practice, something seen across the entire world throughout the whole of recorded history, as was once the case, the phrase ‘slave trade’ is now almost invariably preceded by a definite article; as in the slave trade. This is immediately understood by readers and listeners to refer to the transatlantic slave trade, in which black Africans were transported across the Atlantic Ocean from West Africa to the Americas. Despite the fact that this was by no means the only, or even the most extensive or cruel, trafficking in slaves which the world has seen, this particular type of slavery has become the only slave trade of which many people have even heard. If we see a book called The Slave Trade, we can be sure that the focus will be upon the horrors of the so-called Middle Passage and that any other type of slavery is hardly likely to get a look in.

Here are one or two typical examples of the kind of book about slavery which are typically to be found in libraries and schools. The Slave Trade is by Tom Monaghan. It was published by Evans Brothers Ltd in 2002. A single side of one page deals with the 4,000 year-old recorded history of slavery and the trade in slaves. Apart from two pages at the end of the book, dealing with the modern slave trade, the rest of the book is concerned only with the transatlantic slave trade. Another book with the same title is written by Nigel Sadler and issued by Shire Publications in 2009. It too deals exclusively with the transatlantic slave trade. One more book called The Slave Trade should be sufficient to make the point. This one is by James Walvin and was published in 2011 by Thames & Hudson. Like the other two, it treats only of the transatlantic slave trade.

All this is very curious. The first written mention of slavery dates back to 2,000 BC and from that time up until the present day, slavery of one kind and another has been seen across the world. Until relatively lately, nobody in Britain would have dreamed of referring to the traffic from West Africa to the Americas and Caribbean as the slave trade. After all, Britain had its own experience of slavery to dwell on. Every schoolchild knew about Caractacus being taken in chains to Rome after the country was occupied by Roman forces, the fierce struggle of Boudicca to throw off the Yoke of Roman tyranny and of course that seminal story of how the English first acquired their national identity; the anecdote related by the Venerable Bede of the slave market in Rome.

The Venerable Bede was an ecclesiastical historian working in Britain during the Anglo-Saxon period. He told the story of Pope Gregory who, in the sixth century AD, passed by a slave market in Rome. Seeing some beautiful, fair-haired children for sale, he enquired as to their origin and was told that they were ‘Angli’ or Angles, whereupon he made a pun in Latin. Gregory said, ‘Non Angli sed Angeli’; not Angles but angels. It was after telling this story that Bede began referring to those living in the South-East part of Britain as English. Slavery was, until a few decades ago, known by every English person as something which their ancestors were likely to have endured.

With the increasing emphasis on the transatlantic slave trade in school history lessons, and generally when the subject of slavery is mentioned, this early history of slavery involving English people has faded from memory. The decline in regular church attendance has led too to a reduced familiarity with Bible stories, a number of which also mention slavery. The story of Joseph, favourite son of Jacob and Rachel in the Book of Genesis, who was sold into slavery by his brothers, is probably the only such story of which most people today have heard. Knowledge of these different kinds of slavery, in Europe and the Middle East, is now restricted to those with a special and particular interest in history, rather than being the kind of thing which is picked up in the course of an ordinary childhood. It is perhaps inevitable that the subjects covered in school history lessons should, over the years, change and the increasing prominence of slavery in North America and the Caribbean simply indicates that it is more relevant to many young people in Britain today than incidents from sixth century Rome. There is nothing sinister in the fact that the history taught to children today is different from that which featured in lessons 60 or 70 years ago. One aspect of slavery though is quite deliberately hidden and we avoid talking of it from a sense of delicacy. This is the undeniable fact that the continent where slavery now flourishes as never before is also the one where it has always been a very popular activity as far back as we can look. Nobody wishes to be reminded about slavery in Africa. That wicked white people took black slaves away from Africa is fine to talk about, but few want to be told that those slaves were sold to the white men by black African slave traders and that the ownership and sale of slaves in Africa was a vital part of the transatlantic trade.

So unpalatable is the notion of black involvement in slavery and the slave trade in Africa felt to be, that modern books do their best to brush the subject under the carpet whenever possible. Looking at an example of the way in which this is done might be informative. Here is a popular book on history which was published two years before the millennium. This book, called The Mammoth Book of How it Happened, contains two hundred eyewitness accounts of historical events, from life in ancient Sumer to the death of Princess Diana in 1997. The passage at which we are about to look is headed, ‘Captured by slave traders, Eastern Nigeria 1756’. This extract is from the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who was born and spent his boyhood in the Igbo-speaking part of what is today Nigeria,

My father… had a numerous family, of which seven lived to grow up, including

myself and sister, who was the only daughter.

The ellipsis, those three dots which indicate that some words have been omitted, is curious. This section of the book consists of two closely printed sides, perhaps a thousand words. Could it be that there was a long and irrelevant section which has been left out to economise on space? Well, no. Just three words have been removed. There was plenty of room for them. How did that sentence run in the original document? Here it is,

My father, besides many slaves, had a numerous family, of which seven lived to

grow up, including myself and a sister, who was the only daughter.

Right there, we see the nature of the problem and the reason that it was felt better to leave out those three words. The revelation that Olaudah Equiano’s father, a black African living in Africa, owned many slaves is felt to be a little much for modern sensibilities. In a world where slaves are black victims of white racism and imperialism, the idea that an African man might be buying, selling and owning slaves is, for many people, a shocking and distasteful thing.

Later, in the extract from Equiano’s book, another ellipsis is used. He describes how he and his sister were kidnapped by slave traders when their parents had left them at home one day. They were bound and gagged and carried far from their own village. We read a heart-rending and affecting account of Equiano and his sister being separated by the slave traders who have seized them and sold to different people,

The next day proved a day of greater sorrow that I had yet experienced; for my

sister and I were then separated, while we lay clasped in each other’s arms.

Let us see how the conclusion of this sad incident is set out in the modern book.

I cried and grieved continually; and for several days did not eat anything but

what they forced into my mouth…

I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation

in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life

This all seems pretty clear to anybody reading these words today. A black slave has been parted from his sister and he has now been thrust below the decks of a ship. This fits in perfectly with our knowledge of the transatlantic slave trade. What more needs to be said?

It is time to explain what is going on here, which is something very crafty and dishonest. The slave traders who seized Olaudah Equiano and his sister were themselves black Africans and their kidnapping had nothing at all to do with the transatlantic slave trade. This was simply the way of life in Africa, as it had been for as long as anybody could remember. White people and their ships were not part of this. Just as Equiano’s father had many slaves, so too did other wealthy people in Africa. The men who took Equiano and his sister from their home did not sell them to white slave traders but to another Igbo family. That second ellipsis conceals a story of life as a black slave, owned by black people in Africa. That this was the state of affairs at that time, and a way of life which predated any European involvement in that part of the world, has not only been all but forgotten but is deliberately concealed from view, as we saw in the extracts above.

The book described above is no isolated example of the way in which people avoid mentioning slavery as practiced in Africa. The British Library in London has a copy of the second edition of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African and this is what they have to say about it on their website,

Equiano was born in what is now Nigeria and sold into slavery aged 11. After

spells in Barbados and Virginia he spent eight years travelling the world as slave

to a British Royal Navy officer, who renamed him Gustavus Vassa.

Once again, the impression is carefully created that Equiano had been captured as part of the transatlantic slave trade.

Although the transatlantic slave trade is so widely discussed, taught in schools, and generally focused upon when the topic of slavery comes up, there appears to be some sort of mental block which prevents those who write about or talk of this particular trade from addressing the way in which it actually operated and how it was sustained. One sometimes gains the impression that the average person has the strange notion that the whole business ran smoothly with white Europeans controlling every aspect and black Africans featuring in the narrative just as helpless victims. A moment’s thought will soon show the absurdity of this idea. Perhaps readers would like to pause at this point and ask themselves a simple question. A ship with a crew of perhaps 50 men anchors off the coast of West Africa. How did that small company go about loading up their ship with hundreds of slaves to take across the Atlantic Ocean?

Despite a general and widespread awareness of the transatlantic slave trade, an awful lot of people give little or no thought to the mechanics of the business. Did the crew go ashore and start rounding up people at gunpoint? This would have been a hazardous enterprise and one which would probably need more than a few dozen men. The ships would typically carry anything from between 250 to 600 slaves. Outnumbered ten to one, the logistics of such a hunting expedition would create all manner of problems. Were there perhaps British soldiers present to help with the roundup? In fact, most of the traffic took place in independent African kingdoms. What would the African warriors be doing while the white men were capturing their people; just standing idly by? It is only when we remember that the slave trade across the Atlantic was part of what is often called the ‘Triangular Trade’ that things begin to make sense.

The triangular trade began in Liverpool or Bristol, when ships would be loaded with manufactured goods such as muskets, gunpowder, brass, iron bars, glass beads, mirrors and various other things. These were items which were unobtainable in West Africa, unless they were acquired from European traders. The ships then set sail for Africa. The cargoes of manufactured goods were a vital part of the triangular trade, because on arrival at their destination they would be traded for slaves. The slaves had already been rounded up by African slave dealers. They were, in the main, captives who had been seized from other tribes. Once loaded onto ships, the slaves were taken across the Atlantic to North America, South America or the Caribbean. The proceeds from their sale were then taken back across the sea to Britain, in the form of cotton, sugar and other produce, such as tobacco, for which there was a demand. Once the ships had returned to Liverpool and Bristol, the produce would be traded and exchanged for more manufactured goods and the cycle would begin again.

This then is the aspect of the transatlantic slave trade which is skirted around or preferably ignored altogether. That without the cooperation and cupidity of black African slave traders, there would not have been any slaves in the Caribbean or the southern states of America. The system relied upon the simple fact that slavery, and the buying and selling of slaves, was an old African tradition which had been around long before the ships containing white Europeans had ever appeared off the coast off the African coast. The slaves taken across the Atlantic were all bought and paid for. The white traders had no need to use violence or coercion to get hold of slaves, it was simply a business transaction between two sets of slave traders; one of which consisted of white Europeans and the other of black Africans.

The modern reluctance to face an uncomfortable fact, that this slave trade was no more than an extension of one in which Africans had engaged since time immemorial, is a recent phenomenon. Sixty years ago, none of this would have been considered surprising and even children’s books referred quite casually to the existence of black African slave traders. In 1960 a book about the life of missionary David Livingstone was published by the British publisher Ladybird. ‘Ladybird books’ of this kind, as older readers will know them, were commonly found in libraries and schools and many families had a few at home as well. They formed a background to childhood, at least in Britain, during the 1960s. Here, we read that,

What was known as ‘the slave trade’ was being carried on all over this part of

Africa. Men, women and children were captured by fierce savages, and then

sold as slaves. Livingstone determined to do what he could to stop this terrible

state of things.

On the next page, the following may be found,

The savage slave traders were not long in trying to revenge themselves on

Livingstone for having freed the slaves. One day, when he was travelling with a

party of missionaries who had come out from England, they were suddenly

attacked by the Ajawas.

The extracts above from a popular children’s book were accompanied by colourful and vivid illustrations which showed quite clearly that the slave traders whom David Livingstone had so angered were all black. Even the tribe to which they belonged is named. In other words, sixty years ago the phrase ‘the slave trade’, which is used in the text of the book, had no connotations about white slavers or the transatlantic slave trade. It was simply a neutral way of referring to the seizing, buying and selling of human beings as though they were cattle and could just as easily have referred to ancient Rome, black Africa or the Arab nations of the Middle East.

Although few people ever put the matter into words or follow their ideas to a logical conclusion, an awful lot of white people in Europe and America hold views about pre-colonial Africa which owe a good deal to the eighteenth-century concept of the ‘noble savage’.

There was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a tendency to romanticise those from cultures other than that of Europe. This was done with native Americans and Africans in particular. The idea was that people who lived in unsophisticated and primitive societies were in some vague sense more ‘natural’ and that they were free of the vices which were thought to be a product of civilisation at that time. Greed and envy, for instance, were considered to be caused by modern life and it was thought that in an African or native American village, everybody would share what they had and nobody would be rich or poor. Such people were believed by some to be more ‘natural’ than those who lived in great cities and were constantly trying to exploit others and become wealthy. This led to the idea of the ‘noble savage’, untainted by all the bad aspects of modern civilisation.

Alexander Pope wrote a poem in the early eighteenth-century which summed up the distorted view about the difference between ‘savages’ and those who lived in civilised lands,

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind

Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

His soul proud Science never taught to stray

Far as the solar walk or milky way;

Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n,

Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler Heav'n,

Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,

Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

To be, contents his natural desire;

He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire;

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company.

It is a pleasing vision of a simple man who is more in touch with nature, and God, than white Europeans. He has no ‘thirst for gold’ and is happy simply, ‘to be’.

This mentality is still going strong today. Many people in the West believe that the native inhabitants of both North and South America lived a peaceful life, attuned with the natural world and that they respected the land in the style of a modern climate change activist. Hand in hand with such ideas goes the traditional view of the noble savage, that before the coming of Europeans to Africa or the Americas, life was simpler and free of many of the less desirable character traits which we see in industrialised countries. These were people free of the mad obsession with acquiring consumer goods or piling up money in banks. Their lives were uncomplicated and gentler than those of us involved in the modern world and we could learn from examining such people and perhaps adopting their philosophical outlook on life. If only we too could attain such a state of being so that, as Pope put it,

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

To be, contents his natural desire;

He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire;

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company.

This fantasy touches upon our flawed perception of slavery and the slave trade. Captivated as we are by the thought of the pastoral and thoroughly natural life led by all those folk in Africa before the wicked Europeans came along and spoiled it all, we cannot quite bring ourselves to believe that some black Africans were every bit as keen on keeping, buying and selling black slaves as any of those men whose statues have been pulled down in Britain and the United States. Better by far to pile all the blame for such a detestable trade on the avarice and cupidity of British and American businessmen.

A marvellous instance of this attitude appeared on the internet at the time of writing, in the autumn of 2021. In 21 September 2021, Professor Brittney Cooper of Rutgers University, debated Critical Race Theory with a man called Michael Harriot. Both Cooper and Harriot are African-Americans and their conversation was published on a YouTube channel called The Root. When the subject of slavery and colonialism was touched upon, Professor Cooper made the following statement:

That’s what white human beings do. Prior to them, black and brown people

have sailed across oceans, interacting with each other for centuries without

total subjugation, domination and colonialism.

Leaving aside the improbable claim about black people sailing across the oceans ‘prior’ to white people, we see here a presumably unwitting illustration of the myth of the ‘noble savage’. Black and brown people never engaged in slavery or colonialism; these being sins of which white people alone can have been guilty. The irony of a woman who is evidently of Bantu heritage will become apparent later in this book, when we examine the history of the Bantu conquest of sub-Saharan Africa.

This slight detour has been necessary to explain why very few people have ever even thought that the slave trade in Africa was started by black people and that even when the white colonial authorities tried to suppress the slave trade from the early nineteenth century onward, they found fierce resistance to such a move from the Africans themselves, who regarded this as an unwarranted interference in their time-honoured and traditional way of life. So determined were many Africans to maintain slavery in their countries, that even by the time that Britain began to withdraw from the continent and grant independence to former colonies in the 1960s, the trade in slaves was still going strong; as indeed it is to this very day.

The tendency among progressive and left-wing people in Europe and America to blame all the ills of Africa on the lingering after-effects of white colonialism explains not only why the history of slavery in Africa before Europeans became involved in it is neglected, it might also go some way towards accounting for the disturbing fact that there seems little interest in exploring the current situation regarding slavery in the world. Not a single African country is now ruled by European colonists and yet slavery is rife. For all that American and British people are ringing their hands over the slave trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the melancholy truth is that there are more slaves in the world today than at any time in history. In Africa, slavery is flourishing as never before. With the removal of British prohibitions on the practice of slavery, it has enjoyed a boom since the 1960s.

The Venerable Bede was mentioned at the beginning of this article. He was an ecclesiastical historian working in Britain during the Anglo-Saxon period. He told the story of Pope Gregory who, in the sixth century AD, passed by a slave market in Rome. Seeing some beautiful, fair-haired children for sale, he enquired as to their origin and was told that they were ‘Angli’ or Angles, whereupon he made a pun in Latin. Gregory said, ‘Non Angli sed Angeli’; not Angles but angels. It was after telling this story that Bede began referring to those living in the South-East part of Britain as English. Slavery was, until a few decades ago, known by every English person as something which their ancestors were likely to have endured. This was in fact the first time that anybody in this country was referred to as being ‘English’. Slavery is something which underlies the very identity of the English people.