One of the calumnies directed at Jews — there are so many to choose from — is that “the Jews financed the [Atlantic] slave trade.” This is one of the staples, for example, in the writings and speeches by the dementedly antisemitic Louis Farrakhan. At a public meeting of parents in Rochester, New York, a certain Cynthia Elliott, “prominent in the community,” casually tossed off the same charge, and this prompted a Jewish resident of the city, Lauren Deutsch, to look into the matter. She shared her findings here: “Jews Did Not Finance the Slave Trade; Here Is the Proof,” by Lauren Deutsch, Algemeiner, December 13, 2023:
Recently, a prominent figure in the Rochester city community named Cynthia Elliott made a statement to a parent group about an important topic.
It was a passionate statement, which this person had clearly thought about, and sought to speak about from the heart. In this statement, Elliott included a reference to the “history of the Jewish nation … financing the slave ships to bring Africans into the Americas.”
The fact that this was mentioned as an aside, with no citation, leaves me to conclude that the author believes this assertion to be both true and well known.
I decided it was worth spending some time to address this disturbing but persistent falsehood.
“The Jewish nation” did not finance the slave trade. First of all, any time you begin a sentence with a phrase like, “the Jews” (or some iteration thereof), I urge any author to proceed with caution. Collective action by a racial or ethnic group, especially one without a centralized governing body, is rare. As such, these statements often devolve into stereotypes or worse.
I won’t assert that no Jewish person was ever involved in the transatlantic slave trade. I don’t know the identities of the many people around the world who colluded to perpetrate this industrial scale violation against Black Africans, and people of African descent.
The implication of the phrase is that Jews were the main, motivating financiers (because of course Jews = money) behind this historical atrocity. This is simply not true.
Horrifyingly, as with many of the modern industrial scale crimes against humanity, the perpetrators [the slave traders] kept records.
The Dutch West India company, for example, was one of the largest companies involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Their records indicate that 18 of the original stockholders were Jewish, and estimates put the cash value of their investment as high as 1.2% of total investment. The largest single company involved in the transatlantic slave trade, the Royal African Company, despite being headquartered in London where there was a thriving Jewish community, had no Jewish investors for more than 20 years, until finally in 1691, a single Jewish financier purchased some stock.
Jewish stockholders held an infinitesimal share of the investments in the Dutch West India Company — one of the largest companies involved in the Atlantic slave trade — only 1.2% of the total. And the largest company involved in that slave trade, the Royal African Company, which the author points out had its headquarters in London, a city that by then had a sizable Jewish population. But for the first 20 years of its existence, the company had no Jewish investors at all, until finally a single Jewish financier bought stock in 1691. In neither case did “the Jews finance the slave trade.”
A German-Egyptian scholar, Hamed Abdel-Samad, has created a series of YouTube talks entitled “Box of Islam,” in which he offers a critical appraisal of many aspects of Islam. Several months ago, he devoted his talk to slavery in Islam. It was a remarkable display of candor. Abdel-Samad said that 29 verses in the Quran endorse slavery and that “the Arabs enslaved the Africans more than any other nation did.” This is an important admission by an Arab scholar of Islam who has the unusual habit of saying what he believes to be true; naturally, he has endured death threats and is under police protection from Muslim fanatics even in Germany, where he lives. His main point — that the greatest enslavers of Africans have been the Arabs — should be kept firmly in mind by African states as they consider their future relations with the Arabs, and what they may legitimately demand from them.
Even today, Arabs still enslave black Africans in Mali (200,000), Niger (43,000), and Mauritania (90,000). Slave markets with black African migrants for sale have opened in Libya. The Arab League has not said a word against this continuing practice of Arab enslavement of black Africans. This is the kind of information that needs to be widely disseminated, as part of opening minds to the fact that not only did Jews not finance the Atlantic slave trade, but that Muslim Arabs did indeed finance, in its entirety, their own slave trade, which happens to be the largest slave trade in history. That should lead some to carefully compare the Jewish and the Arab records on participation in the African slave trade. The more they learn, the better for the unfairly maligned Jews.
Bexarkat says
Very interesting, however I wonder if any Black or African American “leader’ in the United States has ever mentioned the Arab slave trade, or considered suing Arab and African nations for reparations? If not, why not? Have they been “bought off” by some potentate? Or do they simply do not care as they have the eternal scapegoat to blame for their calumny?
James Lincoln says
Bexarkat,
You are being too logical – which does not fit the Leftist / BLM, etc., narrative.
libertyORdeath says
EVERYONE participated in slavery at one time in one way or another. We’ve all been related to slave holders AND slaves if we go back far enough.
Slavery was THE NORM around the world from about 5000 BC until AMERICA and BRITAIN put an END to slavery in the West.
GET OVER IT!!!
The Arabic and African slave trade however still goes on to this day.
If you REALLY hated slavery, you’d be working on freeing the ACTUAL slaves in Africa and the Middle-east TODAY.
But they DON’T really care about slavery. It’s just a tool to virtue-signal and accrue power they DON’T deserve.
(Mr. Spencer, I hope u dont mind the links to my Substack. I only post it if it’s relevant to the story or comment)
APARTHEID is another good one.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnfromjamestowne/p/what-does-apartheid-mean?r=288rw5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true
scotia says
Wait are you giving ‘AMERICA’ joint credit for ending slavery???
‘AMERICA’ isnt even in the top 10 for ending slavery.
puzzled says
Democrats stole the land of the “Five Civilized Tribes” to expand slavery as the Indians could not vote and so Jackson violated treaties to steal the land and then Polk went along with a war against Mexico to expand slavery westward…half of Mexico was STOLEN!!
Then the democrats in the Civil War and the “Knights of the Golden Circle”…well, you know.
Donald Kosloff says
Which nations were in the top ten?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Mansa Musa, who a lot of muslims admire for enriching everybody along his route during his pilgrimage to Mecca, was rich thanks to 4 things:
➤ Gold
➤ Ivory
➤ Salt
➤ Slaves
He was a ruler of Mali, & pretty famous for that trip, which was one of the few occasions in history when gold lost value due to it being so abundantly available from Mali to Arabia