A second is to lie about the matter in deference to people's feelings about the slave trade. A the third, which I chose, was to give the most accurate brief answer I could. I should add that the fact that not much slave trade took place at Goree has nothing to do with the horror of the slave trade in general, and that accurate evidence is a fundamental base to all historical enquiry. Lobban has probably gone too far in likening Prof. Curtin's paraphrased remarks on the place of Goree in the Atlantic slave trade to the denial of the Holocaust.
I've heard Curtin's remarks before, and his rather simple, empirical point is that this tiny island, nestled beneath the arm of the Cape Verde Pennisula, was a less likely spot for the shipment of many thousands let alone the million that N'diaye suggests of human beings than were the mouths of major rivers.
Of course empiricism has its limits. The Maison des Esclaves on Goree has a potent symbolic effect. But much of that potency derives from the enormity of the slave trade, from the fact that it was not an event that occured at one time or place, but was instead a process that evolved over hundreds of years and along thousands of miles of coastline.
The desire to fasten upon Goree as a comprehensible symbol of the incomprehensible, is surely enhanced by Dakar's proximity to the United States and Europe, by the fact that it is the entrepot for pilgrims to the Gambia, by the fact that good food and drink are there to refresh one after one's visit, and by the skill of the Senegalais in receiving visitors. I know. But all that has more to do with the phenomenon of tourism than with historical understanding.
As historians, we need to enhance, in our students and the public, the imagination necessary to conceive of huge tragedies that touched many places, without resorting to necessarily limited and sentimentalized symbols. On balance, Philip Curtin has surely enhanced that sort of historical imagination.
What is interesting here is that one side sees Goree as strictly a factual matter, whereas the other views Goree as representational and symbolic. Quel discours! I am a little disturbed by the trend of the discussion about Goree, and even by a recent posting that averred that on balance the phrase used Curtin's contribution was positive.
Surely figuring out likely depots for slaves, the numbers of slaves sent across the middle passage, and the dynamics of local tourism in Goree, are all relevant historical projects when one wants to come to grips with the history of the slave trade.
It is not usually necessary to encrypt, in such discussions, the understanding that the slave trade was a crime against humanity, because it is assumed that historians know this. Just because some people in Goree say certain things about the slave trade there does not make it so. Historians should not be allowed the same freedom that local entrepreneurs in Goree have to make any claims they like.
And insofar as anyone, in Goree or in a Western University, makes a claim to be an historian, his or her numbers can and will be challenged on the basis of evidence. Scholars of the holocaust also discuss numbers. That does not determine the extent of their discussion, but it is important.
Then, there is room for Primo Levy, too. There is room for all sorts of scholarship about the slave trade. Historians have to be able to evaluate and discuss awful and traumatic things in the past, and quantification does not substitute for such discussion. But it serves a purpose.
It represents a commitment to methodology that is, ideally, unassailable on the basis of its ideological or moral bent. That is vitally important, because it gives those who wish to educate us all about the horrors of the past, a firmness, a toughness, in the face of racist or reactionary challenge. If, in other words, there was no Census of the slave trade or similar works, no notion that 12 million is a reasonable number and 3 million, or 50 million, is not, then what would be the attitude of those persons, like Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan, who now wish to "reform" American education?
What would they say about the history of oppressive violence in general? That there are numbers does not foreclose debate on those numbers. But if people are not satisfied with them, there is no shortcut to refiguring the data. It just won't do to condemn the discussion itself as unsatisfactory. I agree with Paul Landau completely. The island is considered as a memorial to the Black Diaspora. An estimated 20 million Africans passed through the Island between the mids and the mids.
During the African slave trade, Goree Island was a slave-holding warehouse, an absolute center for the trade in African men, women and children. Millions of West Africans were taken against their will. These Africans were brought to Goree Island, sold into slavery, and held in the holding warehouse on the island until they were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. The living conditions of the slaves on Goree Island were atrocious.
Human beings were chained and shackled. As many as 30 men would sit in an 8-square-foot cell with only a small slit of window facing outward. Once a day, they were fed and allowed to attend to their needs, but still the house was overrun with disease. They were naked, except for a piece of cloth around their waists.
They were put in a long narrow cell used for them to lie on the floor, one against the other. Search Advanced. By Properties. Cultural Criteria: i ii iii iv v vi Natural Criteria: vii viii ix x. Category Cultural Natural Mixed. All With videos With photo gallery. Country Region Year Name of the property.
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