A History of Violence

This is something pretty terrible I just discovered

The Annual Customs

Whoever the King was in this Damoney region of Africa (modern-day Benin) made ... I don't know, thousands? ... of human sacrifices once a year. They were prisoners of war or criminals, usually. They would whisper a message for the unseen world into their ear and then kill them by slitting their throat. I'm sure they did much worse, too.

The thing is, this was the fate for some people. But what Dahomey did is he sold his fellow Africans as slaves to the Europeans. The Europeans did not kidnap the Africans... they wouldn't have been able to penetrate the interior. Plus there's a lot of disease. Dahomey did the deed... he sold his people into slavery for money. They say he was 5 times richer than the average British Duke. Or, put another way, a King of Dahomey would get 250,000 British pounds a year which is like nearly half a million dollars. By the way, if you're not sure, that is INSANE. We're talking Africa in the 1700s. They used the money for a lot of things, but of course primarily to buy guns from the Europeans to keep this cycle going.

It's amazing how much evil has happened in human history. This is one of countless examples.

Mike, you're really depressing me with this slavery research, man!!