xoxodede
Superstar
Slavery Tourism, IMO needs to be regulated. Meaning, it they are national, governmental sites -- they should be maintained by them --as well as be donations only -- especially -- since a lot of their countries revenue and economy -- is because of them. That's the least they can do.
They should also add the TransAtlantic Slave Trade into their educational systems. It's too many people who come to the States -- and say they didn't learn or know anything about it. Yet, they want the descendants to come visit.
It would also probably help relations between Africans and Diasporans.
We should also know who and what is being said and taught by tourist guides at them. This goes for U.S., Africa and anywhere else.
This is a great read: Welcome the Diaspora : Slave Trade Heritage Tourism and the Public Memory of Slavery – Ethnologies
It explains Slave Tourism and how basically a lot of places that are attractions are questionable.
In addition, info being shared at many of them are false -- just like at the U.S. attractions.
Gorée Island
Since the 1960s, Gorée Island and its Slave House started acquiring notoriety among international visitors, including African American tourists and political and religious authorities. The promotion of Gorée as a slave trade site of remembrance began when Léopold Sedar Senghor was President of Senegal. In 1966, the first World Festival of Black Arts was held in the country. By developing and promoting African arts, Senegal called the public’s attention to African heritage and to the importance of Gorée Island in the history of West Africa. The festival had significant repercussions in Europe and the Americas, contributing to develop and promote Gorée Island and its Slave House not only as a site of memory of the Atlantic slave trade, but also as a tourist destination.
However, the Slave House on Gorée Island is a contested historical site. Among others, its date of construction is uncertain. The late Boubacar Joseph N’Diaye (1922-2009), its curator, stated that the Dutch constructed the building in 1776 [2]. N’Diaye used to describe the building as a slave warehouse, a kind of structure introduced to the island by the Portuguese in 1636. According to him, the two-story house could accommodate about two hundred slaves. During the tours, the curator also used to state that the slaves remained in the dungeons from two to three months while waiting to be embarked for the Americas. He explained that each cell, measuring 279 square feet, accommodated between 15 and 20 slaves in chains, adding that the place’s deplorable sanitary conditions caused the first epidemic of plague on the island in 1779. As in other similar slave trade sites of remembrance, on the first floor, at the end of a corridor, there is a door opening out to the sea, called the “Door of No Return”, because, according to N’Diaye, it was through this door that enslaved men, women, and children were embarked on slave ships sailing to the Americas.
In the early 1960s, Senegal created the BAMH (Bureau d’architecture des monuments historiques), the office of Historical Monuments Architecture. In 1972, Senegal ratified the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO during the seventeenth session of its general conference. Three years later the country included Gorée Island in its inventory of historical monuments. In 1978, during the second session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage held in Washington, DC, UNESCO added Gorée Island to the list of World Heritage sites (UNESCO 1978). In the 1980s, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, UNESCO Director-General, launched an appeal to the international community to help finance and safeguard Gorée Island, by emphasizing its role in the shared imagination of Africa and the Americas [3]. After this initiative, at least eight postage stamps were created to promote Gorée’s future. During the 1990s, as part of the same trend already observed in Ghana and The Gambia, the Slave House, as well as other buildings, were rehabilitated.
The Slave House
The Slave House became internationally known thanks to the narrative developed by N’Diaye. His convincing story describing the tragic experience of enslaved men and women during their passage through the slave warehouse touched the hearts of thousands of tourists who visited the island each year. According to N’Diaye, between 10 million and 15 million enslaved Africans passed through the Slave House before leaving for the Americas. Indeed, still today, N’Diyae’s fantasist estimates (French 1998), which are higher than the volume of slave imports for all the Americas, were not actually questioned by scholars (Katchka 2004: 4) who recently examined the public memory of the Atlantic slave trade in the region, and are widely disseminated on the Internet. For instance, on the website of the House of Slaves, Koïchiro Matsuura, at the time Director of UNESCO, claims that dozens of millions of Africans were deported to the Americas during the period of the Atlantic slave trade. Actually, according to the most recent estimates (Eltis et al. online) — which indeed increased but did not significantly change since 1969, when Philip Curtin published its first census (Curtin 1969) — about 12,521,000 enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic Ocean during the Atlantic slave trade, even though many others died during the Middle Passage, or were killed while still on African soil by starvation, illness, and by the wars intensified because of the growing demand for captives during their displacement inside the continent.
The Door of No Return
Indeed, the House’s “Door of No Return” leads out to rocks, which makes it hard to imagine how it was used to embark slaves. Moreover, the French artist Adolphe d’Hastrel de Rivedoux (1805-1875) depicted in the detail the Slave House in an 1839 lithograph titled “Une Habitation à Gorée (Maison d’Anna Colas)”. If the lithograph’s title is accurate, by 1839 the owner of the Slave House was not a European slave merchant, but a signare named Anna Colas. Signares were Afro-European and free African women slave traders, well known during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries in the region of Gorée and Saint-Louis (Wilson-Fall 2011).
They should also add the TransAtlantic Slave Trade into their educational systems. It's too many people who come to the States -- and say they didn't learn or know anything about it. Yet, they want the descendants to come visit.
It would also probably help relations between Africans and Diasporans.
We should also know who and what is being said and taught by tourist guides at them. This goes for U.S., Africa and anywhere else.
This is a great read: Welcome the Diaspora : Slave Trade Heritage Tourism and the Public Memory of Slavery – Ethnologies
It explains Slave Tourism and how basically a lot of places that are attractions are questionable.
In addition, info being shared at many of them are false -- just like at the U.S. attractions.
Gorée Island
Since the 1960s, Gorée Island and its Slave House started acquiring notoriety among international visitors, including African American tourists and political and religious authorities. The promotion of Gorée as a slave trade site of remembrance began when Léopold Sedar Senghor was President of Senegal. In 1966, the first World Festival of Black Arts was held in the country. By developing and promoting African arts, Senegal called the public’s attention to African heritage and to the importance of Gorée Island in the history of West Africa. The festival had significant repercussions in Europe and the Americas, contributing to develop and promote Gorée Island and its Slave House not only as a site of memory of the Atlantic slave trade, but also as a tourist destination.
However, the Slave House on Gorée Island is a contested historical site. Among others, its date of construction is uncertain. The late Boubacar Joseph N’Diaye (1922-2009), its curator, stated that the Dutch constructed the building in 1776 [2]. N’Diaye used to describe the building as a slave warehouse, a kind of structure introduced to the island by the Portuguese in 1636. According to him, the two-story house could accommodate about two hundred slaves. During the tours, the curator also used to state that the slaves remained in the dungeons from two to three months while waiting to be embarked for the Americas. He explained that each cell, measuring 279 square feet, accommodated between 15 and 20 slaves in chains, adding that the place’s deplorable sanitary conditions caused the first epidemic of plague on the island in 1779. As in other similar slave trade sites of remembrance, on the first floor, at the end of a corridor, there is a door opening out to the sea, called the “Door of No Return”, because, according to N’Diaye, it was through this door that enslaved men, women, and children were embarked on slave ships sailing to the Americas.
In the early 1960s, Senegal created the BAMH (Bureau d’architecture des monuments historiques), the office of Historical Monuments Architecture. In 1972, Senegal ratified the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO during the seventeenth session of its general conference. Three years later the country included Gorée Island in its inventory of historical monuments. In 1978, during the second session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage held in Washington, DC, UNESCO added Gorée Island to the list of World Heritage sites (UNESCO 1978). In the 1980s, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, UNESCO Director-General, launched an appeal to the international community to help finance and safeguard Gorée Island, by emphasizing its role in the shared imagination of Africa and the Americas [3]. After this initiative, at least eight postage stamps were created to promote Gorée’s future. During the 1990s, as part of the same trend already observed in Ghana and The Gambia, the Slave House, as well as other buildings, were rehabilitated.
The Slave House
The Slave House became internationally known thanks to the narrative developed by N’Diaye. His convincing story describing the tragic experience of enslaved men and women during their passage through the slave warehouse touched the hearts of thousands of tourists who visited the island each year. According to N’Diaye, between 10 million and 15 million enslaved Africans passed through the Slave House before leaving for the Americas. Indeed, still today, N’Diyae’s fantasist estimates (French 1998), which are higher than the volume of slave imports for all the Americas, were not actually questioned by scholars (Katchka 2004: 4) who recently examined the public memory of the Atlantic slave trade in the region, and are widely disseminated on the Internet. For instance, on the website of the House of Slaves, Koïchiro Matsuura, at the time Director of UNESCO, claims that dozens of millions of Africans were deported to the Americas during the period of the Atlantic slave trade. Actually, according to the most recent estimates (Eltis et al. online) — which indeed increased but did not significantly change since 1969, when Philip Curtin published its first census (Curtin 1969) — about 12,521,000 enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic Ocean during the Atlantic slave trade, even though many others died during the Middle Passage, or were killed while still on African soil by starvation, illness, and by the wars intensified because of the growing demand for captives during their displacement inside the continent.
The Door of No Return
Indeed, the House’s “Door of No Return” leads out to rocks, which makes it hard to imagine how it was used to embark slaves. Moreover, the French artist Adolphe d’Hastrel de Rivedoux (1805-1875) depicted in the detail the Slave House in an 1839 lithograph titled “Une Habitation à Gorée (Maison d’Anna Colas)”. If the lithograph’s title is accurate, by 1839 the owner of the Slave House was not a European slave merchant, but a signare named Anna Colas. Signares were Afro-European and free African women slave traders, well known during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries in the region of Gorée and Saint-Louis (Wilson-Fall 2011).
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