'Prince Among Slaves" is the story of Abul Rahman, an African Prince abducted and bartered for goods by his kidnapper. There are many important elements to Rahman's story, which make it culturally indispensable in the history of the World.
African Civilization: Rahman, was a Prince. His father commanded and ruled over thousands of subjects, himself, a sub-ruler to the ruler of Timbuktu. Rahman himself was lord of over 2,000 soldiers charged with guarding his peoples passageway to the sea. He was educated in Timbuktu and in the languages, culture and history of the different peoples that conducted essential trade with his tribe.
Black on Black Crime: The sad tale of Africa can not be told, in fact, would not exist without the complicity of Blacks in the acquisition of their own kind that were in turn traded for the cargo of slave traders. At the time of the beginnings of the forced exodus of an estimated minimum of 12 million Africans to the new world, African tribes, were all too willing to trade their own people for gun powder, muskets, rum, beads, etc. This was the beginning of the African arms race. Muskets became essential in the defense of ones territory. To survive without this contribution was increasingly impossible, setting off an arms race and upsetting of traditional power and relations which would become irreparably changed. It is the sad truth, that Blacks, once caught up in this arms race, demonstrated the basest of human psychological/social reactions in their quest to acquire the vital technology of power.
Cotton Production: Rahman, having been trained, educated and with his experience as a leader, was able to assist his master in the cultivation of cotton on a scale unseen in the Americas. Natchez Mississipi, the place of Rahman's plantation, would become the home to more millionaires than any other city in the New World other than New York City, due to it's climate and enviromental conditions which made it one of two ideal locations in the Americas (the other being on the Carolina coast) for the cultivation of cotton. Rahman was the leader and his knowledge made him indispensible to his master. In fact, of the New World crops, the ones that became the most valuable were the ones that Africans knew how to raise on an agricultural scale: Rice, Cotton, Tubers.
African Culture: Africa, African-Americans and the new world, is a fantastic story of survival and adaptation. Slavery began in the Caribbean and became widespread in southern America on a scale and depth much stronger than in the northern American areas. The climate was more similar to the climate of Africa, thus allowing the culture to take hold in a deeper, more penetrating and significant way, with less to adapt to. Also, to be factored in the survival of African culture is the fact that African culture was constantly replenished with each arrival of a new African. For multiple generations, the stories and traditions of Africa, literally, the best of all of Africa's tribes and peoples and agriculture's were passed on from mother and father to son and daughter. As new generations of American born Africans were rooted, new influxes of Pure Africans arrived. The final analysis is that African Culture became fully and totally subsumed into the America's, up and down the Americas in all of the locations where slaves landed. Seeing as Slavers traded with areas where they had established relations, many new world African populations, were from the same locations in Africa, thus adding a new entrenching element to the unique culture of the new world African locations.
The Story of Rahman culminates in his being eventually freed by his master, meeting the President of the United States (John Quincy Adams) and engaging in speaking arrangements with free Blacks and sympathetic whites throughout the north. he returned to Africa, where he died 4 months later of a fever, never having returned to his homeland.
Amazingly, not many years after his arrival in Natchez, he crossed paths with a Dr. he had met in his native Africa. A white Doctor became stranded in Africa when he went into the mainland and his ship sailed without him. Rahman and his tribe took care of him for the 6 months he was there and this doctor was the first white man to visit Timbuktu. The doctor persistently enjoined Rahman's master to allow him to be sold, so that his "debt" could be paid back, but Rahman was too valuable. Besides, in the meantime he became married and had several children. Each child became a new heart string with which Rahman would become bound up and trapped in his American fate....
[The son of Rahman's slave owner was married to the daughter of a minister. their relationship soon grew cool, but his wife found out why when she discovered that he was in a relationship with Rahman's daughter and had children]
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