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. We are historians: that is what
H-AFRICA is about. 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. Raul
Hilberg reckoned with numbers in his massive book *The Destruction of
European Jewry*. 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.