Historians urge historic-site recognition for slave port on Congo River’s mouth

POINTE NOIRE – Historians are urging UN heritage-site status for the central African port of Loango, the continent’s last landfall for an estimated 2 million people taken in the slave trade.

Abutting the mouth of the Congo river, the Republic of Congo port stood for centuries as one of the major shipping points for Africans to Europe and the Americas. “It’s important to draw recognition to Loango as a place of memory.So many black Americans and people from the Caribbean need touch-points of their origins,” said Simao Soundula, an expert at a centre in neighbouring Gabon pushing the effort.Recognition for the history of the port was the topic of a three-day conference last week.It was sponsored by the Republic of Congo and Unesco, which recognises 788 heritage sites worldwide.Inclusion on the list qualifies a site for conservation help from the UN Economic Social and Cultural Organization.Other West African sites, more accessible and more immediately evocative, draw more visits from African-Americans seeking traces of their families, homelands and histories.They include Ghana’s slave castles and Senegal’s Goree Island, both with slavery-era doors of no return.Some historians question the importance of Senegal’s site in particular, saying at most a few thousand enslaved Africans left from there, rather than the millions cited by tour guides.Although more obscure, the Loango port and coast by some estimates accounted for two million of the 10 million Africans enslaved and sent to Europe and the Americas.African sellers and European traders shipped an average of 10 000 Africans a year from Loango, historians say.It was one of the last shipping points on West Africa to stay in business as Western countries gradually outlawed the slave trade.”For Unesco, the interest in Loango didn’t start just today.The duty of all of us here is to promote the site of Loango,” said Robertine Raonimahary, Unesco’s representative in Republic of Congo.Historians also are urging Unesco, the African Union and other organisations to support efforts identifying, inventorying, restoring and researching other slave sites, such as auction houses.”It’s partly about how to make sure that the fundamental causes of the African trade and of slavery, its means and its consequences, are studied with the greatest historical rigour and presented in the history books… as an issue of universal importance,” Raonimahary said.- Nampa-AP”It’s important to draw recognition to Loango as a place of memory.So many black Americans and people from the Caribbean need touch-points of their origins,” said Simao Soundula, an expert at a centre in neighbouring Gabon pushing the effort.Recognition for the history of the port was the topic of a three-day conference last week.It was sponsored by the Republic of Congo and Unesco, which recognises 788 heritage sites worldwide.Inclusion on the list qualifies a site for conservation help from the UN Economic Social and Cultural Organization.Other West African sites, more accessible and more immediately evocative, draw more visits from African-Americans seeking traces of their families, homelands and histories.They include Ghana’s slave castles and Senegal’s Goree Island, both with slavery-era doors of no return.Some historians question the importance of Senegal’s site in particular, saying at most a few thousand enslaved Africans left from there, rather than the millions cited by tour guides.Although more obscure, the Loango port and coast by some estimates accounted for two million of the 10 million Africans enslaved and sent to Europe and the Americas.African sellers and European traders shipped an average of 10 000 Africans a year from Loango, historians say.It was one of the last shipping points on West Africa to stay in business as Western countries gradually outlawed the slave trade.”For Unesco, the interest in Loango didn’t start just today.The duty of all of us here is to promote the site of Loango,” said Robertine Raonimahary, Unesco’s representative in Republic of Congo.Historians also are urging Unesco, the African Union and other organisations to support efforts identifying, inventorying, restoring and researching other slave sites, such as auction houses.”It’s partly about how to make sure that the fundamental causes of the African trade and of slavery, its means and its consequences, are studied with the greatest historical rigour and presented in the history books… as an issue of universal importance,” Raonimahary said.- Nampa-AP