We have seen that there were quite a few African kings who forbade the sale of liquor by Europeans on their territories: Gungunyane of the kingdom of Gaza in Mozambique, Mirambo: the Black Napoleon, king of the Nyamwezi people in Tanzania, and now the Almanny (which means leader) cited during Wadstrom report to the British Committee in 1790s (Royal Resistance to Slavery: the Case of an Almany of West Africa in 1780s). Just like Gungunyane, Mirambo thought that alcohol weakened societies. There are quite a few other African leaders throughout history. Why would they prohibit the sale of alcohol on their territories? In history, we have seen this tactic used by the Europeans in the Americas where they gave cheap liquor to the Native Americans turning them drunkards, violent, in order to dispossess them of their lands.  Below is an account by the abbey Gregoire who clearly saw alcohol as a tool used to destabilize African societies during slavery times. It is good to note that history repeats itself: today in many African countries, the main breweries are owned by European companies, and particularly in countries with a lot of resources, the people have been slowly turned into drunkards (this will be a story for another day) while their resources get siphoned out.

Abbe Gregoire, for his part, emphasizes that Barrow attributes: “…the current barbarity of some parts of Africa to the slave trade. To obtain it, the Europeans created it, and they perpetuate the usual state of war; they poisoned these regions with their strong liquors, by the accumulation of all kinds of debauchery, seduction, rapacity, cruelty. Is there a single vice whose example they do not daily reproduce before the eyes of the Negroes brought to Europe, or transported to our colonies? I am not surprised to read in Beaver, certainly a friend of the Negroes, and who in his African memoranda is full of praise for their native virtues and their talents: “I would rather carry thither a rattlesnake than a Negro who would have lived in London “.

Bwemba Bong, Quand l’Africain etait l’or noir de l’Europe. L’Afrique: actrice ou victime de la traite des noirs? MedouNeter (2022), p. 165; Barrow, African memoranda, relative to an attempt to establish a British settlement in the Island of Boulam, by Phylips Beaver, in 4, London 1805. I would rather carry thither a rattle snake, etc., p. 397, cited by abbey Gregoire, p. 43-44.