When some of the very first representatives of subsaharan kingdoms were brought to Europe in the later 1400s, they were generally treated as emissaries of kings to kings. The betrayals of less powerfully militarized people soon began, of course, as discovery of the Americas quickly after created an enormous greed for labor.
And now we come, not full circle, but yet around.
To some degree this marriage into a European royal family can be seen, not just as change, but as a particularly poetic marker among many of the ending of a particularly nasty period of western history, from the late 1400s to late 1900s. (Not Africa's, unfortunately, since enslavement by other peoples began long before and continues, though tremendously diminished, to this day.)
All European nations had passed laws making slave trade illegal, then slavery itself, before we did in 1808 and then 1862, and the League of Nations made it official for western nations in the 1920s. This tragic era was extended, though, and of course, by its sequelae long past legal slavery itself into our own lifetimes.
And now this royal wedding. When I opened this thread, I had no plan to tune in, but now I think I will. It's really something we could all celebrate.
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