That was all they knew

Fascinating that this could be published today and by the BBC of all places. Not that it is untrue but that it is unacceptable.

From My Nigerian great-grandfather sold slaves' by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani.

We lived in Nigeria in the early 1960s and the Igbo were both celebrated and notorious for their commercial adeptness and quick-witted interactions with the other major population groups such as the Hausa and Fulani.

Speaking of her grandfather who was a slave-trader, she makes the same points most historians make about refraining judgment of the past against the standards of today.

Nwaubani Ogogo lived in a time when the fittest survived and the bravest excelled. The concept of "all men are created equal" was completely alien to traditional religion and law in his society.

It would be unfair to judge a 19th Century man by 21st Century principles.

Assessing the people of Africa's past by today's standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains, denying us the right to fully celebrate anyone who was not influenced by Western ideology.

Igbo slave traders like my great-grandfather did not suffer any crisis of social acceptance or legality. They did not need any religious or scientific justifications for their actions. They were simply living the life into which they were raised.

That was all they knew.

To understand history, we need to know not only what happened but also the context under which it occurred. The past is not the present.