A Brief Primer on Slavery
Thursday, January 17, 2019
Larry Elder recently wrote a short column about the institution of slavery. I highly recommend it, because not only does it do a good job of summarizing that history, but it also will teach almost any reader something he did not know. Perhaps the most important thing that too many people don't know today is the following, which he quotes from economist Thomas Sowell:
As Elder indicates, through the example of a reparations supporter who long ago adopted an Arabic name, too many people are ignorant of or evade our nation's role in ending this evil practice. This column will help the former gain an appropriate appreciation for the United States, however imperfect it is; and it should cause us to ask why the latter focus only on the sins and mistakes of its past.Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century.
Slave (l) and "owner" (r) ca. 1886. (Image via Wikipedia.)
People of every race and color were enslaved -- and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed. [bold added]
I recommend reading the whole thing, and remembering it whenever there is a chance to aid the ignorant or disarm the unjust.
-- CAV
4 comments:
Yo, Gus, good article. Just one comment. Elder writes, "10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That's right: a tiny percentage. In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America..."
While that is in the ballpark of figures I remember, you have to keep in mind many black American slaves were first bought by Caribbean planters and then later sold to mainland colonies after being worked to the end of their usefulness. The Caribbean was a charnel house for slaves, who were worked mercilessly on sugar plantations and died in horrendous numbers. Pretty much the entire arable surface of Barbados at one time (c. 1670s, I think) was devoted to sugar, and in fact South Carolina was founded partly to grow food for Barbados. One consequence is that black slaves coming to the mainland from the Caribbean were somewhat acculturated and had learned some English; slaves coming straight from Africa were not. These slaves were referred to as "outland" slaves, which is the origin of the term "outlandish," I gather.
Of greater importance in social history is that young men were in great demand in the Caribbean, and because of the demand of the region were the focus of slave traders' imports. Thus, a great majority of the black slaves in the mainland colonies before 1720 or so were male, and yet the slave population increased greatly over time through natural increase. Where did the women who bore the children in the first generation or two come from? Amerindian tribes for the most part--the enemies of the tribes allied to the English, who mostly captured women since they were less likely to run away. (If memory serves, in 1708, the white and black populations in South Carolina were just about equal, but of the slaves, about 1 in 5 were Amerindian, mostly women.) This was how Amerindian knowledge of Southeastern plants and other foods entered slave culture; such things as details of cattle herding, rice growing, okra, and the like survived from Africa. This is just one of the ways that the American South saw a fusion of elements from three different cultures, British, (mostly sub-Saharan West) African, and Southeastern Amerindian (French and a little bit of Spanish as well).
Yo, Gus, in fact, another comment, this time about black slaves in the Islamic world. As you are likely to learn in introductory Islamic history class, unless the teacher has an axe to grind, there were massive revolts of slaves (perhaps half a million of them), probably largely black, in southern Iraq in the late 800s. Educated Arabs of my acquaintance are quite familiar with this part of their history, which they consider deplorable but certainly of its time and place (and later).
Also, it's worth remembering that "slave" comes from "Slav," as they were one of the major groups sold as slaves through Byzantium. (I remember one Turkic bigot-cum-crank who hated the Slavs because the Russians controlled Central Asia and thus prevented him and his like-minded pests from unifying and conquering the surrounding peoples, who insisted because it was such a delightful thought to him that in fact "Slav" was the name they chose for themselves because they themselves knew they were suited by genetics to be natural slaves. This fellow was very very sic, but actually not as sick as the Greeks he would fight bloody battles of words with on Usenet--after all, at least he didn't say that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion proved that Hitler's only fault, apart from not being Greek, is that the Holocaust was too inefficient. In short, soc.culture groups are cloaca; you'd best shun them for reasons of health.
In any case, I forgot to make the important point that the simple fact of the widespread existence of slavery from time immemorial in so many societies and regions of the world is worth keeping in mind when you run across lefties who claim to be educated and yet say that the special sin of capitalism, and in particular of the United States, is that it was founded on the ownership of people. This is simply false--it long antedated capitalism in any real sense of the word and flourished under all manner of traditional societies. (One is often tempted when learning the political bent of such people to retort that clearly their only opposition to slavery in the United States in real terms is that there the slaves were private property, since their preferred system would make the entire citizenry publicly owned slaves. Égalité oblige, doncha now.)
Snedcat,
Thanks for your further comments. Your last, in particular, is worth remembering.
Gus
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