Why Slaves?
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NewCliches — 14 years ago(December 13, 2011 11:00 AM)
The obvious retort is that free Indians did.
And I might point out that even before slavery was abolished in the Caribbean, most of its free people were themselves black or mixed race. Free whites were such a tiny minority that they had been outnumbered by freed slaves and their descendents for a long long time.
And yet, those free black people stayed in the Caribbean. Very few of them emigrated. So it cannot have been as bad a place to be as you seem to think, as long as you were a
free
black person.
After all, the free white people had always been so heavily outnumbered that they had to maintain the loyalty of the free black people.
"The most racist societies in the world" were, and always had been, in the American South, where white people made up the majority of the population and were secure enough to indulge in luxuries like classical racism. -
Robbmonster — 16 years ago(August 12, 2009 12:03 PM)
I know this is a serious subject, but I just had to say
But why male models???
"It's just a movie" is no excuse for treating us like idiots!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRqc0KSkJ0 -
rightwing_redcoat — 15 years ago(June 01, 2010 07:59 PM)
One important thing to remember is the natural slave population increase that occurred in America. Slavery in the Caribbean under the British or French (while it existed) was far more brutal, and so new slaves needed to be imported constantly to keep the population up. Now, just be clear, I am in no way defending slavery, but in America, the slavery was not as harsh, and so slaves lived longer, and had more children. America actually banned the importation of slaves in 1808, and it turned out that importing them was unnecessary, as the population of slaves actually had an exponential increase. By 1860, there were almost 4 million slaves in America, whereas only about 650,000 were actually imported to the USA from Africa legally.
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julianamonti — 15 years ago(July 01, 2010 01:47 AM)
I don't know about United States but I can tell you about Brazil, since I am brazilian.
The natives in Brazil did not obey or take any of the europeans teachings, they would rather die instead of being slaves, that is they culture and that is what they did, they didn't bow once for any european or whatever. They preferred to sacrifice themselves and die in pain as free men. The brazilian indians would receive visitors with joy but they wouldn't let them rule things, until nowadays they can be hostile, there are recent cases of journalists who tried to take pictures in the natives reservation and got beaten until death, I think they inheritated the bad feeling of the white men.
Why the africans accepted? In my opinion they were too much nice to the newcomers and I think they didn't see that coming, since in my view it isn't in their culture actions such harm and slave people.
The africans and natives of the countries involved were treated like animals, but for me the real animals were the europeans who raped the latin america and africa. -
davidwile — 13 years ago(January 01, 2013 07:33 PM)
Hey folks,
Bringing people from Africa to the Americas to serve as slaves was quite an expensive enterprise. North America had an abundance of Native Americans who could be subjugated for a lot less cost than what it took to bring Africans here. In the eyes of the ruling white population, Native Americans really were not looked upon with any more favor than Africans, so this begs the question as to why Native Americans were not used for slave labor instead of Africans.
I suspect the basic reason more costly Africans were used instead of Native Americans was largely due to the type of work that was expected of the slave labor. The Americas in the time of slavery were mostly agrarian cultures, and this was especially true of the southern colonies and the Caribbean where plantation life both large and small were the norm. The Africans used for slaves came from cultures that were also agrarian in nature rather than hunter-gatherers. Other than initial language difficulties, African slaves were very adept at performing agrarian tasks. Native Americans, on the other hand, were not so agrarian by nature. Those in the East who were adept at agrarian life were already pushed out of the land. So many of the remaining Native Americans were largely hunter-gatherers who were basically nomadic and not very adept at an agrarian life.
In short, Native Americans did not serve the intended purpose of slaveowners as did Africans at the time. Slaveowners found Africans better suited for their agrarian needs than Native Americans and were willing to pay the high cost of obtaining the African slaves.
Best wishes,
Dave Wile -
dannieboy20906 — 10 years ago(June 10, 2015 01:47 PM)
Dave Wile;
It was pointed out by another poster in another thread on this board, but apparently you didn't read it.
An attempt was made to enslave Native Americans or American Indians, but it failed for the obvious reason that they can escape and go home. They know how to live off the land and navigate cross-country to rejoin their tribes.
Slaves imported from Africa cannot return home because three thousand miles is a heckuva lot of water to swim. Subsequent generations cannot blend in with the local population and must make it all the way to Canada to get free. In the meantime, there is no support network to help them. Near the time of the beginning of the Civil War the Underground Railroad was making strides in moving escaping slaves up to Canada, but it was a dangerous task. -
generationofswine — 11 years ago(March 23, 2015 12:43 PM)
Now hold on everyone, it was one of the debates in Congress at the time of Amistad. The free laborers in the North had a FAR lower standard of living than the slave laborers in the South.
Slaves were an investment and between the housing costs (which were better than the tenements in the North) the Food cost (again better) and the healthcare costs (once more, better) it actually cost more to own a slave than it did to hire a free laborer.
The pro-slavery movement pointed this out, & the fact that slaves had a higher standard of living than free laborers time & again when they were arguing against abolition.
But the economic structure was extremely different & we were still an agrarian nation with a developing industrial base.
The reason that slaves were preferred over free labor was migratory. In the industrialized north companies held free-labor as slaves through debt to the factory stores & factory housing.
In the south with growing seasons that would be a difficult prospect & the labor needed for the farm to prosper would be far from guaranteed. Slaves, on the other hand, were sedentary & able to diversify as, like on Jefferson's plantation, there were artisan slaves.
In other-words, as where bigotry no doubt played a role in slavery, the economic argument is slightly flawed. It actually did cost far more to own a slave than to higher a free man.
However, because of an economic base in agriculture, a diversification in slave labor, & the fact that slaves unlike free farm-workers were not migratory, the benefits far outweighed the costs thus making the South's "peculiar institution," as they called it, more profitable than the cheaper free labor. -
NewCliches — 11 years ago(March 23, 2015 12:55 PM)
The free laborers in the North had a FAR lower standard of living than the slave laborers in the South.
If that were true, I would expect a fair number of free laborers to volunteer to be enslaved. How many did so? -
g_samov — 10 years ago(September 02, 2015 01:42 PM)
Hmm, good thinking I'd say. I'm not even sure if you find that surprising or what you're arguing here. Just look at the migrants from Africa drowning en route to France, UK and so on. I highly doubt they'd be taking equal risks if they knew they'd be facing good nutrition, health care but also a ball and chain at the end of their journeys.
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debrecenisrac38 — 9 years ago(April 15, 2016 05:19 PM)
I can give you a very good answer to that from a different perspective. After 1961, when the Berlin Wall was built and the Non-Aligned countries have formed, many Westerners were aware, that all costs in the communist bloc was lower, than in the West.
Yet, guest workers in the GDR came from Angola, Vietnam, and neighboring socialist countries. The answer to that question is the same as to yours: political will. Slave economy, much like a plan based economy is unfit to compete with free trade and is doomed to fail. So, the political will behind it has to keep it up by violence, and they did, and wherever there's still slavery, they still do. Individuals rarely give up their personal freedom, if they don't have to, so paying half for things was not enticing enough to move to a society, where most of your neighbors would snitch you out.
As for Indians being legally free, I strongly recall, Gandhi's early protests in South Africa as a lawyer concerned the mandate toward Indians not being able to walk on the road, only beside it. So yes, the British exchanged African slaves for workers of other colonies, or half colonies, like China.
Circling back to the GDR, people accepted guest worker spots, because the wage was better. Claims by the pro-slavery movement on slavery not being cost effective is akin to the communist argument of workers having it better, than being under capitalist exploitation. In other words both being a lie. It wasn't done, because it was more effective, only the ruling class wanted it.
Technically I wasn't born a slave, but not as a free person either, a long iron curtain prevented me from choosing where I wished to go. You may interpret this as a divide between white people, because I stand by my view of equating colonialist slave traders to communists. What celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution is to Russia is the Confederate heritage month to the South.
I live in the Gordius Apartment Complex, my interior designer was M.C. Escher.