Re: Master and Commander...


<chuckgould.chuck@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1130951040.694552.70550@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Bob wrote:
>> On 2 Nov 2005 08:18:12 -0800, dbohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>
>> >I once read an interesting statistic concerning ships transporting
>> >slaves through the "Middle Passage". I believe the book was "The Slave
>> >Trade". It said that the death rate among the sailors on these ships
>> >was about 15-20% whereas the death rate of the slaves being transported
>> >was normally lower than that. The reason was that slaves were
>> >valueable cargo whereas seamen were considered expendable.
>>
>> too bad all the sailors didn't die. maybe they would have learned a
>> lesson.
>>
>
> It would be pretty tough to lay more than a portion the moral blame for
> the slave trade at the feet of the sailors working the ships. In some
> cases, these ships recruited a "crew" among natives on the Ivory Coast,
> and after sailing to the West Indies these so-called "crewmen" were
> sold into slavery as well.
>
> Blame for slave trade must be shared, IMO, by:
>
> Arab and African slavers who raided farms and villages to gather
> prisoners to sell into slavery. (Forget the opening scenes of "Roots"
> where a bunch of overweight Europeans are running alongside hounds to
> catch the natives on their own turf.)
>
> European "factory" traders who established trading posts and holding
> pens
> on the E coast of Africa and traded cheap muskets, fabrics, trinkets,
> and tiny amounts of currency for captives.
>
> European governments which profited from the trade.
>
> European churches and other social agencies which failed to adequately
> condemn it.
>
> Colonial planters who depended upon it.
>
> Consumers of cheap goods and agricultural produce that resulted from a
> slave economy.
>
> While the US gets the majority of attention for slavery in the American
> SE, slavery was also common in the north during the earliest years of
> the Republic. Slavery was legal in most corners of the British Empire
> until some time around 1830, (or so). We now quite often mistakenly
> view it as a particularly American disgrace, almost 150 years after the
> Emancipation, but it was a world-wide economic model- and problem.
>

And the only reason we did not ban slavery when, actually before Britain,
was the fact Whitney invented the cotton gin and cotton plantations expanded
greatly. Up until that time, was becoming an uneconomical model.


.

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