Removal of Confederate Monuments

[Darrell]

(09-11-2017 05:45 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  "Today it is politically correct to blame some European empires and the USA for slavery (forgetting that it was practiced by everybody since prehistoric times). But I rarely read the other side of the story: that the nations who were the first to develop a repulsion for slavery and eventually abolish slavery were precisely those countries (especially Britain and the USA). In 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in England: it was the first society anywhere in the world opposed to slavery. In 1792 English prime minister William Pitt called publicly for the end of the slave trade: it was the first time in history (anywhere in the world) that the ruler of a country had called for the abolition of slavery. No African king and emperor had ever done so. As Dinesh D'Souza wrote, "What is uniquely Western is not slavery but the movement to abolish slavery".

Of course, what was also (horribly) unique about the Western slave trade is the scale (the millions shipped to another continent in a relatively short period of time), and, of course, that it eventually became a racist affair, discriminating blacks, whereas previous slave trades had not discriminated based on the color of the skin. What is unique about the USA, in particular, is the unfair treatment that blacks received AFTER emancipation (which is, after all, the real source of the whole controversy, because, otherwise, just about everybody on this planet can claim to be the descendant of an ancient slave).

That does not mean that western slave traders were justified in what they did, but placing all the blame on them is a way to absolve all the others.

Also, it is worth noting that the death rate among the white crews of the slave ships (20-25%) was higher than the rate among black slaves (15%) because slaves were more valuable than sailors; but nobody has written books and filmed epics about those sailors (often unwillingly enrolled or even kidnapped in ports around Europe when they were drunk).

To this day, too many Africans, Arabs and Europeans believe that the African slave trade was an aberration of the USA, not their own invention.

By the time the slave trade was abolished in the West, there were many more slaves in Africa (black slaves of black owners) than in the Americas."

Historian Robert Collins makes a related point in stating that “the historic obsession with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas has often obscured the trade to Asia and slavery within Africa” (article by Martin Plaut linked below). Plaut also describes a 2003 UNESCO Conference on “Arab-Led Slavery of Africans” which declared that “the Arab-led slave trade of African people predates the Trans-Atlantic slave trade by a millennium, and represents the largest and, in time, longest involuntary removal of any indigenous people in the history of humanity.”

In addition to noting the far greater antiquity of the Arab slave trade, the author emphasizes that African slavery still exists. Plaut states: "What is far more worrying is the almost total silence from the African Union, the United Nations and almost all other international bodies about the continuing scandal of modern Africa slavery."

Antislavery International reports that "descent based slavery" is still practiced in Africa, particularly in Sudan, Niger, Chad, Mali and Mauritania. The latter country is of particular note as Mauritania didn't "abolish" slavery until 2007 - and that was in name only. According to one report at least 4% of the population (155,600 people) is currently enslaved against their will. One of Antislavery International's webpages (also linked below) gives a description of slave life in the aforementioned countries, including a profile of Moulkheir, a Mauritanian ex-slave. Her story sounds as atrocious of some of the more egregious accounts of chattel slavery in the antebellum South. (And, like the South, Mauritanian slavery is race-based - as it consists of Arab masters with black slaves.)

http://www.newstatesman.com/internationa...-trade-too

https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-toda...d-slavery/