Joe wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2019 6:13 pm
The stupid; it burns!
Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich attempted to counter Senator Elizabeth Warren’s call to discuss the injustices of slavery, and its lasting systemic impact on generations of African-Americans, by claiming that the United States does not get “enough credit” for ending slavery.
While discussing reparations to descendents of enslaved people on Fox News’ "Outnumbered" on Tuesday, Ms Pavlich claimed that the US was the first country to abolish slavery.
“They keep blaming America for the sin of slavery but the truth is, throughout human history, slavery existed, and America came along as the first country to end it within 150 years,” she said. “And we get no credit for that to move forward and try to make good on that.”
Her point is not wholly without merit. Remember, slavery in the Americas was created not by the United States, but by the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Portugal, predominantly. Those countries ignore their history in slavery and the slave trade. Spain and Portugal were far bigger slavers than the UK and France.
Brazil (a colony of Portugal) alone accounted almost 50% of the entirety of the slaves reaching the New World, and they almost kept slavery to the 20th century. Spanish America and the Caribbean accounted for another approximately 45% and the slaves that wound up in the US? Drum roll please.... about 5% of the slaves shipped to the new world went to the United States (and only the southern states).
The United Kingdom was the colonial empire that did the most to end slave trade, and ultimately the abolitionist movement in the US achieved its goals. The end of slavery did not come from South America or Spanish north America or the Caribbean. It did not come from Portugal, or Spain or France - or Asia or Africa. It came from the British Enlightenment, with most credit to the Scots.
Worldwide, slavery has existed for most of human history. Throughout much of Africa and muslim countries, slavery and the slave trade still goes on. During the time of the atlantic slave trade, Muslim countries rounded up slaves all the time - they would take them from Europe and the Americas, and slavery was quite common. See Barbary Slave Trade - and Corsairs, etc.
It was the western Enlightenment originating in the UK that gave the world the principles which ultimately ended slavery in the West. And that was before the rest of the world.
I wouldn't so much credit the US, as the lady in the article says - but it's a British achievement. I credit the British.
But most people focus on United States slavery as if it was the United States that created it, and the US that resisted ending it. That's not really an accurate way to look at it.
The most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson. (While the editors are careful to say that all of their figures are estimates, I believe that they are the best estimates that we have, the proverbial "gold standard" in the field of the study of the slave trade.) Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 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; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone! Some scholars estimate that another 60,000 to 70,000 Africans ended up in the United States after touching down in the Caribbean first, so that would bring the total to approximately 450,000 Africans who arrived in the United States over the course of the slave trade.
https://www.theroot.com/how-many-slaves ... 1790873989
Let's also understand that the focus is on the US due to the civil war, but the abolition of slavery in British Colonies did not occur until 1834, and slavery ended in the US in 1865. So, it was only 32 years separating the two. In Brazil I think it was 1888, or 1890 before slavery ended there (nominally).
When the Brits freed their slaves in 1834, there were even slaves in Canada. Not many people understand that. But, there were - and throughout the British holdings in the Caribbean and the New World.
This was an effort basically started by the Quakers in the late 18th century, which took a generation or so to take hold and start working. In the rest of the world, however, slavery was still normal, as it was for most of human history. In Ethiopia, slavery and involuntary servitude were only officially abolished in 1942, or that of Saudi Arabia, where it went until about 1962.
This is not to say that the UK and the US don't have a lot to answer for in regards to slavery - they do. But, let's also not pretend that if we were all born in the 17th and early 18th centuries a world without slavery would hardly be thinkable. It's not as if we would, at least in all likelihood, be enlightened figures, seeing the inherent evil in the practice. Most of us would grow up in that milieu, and be part of it.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar