Sculptor1 wrote: ↑December 6th, 2021, 7:52 am
Classic victim blaming.
Egads. You had said, "Most countries were doing fins before the white man came with his guns, and enslaved them, brought them disease."
I responded, "As for slavery, African and North American tribes were enslaving each other long before Europeans entered the game."
You then replied, "Nothing of what you say is contained in the link."
So I quoted from the link, which obviously refutes that statement, to wit:
"Slavery was prevalent in many West and Central African societies before and during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. When diverse African empires, small to medium-sized nations, or kinship groups came into conflict for various political and economic reasons, individuals from one African group regularly enslaved captives from another group because they viewed them as outsiders. The rulers of these slaveholding societies could then exert power over these captives as prisoners of war for labor needs, to expand their kinship group or nation, influence and disseminate spiritual beliefs, or potentially to trade for economic gain."
So now, to deflect from that false statement, you claim I'm "victim blaming"?
The only blame being cast in the above exchanges is in your original statement. I've not "blamed" anything on anyone. I've merely pointed out a fact.
The discovery of the Americas was the most potent force of economic insentive to build the largest slave trade in history. The slave trade was almost nothing before Europe demanded millions of slaves from Africa.
The British Empire inherited slavery as part of the common culture of the world. And, being the world's first global economic power, they commercialized it. But by the time the Empire reached its height, and for millennia before, slavery was a customary and ubiquitous practice throughout most of the world --- in Asia, the Middle East, in Africa, and in much of Europe. It was practiced by the Vikings, by American Indians, in ancient Egypt and Persia, and most notably in ancient Greece, where it was accepted without a second thought, barely attracting the attention of such enlightened minds as those of Plato and Aristotle. It was widespread in the Roman Empire, and accepted later by both Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
"Historically, slavery was not just an Old Testament phenomenon, as slavery was practised in every ancient Middle Eastern society, such as Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome and Israel. Slavery was an integral part of ancient commerce, taxation, and temple religion."
"Some forms of servitude, customary in ancient times, were condoned by the Torah . . . Hebrews would be punished if they beat a slave causing death within a day or two, and would have to let a slave go free if they destroyed a slave's eye or tooth, force a slave to work on the Sabbath . . ."
"It is clear from all the New Testament material that slavery was a basic part of the social and economic environment. Many of the early Christians were slaves. In several Pauline epistles, and the First Epistle of Peter, slaves are admonished to obey their masters, 'as to the Lord, and not to men'."
"Slavery was the bedrock of the Roman and world economy. Some estimate that the slave population in the 1st century constituted approximately one third of the total population."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian ... on_slavery
And, of course, the European slave traders did not run around the continent with ropes and nets capturing Africans for slaves; they were
sold to the slave traders
by other Africans.
"The major Atlantic slave-trading nations, ordered by trade volume, were the Portuguese, the British, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and the Danish. Several had established outposts on the African coast where they purchased slaves from local African leaders."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
All these contemporary lamentations and protestations of the 18th and 19th century slave trade are curiously selective in their condemnations --- a ploy devised by the Left to convince the ignorant that slavery, rather than an ancient global practice, was a unique evil invented by European "capitalists." An especially devious charge, since it was in those very countries, and especially in Great Britain, where moral arguments against it began to be voiced, and which led, in less than a century, to the abolition of that hoary and near-universal social institution.