I don’t think the lack of slavery makes that big of a difference in the south. The slave labor would pretty easily have been replaced by immigrant labor. Realistically, their wages weren’t much more than what was required for survival. If anything, I think slavery was a long term drag on the south’s economy.
Your forgetting the effects of the trade winds. The clockwise direction of the Atlantic winds so ships leave Europe, go to Africa, pickup goods in this case slaves), go westward to the Americas, pickup more goods, and then return eat to Europe.
Yes, ships can tack. But the trade winds made for an easier and more profitable trade.
Before the 18th century there wasn’t a country in the world without slavery and almost nobody actually questioned the morality of it.
So, by your analysis reparations should be paid the other way?:dubious:
Lots of people questioned the morality of it. For example, a number of early Christian church councils anathematized Manichaeans for encouraging slaves to desert from their masters. Aristotle defended slavery against people who criticized it, which underscores that it was a matter of debate. My understanding is the Achaemenid Persian Empire relied on non-slave laborers as most of its labour force, etc. though im open to being corrected.
Slavery mostly disappeared from western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire and then was brought back in the Crusades when they conquered the Levant and enslaved Muslims. And then it was reintroduced on a larger scale during the early stages of the Age of Empire.
I don’t recall using the word “should” in my historical observations. I just pointed out an historical event and an observable later condition, leaving it to my readers to judge whether an unintentional causation was involved.
Or perhaps they may have developed those kinds of things on their own. Who knows? :rolleyes:
By that logic, Jews in Israel are richer than they would be in Iraq or Poland, so they should thank Hitler for the holocaust.
If you think life in Guinea and Sierra Leone sucks (and I wouldn’t disagree, although it’s interesting you didn’t pick Ghana or the Republic of Congo which furnished a lot of slave population and are more prosperous than other two) how about we solve the problem by increasing our foreign aid budget instead of talking about how slavery might not have been all bad?
The linked video rightly points out that sugar* was the original slave-raised cash crop. Cotton wouldn’t surpass it until after Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. Tobacco was maybe second. And the economics of sugar production was brutal- it literally paid to work the slaves to death and buy new ones.
*at this point in history it would have been brown sugar, molasses and rum. Refined white sugar came later.
Nobody is arguing in favor of slavery but to assume that no good came from it on the basis that the idea offends you is crap.
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Did you watch the video? Because, based on your first sentence you didn’t seem to, or understand the concept of alternative history. No one is saying we have anyone to ‘thank’ for the past, it’s merely a look at what might have happened if there was a change in the past causing an alternative time line. Surely you can acknowledge that if there was no black slave trade by the Europeans to the Americas that something might have changed, yes?
This has nothing to do with what we should or shouldn’t be giving for foreign aid in Africa today, simply looking at the butterfly effect if such a large change in history happened somehow.