sailor, I basically agree with the sentiment that an overly PC outlook has tended to paint the early contacts of Europeans with native Americans in the blackest terms possible. (In fact, it’s hard to do a search on Columbus and slavery without getting only the most rabidly anti-Columbus sites.)
However, having done a fair amount of reading on Columbus’ voyages and Spanish colonization, I think you go a bit too far in minimizing Indian slavery in the Spanish colonies.
There is little question that Columbus himself saw slaves as one of the potential “riches” of his new discoveries. What Columbus said, in his original letter describing the results of his first voyage, was:
I don’t have my copy of Admiral of the Ocean Sea at hand to verify the details, but some sites do mention Columbus’ forced labor of the Indians of Hispaniola to search for gold (using their rebellion as a justification) during his second voyage, and mention that he shipped about 500 slaves back to Spain when he returned. This sounds correct to me.
Regarding the attitude of the Spanish crown, they sent this letter to the Taino Indians with Columbus on his second voyage, which states:
In practice, rebellions were used as an excuse to enslave many Indians. I do agree with you that the practice was highly controversial in the adminstration of the Indies, and was campaigned against by Las Casas and others. But de facto slavery of Indians was practiced in many parts of the Spanish empire, condoned or even encouraged by the authorities, regardless of what the “official” position of the crown was.
They weren’t rounded up by slave traders as such. They were the result of the spoils of war between tribes. They were then sold to slave traders who in turn sold them overseas.
I’ve always been fascinated by the duality of their labor. From a cotton industry perspective, Slavery was essential to the trade with England, which, if I remember history correctly, was an early advocate for the abolition of slavery.
William Wilberforce, 1833, pushed through the abolition of slavery act. Once Britain abolished slavery they then went on to relentlessly enforce this throughout the world.
I think Chile were the first country to actually abolish slavery but they only did this because of British influence - they saw which way the wind was blowing and they jumped in first.
Britain followed not long after. Once Britain abolished it they set up a fleet of ships to patrol the coast of Africa. This fleet were called the Anti-Slavery Squadron and they eventually became the biggest fleet in the world.
They used to roam the coasts of Africa intercepting ships that they thought were carrying slaves. They freed something like half a million slaves and returned them to Africa.
Now they didn’t know where in Africa these slaves came from exactly so returning them all to their families was impractical. So they built a town in which all the freed slaves could live, or else they could leave and try and find their families again. Whatever.
The British called this town Freetown. It is the capital of present day Sierre Leone.
When the British arrived in South Africa they discovered that the Boers were keeping slaves so they banned them from doing this. The Boers objected and went on a “Great Trek” across Africa to get away from the British. Unfortunately for them, the British merely followed them across Africa and said “No, sorry, you still can’t keep slaves”. This resulted in the Boer Wars, which Britain won.
I just like to see credit given where it’s due. Slavery has been going on for as long as there has been mankind - the Greeks, the Romans, the Africans, everyone - and my people stopped it, forever, worldwide.
Colibri, you can take any person’s quotes out of context and make them seem to say anything you want. Those phrases may be true and yet may not be representative of what Columbus thought or may be a minimal part. He also wrote much more at length about putting strong limits on searching for gold and in encouraging settlement and commerce and productive farming etc. and yet he is always depicted as thirsty for gold.
In any case, Columbus never really had power in the New World. He was a disaster as a leader and soon was on bad terms with too many people. He was stripped of any authority in the government of the new colonies and sent back to Spain in chains so, whatever he thought did not count for much. What is important is the policies and attitudes of the Spanish monarchy and government and those were incredibly advanced for their time. Of course they were breached with or without excuses but that does not detract from the fact that they were well ahead of their time.
Obviously, at that time Spaniards could be arrogant and go around being pushy, just like every other people of an empire have done in history, it is human nature, but Spanish people have never had the type of racism the Anglos had. Indian nobles and princes were given Spanish titles of nobility and many Spanish married with natives. The Spanish did not keep themselves separate, they mixed with the locals where ever they went.
You can blame Spain for imposing its religion and culture but this was at a time when this was done by every government on their own people. You have to put things in context. It is naive to judge life then by how life is today.
Sadly, with the decay of Spain this enlightment was also lost. Spain in the 16th century was a model of limited government, of rule of law, in every respect. As the 17th century advances this is gradually lost and in the 18th and 19th centuries Spain continues to lose the culture of government that made her great. (In spite of that there are some very interesting scientific voyages of discovery in the 18th century.)
Cuba is a relevant example. Spain maintained slavery in Cuba during the 19th century for the sole reason that abolishing slavery there would mean the instant loss of Cuba. The rest of Spanish America had been lost as colonies due to the ideals of freedom that the enlightment that followed the French Revolution brought (just like the USA). But Cuba had developed a plantation economy similar to the South of the USA (in fact, many of the plantation owners were Americans). the minute Spain had tried to abolish slavery, Cuba would have turned around and asked to join the USA. (See “Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom”, a great book on Cuba’s history, by Hugh Thomas)
Anyway, this is only a side issue to the main point of the OP which asks about slaving the natives in North America. The causes and the culture were totally different so all this does not apply except, maybe, in a very limited sense.
You didn’t stop slavery; the British stopped the slave trade. Oddly enough, the US was the first nation to abolish the slave trade in her own borders by law, but the law didn’t take effect until after Britain’s immediate-effect law went into action.
We won’t steal too much of your thunder, but I want some Brownie Points, too!
How could Great Britain have any international authority to ban slave trading world-wide? I doubt it. I believe they were enforcing treaties to which the USA and other countries were parties. In other words, they were not unilaterally enforcing a ban against the will of the USA and other countries, rather, all those countries had agreed to a treaty forbidding the traffic and the British were the ones who had the most ships to enforce it.
I would like to see some evidence either supporting or denying my supposition.
Well, the quote I presented was in context, especially if you checked the link.
True, Columbus wrote about placing limits on searching for gold, commerce etc. In that same letter he also made a point of how docile and unaggressive the Taino were, and how easily they could be dominated and conquered.
If you are trying to determine which were the “true” opinions of Columbus, and which were lip-service and hypocrisy, probably the best approach is to look at what he actually did, rather than what he said.
I’ve now had a chance to look at Admiral of the Ocean Sea, (1942) by Samuel Elliot Morrison, one of the standard works on Columbus’ voyages. Morrison was an open admirer of Columbus, and can hardly be accused of being PC or revisionism. But Morrison minced no words in describing the barbarities of Columbus’ misrule in Hispaniola. In fact - remember this was published in 1942 - Morrison compared what the Spanish did in the early years of colonization in Hispaniola to what Hitler was then doing in Europe.
According to Morrison (and Las Casas, which I also had the chance to look at), Columbus imposed an extremely onerous demand for gold on the Taino, which in some cases was enforced by cutting off the hand of those who did not meet the requirement.
Morrison also mentions the specific case during Columbus’ rule in which 1.500 Taino were rounded up after an insurrection. 500 were shipped to Spain as slaves, and the colonists were allowed to take 600 more for thier own service. The remainder were allowed to flee.
There are many other specific examples that could be mentioned.
There may be some debate over how much of this was Columbus’ own policy, and how much he simply permitted to happen. However, in my own reading of Columbus’ letters and journals, I’ve seen nothing to suggest that he had any serious compunctions against slavery. The quest for gold and other wealth was clearly one of the major driving forces in his life.
Columbus was sent back in chains because of conflicts with his Spanish subjects, not because he was maltreating the Indians. According to Las Casas, his successors continued to maltreat the Indians just as badly or even worse.
After reading Las Casas, I should however mention that often what was imposed was technically not slavery - but it might just as well have been. A quota of Indians was allotted to each settler so he could convert them to the faith. In practice, they would end up de facto slaves. They may have been paid, but it was a negligible amount.
True that the Spanish monarchy technically forbade slavery and many other abuses. In practice these prohibitions were very often ignored, or gotten around on a technicality (such as paying a minimal amount). This may have been simple hypocrisy on the part of the government, or indifference. I don’t think the relative enlightenment of the government mattered very much to the many thousands of Indian forced laborers who died in the mines of Peru.
Well, I agree with this. Slavery was a fact of life throughout much of the world in the 1500s. Columbus can’t be judged solely through modern eyes. His attitude towards slavery was commonplace at the time. I would, however, point out that even a near contemporary like Las Casas though Columbus’ behavior was reprehensible.
I’d stress that I’m not trying to demonize either Columbus or Spanish rule, especially relative to their own contemporaries. Even with respect to Indian Empires, the Spanish were probably better rulers than the Aztecs, but worse than the Incas.
I see you are in Holland so you will have learnt a biased version of history as it relates to the Boer War. You probably think it was all about diamonds and control of the area.
These things were all factors of course but, as far as the British were concerned, the major factor was stopping slavery. Hell, your boys would probably still be keeping slaves today if we hadn’t come over there and stopped you.
And if we ever catch you keeping slaves again we’ll be over to kick your ass again.
sailor you ask:
International authority?
snort
We didn’t need no poxy permission from no one. We enforced whatever we liked.
Treaties? Treaties Schmeaties.
You think Britain took the slightest bit of notice about what the USA thought back then?
You are right that other countries also banned slavery but they only did this because Britain had decided to do it and they didn’t want any trouble. It wasn’t the case that everyone decided to ban it altogether like one big happy family and then Britain went ahead and enforced it.
If Britain hadn’t decided to ban it then no one else would have banned it.
Yes, yes, very cool… except for the irony of the cotton trade to England (from slave labor) to keep her great textile mills going. Still cool, just a little ironic.
I liked the ending in Amistad when the Brittish Naval Officer dictated a letter stating he could find no evidence of a slave trading fortress. I really like that Brittish sense of humor.
I was asking for some evidence, not for some stupid, made-up, erroneous opinion. Hugh Thomas in “Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom” says:
England was not so stupid as to go around attacking foreign ships illegally, much less American ships. The last thing Britain needed was to make an enemy out of the USA.
Most of what I know about the Boer Wars and the Zulu Wars doesn’t come from Dutch sources but from Brittish ones.
Never ever have I seen the issue of slavery pop up.
But, I’m looking forward to the cites you are about to provide to support this notion.
Not to hijack this thread totally, but it seems to me the British press is the only press in the world that has no propaganda, so their history is of course equally unbias. Just ask any Brit.
I enjoyed reading your (biased) cites. Thank you so much for providing them.
Please recall that I never claimed that the British were whiter than white. Some terrible things were done back then. Please also recall that I accepted that the desire for control and the gold were also factors.
However consider the following:
Why were the boers running from the British in the first place? Because the British banned slavery and were enforcing this ruling on them.
Why were the boers attacking the British after the British followed them? Because they wanted to keep their slaves.
In that delightful quote you gave, the Bantus fear that the boers wanted to keep slaves was a very real fear. The boers did want to keep slaves.
Why do I think your cites are biased? because of some of the bullshit therein about the “great and noble” boer people. Great and noble? Huh, all they were trying to do was establish a white supremacist state in a foreign country by enslaving the local blacks. Don’t fear though, they got their way in the end when the British left in 1924 and they set up the apartheid regime.
You think it was all about gold? Remember that the abolition of slavery cost Britain a fortune - millions. It’s arguable that the abolition of slavery was one of the prime causes of the downfall of the empire. But they still went ahead and did it anyway on principle. And you think these people were solely motivated by riches? You underestimate the stern Victorian sense of morality.
OK I admit I’m stretching a bit to claim the boer war was mainly about slavery but it was all tied up with why the British were haranguing the boers continually for decades before the war itself. And why the boers were so keen to escape British influence during those decades.
The boers had been in Africa since 1675 or so but they had no more right to be there than the British did so all this misty eyed stuff about the boers being a “noble people” bravely trying to resist British imperialism is just bullshit. At least the British weren’t quite so overtly supremacist.
And the war was sold to the British people to a large extent as being a war against slavery. And de facto, it was a war against slavery. OK maybe the British also wanted the gold but a side effect of defeating the boers was getting rid of slavery in South Africa.
So whatever the motives of the British were, the effect was to end slavery. Therefore, de facto, it was a war against slavery.
QED.
(Please note that even I’m a bit unsure about the strength of my reasoning in the last couple of paragraphs there, but it seems to work so I’m going to go with it for the time being).
Do you have a cite for this claim? The Encyclopædia Britannica has this to say on the subject:
Now, I have found that the EB is quite capable of playing up the noble aspects of British actions in various articles, so, if the Trek was actually inspired by conflicts over slavery, why does the EB downplay that point? (And, of course, if your first point is weak or fails, the rest of your logical progression is left without its foundation.)
I am not claiming that you are wrong, but it would be interesting to see some evidence that you are correct.
Since you’ve yet to provide any cites for your statements, I think I will wait a while to return the compliment - but rest assured, I’ll thank you when you do so…
I suppose it is worth noting that I would probably agree with you about the “great and noble Boer republic” bullshit - as a pupil under the South African Education system we were spoonfed the same sort of lies year after year. ALL the colonial powers were in the game for money and power, anything else is spin…
