The English started the slave trade

[Annamaria14]

I just saw a black American woman post online,

"The English started the slave trade. They caused all our problems, they hurt generations of people. I will never set foot in that country".

What do you think? I felt a bit guilty, because the English did cause a lot of problems around the world. Have we learned from our past. How can we do better in the future

African slavery in the Americas also amounted to a range of experiences, from being educated and well-cared for house servants and musicians to the most brutal forms of being worked to death, served by male 'bulls' in baby farms or being the playthings of their masters for sex or 'sport,' meaning hunting.

The phrase 'sold down the river' tells a tale.

Maybe Thomas Jefferson was really kind to Sally Hemmings? Or maybe it was forced sexual abuse?

Yes, it's a thread about historical accuracy, and the claim that the British started the slave trade - as written by the OP. The British didn't start the slave trade, as many people have pointed out

To be honest we had slaves here in Wales too, even in the middle ages, we also cut off rapists testicles if they couldn't pay a fine and women had far more power and equality under our ancient laws. Then England put their laws in and women lost most of their equality.

So maybe they won't visit Wales either 🤔

@MockersxxxxxxxSocialDistancing

Oh yep I'm sure being a house slave was FANTASTIC.

"
Views 1,265,809
Updated May 01 2020
House Slaves: An Overview
House slave was a term used to refer to those enslaved Africans relegated to performing domestic work on American slave plantations. Typically slave labor on the plantation was divided into two broad categories: house servants and field hands. The process of turning a person into a house servant or field hand was called "seasoning." The goal of seasoning was to socialize the enslaved into disciplined, obedient workers. The practice itself was coercive and extremely violent. The central task was to remove the cultural memory of those enslaved to ensure that notions of African inferiority and white superiority could replace it within three years (Phillips 1914, p. 546). It is estimated that close to 20 percent of those who reached American shores perished during the seasoning process."

Plus, house slaves were in a tiny minority.

Yes Plan I was being facetious.

Barbary comes from Berber. None of those iterations of Islamic empire were centralised the way that Western empires and commerce were, and the Barbary ports were usually highly autonomous enclaves. There is not a huge population of the descendants of English slaves in Turkey today. Hence, it is a poor analogy when talking about other possible cases of apology/reparation.

Just a bit more about the CHARMED life of house slaves...

"Slave owners also made an attempt to ensure that house servants and field hands would remain socially isolated, both physically and psychologically, from one another even if they shared blood ties. House servants were threatened with flogging if they were caught interacting with field hands (Williams 1838, p. 48). In many ways, the notion of the happy house slave portrayed in movies such as Gone with the Wind, and the rebellious field slave are both mythic and simplistic. The lives and social consciousness of field hands and house servants were most often extremely complex.

The life of a house servant was often harsh and demeaning. Women house servants in particular were both desired and routinely raped by the plantation owner. Because they lived in close proximity to the master's family, the house servant was naturally absorbed into its many social conflicts. The master's desire for a slave mistress caused severe problems if he was married. In many cases the mistress of the house resented the presence of female house servants. Women house servants served as a constant reminder of marital infidelity. In response mistresses would often abuse their female house servants physically by slapping their faces, boxing their ears, and flogging. House servants were required to defer socially to the members of the master's family regardless of age differences. Elder men were required to refer to the teenage and adolescent children of the master as sir and ma'am. Elder women who often served as wet nurses for white infants were required to defer to them as adults (Jacobs 1861). In addition, house servants served as informants for the master and overseer, concerning the possibility of revolt by field hands."

"Although the nature of work performed by the house servant was much different from the work performed by the field hand, the overarching presence of the slave system and its coercive, violent, and humiliating methods of socialization invariably would define the lives of the enslaved regardless of their status within the plantation system."

Okay Zhuleva they didn't steal people, they just paid other people lots of money and guns to steal them. Completely different.

The type of slavery in Africa was often much different. Slaves could become prominent people in society in many cases. Sometimes they intermarried with the families. It was not nearly as brutal as European slavery.

No, slavery in Africa was no better. African slaves were used on Coffee plantations in Kenya and even shipped to Zanzibar to clove plantations too! I don’t think a slave in Kenya really cared whether he was picking coffee beans in Kenya or Brazil. Or that the conditions were really much different.....still a slave under a master with right of life or death over him.

Slaves could not become prominent people, the cheek of that lie! [Not since Roman times and even then that was only the Emperors slaves because they were the first civil servants and were often promoted to freedom and became freedmen on a pension. And, Romans, despite owning N. Africa were originally European...Rome, Italy. Roman.]

Slaves didn’t “intermarry” with the families unless you are disingenuously counting the female concubines of the harem being raped and impregnated by their masters. Or sown into sacks and drowned when they were no longer sexually satisfactory? It was just as brutal, I take it you’ve never seen the ankle and neck collars? Read their laws about slaves?

@dreamingbohemian well, yes it is completely different - and in this case, both are horrific.

Obviously to trade something is different to stealing it. I'm not sure if you're being dim or deliberately obtuse.

"The Barbary pirates were from a of caliphates of the Islamic Empire: the Umayyad, the Abbasid and the Ottoman. It was one of the largest empires in the world. And, yes, the proceeds were also used to expand that empires borders from its founding in 750 to its fall in 1922. And yes, millions were killed and enslaved and yes, the descendants of their slaves still live in the regions and are systematically oppressed as well"

This isn't really mentioned when teaching about slavery and other nations built empires conveniently glossed over?

I'm saying there's no moral difference Zhuleva. I thought that might be obvious.

Slavery in Africa pre-colonialism obviously varied in different places. Africa was and is not a monolith.

However in many places (Ghana in particular as an important place of trade with Europeans), slaves had rights. Rights to be fed, clothed and housed. Rights to marry and have an independent income. Also it was not under the same kind of soul-breaking cultural conditioning in terms of race. It was not 'you are x therefore you will only ever deserve to be a slave', slavery was often as a result of warfare (though not always).

While slavery anywhere is abhorrent, it is in no way sensical to believe slavery within Africa by other Africans is in any way on a par with Transatlantic Slavery.

@dreamingbohemian no, it wasn't

@dreamingbohemian

Yes Plan I was being facetious.

Barbary comes from Berber. None of those iterations of Islamic empire were centralised the way that Western empires and commerce were, and the Barbary ports were usually highly autonomous enclaves. There is not a huge population of the descendants of English slaves in Turkey today. Hence, it is a poor analogy when talking about other possible cases of apology/reparation.

No Barbary does most definitely not come from Berber. No the Islamic Empire was most definitely centralised and under one Emperor the same as other empires. No, the “ports” were not “autonomous enclaves” it was not a city state nation like the Ancient Greeks. Yes, descendants of European slaves live there to this day (and not just in modern day Turkey but the rest of the empire too). Suggest you look at a map?

You don’t know the history, linguistics, geography or the fact that some Caucasians live in these regions not because they colonised, but because they were brought there as slaves. There are not as many obvious descendants because they were not allowed to marry each other like the US slaves. Their racial identity was slowly erased by repeated rape of the slave women and the denial of sex to slave men.

It’s a perfectly good analogy if you don’t trot out lie after lie about who the Barbary pirates were.

There was a large Ottoman slave trade.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire

Muhammad had slaves.

House servants were required to defer socially to the members of the master's family regardless of age differences. Elder men were required to refer to the teenage and adolescent children of the master as sir and ma'am. Elder women who often served as wet nurses for white infants were required to defer to them as adults

I imagine the life of house slaves would be harsh and brutal but this bit seems odd in the description. Any serving class would be expected to do this not just slaves. Indeed even shopkeepers, tradesmen and tenants would be expected to do this and to some extent do so even now.

www.lexico.com/en/definition/barbary

Origin
Based on Arabic barbar (see Berber).

There was no one centralised Islamic Empire for 1500 years. I'm not explaining all that history at this hour though. Maybe tomorrow.

I've been trying to find a good short explanation of why American chattel slavery was different from older forms of slavery in Africa and Europe, I think this might be a good one:

ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/slaverybeforetrade

"In contrast to the chattel slavery that later developed in the New World, an enslaved person in West and Central Africa lived within a more flexible kinship group system. Anyone considered a slave in this region before the trans-Atlantic trade had a greater chance of becoming free within a lifetime; legal rights were generally not defined by racial categories; and an enslaved person was not always permanently separated from biological family networks or familiar home landscapes.

The rise of plantation agriculture as central to Atlantic World economies from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries led to a generally more extreme system of chattel slavery. in this system, human beings became movable commodities bought and sold in mass numbers across significant geographic distances, and their status could be shaped by concepts of racial inferirority and passed on to their desendants. New World plantations also generally required greater levels of exertion than earlier labor systems, so that slaveholders could produce a profit within competitive trans-Atlantic markets."

"The European labor systems that began to replace slavery should not be confused with modern free labor, but serfdom, convict labor, and contract systems did grant workers access to rights that were denied to slaves. For example, European serfs were bound to work for the lord of a manor, but in return the lord provided protection and land that serfs could farm for their own subsistence. While serfs did not own the land they worked, they could not be sold away from it like chattel slaves. Instead, serfs were bound to whichever lord currently owned the manor. "

we shouldn't feel guilty for something our ancestors did
Why not?

It's hard to refute a proposition which has no rationale. How would one argue that we shouldn't feel angry that clouds exist?

What is distant? Would it be ok for a German person to say that in relation to the Holocaust in a 100 years time?

It would be OK for a German person not to feel guilty about the holocaust now. Doing so would make as much sense as feeling guilt that a German may have murdered Madeline McCann. Most people don't feel guilt for things they are not remotely responsible for.

We should certainly be informed by history and look critically at the impact it still has today, but that's different from personal guilt.

She is just trying to inflame an already inflammatory situation. This is in our past, we were also one of the first to discontinue it. If she feels so strongly why is she living in America?

No we didn't start the slave trade as many have pointed out. But we were the first to end it. And not by some useless token gesture but enforced by our navy. A lot of countries deeply resented our interference including the Americans. So whilst we beat ourselves up about out participation in slavery we can also take pride that we ended it. Not the French, Americans, Indians, Africans or Arabs. Us.

The “English” didn’t start the slave trade. There have been slaves throughout history. Even the Atlantic slave trade which started in the 1600s or so was “started” by the Portuguese. I don’t know if it really matters who started it though.

Regardless of what your ancestors did or did not do, you are not responsible for what someone else did many years before you were born. It’s quite disturbing that many people will be descended from both slave owners and slaves. But that’s life and that’s history. My family are jewish but we have German ancestors too. Life is never simple.