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Post by eufrenio on Apr 24, 2004 15:49:15 GMT -5
[ I still don't see anything good about using your might to exploit a group of people only to benefitt yourselves. Sure they set up shop and taught them things, but for the most part Africa got shafted by the deal. Maybe America should just invade Africa for its natural resources! They would surely mine them for free, seeing as how we give SOOO MUCH back to them by running there governments and teaching these savages how to make fire. I think Africans really got "shafted" ( I am not sure in American English, but in the UK: shaft= f*ck?) when they made the Europeans leave, with some help from the USA and the USSR!
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Post by berschneider on Apr 24, 2004 15:59:19 GMT -5
I think Africans really got "shafted" ( I am not sure in American English, but in the UK: shaft= f*ck?) when they made the Europeans leave, with some help from the USA and the USSR! Eufrenio. I think your comparison of long term benefits of colonization (Rome in Iberia) is a good one. I think your belief that Africans are absolutely different from other humans because they've accepted slavery - sale of human being for involuntary service or whatever - is wrong. The fact that blacks (Africans) sold each other to slavery is undisputable. Africans did not have any sense of common solidarity (and still don’t. Neither still do Arabs or Europeans) and had few if any qualms about selling their fellow countrymen or wives or children to Arab or European slavers. However the idea that slavery is uniquely African phenomenon does not hold water. Entire Europe was engaged in brisk slavery business until it was outlawed or for most of continent's history. In Germany, parents routinely sold children and husbands wives in 1600s. In England commerce in children as servants or for other purposes was very common until 1700s. Many colonists to the north American colonies were non-free whites and white slavery existed in America. Here is early 19 century England - in poor districts, such as the West Midlands of England, a wife was considered a chattel to be bought and sold like any other commodity. In Staffordshire the custom of selling a wife followed a strict pattern. The man took his wife to the Market as he would his pig, but with a halter round her neck instead of around its leg. Having paid the 'Market Toll', which gave him the right to sell merchandise, he then paraded his wife round the market place extolling her virtues. As the crowd heckled several would-be owners made their bids for possession of her. Prices usually ranged from a few pence to as much as £1. I had a book with 17 through 19 century English private ads selling wives and children.
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Post by berschneider on Apr 24, 2004 16:09:56 GMT -5
Maybe America should just invade Africa for its natural resources! They would surely mine them for free, seeing as how we give SOOO MUCH back to them by running there governments and teaching these savages how to make fire.
May be it's not a bad idea. I don't believe US military would be too brutal, - not like it is in Iraq where it's acting really savage, - because so many American military personnel are black. Secondly I can't see much resistance to the occupation on the part of the locals (for same reason). I believe that colonialism would in today's terms be very expensive to the colonizers and occupiers without any tangible benefit or return (often one can buy same commodities on the free market for less than it would cost to steal them after enslaving a whole country). The abrupt end of colonialsm was bad for Africa but not necessarily for the colonial powers who might have even benefited from colonies' independence.
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Post by eufrenio on Apr 24, 2004 16:10:56 GMT -5
Berschneider, I never said that slavery was unique to Africans. It just seems a very old habit In Africa! Of course I knew that slavery was also common in Europe , although it started to wane with Christianity. Indentured servitude did persist for many years. I had no idea of actual slavery in Europe like the one you mention. I am no expert, but selling your wife does not look very legal under English Law, even four centuries ago.
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Post by berschneider on Apr 24, 2004 16:13:47 GMT -5
yeah, the arab slave trade does predate islam. they were putting people into slavery before the west was, and do so up to this day. Often the black parents are told that their children will get a better life in the new country and will not be "slaves" - they are told that if they do this they will get more money. Being very poor and not having had much contact with the outside world, they often do this because they acutally believe what these people are saying. If you were poor, starving and very politically unaware, and some merchant guy came up to you and said that they could offer your child a better life than what they had, you would want the best for your child and that may well involve handin the child over. you would want them to have a chance of a good future. And tragically, their country doesn't offer them that chance, and charlatans such as these guys exploit them. I agree. This behaviour is quite widespread all over the world and one doesn't have to go to Africa to see situations when parents literally sell their children either for money or for promise of a better life, although the transaction itself or its aftermath is not legally called slavery. I thought in most cases black slaves were just captured by slavers, not sold by their kin.
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Post by berschneider on Apr 24, 2004 16:17:54 GMT -5
Berschneider, I never said that slavery was unique to Africans. It just seems a very old habit In Africa! Of course I knew that slavery was also common in Europe , although it started to wane with Christianity. Indentured servitude did persist for many years. I had no idea of actual slavery in Europe like the one you mention. I am no expert, but selling your wife does not look very legal under English Law, even four centuries ago. eufrenio, commerce in wives and children was illegal or semi-legal but was widely practiced in England until 1850s. In Prussia landlords sold people (attached to their land though) until 1780s, in Russia until 1840s (all serfdom was abolished in 1861 though). While serfdom is not slavery per se and selling a wife in England to another owner or daughter to serviture was not same as slavery, you must admit we are 'threading on thin ice" here. In America white slavery (real slavery) was common until mid 1700s.
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Post by berschneider on Apr 24, 2004 16:36:42 GMT -5
Eufrenio,
Here is one link but I am sure you can find more
A Queen Mother’s Collection, University of Aberdeen (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~ltu004/ws/qml/1.htm) Undesirable Old Customs (Must be early 1890s)
Highlights: The beating, the letting, the lending, and the leasing of wives….
In 1750, "a man and his wife, falIing into discourse with a grazier at Parham, in Norfolk, the husband offered him his wife in exchange for an ox, provided he would let him choose one out of his drove. The grazier accepted the proposal, and the wife readily agreed to it. Accordingly they met the next day, when she was delivered to the grazier with a new bauer round her neck; and the husband received the bullock, which he afterwards sold for six guineas."
In 1773, a proof was afforded how firm was the belief, among some portions of the working-class, that such sales were legal, especially if any formalities were observed. Three men and three women went to the Bell Inn at Birmingham, and made the following entry in a toll-book which was kept there: "Samuel Whitehouse, of the parish of Willenhall, in the county of Stafford, this day sold his wife, Mary Whitehouse, in open market, to Thomas Griffiths, of Birmingham. Value one shilling. To take her with all full."
A mint at Tuxford market- place, in 1805, sold not only his wife, but his child; he was well satisfied with five shillings, as the purchase price of the two.
It may be worth mentioning that, during the later years of the reign of George the Third, the marital relations among the humble classes were much disturbed by the exigencies of the Array and Navy.
Thomson placed his wife on a large oak chair, with a straw halter round her neck. He announced that the sale was with her consent. He enumerated her good dud bad qualities with considerable frankness, perhaps more impartially than he would those of a cow.
After a few biddings, he "knocked her down" to Henry Meads, the purchase- price being twenty shillings and a Newfoundland dog. Mr. Meads and Mrs. Thomson departed in one direction; Mr. Thomson, with the dog and rite twenty shillings, in the other.
A transaction of this kind, with a difference by way of excitement, was witnessed in 1835. A wife, sold for fifteen pounds, who eventually survived both buyer and seller, married again after the sale. Afterwards her first husband died, and she claimed to be legally entitled to a share of some property which he left behind him. The relatives of the first husband insisted that the sale had been a valid one, and that he died wifeless; the law decided otherwise, much to their astonishment and discomfiture.
In the firstyear of the reign, the inhabitants of a village in the West Riding of York- ,strife were much surprised at the result of a trial, ill which a man was sentenced to a month's imprisonment for selling his wife; they had entertained no doubt of his right to do so. Of course it was illegal; and eighty years ago Lord Hardwicke had treated as an indictable offence the making over of a wife by private contract; but these beliefs cling to the uneducated mind, with a tenacity that almost &,tics legal and logical proof.
A case which took place at Dudley illustrates a whole class: a man sold his wife for sixpence, under a firm belief that the smallest coin would surflee to release him from all marital obligations.
So recently as 1870 one of these transfers took place at Bury in Lancashire; the purchase-price was eight shillings, and the circumstances showed that in this case, at any rate, the "chattel" was worth little to any one.
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Post by nobody you know on Apr 24, 2004 17:24:42 GMT -5
The point is that the parents know all too well what slavery is and get paid for the deal. Being poor is no excuse. Did your ancestors ever sell their children because they were starving? I think not. Slavery is an ingrained African custom. Benin and other African "states" flourished on the trade. Although yes this does happen in some cases, often the parents of the children are lied to and told that the kids are going to not be slaves and get a "better life". They are also told that the children will be allowed to return, and promised large amounts of money and their child to get a decent education. All of these promises are lies. But when the situation does happen as described you are right it is absolutely inexcusable.
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Post by eufrenio on Apr 24, 2004 17:30:26 GMT -5
eufrenio, commerce in wives and children was illegal or semi-legal but was widely practiced in England until 1850s. In Prussia landlords sold people (attached to their land though) until 1780s, in Russia until 1840s (all serfdom was abolished in 1861 though). While serfdom is not slavery per se and selling a wife in England to another owner or daughter to serviture was not same as slavery, you must admit we are 'threading on thin ice" here. In America white slavery (real slavery) was common until mid 1700s. That stuff is fascinating! I admit we are threading on thin ice, but still slavery was illegal. Serfdom had a longer life for sure.
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Post by eufrenio on Apr 24, 2004 17:33:57 GMT -5
"Undesirable Old Customs "! What an understatement! Great link, thanks!
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Post by berschneider on Apr 24, 2004 17:52:47 GMT -5
Eufrenio, you are of course correct. My point is not that slavery or wife-selling was illegal in 19th century England, it was, but that attitudes toward selling another human being were quite different from what they are today.
Africans lived in more primitive societies and (pre-colonial) Africa lacked police or courts to enforce non-existent laws. I would assume that attitudes to slavery were very common in Europe and in Africa for most of their history and changed in Europe relatively recently. I also think that attitudes to cannibalism were quite different in most of Europe and while it was a taboo, it was not as much of a taboo as it is today. Swift’s outrageous and classic Modest Proposal suggesting slaughter of Irish babies and children for meat was designed for a shock value when it was written over 300 years ago, but yet nobody in his or her right mind would even think to write anything like that nowadays. Cannibalism was quite widespread during famines or calamities from 30 Years War to WWII. This, like slavery and buying and selling other humans, are not remote history but very much recent events. From that link to the wife selling and leasing document it is apparent wives were sold in England around 1870 - Bismarck was the chancellor of Germany, Lenin was just born, you could travel anywhere by train, news spread in seconds via telegraph. These are modern times not antiquity. This is also the most enlightened and wealthiest nation in Europe at the time (just think what was going on in the more primitive ones).
Africans could not compete when they encountered Europeans because they did not have firearms, but were 17 or 18 century Africans that much worse off than contemporary poor Swedes? I am not so sure about that. Because Sweden was wretchedly poor in the 17 century and a family in Iceland was probably not much wealthier than a family in sub-Saharan Africa.
Of course now what is done is done, and Africa is odd, unstable, very poor precisely because it found itself the midst of an entirely different world for which Africans were ill-prepared.
edit - corrected misspelling.
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Post by murphee on Apr 26, 2004 12:46:33 GMT -5
Many people forget that slavery is alive and well all over the modern world. A year or so ago, a 'slavery ring' was busted in the United States. Mexican agricultural workers were enslaved by a family of wealthy Mexican-Americans. Then, of course, are the multitudes of women held as 'sex slaves.'
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Post by berschneider on Apr 26, 2004 13:16:03 GMT -5
Many people forget that slavery is alive and well all over the modern world. A year or so ago, a 'slavery ring' was busted in the United States. Mexican agricultural workers were enslaved by a family of wealthy Mexican-Americans. Then, of course, are the multitudes of women held as 'sex slaves.' You forgot to mention Walmart.
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Post by murphee on Apr 26, 2004 13:51:49 GMT -5
Yes!!!
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