Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Jacob]

~20% of slaves being sold as a result of "being tricked by friends or family" is just grim

[Josquius]

Yeah, there are definitely hints of a bit of a reckoning brewing in some west African countries with traditional elites.
It helps that these people who have slavery links also have links to post independence corruption... But also have heavy links to independence in the first place.

[Valmy]

Yeah but again it gets difficult to hold individuals responsible for systems. Those African leaders were doing what they had to do to be successful in the culture and society they were born into. The Africans who refused to participate in the slave trade weren't successful leaders.

[HVC]

Yeah but again it gets difficult to hold individuals responsible for systems. Those African leaders were doing what they had to do to be successful in the culture and society they were born into. The Africans who refused to participate in the slave trade weren't successful leaders.

That's a strained argument, isn't it? A plantation owner who refused to participate in slavery wasn't successful either.

[Zanza]

If you want to use an analogy to Nazi Germany, you should actually look at forced labour, which is fairly similar to slavery and how some still existing German companies (e.g. my employer) or even more sinster rich families profited from that. In sheer scale, the 20 million forced laborers Germany had in WW2 is more than the numbers for the Atlantic slave trade given in this thread. Yet it is often just a footnote due to the even more vile genocides Germany committed.

[Valmy]

Yeah but again it gets difficult to hold individuals responsible for systems. Those African leaders were doing what they had to do to be successful in the culture and society they were born into. The Africans who refused to participate in the slave trade weren't successful leaders.

That's a strained argument, isn't it? A plantation owner who refused to participate in slavery were successful either.

Indeed. You have a person who was born into a slavery system and just accepted it as normal and did what the society told him to do, that is a lot to ask of a person to have the wisdom and insight to see the evils in his society and take a principled stand that will also be ruinous to your social status, relationships, and finances. And even if you did do that the laws in a lot of those slaves states made emancipation difficult. It may simply not be practical for you do that, society really didn't want you to take a stand against slavery and start emancipating people.

Those people who did go from plantation owner to abolitionist like James Birney obviously deserve commendation, but as I noted Birney wasn't out there fighting the many other corrupt and unjust things going on in the United States at the time that he benefited from. Is he an evil man for not fighting those other things and just going to abolition?

It is hard to hold individuals responsible for systems. We all exist in the midst of bad systems and we benefit from some of those, but it is a little overwhelming to even do something token like only buy ethically made clothes or something. The sheer number of things you have to do to ethically cleanse your consumption is ridiculous and in end doesn't really make that much of a difference if the systems themselves are not changed.

[HVC]

But that still leaves the state we're in, asking for apologies from the heirs of one system (slavery owning west) without doing the same for the heirs of another system (slave selling Africa).



*edit* Sorry, not arguing with your overall point. Just reiterating Yi point. 

[Valmy]

There is also that saying that goes something like: that it is very hard to convince somebody something is true when their salary depends on them not seeing it is true.

[Valmy]

But that still leaves the state we're in, asking for apologies from the heirs of one system (slavery owning west) without doing the same for the heirs of another system (slave selling Africa).

I would mostly like apologies from people still doing slavery and them stopping it frankly. And an apology for how black people are currently treated in the West and stopping that.

But as for the West Africans the deal becomes complicated because sure from rich and powerful kingdoms rose out of the Atlantic Slave Trade but it was never used to create sustainable powerful states and eventually they all became part of European Colonies. Whereas the Western States used that trade to become sustainable world powers. So maybe we should feel bad that one of the bases of our wealth and power was such a terrible thing.

But again I would rather we be more concerned about the bases of our current wealth and powerful being partially based on terrible things currently being done. No current government would want to do anything that even reduces economic growth by 1%, which makes it hard to act like we learned anything from the Atlantic Slave Trade crime against humanity.

[HVC]

But that still leaves the state we're in, asking for apologies from the heirs of one system (slavery owning west) without doing the same for the heirs of another system (slave selling Africa).

I would mostly like apologies from people still doing slavery and them stopping it frankly. And an apology for how black people are currently treated in the West and stopping that.

Agree

But as for the West Africans the deal becomes complicated because sure from rich and powerful kingdoms rose out of the Atlantic Slave Trade but it was never used to create sustainable powerful states and eventually they all became part of European Colonies. Whereas the Western States used that trade to become sustainable world powers. So maybe we should feel bad that one of the bases of our wealth and power was such a terrible thing.

But the western nation with the most slaves as per oex's numbers was Portugal. By a very wide margin. And they're tiny and poor. So maybe slavery wasn't a gateway to the wealth and world power status of the west in the modern age. And if it's not a basis for modern status does one still need to apologize for a past actions and offer reparations  (again general question, not specifically asked of you).

But again I would rather we be more concerned about the bases of our current wealth and powerful being partially based on terrible things currently being done.

Again agree

[Sheilbh]

If you want to use an analogy to Nazi Germany, you should actually look at forced labour, which is fairly similar to slavery and how some still existing German companies (e.g. my employer) or even more sinster rich families profited from that. In sheer scale, the 20 million forced laborers Germany had in WW2 is more than the numbers for the Atlantic slave trade given in this thread. Yet it is often just a footnote due to the even more vile genocides Germany committed.

I'm not really sure on analogies with Nazi Germany and understand it's always going to be difficult - I also don't really know much about Nazi Germany while I've read a fair bit about slavery.

I think it is also worth noting that North America was the destination of hundreds of thousands of slaves, but is far less common as a destination than the Caribbean or Brazil - obviously there is also intra-American trade. Obviously a significant number of the enslaved don't survive the Atlantic crossing. Of those who do survive and reach most often the Caribbean, there is horrendous mortality. A very significant number of people die within the first month. But once there conditions are hellish. As well as the particular tortures and sadisms from specific overseers or plantation owners, the entire system is based on people dying (because they can be replaced). I believe the life expectancy after arrival in Jamaica was under ten years.

I think that is possibly a similarity with the slave labur in Nazi Germany. But I'm not sure.

On the other stuff I don't necessarily particularly care about individuals - I don't necessarily think it tells us much except as exemplars of wider patterns. Not least because I think looking at individuals inevitably ends up perhaps focusing too much on Europeans. But again I think it is worth remembering just how much social opprobrium abolitionists got and how much they were seen as outside of the norm/counter-cultural.

[Valmy]

I think that is possibly a similarity with the slave labur in Nazi Germany. But I'm not sure.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_through_labour

And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II

And for the Soviets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

And the PRC:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laogai which hey are still around. The West loves trading with China despite its use of slave labor. Maybe we should apologize for that? You know, the thing we still do?

[Sheilbh]

I don't think we in the West are responsible for Chinese labour camps - but I absolutely think we should be vastly reducing our reliance in China in general and I support laws (like the Modern Slavery Act) which ban forced labour in supply chains of UK companies. I'm not convinced it's massively well-policed but that goes for 90% of business regulations in the UK.

But in the context of this conversation I don't think institutions in the UK, including the state, bear responsibility for or significantly benefited from the Gulag or forced labour in Nazi Germany. That's different, to my mind, than the UK's historical responsibility (and capital cumulating) in relation to the Atlantic slave trade - and those specific institutions still exist.

[Valmy]

I thought you were asking me about mortality in the German forced labor program and how it compared with the mortality in the middle passage and Caribbean slave system rather than the specific responsibility the UK may or may not have with that system.

As far as I know the forced labor system only got going on a giant scale after the UK was already at war with Germany.

[Barrister]

I'm not entirely sure I understand your point.

It may be easier if I flip it - what does history as moral analysis look like?

Also not sure it would really work in the context of the Atlantic slave trade because I feel the moral analysis would be pretty short.

I know it's morbid but actually it does kind of line up with the "blame demand or supply" debate you guys had regarding oil.

I really, really, really do not like comparing oil companies to the slave trade.

Slave trade was evil.  Full stop.  It needed to be completely eradicated from the world.

Pumping oil out of the ground is not inherently evil.  It has some serious negative externalities and we need to do less of it - but nobody, at any time, has ever pretended we can run modern society without oil.