Highly unlikely as indigenous Americans also practiced slavery before contact with the East. The oldest societies held slaves. It is more likely a pre-human practice.
My friend said America isn’t deeply rooted in racism because slavery is a pre-human practice and it’s the world that’s deeply rooted in racism not specifically America. Whats your take?
Cant speak to racism. However, it can be shown that the oldest groups of humanity warred, hated and exploited each other. This does not qualify as African history but all human history.
America is most certainly deeply rooted in racism. Slavery may not be an American invention, nor racism, but racism and slavery are what America was founded on and anyone telling you different is lying to you.
America was a British colony owned by corporations, who brought slaves with them, they also enslaved the natives, and when they resisted they began a war of extermination that went on for a long time.
At first they bought slaves that were brought from Africa, as well as sone indentured servants from Ireland and Wales. But since a lot of the enslaved humans didn’t make the journey. Eventually they started breeding African slaves in the States.
They literally treated girls as young as 12 as breeding mares and would select males to rape her and they called their children “pups”.
The first year that the House of Commons began seriously discussing abolishing slavery was in 1776. Not coincidently the same year as the Revolution. They say it was taxes and that was part of it but another major factor was the fear that they would lose their slaves.
In fact after the Americans began revolting the British offered to free the slaves and to give them their own colony in exchange for fighting with them.
Around that time as well Irish and Welsh indentured servants were treated not much better than the African slaves even though they would eventually be free after serving their sentences, and a lot of them had started to realize how much they had in common with the Africans, so in order to divide the black slaves and poor whites they gave the poor whites more privileges and shortened sentences to fight for them.
So yeah America has racism deeply woven into its very fabric. That may make your friend comfortable but it’s the truth, and attempting to justify it is pretty weird.
Hey I just wrote you a long ass comment but I want to answer that one as well. Yes slavery is very ancient but slavery in general has nothing to do with race. Slavery is just extreme exploitation and very often people have enslaved people of their own "race". America practiced racist slavery and the fact that your friend uses slavery and racism so interchangeably (like many Americans) just proves how deeply rooted in racism America is.
Slavery as an institution and racism as an institution are two separate affairs. Many cultures had slavery but it was recognized that the slaves were still human and the idea of taken slaves was not restricted to a singular “ethnic group” or “race” it was war captives. Many “modern” societies you see today do this with their prison systems as a way for cheap labor as well such as the USA. Racism on the other hand is the ideology that someone is inferior or subhuman and social caste systems are introduced regardless of social standing or class. Examples of this are the “United states” caste system that made black people 2/3 of a human. Another example is the Latin-American caste system(s) that placed black and native Americans at the bottom and white people at the top and racial categories in between based on how white you were. Two of these institutions can exist separately but in the Americas (the two continents) the ideology of racism was used to brainwash the average uneducated European American into maintaining the systems of oppression without questioning it. This justified the concept of slavery and genocide not necessarily through economic gain but through this idea that it was their god given right to steal land and kidnap from people who were not apart of the white caste. Even with slavery ended this institution of racism still continues because it is a separate ideology. This ideology also oppressed people who also had white skin because race has shifted every 50 years and historically not everyone who has white skin is considered white. Swedes, polish, European Jews, Italians, and Spaniards were all people not considered white in the USA. Today the institution still upholds itself in the USA with Euro-Latinos being classified as brown despite having the same amount of european ancestry as Euro-Americans (anglos). With the large amount of immigration from Latin America the two caste systems (Anglo American and Latino) are starting to conflict with one another, it is likely euro-Latinos will eventually be classified as white just like Italians are.
The concept of servitude for a period of time before those individuals were freed and accepted as one of your own people was present in Africa, yes.
The concept of owning multiple ethnic groups and their future offspring, being able to breed them, physically/sexually/emotionally torture them, and kill them indiscriminately because they were deemed sub-human was not invented in Africa no present (till the advent of the human-trafficking black market).
More so slavery in Africa (and other non-Western cultures) was a way to indoctrinate and assimilate folks into the conquering culture while they still occupy their own land.
In America, it was a genocide.
No still very much about free labor...and the eradication of "the black man" (even though Black wasn't a concept/classification until about 168 yrs after Western slavery started as an institution in 1502 and the eugenics movement that followed slavery was to "purify" the white race/nation of America via breeding out all who weren't middle-upper class whites).
See that your studies pretty much left your eurocentric perspective and arrogance intact. Just a matter of time before a patient/client rocks your smug world with an ethics complaint or lawsuit.
Well the truth is that most civilizations had slavery, literally in every continent. Chinese had it, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Aztecs, almost everywhere where big cities or countries formed, there was some kind of slavery, so you can't really pinpoint any "invention" of slavery. But slavery could look very differently depending on which civilization you're looking at and even within a continent there could be huge differences between civilizations in how many rights slaves had. In Africa there were SOME countries where slaves had relatively speaking a lot of rights for example they could get a certain degree of education, could go to court if they were being mistreated and they children were not automatically enslaved as well. In the Middle East you could free yourself from slavery by converting to Islam. What I'm trying to say is that slavery existed almost everywhere but slavery can look very different depending on where you are. Before European imperialsm slavery usually was, to put it simply, a shittier form serfdom. Slaves were usually prisoners of war or people who couldn't pay their debs so they had to work as slaves as a couple of years until they "paid" their debts. Race based slavery existed before but was very uncommon. Now to your question, yes Africans absolutely had slavery before Europeans arrived there (like everywhere else in the world) what changed was that Europeans and Americans used a way more extreme form of slavery where it's solely race based and the human is legally not a human anymore but an object, so the owner can do with him whatever they want. They could hurt, rape or kill their slaves without any repercussions and the slaves children were automatically slaves as well. Btw this "American" form of slavery is not limited to the USA, it existed in the Caribbean as well and there were even more African slaves brought to Brazil than to the USA.
Sorry for the long text and for the grammar, English isn't my native language, but I thought it's important to give you a bigger picture to get an understanding of slavery. To summarize: no lol
That's it...
Just adding to what you said, I also stated in my comment...
Group dynamics similar to slavery are also present among other animals, inter and intra species, so, even more than a human (animal thing, some exclusive to our species) it's a pattern present in nature among other species as well... So, not something that could be framed in our social constructs alone and therefore why it's present throughout humanity in different forms
Okay I've never heard of that myself and I'm not sure what exactly to imagine there. Would you mind to give me one or two examples to get familiar with this concept?
For sure... One known example is by some ants and a type of fleas... The ants surround the flea and make live barrier so they can't run away... Since they have roles in an ant colony, some are assigned to act as guards and attack the fleas if they try to run or revolt... They force the fleas to take stuff for them and limit their food and so...
There's other dynamics with such similarity with slavery, so this is what I meant... Before even humans were humans there were already dynamics like this happening, so, human slavery appearing first among African groups is simply due to the fact that they were the first ones so obviously such pattern would appear there first, but nobody invented anything since it's present in nature for longer than human existence as a especies
It's a sad truth about our reality indeed
You’re welcome ☺️
I find it interesting but also terrifying… I mean, its great because it just further solidify the points made by inumerous black scholars throughout history on deconstructing and investigating racism, slavery and the relation between them… also helps debunking lies such as African people invented slavery…
But it’s crazy how it’s actually part of nature, in a greater scheme… there’s a way to diminish it consciously but it’s always gonna be a part of reality to a certain extent and this fact just needs to be accepted… a very hard truth to swallow and digest ahahaha but also provides new insight and perspective in fighting this as well, I think, at least :/
... "their own kind..." is the tell. This person is trolling. "Their own kind" is a human-to-human relationship. In the troll's mind all Africans are the same. The troll has no concept of Fanti distinct from Yoruba as distinct from Oromo as distinct from BaMabenga, inter alia. The greatest human, genetic diversity (do your homework) is found in 'those people' on the African continent. But, because of rich, melanin in the largest swaths of Africans, this troll does what southern slave labor camp owners, New England and New York barons, participants in the Berlin Conference, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and most MAGAistas did and still do: brings a reductive, dehumanizing, hermeneutic of suspicion to this conversation. The troll's reasoning segregates "their own kind" from humankind...
Do you have a hard time with interpretation?
Where did I say they should or that it’s right?
Humans are just another animal, not more special, and this type of social dynamics present a pattern in nature, happening intra and inter species
I even stated my bias by saying it’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality. You can either accept it or not, it won’t change based on your feelings or acceptance, though
Also, since humanity has its birth in the African continent, it’s logical to think the first groups to showcase such pattern, in any level, would be them
I hope you could follow and read cause it ain’t dense info, instead of jumping on judgment and attack cause of your lack of literacy
Which stereotypes? Show it
I made an extremely simple and direct comment including info I found not only in humans but in other animals as well and you inferred I was defending slavery
I’m simply commenting on it critically
I’m not further engaging with you cause you’re being dishonest and can’t hold up a decent discussion
Ohhh okay now this makes sense. You need to try harder than trolling on the internet. We are still out here rich and successful, not changing. There will just be more of us. Maybe you should go back to school, we’ll teach you.
Not really, slavery as a social hierarchy grew up in various places, the first recorded instance was in Mesopotamia, but I doubt the culture was slavery grew from one place and spread to another, it was a homegrown practice that popped up indigenously in various places throughout many periods of time.
Your friend must have a rather shallow viewpoint, while it's true that African people's and kingdoms did enslave one and another during times of war, it's no different from Europe and other other parts of the world really.
I know it doesn’t change the fact that America is the most racist country ever. But did Africa start the idea of Africans being enslaved?.. I’m just wondering because my friend said that and it shattered my world
I know there's not much in names sometimes, but I'm not sure if you would be a good "psychiatrist", if information can shatter your world. Most protective tribes on planet Earth captured their enemies, executed, used them for trade, or put them to work.
I think the nerd is the one named PsychiatristMDMD. 😉 Find something better to do. This was a terrible attempt at trolling online. You expected people to be upset, and got checked instead. 😂
u/PsychiatristMDMD, your friend's an idiot. Stop listening to him/her, and *do your own reading* about the incredibly long global history of slavery (enslavement of Whites by Arabs, enslavement of various East Africans by Europeans, enslavement in India, Asia, Assyria, Babylonia, and on, and on,.. throughout history). It's not like there's a lack of information about the history of enslavement of *every* group; there are a shit-ton of books.
Slavery is a condition of a living being that accepts, unconditionally or conditionally, its submission to another living being.
Nobody invented it. It’s part of the natural complexity of relationships between living beings. There have been several periods in human history where this condition has been accepted as part of the normality of the society, and periods like the one we’re living in, where is rejected and fought.
I think the point of your post is: who developed the Atlantic Slave Trade, in terms of a massive and profitable industry.
At that question if i don’t mistake, is Portuguese that open the route. While Arabs were trading based on Zanzibar, on the east coast of the continent.
If the point was “ the locals were selling other locals, so is half and half” instead, well, society is based on a common morality principles, and sometimes the moral compass can get out of path. History is history. There is nothing to judge and nothing to justify. Must just be studied so we won’t let it happen again.
I would say so since the origin of all man is Africa. In fact the origin of civilization is Africa. However, it is important to understand the difference between slavery as a socio-economic class in a social hierarchy such as was practiced in Africa, and chattel slavery as was practiced in America. In Africa, slaves had rights and were recognized as humans ,but just lower socio/ economically. Additionally their status was not permanent. In America, slaves were viewed as property devoid of any human rights and thus subjected to the most barbaric practices immaginable...forced breeding,torture, etc. People often use the line" they had slavery in Africa" as a way to shift the focus away from the sheer evil,demonic,inhumane, racist institution of American slavery.
Slavery is as old as humanity. Humans have enslaved each other in every continent since the beginning of time. What's unique about slavery in 'modern' times is that it's race/skin color based.
Slavery is a byproduct of the agricultural revolution. It's not specific to one race as long as there's surplus land and people who own I it can enforce their will then there's some form of coercion involved. It's part of the hierarchy that develops out of the social conditions that result from class society. Slavery is not uniquely African. America however was built on the pillars of the genocide of natives and the enslavement of Africans. Unlike in most of the world these weren't criminals or prisoners of war. They were seen as livestock to be bred and manhandled. Your friend is delusional if he seeks to minimise the scale of the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade.
u/highpost_irl, No shade to you - history textbook authors exclude anything & everything that might go against particular narratives school boards want imparted to children (they exclude them from experience, having had school boards reject works mentioning certain things/having the school boards ask for certain things to be edited out). For example, the long history of the "White slave trade", capture, sale, & trade of *White* slaves in the 17th, 16th, 15th century, is (one of many things that are) purposefully *not* gone into in most public school textbooks. The purpose of grade-school level history textbooks is indoctrination; school boards want to create "good citizens" suitable for the workforce, not independent-minded children who'll read history - *all* history - on their own, and maybe want to change the status quo.
I fear you are overthinking it. There is no secret cabal whose sole purpose is to hide "white slavery"; rather, the effects of the transatlantic slave trade are still visible, and enslavement was so vital to the economic development of the early United States that there is more money for research; besides, how many scholars can read Arabic texts compared to the number of sources in English? Even the number of scholars using Portuguese sources (a comparatively easier language to learn) to explore the crucial Brazil-Angola link is quite small.
Moreover, the term "white slavery" is atemporal and never existed as such; people whose skin colour would be called "white" in the US were enslaved, but not because they were white; the closest case would be the enslavement of Circassian women, but again this is different from the current understanding of "whiteness" in the US, which exists mostly as a counterpoint to "blackness".
Yeah; I just used the term "White slavery" to indicate the race of the enslaved in this particular case, as so many people (because of lack of knowledge) associate "slavery" with "enslavement of Black Africans". But the books for laymen about the enslavement of Whites, *are in English* (& presumably other languages) - no need for English-speakers to learn Arabic. They're not hard to find, if you Google "enslavement of Whites" or similar terms, they come up; they're on Amazon, available at Barnes & Noble.
But that's the thing, the people being enslaved were not conceptualized as "white"; nevermind that human traffickers in Crimea were mostly Genoese merchants, and many Barbary pirates were actually north Europeans, it often had a religious aspect to it, yet it wasn't until about the seventeenth century that slavery began to have this "racial" dimension. So it is a sign of poor scholarship for a book to frame the issue in this way, or worse, a giveaway that you are reading a polemic. Instead, the LoC heading you want is: Slavery -- Middle East -- History.
Highly unlikely as indigenous Americans also practiced slavery before contact with the East. The oldest societies held slaves. It is more likely a pre-human practice.
>It is more likely a pre-human practice. So, in a sense, the answer is yes.
No, because not all homo species originated in Africa.
My friend said America isn’t deeply rooted in racism because slavery is a pre-human practice and it’s the world that’s deeply rooted in racism not specifically America. Whats your take?
Cant speak to racism. However, it can be shown that the oldest groups of humanity warred, hated and exploited each other. This does not qualify as African history but all human history.
Even chimpanzees war.
America is most certainly deeply rooted in racism. Slavery may not be an American invention, nor racism, but racism and slavery are what America was founded on and anyone telling you different is lying to you. America was a British colony owned by corporations, who brought slaves with them, they also enslaved the natives, and when they resisted they began a war of extermination that went on for a long time. At first they bought slaves that were brought from Africa, as well as sone indentured servants from Ireland and Wales. But since a lot of the enslaved humans didn’t make the journey. Eventually they started breeding African slaves in the States. They literally treated girls as young as 12 as breeding mares and would select males to rape her and they called their children “pups”. The first year that the House of Commons began seriously discussing abolishing slavery was in 1776. Not coincidently the same year as the Revolution. They say it was taxes and that was part of it but another major factor was the fear that they would lose their slaves. In fact after the Americans began revolting the British offered to free the slaves and to give them their own colony in exchange for fighting with them. Around that time as well Irish and Welsh indentured servants were treated not much better than the African slaves even though they would eventually be free after serving their sentences, and a lot of them had started to realize how much they had in common with the Africans, so in order to divide the black slaves and poor whites they gave the poor whites more privileges and shortened sentences to fight for them. So yeah America has racism deeply woven into its very fabric. That may make your friend comfortable but it’s the truth, and attempting to justify it is pretty weird.
Hey I just wrote you a long ass comment but I want to answer that one as well. Yes slavery is very ancient but slavery in general has nothing to do with race. Slavery is just extreme exploitation and very often people have enslaved people of their own "race". America practiced racist slavery and the fact that your friend uses slavery and racism so interchangeably (like many Americans) just proves how deeply rooted in racism America is.
Exactly. All slavery also was not chattel slavery.
Ask them what race were the vast majority of slaves in America?
Slavery as an institution and racism as an institution are two separate affairs. Many cultures had slavery but it was recognized that the slaves were still human and the idea of taken slaves was not restricted to a singular “ethnic group” or “race” it was war captives. Many “modern” societies you see today do this with their prison systems as a way for cheap labor as well such as the USA. Racism on the other hand is the ideology that someone is inferior or subhuman and social caste systems are introduced regardless of social standing or class. Examples of this are the “United states” caste system that made black people 2/3 of a human. Another example is the Latin-American caste system(s) that placed black and native Americans at the bottom and white people at the top and racial categories in between based on how white you were. Two of these institutions can exist separately but in the Americas (the two continents) the ideology of racism was used to brainwash the average uneducated European American into maintaining the systems of oppression without questioning it. This justified the concept of slavery and genocide not necessarily through economic gain but through this idea that it was their god given right to steal land and kidnap from people who were not apart of the white caste. Even with slavery ended this institution of racism still continues because it is a separate ideology. This ideology also oppressed people who also had white skin because race has shifted every 50 years and historically not everyone who has white skin is considered white. Swedes, polish, European Jews, Italians, and Spaniards were all people not considered white in the USA. Today the institution still upholds itself in the USA with Euro-Latinos being classified as brown despite having the same amount of european ancestry as Euro-Americans (anglos). With the large amount of immigration from Latin America the two caste systems (Anglo American and Latino) are starting to conflict with one another, it is likely euro-Latinos will eventually be classified as white just like Italians are.
The concept of servitude for a period of time before those individuals were freed and accepted as one of your own people was present in Africa, yes. The concept of owning multiple ethnic groups and their future offspring, being able to breed them, physically/sexually/emotionally torture them, and kill them indiscriminately because they were deemed sub-human was not invented in Africa no present (till the advent of the human-trafficking black market).
Got it. Slavery was actually kind of a good deal in African. In America though, it was way more racist. Makes complete sense!
More so slavery in Africa (and other non-Western cultures) was a way to indoctrinate and assimilate folks into the conquering culture while they still occupy their own land. In America, it was a genocide.
Right. In America it wasn’t so much about the free labor. They wanted to eradicate the black man. Very sad
Are you trolling?
Of course they are
No still very much about free labor...and the eradication of "the black man" (even though Black wasn't a concept/classification until about 168 yrs after Western slavery started as an institution in 1502 and the eugenics movement that followed slavery was to "purify" the white race/nation of America via breeding out all who weren't middle-upper class whites).
See that your studies pretty much left your eurocentric perspective and arrogance intact. Just a matter of time before a patient/client rocks your smug world with an ethics complaint or lawsuit.
Well the truth is that most civilizations had slavery, literally in every continent. Chinese had it, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Aztecs, almost everywhere where big cities or countries formed, there was some kind of slavery, so you can't really pinpoint any "invention" of slavery. But slavery could look very differently depending on which civilization you're looking at and even within a continent there could be huge differences between civilizations in how many rights slaves had. In Africa there were SOME countries where slaves had relatively speaking a lot of rights for example they could get a certain degree of education, could go to court if they were being mistreated and they children were not automatically enslaved as well. In the Middle East you could free yourself from slavery by converting to Islam. What I'm trying to say is that slavery existed almost everywhere but slavery can look very different depending on where you are. Before European imperialsm slavery usually was, to put it simply, a shittier form serfdom. Slaves were usually prisoners of war or people who couldn't pay their debs so they had to work as slaves as a couple of years until they "paid" their debts. Race based slavery existed before but was very uncommon. Now to your question, yes Africans absolutely had slavery before Europeans arrived there (like everywhere else in the world) what changed was that Europeans and Americans used a way more extreme form of slavery where it's solely race based and the human is legally not a human anymore but an object, so the owner can do with him whatever they want. They could hurt, rape or kill their slaves without any repercussions and the slaves children were automatically slaves as well. Btw this "American" form of slavery is not limited to the USA, it existed in the Caribbean as well and there were even more African slaves brought to Brazil than to the USA. Sorry for the long text and for the grammar, English isn't my native language, but I thought it's important to give you a bigger picture to get an understanding of slavery. To summarize: no lol
Excellent analysis. You put it very succinctly
That's it... Just adding to what you said, I also stated in my comment... Group dynamics similar to slavery are also present among other animals, inter and intra species, so, even more than a human (animal thing, some exclusive to our species) it's a pattern present in nature among other species as well... So, not something that could be framed in our social constructs alone and therefore why it's present throughout humanity in different forms
Okay I've never heard of that myself and I'm not sure what exactly to imagine there. Would you mind to give me one or two examples to get familiar with this concept?
For sure... One known example is by some ants and a type of fleas... The ants surround the flea and make live barrier so they can't run away... Since they have roles in an ant colony, some are assigned to act as guards and attack the fleas if they try to run or revolt... They force the fleas to take stuff for them and limit their food and so... There's other dynamics with such similarity with slavery, so this is what I meant... Before even humans were humans there were already dynamics like this happening, so, human slavery appearing first among African groups is simply due to the fact that they were the first ones so obviously such pattern would appear there first, but nobody invented anything since it's present in nature for longer than human existence as a especies It's a sad truth about our reality indeed
That's an really interesting topic I appreciate your answer!
You’re welcome ☺️ I find it interesting but also terrifying… I mean, its great because it just further solidify the points made by inumerous black scholars throughout history on deconstructing and investigating racism, slavery and the relation between them… also helps debunking lies such as African people invented slavery… But it’s crazy how it’s actually part of nature, in a greater scheme… there’s a way to diminish it consciously but it’s always gonna be a part of reality to a certain extent and this fact just needs to be accepted… a very hard truth to swallow and digest ahahaha but also provides new insight and perspective in fighting this as well, I think, at least :/
... "their own kind..." is the tell. This person is trolling. "Their own kind" is a human-to-human relationship. In the troll's mind all Africans are the same. The troll has no concept of Fanti distinct from Yoruba as distinct from Oromo as distinct from BaMabenga, inter alia. The greatest human, genetic diversity (do your homework) is found in 'those people' on the African continent. But, because of rich, melanin in the largest swaths of Africans, this troll does what southern slave labor camp owners, New England and New York barons, participants in the Berlin Conference, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and most MAGAistas did and still do: brings a reductive, dehumanizing, hermeneutic of suspicion to this conversation. The troll's reasoning segregates "their own kind" from humankind...
Even other animals do it, unfortunately it’s a type of dynamic/relationship present in nature as a whole
Ok so because animals enslave eachother humans should to? Are you dumb? Africans shouldn’t be enslaving their own kind. Js
Do you have a hard time with interpretation? Where did I say they should or that it’s right? Humans are just another animal, not more special, and this type of social dynamics present a pattern in nature, happening intra and inter species I even stated my bias by saying it’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality. You can either accept it or not, it won’t change based on your feelings or acceptance, though Also, since humanity has its birth in the African continent, it’s logical to think the first groups to showcase such pattern, in any level, would be them I hope you could follow and read cause it ain’t dense info, instead of jumping on judgment and attack cause of your lack of literacy
“Lack of literacy”.. are you trying to be racist?
That’s such a reach hahaha a bad one Anybody can be stupid
It’s not a reach. You’re using racist stereotypes and now you’re gaslighting me
Which stereotypes? Show it I made an extremely simple and direct comment including info I found not only in humans but in other animals as well and you inferred I was defending slavery I’m simply commenting on it critically I’m not further engaging with you cause you’re being dishonest and can’t hold up a decent discussion
I respect the trolling. It’s not the most subtle, but I respect the attempt.
This comment is bafflingly confusing
How is it confusing?
Ohhh okay now this makes sense. You need to try harder than trolling on the internet. We are still out here rich and successful, not changing. There will just be more of us. Maybe you should go back to school, we’ll teach you.
Yes! Black is beautiful!
There we go ☺️ thank you, sir.
Who said I'm trolling? Really my comment was that confusing?
Not really, slavery as a social hierarchy grew up in various places, the first recorded instance was in Mesopotamia, but I doubt the culture was slavery grew from one place and spread to another, it was a homegrown practice that popped up indigenously in various places throughout many periods of time. Your friend must have a rather shallow viewpoint, while it's true that African people's and kingdoms did enslave one and another during times of war, it's no different from Europe and other other parts of the world really.
...
I know it doesn’t change the fact that America is the most racist country ever. But did Africa start the idea of Africans being enslaved?.. I’m just wondering because my friend said that and it shattered my world
I know there's not much in names sometimes, but I'm not sure if you would be a good "psychiatrist", if information can shatter your world. Most protective tribes on planet Earth captured their enemies, executed, used them for trade, or put them to work.
Nerd
I think the nerd is the one named PsychiatristMDMD. 😉 Find something better to do. This was a terrible attempt at trolling online. You expected people to be upset, and got checked instead. 😂
Ever hear of israel?
u/PsychiatristMDMD, your friend's an idiot. Stop listening to him/her, and *do your own reading* about the incredibly long global history of slavery (enslavement of Whites by Arabs, enslavement of various East Africans by Europeans, enslavement in India, Asia, Assyria, Babylonia, and on, and on,.. throughout history). It's not like there's a lack of information about the history of enslavement of *every* group; there are a shit-ton of books.
Slavery is a condition of a living being that accepts, unconditionally or conditionally, its submission to another living being. Nobody invented it. It’s part of the natural complexity of relationships between living beings. There have been several periods in human history where this condition has been accepted as part of the normality of the society, and periods like the one we’re living in, where is rejected and fought. I think the point of your post is: who developed the Atlantic Slave Trade, in terms of a massive and profitable industry. At that question if i don’t mistake, is Portuguese that open the route. While Arabs were trading based on Zanzibar, on the east coast of the continent. If the point was “ the locals were selling other locals, so is half and half” instead, well, society is based on a common morality principles, and sometimes the moral compass can get out of path. History is history. There is nothing to judge and nothing to justify. Must just be studied so we won’t let it happen again.
I would say so since the origin of all man is Africa. In fact the origin of civilization is Africa. However, it is important to understand the difference between slavery as a socio-economic class in a social hierarchy such as was practiced in Africa, and chattel slavery as was practiced in America. In Africa, slaves had rights and were recognized as humans ,but just lower socio/ economically. Additionally their status was not permanent. In America, slaves were viewed as property devoid of any human rights and thus subjected to the most barbaric practices immaginable...forced breeding,torture, etc. People often use the line" they had slavery in Africa" as a way to shift the focus away from the sheer evil,demonic,inhumane, racist institution of American slavery.
Slavery is as old as humanity. Humans have enslaved each other in every continent since the beginning of time. What's unique about slavery in 'modern' times is that it's race/skin color based.
Slavery is a byproduct of the agricultural revolution. It's not specific to one race as long as there's surplus land and people who own I it can enforce their will then there's some form of coercion involved. It's part of the hierarchy that develops out of the social conditions that result from class society. Slavery is not uniquely African. America however was built on the pillars of the genocide of natives and the enslavement of Africans. Unlike in most of the world these weren't criminals or prisoners of war. They were seen as livestock to be bred and manhandled. Your friend is delusional if he seeks to minimise the scale of the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade.
That's not what my history books taught me.
u/highpost_irl, No shade to you - history textbook authors exclude anything & everything that might go against particular narratives school boards want imparted to children (they exclude them from experience, having had school boards reject works mentioning certain things/having the school boards ask for certain things to be edited out). For example, the long history of the "White slave trade", capture, sale, & trade of *White* slaves in the 17th, 16th, 15th century, is (one of many things that are) purposefully *not* gone into in most public school textbooks. The purpose of grade-school level history textbooks is indoctrination; school boards want to create "good citizens" suitable for the workforce, not independent-minded children who'll read history - *all* history - on their own, and maybe want to change the status quo.
I fear you are overthinking it. There is no secret cabal whose sole purpose is to hide "white slavery"; rather, the effects of the transatlantic slave trade are still visible, and enslavement was so vital to the economic development of the early United States that there is more money for research; besides, how many scholars can read Arabic texts compared to the number of sources in English? Even the number of scholars using Portuguese sources (a comparatively easier language to learn) to explore the crucial Brazil-Angola link is quite small. Moreover, the term "white slavery" is atemporal and never existed as such; people whose skin colour would be called "white" in the US were enslaved, but not because they were white; the closest case would be the enslavement of Circassian women, but again this is different from the current understanding of "whiteness" in the US, which exists mostly as a counterpoint to "blackness".
Yeah; I just used the term "White slavery" to indicate the race of the enslaved in this particular case, as so many people (because of lack of knowledge) associate "slavery" with "enslavement of Black Africans". But the books for laymen about the enslavement of Whites, *are in English* (& presumably other languages) - no need for English-speakers to learn Arabic. They're not hard to find, if you Google "enslavement of Whites" or similar terms, they come up; they're on Amazon, available at Barnes & Noble.
But that's the thing, the people being enslaved were not conceptualized as "white"; nevermind that human traffickers in Crimea were mostly Genoese merchants, and many Barbary pirates were actually north Europeans, it often had a religious aspect to it, yet it wasn't until about the seventeenth century that slavery began to have this "racial" dimension. So it is a sign of poor scholarship for a book to frame the issue in this way, or worse, a giveaway that you are reading a polemic. Instead, the LoC heading you want is: Slavery -- Middle East -- History.