Re: Todays rant

Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

On 12/17/2024 4:51 AM, Roger Merriman wrote:

Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

 
Yes. I'm always struck by the fact that so many people forget that the
existence of slavery has been the norm in human societies.

 
Not to the industrial scale though. Ie shipped across continents in huge
numbers. Nor with any means of an end.

Sorry, I disagree. The Roman Empire ran on slavery. They didn't ship
them to other continents only because the empire didn't extend to
distant continents. They certainly shipped conquered people around the
empire as needed.
 

It’s more complicated and the Romans and antiquity in general slavery,
family units where generally kept together, it was more akin to serfs etc
in the Middle Ages, which is to say still a life of service and lack of any
control, but very different to the industrial process to the Slave trade.

They all are bad but the Slave trade moved folks across the Atlantic in
conditions which meant that they would loose some to the conditions of
travel. As it was more profitable, and once there family units were not
generally kept, and the process was much more industrial and profit driven.

And it wasn't just the Romans. I once had a conversation with a Native
American national park ranger, who was whitewashing her (Navajo?)
tribe's record of enslaving other (Hopi?) Indians, by saying they did so
only to learn valuable skills from them. Yeah, right.
 
 

Well yes most cultures if not all had some form of slavery and all
conquest. Would have been people’s before the Navajo and so on.

Roger Merriman