Regarding slavery.

[Common Soldier]

Please don't use the term "facts" (your facts) as an ultimate,definitive and universal truth.
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Three different perspectives. What they all have in common is the the inexorable link between slavery and capitalism in the USA. I hope this helps you to understand better the clear connection between capitalism and slavery in the USA, where capitalism need not emerge along the same lines as the agrarian transitions identified by Brenner and Wood in the European cases.

I don't see any evidence presented that show Southern plantation owners invested the wealth their slaves created into funding American industry and technology, just the opposite. The connection between Americsn slavery and capitalism seems an inverse link - American capitalism flourished where slavery did not. Those states where slavery did not predominate were the strongest at capitalism.


All the people.you quote make assertions but you have yet to show a single example of them actually presenting real facts to show why those claims are true.


While slavery did generate wealth that contributed to the generation of American Capitalism, it was not the only source generating wealth nor necessarily even the most important one. What was the economic value of the cotton produced by slavery compared that of farming, manufacturing, fishing, mining, etx., both internally and export? The northern population was much larger, so even if northern farmers produced lower value crops, like wheat versus cotton, that was offset by the larger population of northern farmers.

Just as the 1619 crowd overstates the importance the importance of Africans in America, ignoring thr fact that the slaves were only brought to American because because settlement had already created, so too slavery's role in American Capitalism is overstated. That fact the Union completely defeated the Confederacy decisively shows that slavery's role in American capitalism is overstated. Like the slaver owners of thr Confederacy, who greatly overestimated the importance of their slave produced cotton, these same scholars overestimate slavery's role in American capitalism. Thr fact is that Europe and even the Union managed without Southern slave produced cot

Sure, a lot of "historians" might say otherwise, but it is no secret that "history" departments are dominated by a far left, marxist mentality. Thr creator of the 1619 myth even admits it is not history https://thespectator.info/2020/07/27...e-twitchy-com/ The assertions about the importance slavery to American capitalism is equally not about history or facts, of which there are none, but about pushing political ideology.

Sure. The retarded Africans always enjoyed to see foreigners stealing their lands and resources, killing and imprisoning them, they absolutely loved the socio-political engineering known as apartheid, framing non-whites and creating second class citizens. Colonialism was a win for the humanity.

You are not challenging anything I said with facts and you imply I said things I did not. Stealing candy from a baby is easy because a baby is weak and helpless. However the persons stealing the candy did nor make the baby weak and helpless. Stealing from a blind person may be reprehensible, but it is quite different from making a person blind and then stealing from them, which is far worse. Europeans did not make the Africans blind, and it is immoral to accuse them of doing so.



Consider the following:

1. Was the printing press invented and through Europe before or after Africans were brogut as slaves to the Americas?

2. What major inventions did Sub Saharan Africans make in medieval times?

3. Was not the majoirity of Africa not under European or other foreign control until the late 19t century? That European domination of thr overwhelming majority of Africa lasted less than a century?

4. Atlantic Slave trade took slaves overwhelming from a resticted area from West Africa, so how could the vast regions of central and east Africa be affected by it unless it was through the activities of Africans themselves? Where were the centers of Africa making complex machinery in Africa before the 19th century, when the vast majority of Africa was free of outside control?

5. If thr vast majority of Africa before the 19th century, and the Atlantic Slave trade effected only one restricted region of Africa, how csn it possibly be said that Africa's lack of development was due to either colonialization or slavery? Why did Sub Sahara Africa not have labor saving machinery like windmills, watermills, which date to medieval times. The claim there is no wind, or running water in Africa is not true, nor can it be said that Africa had no wood.

Now, if that's the case, why not a case . for re-colonization, and long‐​term nation‐​building projects in Africa? if profitable, off course. Bruce Gill, in the "Case for Colonialism", calls for a return of colonialism, citing the benefits of a "colonial governance" agenda over the "good governance" agenda, which would involve overtaking state bureaucracies, recolonizing some areas, and creating new colonies "from scratch".
There is no end to colonial nostalgia...
Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. There is no place in the world- Africa, Middle East, Asia and Americas - where colonists/settlers gently landed, built homes and lived their lives. No, they were always part of a movement consisting of subjugation and disempowerment of the native inhabitants.
Even today, neocolonialists tend to think that enslaving, killing and theft is an insignificant collateral damage, and in order to justify the oppression of the conquered peoples, they cynically, systematically argue that there is no oppression without permission.

I did not say that I never said colonialism was good, merely that it did not create Africa's problems. Illiteracy was a problem in Africa before colonialism. Slavery existed in Africa before Europeans. Transportation problems existed in Africa before colonialism. Many African nations boundaries were poorly drawn with regard to ethnicity, so why haven't Africans redrawn national boundaries instead of just complaining about but stil using colonial boundaries instead? Nothing prevents Africans from jettisoning thr old colonial boundaries but they did not. Poland ceases to exist as a country longer than European colonialism existed in Africa, so why couldn't African nations re-establish themselves if they had really existed in the first place?


Colonialism never is done for the benefits of the colonies. The Americans knew that when they kicked the British out. But I.contend that Africa was exploited because it was poor, not poor because it was exploited. Colonialism did not help matters but it did not create the problems in the first place.

-Moved from the "rant about liberals" thread. ~Abdülmecid I

[Ludicus]

I never said colonialism was good... Illiteracy was a problem in Africa before colonialism...Slavery existed in Africa...Transportation problems existed...

Colonialism was great- that's exactly what you think.

Nothing prevents Africans from jettisoning thr old colonial boundaries but they did not.

...and your (trolling) point is?
The Dividing of a Continent: Africa's Separatist Problem - The

Of course, the actual practice of secession and division would be difficult, if it's even functionally possible; Africa's ethnic groups are many, and they don't tend to fall along the cleanest possible lines. The debate over whether or not secession is good for Africa, as Zachary explained, is a complicated and sometimes contentious one. But the simple fact of this debate is a reminder of Africa's unique post-colonial borders, a devil's bargain sacrificing the democratic fundamental of national self-determination for the practical pursuits of peace and independence. And it's another indication of the many ways that colonialism's complicated legacy is still with us, still shaping today's world.

-------------------

How about reaponding with real facts:

1. Was the printing press invented and through Europe before or after Africans were brogut as slaves to the Americas?

2. What major inventions did Sub Saharan Africans make in medieval times?

We already have enough of this racist crap in Reliability of reporting on Chinese History #101

--

.contend that Africa was exploited because it was poor,

??
Africa endows a large amount of natural resources that has been extracted and exploited for centuries.Nowadays, foreign ownership of African natural resources is the prefered way that rich countries continue to dominate African states. In the past,the slave trade was one of the most lucrative transnational enterprises for the colonial powers.

[Common Soldier]

Colonialism was great- that's exactly what you think.

That is not what I think, it is the opposite of what I think. I have repeatedly said colonialism is not good. The only thing I have said is that colonialism is not responsible for all Africa`s problems. The major problems that plague Africa existed before colonialism, and while colonialism did little to.correct them, neither did it create them in the first place.

Instead of dealing with facts, you assert things you know are not true.

...and your (trolling) point is?
[URL="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/the-dividing-of-a-continent-africas-separatist-problem/262171/"]The Dividing of a Continent: Africa's Separatist Problem

Africa was never united in the first place, which meant that the colonial powers cannot be accused of dividing it. Africa was not united before and the.fact it is divided now is not due to colonialism.

We already have enough of this racist crap in

So instead of dealing with the facts you just engage in ad hominem attacks, ok. If what I say is factually wrong, please.point it out. The fact you don't bother to address the.facts says how.weak and non existent your argument is. Apparently, "racism" is anything you don't agree with, whether factually true or not. We have already seen how 1619 proponents admit they do not care whether the 1619.story is factually true or not https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...e-got-it-wrong https://thespectator.info/2020/07/27...e-twitchy-com/

Africa endows a large amount of natural resources that has been extracted and exploited for centuries.Nowadays, foreign ownership of African natural resources is the prefered way that rich countries continue to dominate African states. In the past,the slave trade was one of the most lucrative transnational enterprises for the colonial powers.

The claim that Africa has been exploited for centuries is not true. Until the late 19th century, the mineral resources of Africa was provided mostly by independent Africans through trade, only in the late 19th century did most of Africa fell under foreign domination. Even Africsn slaves were provided by Africans themselves - slavery would have been rendered uneconomical for Europeans within decades if Africans themselves had not obtained slaves from further in the interior that was inaccessible to Europeans until the late 19th century, by when slavery was already ended.


Many of those resources of African could not have been exploited without non African technology or the Africans themselves. Africans did not crrated the mineral resources of Africa, the fact Africa is rich in many mineral resources is not due the results of humans, including the native Africans. Until the late 19th century, most of the gold provided by Africa to Europe was obtained by trade, not enforced African labor run by Europeans. And the blood diamonds of Africa are being mined and provided by the Africans themselves, not by greedy foreign corporations.


Outsiders do control a lot.of.African resourced, because these outside groups provided the technology and capital to allow these resources to be exploited in the first place. Moat of the gold of South Africa would.still be sitting in the.ground.without non African technology, and Africans were not utilizing the rich copper mines of Zaire until non African technology was used. By the way, you do know the Chinese are now the leaders in developing Africa's resources? Do the Chinese pay their African workers better, provide better health care, and are doing a better job of developing African resources for the Africans? I am curious.

[Ludicus]

Africa was exploited because it was poor

False. It's painfully obvious that Africa was exploited because it was rich.

18th century - 1750 - Main gold producers (troy ounces)
Brazil: 500 - 550,000
África: 75-100,000
Chile: 35 - 40,000
Peru: 25-30,000
Mexico: 25-30,000
Bolívia: 10-15,000

European capitalism began before the Atlantic slave trade ... Italian bankers... The money eas not gemerated by African slave trade

..and German bankers. I know quite well the history of European mercantilism. That said, a lot of money was generated by the slave trade. In great detail
(2017) Sugar and slaves: The Augsburg Welser as conquerors of America and colonial foundational myths, Atlantic Studies, 14:4, 436-456, DOI:

"While today the Welser and Fugger are thus romanticized as progressive first “global players,” their activities historically functioned as a romanticized colonial foundational myth and as an important reference point for later colonial endeavors and cultural texts. The Welser’s colonial involvement as financiers, factors, mining experts, and conquerors has served as an important trope in numerous German self-narrations on colonial and imperial power until later phases of German colonial and imperial expansion and came to function as a model for later colonial German engagement"
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Manchester, if it could not get cotton from Missippi, would have just gotten it from Egypt and Indiw or elsewhwere.

Or from the moon. Have you ever heard about the Lancashire cotton panic and riots? how the American civil war almost left Britain bankrupt?

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. But more precisely- I'm talking about the roots of the American capitalism. In the USA, slavery completely shaped American capitalism.
Racial capitalism is a different concept. What did Robinson mean by racial capitalism? capitalism emerged within the feudal order and flowered in the cultural soil of a Western civilization already thoroughly infused with racialism, to produce a modern world system of dependent on modern slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide.

Even African slaves were provided by Africans themselves

Don't patronize me. I know the history of the Portuguese expansion and slave trade better than you do.
In the beginning,the Portuguese pioneered slaving raids on the West African coast, it was a short lived period. There was a significant shift in the 1440's from slave raiding to slave trade. From late 15th century until the 1520's Upper Guinea was main source of African slaves, destined for Spanish America. And finally, from about the mid-16th century to 1640, from Angola. But in Kongo, interest in slaving, ivory trade and the possible exploitation of mineral deposits continued.

The Portuguese policy changed with the decision to treat Ndongo (south of Kongo, principal home of the Mbundu) as a conquest, rather than respect the country as a fully independent state., leading the seeds to territorial annexation and European settlement in Africa.Once the captaincy was established, he was to maintain a garrison of 400 soldiers, three fortresses, and settled 100 families within 6 years.After founding Luanda, Dias de Novais, in 1579, began the first of a long series of Portugal's " Angolan Wars", destined to continue intermittently, for the next century. During this period, slavery was conducted by military means.A peace between the Portuguese and Matamba was finally signed in 1683, amd marked a new era in the history of Angolan slave trade, conducted by commercial rather than military means,taking advantage of their power to indulge in coercive trade, carried out on a larger scale than ever before.

Read the letter(s) written by the King of Kongo to the Portuguese king, in 1526. Not everything smells like roses...for the "illiterate savages"

Sir, Your Highness should know how our Kingdom is being lost in so many ways that it is convenient to provide for the necessary remedy, since this is caused by the excessive freedom given by your agents and officials to the men and merchants who are allowed to come to this Kingdom to set up shops with goods and many things which have been prohibited by us, and which they spread throughout our Kingdoms and Domains in such an abundance that many of our vassals, whom we had in obedience, do not comply because they have the things in greater abundance than we ourselves; and it was with these things that we had them content and subjected under our vassalage and jurisdiction, so it is doing a great harm not only to the service of God, but the security and peace of our Kingdoms and State as well.

And we cannot reckon how great the damage is, since the mentioned merchants are taking every day our natives, sons of the land and the sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives, because the thieves and men of bad conscience grab them wishing to have the things and wares of this Kingdom which they are ambitious of; they grab them and get them to be sold; and so great, Sir, is the corruption and licentiousness that our country is being completely depopulated, and Your Highness should not agree with this nor accept it as in your service. And to avoid it we need from those (your) Kingdoms no more than some priests and a few people to reach in schools, and no other goods except wine and flour for the holy sacrament. That is why we beg of Your Highness to help and assist us in this matter, commanding your factors that they should not send here either merchants or wares, because it is our will that in these Kingdoms there should not be any trade of slaves nor outlet for them. Concerning what is referred [to] above, again we beg of Your Highness to agree with it, since otherwise we cannot remedy such an obvious damage. Pray Our Lord in His mercy to have Your Highness under His guard and let you do forever the things of His service. I kiss your hands many times. . . .
(At our town of Kongo, written on the sixth day of July in 1526.)

Africa was never united in the first place

Europe was not never united, apart from a very few exceptions: the 19th century is the age of nationalism in Europe.
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Debunking the myth of the lazy, ignorant, black savages,

"Prior to 1680, Africa's economic and military strength enabled African elites to determine how trade with Europe developed.
Perhaps one of the most interesting facts of the early Atlantic trade was that Europe offered nothing to Africa that Africa did not already produce- a fact often overlooked in analyses of the trade.This immediately differentiates the early period from the present day, for today domestic African industry produces none of the manufactured goods that they import from the developed world. Europe exported a wide range of goods to Africa before 1650, of which we can recognize several categories. What is significant about all of these items is that none were essential commodities. Africa had well-developed industries producing every single item on the list.
(...)Research into the quality of metal produced by African foundries in West Africa in modern times and recent archeology suggest that African steel was equal to that made anywhere in the fifteenth century
...the purchasers were responding far more to the changing fashions of non essential commodities than a real need to trade to satisfy basic wants...Africa exported manufactured goods to Europe as well, including\textiles.The reason that slavery was widespread in Africa was not, as some have asserted, because Africa was an economically underdeveloped region in which forced labor had not yet been replaced by free labor. Slavery was widespread in Atlantic Africa because slaves were the only form of private, revenue producing property recognized in African law. By contrast, in European legal systems, land was the primary form of private, revenue-producing property, and slavery was relatively minor.
... Consequently, African slaves were often treated no differently from peasant cultivators, as indeed they were the functional equivalent of free tenants and hired workers in Europe.

(...) ultimately Europeans forced Africans to exceed their capacity to deliver slaves at a later period when high demands for slaves and improved military technology played a more important role. African exports of slaves expanded dramatically beginning in the mid seventeenth century, to the point where the number of exported slaves grew from being a relatively small number relative to the total population of the African regions from which they were taken to having a major demographic impact.

Source, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, John Thornton (Chapter: The development of commerce between European and Africans)
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More on "black savages",

"Sixteenth-century events have been interpreted as if they had occurred in the immediate pre-colonial days of the late nineteenth century, or even during the post-colonial era of the twentieth century; the familiar image of a growing industrial power from Europe confronting pre-industrial Africa or of the neo-colonialism of post-independence Africa is evoked. The image is accurate enough for the periods to which Davidson or Duffy primarily addressed themselves in their studies but it is not adequate, we would argue, for the sixteenth century. The fact that Portugal possessed more developed marine technology, firearms, and building technology--and these were the very things that Kongo most wanted from Europe--does not necessarily imply that Portugal had a decisive structural advantage over Kongo.

In more fundamental ways Kongo and Portugal were more or less on the same economic level. Both were monarchies ruled by kings and a class of nobles in which relations of kinship, clientage, and influence dominated the political system. l4 Although both had attained a high degree of political centralization, life in rural areas went on in a way not very different than in centuries past. Productivity in neither society was high by modern standards but, to judge from the comments of European visitors to Kongo, Kongo's productivity was equal to or higher than that of most of Europe. This was, of course, only relatively high productivity, since agricultural production in Europe was itself very low in the sixteenth century. Famine and pestilence were as prevalent in Portugal as they were in Kongo, and such indicators of health as life expectancy or infant mortality, while dismal by modern standards for both countries, were scarcely much different from each ocher. Even in commercial matters, where the crux of most analyses of the relations between the two countries is found, there was little to distinguish the two.

For example, both possessed general-purpose monies--gold and silver in Portugal and monetary cloth and nzimbu shells in Kongo--but neither possessed "modern money" in the sense that this term is generally used in economic or anthropological literature. Both also possessed international currencies, in that gold and silver were widely accepted throughout the world, while cowrie shells, which circulated in Kongo, had a wide circulation in Africa and Asia as well.

The two countries solved the problem of the non-convertibility of their currencies by evolving a rather complex system of currency exchanges and credits. The nature of this working arrangement can be gleaned from a "letter of credit" which Afonso I drew up for his brother Manuel, travelling to Rome as his ambassador in 1540. Afonso asked for a grant of 5,000 cruzados, and in exchange created a credit of 150 kofu of nzimbu for the King of Portugal in Kongo. Other such money matters in the mid-sixteenth century were handled by the Kongolese factor in the city of Lisbon, who for some fifteen years was Antonio Vereira, a noble Kongolese resident there.
The flow of gold from the Gold Coast to Portugal was managed in part by exchanging copper bought in Kongo for slaves in Benin which were in turn sold to Akan traders for gold. Some of the copper from Kongo may have been purchased with cowries obtained in the Maldives, and imported to west and central Africa since the beginning of the sixteenth century.
In this way the Portuguese manipulated the money market of the southern hemisphere in much the same way as the Spanish manipulated the silver market of the northern hemisphere. The outcries of later Kongo kings against the reduction of their revenue by the flooding of the country with foreign monetary shells resembles in many ways a similar body of literature generated in sixteenth-century Europe over the influx of "Spanish Silver...once Kongo had developed fully toward the end of the sixteenth century, it was no longer a center of the slave trade, and seventeenth-century sources stress that slaves were rarely obtained in Kongo. In this respect Kongo resembled Benin, which had also acquired slaves and sold them to the Portuguese in exchange for military assistance during their wars of expansion, but had also dropped out of the slave trade by the early seventeenth century.
Like Benin, too, Kongo made most of her exchange with the Portuguese in cloth, which the Portuguese re-exported to other parts of Africa in order to acquire slaves. Kongo thus had complete political control over its own development, and trade considerations were always secondary to the main logic of this development, which was dictated by internal needs and not by external pressures from trading partners.
In short, we can see that, while Portugal had some advantages in navigational techniques, these must not be interpreted as being a fundamental, structural advantage such as the Industrial Revolution was to afford European countries in the nineteenth century "

Source - Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: John Thornton History in Africa, Vol. 8. (1981), pp. 183-204. Full paper.
--------

But in the end... "Kongo could not simultaneously be a major supplier of foreign slaves, maintain a social order based on slavery, and still protect freeborn Kongos from enslavement. Thus the distinctions between foreign-born slaves and freeborn Kongos disappeared. Ultimately every Kongo was a potential slave".
Source - JAH 2009 SLAVERY AND ITS TRANSFORMATION IN THE KINGDOM OF KONGO: 1491–1800 LINDA M. HEYWOOD The Journal of African History
-------------------

Since Musa had vast wealth, this failure by Africans can't be blamed on poverty

Another racist tirade. Well, they were blacks, weren't they? Africa is a huge continent. The empire of Mali was a great empire, founded in the 13th century ,and flourished because of its trade.
Ah, yes, let's keep in mind that the slave trade was "not a problem". Really.
-----------
The uniqueness of the Atlantic Slave trade.
Dutch Historian Piet Emmer, explains how unique was the Atlantic Slave Trade,
"In the European colonies the use of slaves was based on economic motives and not on tradition. Nowhere else was slavery so directly linked to economic growth. In Africa, Arabia and in Asia, slaves were used either as conspicuous consumption or to fill certain occupations traditionally reserved for slaves such as porterage, army service, and cleaning. In the European colonies, however, the transition from non- slave to slave labour was based on a cost-benefit analysis"
---------------
The Impact- the Atlantic slave trade effects on African societies and consequences of the slave trade in the Americas.
Understanding the long-run effects of Africa's slave trades - The Long Economic and Political Shadow of History, Volume 2, available to download here.
" the evidence accumulated up to this point suggests that this historic event played an important part in the shaping of the continent, in terms of not only economic outcomes, but cultural and social outcomes as well. The evidence suggests that it has affected a wide range of important outcomes, including economic prosperity, ethnic diversity, institutional quality, the prevalence of conflict, the prevalence of HIV, trust levels, female labour force participation rates, and the practice of polygyny. Thus, the slave trades appear to have played an important role in shaping the fabric of African society today".
More,
The Legacies of Slavery in and out of Africa - IZA - Institute of
The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades - Harvard
The Impact of the Slave Trade on African Economies - umich
The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of
---

TI have repeatedly said colonialiam is not good.

Apparently. What you really said, "Illiteracy was a problem in Africa before colonialism. Transportation problems existed. I doubt even without conialism Africa could have modernized".
So, apparently colonialism was a bless, and literacy flourished, Impact of the Slave Trade on Literacy in West Africa: Evidence
The Education of African Children in British Colonies, 1910 ... Schooled for Servitude: The Education of African Children in British Colonies, 1910–1990

Letter from King Leopold II of Belgium to Colonial Missionaries, 1883 , Letter Leopold II to Colonial Missionaries - fafich/ufmg

"...you have to keep watch on disinteresting our savages from the richness that is plenty in their underground. ..Your action will be directed essentially to the younger ones, for they won't revolt when the recommendation of the priest is contradictory to their parent's teachings.
Convert always the blacks by using the whip. Keep their women in nine months of submission to work freely for us. Force them to pay you in sign of recognition-goats, chicken or eggs-every time you visit their villages. And make sure that never become rich. Sing every day that it's impossible for the rich to enter heaven. Make them pay tax each week at Sunday mass. Institute a confessional system, which allows you to be good detectives denouncing any black that has a different consciousness contrary to that of the decision-maker. Teach the to forget their heroes and to adore only ours. Never present a chair to a black that comes to visit you. Don't give him more than one cigarette"

Stealing candy from a baby is easy because a baby is weak and helpless

So, the African blacks were "helpless babies". Well, Leopold II of Belgium, a mass murder, said the same thing using different words.
Mission civilisatrice" was one of the bywords of French colonial expansion.



The roots of European racism lie in slave trade and colonialism. Ideas of Africans as inferior, backwards and barbaric - are nothing more, nothing less than the apologetic stance towards European colonialism and the superiority of the white race, in terms of a hierarchy of racial superiority and inferiority: the civilized whites versus the uncivilized blacks, the chronic intellectual stagnation of the barbaric Muslim civilization, the Japanese culture of deceit and lying, the backward Chinese people, supreme liars. Apart from that, a confessed admiration for the Stormfront forums is not something that I take lightly The temporal evolution of a far-right forum | SpringerLink)

[Ludicus]

If whqt ainsay is factually wrong, please.point it out.

Fine. For example I don't agree with statements of this kind :" Muslims seems to lend support the views in Stormfront;"China is the world's most dishonest nation; Japanese have a culture of deceit and lying"
This is factually incorrect. You will have to stand by what you said. And this is a crucial point of this discussion.

it is no secret that "history" departments are dominated by a far left, mardist mentality.

I don't think so. More exactly, in the US, Research confirms that professors lean left, but questions

Studies say professors lean left but challenge idea that this results in indoctrination or harms conservatives

In my opinion, that's probably because gray matter matters: the left doesn't want to indoctrinate far right Eurocentric fanatics. It's a lost cause.
Let's take as an example, Vitorino Magalhães Godinho. Economic and social historian, leftist and antifascist, Godinho is a seminal figure of the Atlantic History.Immanuel Wallerstein's "The discovery of the World Economy" is based on the monumental work of Vitorino Magalhães Godinho.

Accused of "marxist inspiration", "against the spirit of the event", his work "Economic Overview of the Henrican Discoveries" was rejected for publication by the Executive Commission of the 1960 Fifth centenary of the death of Henry the Navigator.
Why haven't they invited in first place a fanatic Eurocentric, ideologically biased with the objective of celebrating the faith and the empire- and the Western civilization as the highest referent of the world?
What it means to be "against the spirit of the event"? Dale Tomich (Ferdinand Braudel Center for the Study of Economics) explains,

Long before the protests and controversies of the Columbus quincentennial, he enjoined us to pay less attention to ship captains and more to cod. His eye is on the anonymous fisher men who pioneered transatlantic routes rather than on captains who took the credit and the rewards for the "discoveries"

Godinho has written over twenty books, including the magisterial The Discoveries and the World Economy-four volumes, on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, his work -still not translated in English- is little known in the English-speaking world outside of a circle of specialists. In the mid-1940's, he was forced by the fascist regime to leave his teaching position.: History is a way of thinking about all of mankind’s problems and about what is the human condition", as he says.
Braudel wrote: "All these problems...He takes them up, transforms them and enlightens us with a taste that his predecessors have almost never applied to economic and social realities. From now on, we can see the vastness and novelty of his work"
-----
Voltaire, and the "intellectually lazy and helpless babies" of Common Soldier,

"It may be said that if the Negro understanding is not of a different nature from ours, it is at least greatly inferior. The petty nations of blacks, who have but little commerce with other nations...In this middle state between imbecility and infant reason, many nations have continued for several ages"

Kant writes in his essay, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

"Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another...Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment"
Sometimes I think that he should have written "What is the white Enlightenment", the intellectual foundation of the modern white supremacy.Blacks are not fully human, as he says,
"Humanity is in its greatest perfection in the race of whites. The yellow Indians are already of lower talent. The Negroes are much lower and at the lowest there are parts of the American people"

Hume’s On National Characters. Common Soldier wouldn't have it better,

"I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.
No arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans the present Tartars have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but "tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly"

Kant agrees, on his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime,

"Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts
earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great regarding mental capacities as in colour".
---------

So, the question is, can a modern white fanatic Eurocentric, be enlightened? Peter Harrison, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities at the University of Queensland, tries to answer this question,

...We need to continue to seek ways of bridging the gap between our remarkable scientific and technological accomplishments and the underexploited wisdom that is embedded within "mythical" world views

The Economist seems a bit skeptical about the chances of success, and cites Uday Singh Mehta, In the balance - Enlightenment liberalism is losing ground in debate about race

In Europe many liberals opposed slavery but supported despotic imperial rule overseas. "Perhaps liberal theory and liberal history are ships passing in the night, spurred on by unrelated imperatives and destinations" speculated Uday Singh Mehta of the City University of New York in 1999.

---------
Which brings us to the concept of coloniality, and the ambiguity and instability of the western values,

on the epistemic decolonization of 'western' education

European colonies were not only to be politically controlled and economically exploited, but also the culture, social customs and education were meant to be Europeanized or transformed to the advantage of the colonizing population. This is widely known.
The concept of coloniality posits that the global relations of power, dependence, exploitation and oppression, which were formed in the course of European expansion and European colonialism on an economic, political and cultural level, continued to exist beyond the colonial period in the narrower sense.
The end of European colonial rule, for example in America, obviously did not simultaneously mean the end of the modern world system.
On the contrary, European colonialism and imperialism created the basic structures on which global capitalism and all other global relations developed, always to the advantage or disadvantage of certain groups or countries, cultures and ways of life.

A must read for all of us. Jochen Hippler Eurocentrism

One of the more drastic examples of a Eurocentric worldview has been formulated by Samuel Huntington in his well-known article “A Clash of Civilizations?”, published in Foreign Affairs. He opined, that “Western concepts differ fundamentally from those prevalent in other civilizations. Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures.” (Huntington 1993, p. 40)

[Aexodus]

Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures.

This is exactly the sort of thing the National Front used to say.

No rule of law in Islamic cultures? Don't make me laugh.

[fkizz]

USSR used plenty of slave labour. "Stalinist Gulags" are an Euphemism to avoid saying slavery and Stalin on the same sentence.

You can find "slavery" in all systems, so playing holier than thou in this is pointless.

Athens, the craddle of the revered Democracy, used slavery too.

Serious slavery (auctions of human beings, buying and selling slaves) happens in Lybia today, real time, but people only "care" about slavery of 300-400 years ago or older. Speaks for itself.

I'm not aproving of slavery, I'm just saying throwing the first stone here as if sinless in this matter is redundant in terms of solving the problem.

[Common Soldier]

Fine. For example I don't agree with statements of this kind :" Muslims seems to lend support the views in Stormfront;"China is the world's most dishonest nation; Japanese have a culture of deceit and lying"
This is factually incorrect. You will have to stand by what you said. And this is a crucial point of this discussion.

Your quotes are not.relevant to thr discussion, and I do not stand by what you quote. Implying I said something I did not is lying. Please provide the link where I said "Muslims to support th viees in Stormfront". I have said China is thr most dishonest nation, but that was is.a viee that is on the basis of internaional polling, not just my personal opinion https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/ne...st-country-is/ https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/artic...st-study-finds https://www.cracked.com/article_1974...erfeiting.html I did not create these aeticles or unflattering facts, no matter how much you dislike them.

The fact you engage is character assination instead of actually engaging in the facts of the issue just shows how weak and non existent your.arguments are. You have yet to provide the actual.facts to support your claims. Thr opinions of politicized historians do not count as facts. The fact you must resort.to attacking character rarher counter with real.facts just peoves what I.am.saying.

I don't think so. More exactly, in the US, Research confirms that professors lean left, but questions

Studies are filled wirh the very bias they study and do not offer obejective analysis. Admitting what cannot be credibably denied does not demonstrate objectivity.. Of course, people wirh the same bias as themselves are not going to admit they are not objective. (PS - the reason that conservatives avoid certain academic fields in the first place is to.avoid.thr admitted leftist bias.of the.professors in tbose fields. The field the conservatives go into like MBA have less potential of leftist professors to adversely effect grades.)

In any case iit the facts that are important, ans hen you sift through everything that the leftist historians say, you rrally don't find any real facts. I asked for.facts from.you, and all you havs done is engage in character assination and name calling. You have yet to peovide facts to support your claims. Referring to some historian's opinion is not a fact, even if an opinion comes from a tenured professor still doe not make it a fact. Rhe fact you can't pull out any facts.from.the sources you clearly admire shows ultimately weak those sources are. You should be able ro provide some facts from those sources, but you clearly do not seem.to be able to.

In my opinion, that's probably because gray matter ]matters: the left doesn't want to indoctrinate far right Eurocentric fanatics. It's a lost cause.

It is a lost cause, because your views are clearly driven by your politicsl ideology, similar.ro.making marxist historians. Marxist ideology destroyed rhe Sovier economy, but fortunately in the case of history completely nonsense history and non factual history only leads ro badly informed students and crime ridden cities by people being influenced by such bad misinformation of real hisrory.

Let's take as an example, Vitorino Magalhães Godinho. Economic and social historian, leftist and antifascist, Godinho is a seminal figure of the Atlantic History.Immanuel Wallerstein's "The discovery of the World Economy" is based on the monumental work of Vitorino Magalhães Godinho.

Accused of "marxist inspiration", "against the spirit of the event", his work "Economic Overview of the Henrican Discoveries" was rejected for publication by the Executive Commission of the 1960 Fifth centenary of the death of Henry the Navigator.
Why haven't they invited in first place a fanatic Eurocentric, ideologically biased with the objective of celebrating the faith and the empire- and the Western civilization as the highest referent of the world?
What it means to be "against the spirit of the event"? Dale Tomich (Ferdinand Braudel Center for the Study of Economics) explains,


Godinho has written over twenty books, including the magisterial The Discoveries and the World Economy-four volumes, on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, his work -still not translated in English- is little known in the English-speaking world outside of a circle of specialists. In the mid-1940's, he was forced by the fascist regime to leave his teaching position.: History is a way of thinking about all of mankind’s problems and about what is the human condition", as he says.
Braudel wrote: "All these problems...He takes them up, transforms them and enlightens us with a taste that his predecessors have almost never applied to economic and social realities. From now on, we can see the vastness and novelty of his work"
-----
Voltaire, and the "intellectually lazy and helpless babies" of Common Soldier,

"It may be said that if the Negro understanding is not of a different nature from ours, it is at least greatly inferior. The petty nations of blacks, who have but little commerce with other nations...In this middle state between imbecility and infant reason, many nations have continued for several ages"

Kant writes in his essay, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

"Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another...Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment"
Sometimes I think that he should have written "What is the white Enlightenment", the intellectual foundation of the modern white supremacy.Blacks are not fully human, as he says,
"Humanity is in its greatest perfection in the race of whites. The yellow Indians are already of lower talent. The Negroes are much lower and at the lowest there are parts of the American people"

Hume’s On National Characters. Common Soldier wouldn't have it better,

"I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.
No arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans the present Tartars have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but "tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly"

Kant agrees, on his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime,

"Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts
earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great regarding mental capacities as in colour".
---------

So, the question is, can a modern white fanatic Eurocentric, be enlightened? Peter Harrison, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities at the University of Queensland, tries to answer this question,

Not a single thing had any real historical.facts to the subject nor relevant ro any of the.points I made, but only demonstrate you own bigotry, intolerance. To state that Sub Sahara Africa was poorer and less technologically advance than Europe is statement and has nothing ro due wirh race - you, not me, are making it an issue of race, which makes you personally the true kindred spirit of Stormfront, not me.

Germany was the among thr more.backwards regions of the world at the time of thr Roman Empire, and to claim the Germans were not technologically backwards compared ro.the Romans and Egyptians would be as false.as saying that thr Sub Saharan Africans were not.technologically behind thr Europeans. And it would be as false ro blame the technological backwardness of the Germans on thr Romans as to.blame the technological backwardness of thr Africans on the Europeans. The Romans did try ro enslave thr Germans when they could, and did exploit the the Germans when they could, but they were not responsible the Germans being backwards and poor, and the same thing is true for the Africans. Not all culture are equals, but race itself has nothing to do with thr success or failure of a culture or society. Germans who were raised in a Roman culture would be just as intelligent, and successful as a Roman.. We find evidence of high status successful Africans. To.say that some races are biologically superior is nonsense, and repeatedly shown ro be false. But to say some cultures are more technologically advanced and lead.ro greater prosperity is not. Unfortunately, race and culture can be confused and conflated, but they are quite different.

In a question you.refuse to acknowledge, what major inventions did thr Sub Saharan Africans make.in thr middle ages, when it could boast having the richest man in the world, Mansa Musa?
What signicant engineering buildings did Musa build? How many papermills?
What advances in ship construction did rhe Africans make?
What advances did the.Sub Saharan Africans make in navigation?
Can you give an example of Sub Saharsn watermills and.windmills?
Did the Sub Saharan Africans have pedal operated spinning wheels?

Improvement in transportations by better ship designs and better navigation can lower transportiation cost, improving trade and increasing wealth. Poor transportation can increase cotf of shipping, reducing wealth and increasing poverty.

Marxist economists and their policies led to the economic collapse of the Soviet Union, and equally flawed marxist historical views lead to destructive trends in society. In many cases they have admitted their "history" is not about real facts or what happened, but about pushing an agenda, not the truth. 1619 creators admit what they are promoting is not history https://thespectator.info/2020/07/27...e-twitchy-com/

Given that American "historians" want things taught in history classes that they admit are not real history, little trust can be put on anything they say. Marxist historians have a history of flat out lying, repeatedly marxisr and leftist have demonstrated they will sacrifice the truth to push their political agenda. The current historians are no different than those leftist who did their best to hide rhe truth of communist atrocities https://thefederalist.com/2017/03/24...harvest-1930s/ Much like Duranty in lying about thr Urkrainian Holodomar https://unherd.com/2020/07/what-the-...nd=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3 modern historians are willing to sacrifice

[Common Soldier]

False. It's painfully obvious that Africa was exploited because it was rich.

18th century - 1750 - Main gold producers (troy ounces)
Brazil: 500 - 550,000
África: 75-100,000
Chile: 35 - 40,000
Peru: 25-30,000
Mexico: 25-30,000
Bolívia: 10-15,000

That due to accident of geography Africa had a lot of gold does not.automatically make it rich. South Africa is the world's largest gold producer, but Swozterland, which produces no gold, is far richer.

In any case, silver was far more important, since it was silver that was used for trade with ChinA, not gold, and silvsr was thr basis for.many European currencies - it is pound sterling silver, not pound gold, was long the standard of British currency. Also, since the gold obtained from Africa was gottrn through trade, that cannot be said to be "exploition"

Africa was exploited because it was poor and weak - Africa exports a lot of minerals today, including gold, but it is still poor. The vast silver exported from thr Americas did not make Spain the richest European nation, and the splendor of the Palace of Versaille exceeded any of thr Spanish palaces. Precious metals alone is not an indication of how rich a nation is.



Nothing more thoroughly shows the weakeness of Africa is that thr Kongo King Alfonso was unable to kick thr Portuguese out or get them to stop trading in slaves. But the Japanese were able to kick out thr Portuguese, something the Africans were too weak to do. Had the Africans not been weak, they would have been able to kick out thr Portuguese and stop thr slave trading. But they were simply too weak.

..and German bankers. I know quite well the history of European mercantilism. That said, a lot of money was generated by the slave trade.

And even more money was generated by things other than the slave trade. Until thr rise of cotton, African slave labor was used to produce mostly luxury non essential items like sugar. Sugar is nice, but it is nonsense to claim.thr production of sugar is fundamental or essential to economy. Iron and coal, which are fundamental to industrial revolution economy, owed nothing to slavery. Thr first stsam engines were funded by the peofits of coal mining, which neither used slaves to mine, nor depended on slavery for markets, and whose origins predated hr Altantic Slave trade.

In great detail
(2017) Sugar and slaves: The Augsburg Welser as conquerors of America and colonial foundational myths, Atlantic Studies, 14:4, 436-456, DOI:

Work ignores profits generated by domestic industries such as iron pdoduction or the aggragate income generated by all the.non slave relatex economic activities. Just more leftist historiczl revisionist work. That sugar production was profitable and had a high profit marigin is true, but is overall impact is greatly overstated. The income level, living standards were higher in the non slave states, and while a small number of planters, it was at the expense of a much larger population of ordinary whites who were in genersl worse off than their northern counterparts. The whitd population in the northern colonied was far greater than in ths sugar prodicing islands, and Alexander Hamton left such an island to go.to New York because the economic opportunities were better in those areas where slavery did not thrive.

Typical work of modern historians thst wherr you read closely, you find they do not have any real facts.

"While today the Welser and Fugger are thus romanticized as progressive first “global players,” their activities historically functioned as a romanticized colonial foundational myth and as an important reference point for later colonial endeavors and cultural texts. The Welser’s colonial involvement as financiers, factors, mining experts, and conquerors has served as an important trope in numerous German self-narrations on colonial and imperial power until later phases of German colonial and imperial expansion and came to function as a model for later colonial German engagement"

Typical.assertion of opinion rather thsn presenting any real facts, just opinions that, when you examine closely, are not supported by the actual facts. More 'political agenda" masquerading as history.
------

Or from the moon. Have you ever heard about the Lancashire cotton panic and riots? how the American civil war almost left Britain bankrupt?

The Lancashire cotton panic was due as much to overproduction, as to.a cotton shortage. Mills shutdown because there was oversupply of woven cotton, not simply because they could not get raw cotton supplies. Since you are a historian, so real facts do not matter to you, but thr Americsn South is no longer the world's leading cotton producer, and for more than half a century after slavery, the South was still a leader in cotton production. It is total nonsense to claim Britain was even close to bankrupt. The Union was able.to fight an extremely costly war and it was nowhere near bankrupcy. More example of how younare wrong on pretty much everything. Thr British textile.industry did not collapse and end during the.American Civil.War
[

Slavery helped[/I] finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide.

And even greater fortunes were made in coal mining, iron production and shipping that had nothing to due with slavery. The huge English mansions were built mostly with the income of domestic English agriculture, not slavery. Slavery's contribution is vastly overrated by people like you. It did contribute some, but the fundamentals of the industrial.revolution were funded by domestic industry and trade thst did not involve slavery. Thr first steam engine were built with the profit of coal mining, and the money for coal mining csme from local European industries.

With or without slavery, the industrial revolution would have arisen. The majority of.money funding thr developement of thr industrial.revolution did not come from slavery.

. But more precisely- I'm talking about the roots of the American capitalism. In the USA, slavery completely shaped American capitalism.

Ah, no it did not. Northern factories are the roots of American capitalism, not slavery. It was not Southern Plantstion owners who were American capitalist, but northern factory owners. It was the factories where American cspital was created. Note by 1810, New England involvement with thr Atlantic Slave trade largely came to an end and whaling and fishing generated more revenue. How many ships were deficated to the slave trade versus whaling in 1840's? How many books were written regardivoyages of a slave trading vessel in the US versus whaling and fishing onr?

Don't patronize me. I know the history of the Portuguese expansion and slave trade better than you do.

You are ignorant of the fact that Japanese easily kicked the Porguguese out

In the beginning,the Portuguese pioneered slaving raids on the West African coast, it was a short lived period

Finally, a bit of truth. Only in the beginning were Europeans invovled in raiding for slaves. Most the African slaves were obtained through trade. Without African support, thr Altantic Slave trade would not havd bedn significsnt or existrd as long as it did. African weakness allowed thr slave trade to endure.

. There was a significant shift in the 1440's from slave raiding to slave trade. From late 15th century until the 1520's Upper Guinea was main source of African slaves, destined for Spanish America. And finally, from about the mid-16th century to 1640, from Angola. But in Kongo, interest in slaving, ivory trade and the possible exploitation of mineral deposits continued.

So even by what you say, by the time of the trans Atlantic slave trade, the slave were obtaned by trade. While individual Africans were exploited, Africa itself was not being exploited - there were Africans getting wealth off the trade. The Africans were as responsible for.thr exploitations of other Africans as anyone.

The Portuguese policy changed with the decision to treat Ndongo (south of Kongo, principal home of the Mbundu) as a conquest, rather than respect the country as a fully independent state., leading the seeds to territorial annexation and European settlement in Africa.Once the captaincy was established, he was to maintain a garrison of 400 soldiers, three fortresses, and settled 100 families within 6 years.After founding Luanda, Dias de Novais, in 1579, began the first of a long series of Portugal's " Angolan Wars", destined to continue intermittently, for the next century. During this period, slavery was conducted by military means.A peace between the Portuguese and Matamba was finally signed in 1683, amd marked a new era in the history of Angolan slave trade, conducted by commercial rather than military means,taking advantage of their power to indulge in coercive trade, carried out on a larger scale than ever before.

400 is an insignificant number compared to the entire African continent. Angola is only a tiny part of Africa, and the truth is that the vast majority of Africa remained outside of Europsan control.until the late 19th century. It was the vastly superior European technology which enabled Europeans to conquer Africa. African states that were well.established, like Ethiopia, were still able to resist colonization. Most of Africa, like Angola, were too weak to resist - had Africans not been poor or so weak, they could have prevented conquest and tossed the Europeans out as Japan did.thr Portuguese. It is proof of weakness of Africans is that the Portuguese were able to conquer Angola and not get expelled as in Japan.

"Prior to 1680, Africa's economic and military strength enabled African elites to determine how trade with Europe developed.

So that says Africa was not being exploited before 1680, if Africans elites could determine how trade with Europe could be developed as you quote. This undermijes your theme of African exploitation.

It also means Africa's lack of technological progress must be the fault of Africans themselves. Europe made a number of major technological and scientific advances which Africa did not make. As Europe technologicslly progressed and Africa did not, that would make Africa weaker relative to Europe.

"Sixteenth-century events have been interpreted as if they had occurred in the immediate pre-colonial days of the late nineteenth century, or even during the post-colonial era of the twentieth century; the familiar image of a growing industrial power from Europe confronting pre-industrial Africa or of the neo-colonialism of post-independence Africa is evoked. The image is accurate enough for the periods to which Davidson or Duffy primarily addressed themselves in their studies but it is not adequate, we would argue, for the sixteenth century. The fact that Portugal possessed more developed marine technology, firearms, and building technology--and these were the very things that Kongo most wanted from Europe--does not necessarily imply that Portugal had a decisive structural advantage over Kongo.

In more fundamental ways Kongo and Portugal were more or less on the same economic level. Both were monarchies ruled by kings and a class of nobles in which relations of kinship, clientage, and influence dominated the political system. l4 Although both had attained a high degree of political centralization, life in rural areas went on in a way not very different than in centuries past. Productivity in neither society was high by modern standards but, to judge from the comments of European visitors to Kongo, Kongo's productivity was equal to or higher than that of most of Europe. This was, of course, only relatively high productivity, since agricultural production in Europe was itself very low in the sixteenth century. Famine and pestilence were as prevalent in Portugal as they were in Kongo, and such indicators of health as life expectancy or infant mortality, while dismal by modern standards for both countries, were scarcely much different from each ocher. Even in commercial matters, where the crux of most analyses of the relations between the two countries is found, there was little to distinguish the two.

Portugal was not the.most economically advanced or prosperous nation in Europe. France and the Low countries were more developed, and even at the height of its empire, its palacea did not match the splendor of Versailles. Portugal possed windmls.and watermills, which freed up human and animal labor that had to be used for grinding grain and other task in Africa, including Kongo. This gave an economic edge to Portugal already in the 16th century. Printing press gave a huge edge to Portugual in literacy, and Portugal share in the discoveries and technological developments of Europe.as a whole. While in many areas Kongo's kingdom was comparable in technology, there.a number of areas where Portugal had a technological lead, while the reverse was not true. The banking industry was being developed that allowed European.monarchs to borrow money to fund projects in a way African rulers did not have. Even if only a few areas, they were still sufficient to give a decisive edge.

For example, both possessed general-purpose monies--gold and silver in Portugal and monetary cloth and nzimbu shells in Kongo--but neither possessed "modern money" in the sense that this term is generally used in economic or anthropological literature. Both also possessed international currencies, in that gold and silver were widely accepted throughout the world, while cowrie shells, which circulated in Kongo, had a wide circulation in Africa and Asia as well.

Silver and gold have intrinsic value, you can melt gold and silver coins and make useful things out of them, and both gold and silver have numerous industrial applications. Nzimbu and cowri shells, in contrast, have no intrinsic value - they have no real.application outside being used for money. Cloth csn decay more readily being store than silver or gold, which can last for centuries. Portuguese rulers could also borrow money from bankers like other European rulers, an option not open to Kongo rulers.

The two countries solved the problem of the non-convertibility of their currencies by evolving a rather complex system of currency exchanges and credits. The nature of this working arrangement can be gleaned from a "letter of credit" which Afonso I drew up for his brother Manuel, travelling to Rome as his ambassador in 1540. Afonso asked for a grant of 5,000 cruzados, and in exchange created a credit of 150 kofu of nzimbu for the King of Portugal in Kongo. Other such money matters in the mid-sixteenth century were handled by the Kongolese factor in the city of Lisbon, who for some fifteen years was Antonio Vereira, a noble Kongolese resident there.

While all civilization appreciated the value of silver and gold, and even today we value them, not even close to all civilizations appreciated the value of cowrie shells, and while today a pile of silver or gold coins are still worth something, a pile of cowrie shells is not. Did Kongo practice letter of credit before contact wirb Portuguese?

£

The flow of gold from the Gold Coast to Portugal was managed in part by exchanging copper bought in Kongo for slaves in Benin which were in turn sold to Akan traders for gold. Some of the copper from Kongo may have been purchased with cowries obtained in the Maldives, and imported to west and central Africa since the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Are you certain the copper was obtained from Kongo? I know that copper manillas.were being manufactured and exported to Africa to.purchase slaves https://coincoin.com/I024.htm. Europe was producing its own copper at the time. For local African trade, Portugal likely used local copper supplies, but later Europeans used manilla bracez manufactured in Europe as a medium of trade in Africa.

In this way the Portuguese manipulated the money market of the southern hemisphere in much the same way as the Spanish manipulated the silver market of the northern hemisphere. The outcries of later Kongo kings against the reduction of their revenue by the flooding of the country with foreign monetary shells resembles in many ways a similar body of literature generated in sixteenth-century Europe over the influx of "Spanish Silver...once Kongo had developed fully toward the end of the sixteenth century, it was no longer a center of the slave trade, and seventeenth-century sources stress that slaves were rarely obtained in Kongo. In this respect Kongo resembled Benin, which had also acquired slaves and sold them to the Portuguese in exchange for military assistance during their wars of expansion, but had also dropped out of the slave trade by the early seventeenth century.

Manipulation implies control, and deliberately, which is not the case. That Spanish bringing in vast quanties of silver did effect prices, but neither thr Spanish nor Portuguese.deliberately intended the the resulrs and so were not guilty of manipulation, just a byproduct of their actions.

Like Benin, too, Kongo made most of her exchange with the Portuguese in cloth, which the Portuguese re-exported to other parts of Africa in order to acquire slaves. Kongo thus had complete political control over its own development, and trade considerations were always secondary to the main logic of this development, which was dictated by internal needs and not by external pressures from trading partners.
In short, we can see that, while Portugal had some advantages in navigational techniques, these must not be interpreted as being a fundamental, structural advantage such as the Industrial Revolution was to afford European countries in the nineteenth century

"

African kingdoms like Benin and Kongo were active participants in the slave trade and negative consequences of it.are as much rhe responsibilities of the Africans thrmselves as the Europeans. It is weakness of Africa that enabled thr slave trade. If other Africa stated were as strong ad Benin and Kongo, they too could have prevented the export of slaves from their lands, but they were not, allowing the Benin to take slaves from thoze lands.

And you only need an advantage in just some areas, not in all areas, to give a decisive edge. The Portuguese had that edge in critical technologies, transportation and weaponry.

Another racist tirade. Well, they were blacks, weren't they? Africa is a huge continent.

Another resort to name calling. Even just restricting to Mansa Musa's realm, all his vast wealth did not translate into any long lasting results.

And Africa is a huge continent, so it is racist by you to blame the entire problems on the continent on the Europeans who only exported slaves from a small region and only controlled a tiny region of Africa until slavery had been ended for a generation. For centuries European technology advanced and Africa's did not during a time when only a tiny portion of Africa was controlled by Europe. It is not racist to point out that truth.

Again, what were.the major.technological.advanced made.in Africa during the middle ages? None whatever, and the fault.lies.solely with Africa the Africans.

The empire of Mali was a great empire, founded in the 13th century ,and flourished because of its trade.

And what were the majod trchnological advances made by this mighty empire? None.

Ah, yes, let's keep in mind that the slave trade was "not a problem". Really.

Slaves were not being exported to the Americas from Africa in the 13th.century. So if slavery was a problem, it was due only to the Africans themselves back then.

And I never said slavery was not a problem, just that slavery was not the root of all Africa's problems as you claim. Africa was not making significant inventions in the 13th - 15th century, so should we expect the Africans to suddenly change in the 16th, 17th, or 18th century? Africans could have chosen to trade gold and slaves for printing presses or to trade for guns and worthless cowrie shells. The Africsns chose to trade for guns and intrinsically worthless cowrie shells, it was their choice. Is it surprising that the Africsns wound up poor because.they thought intrinsically worthless cowrie shells were more valuable than printing presses.

So, apparently colonialism was a bless, and literacy flourished,

Once again you show your lack of understanding of logic. To say that the slave trade and colonialism did not cause illiteracy is not the same thing as saying that colonialism did the opposite and greatly reduced illiteracy instead There is a 3rd option, which is that colonialism did not effect illiteracy one way or other.

The greatrst strides of reducing illiteracy in Africa were made after independence. Colonial.governments did create the educational.isntitutions which enable the.independent African nations to.grearly reduce illiteracy but credir must really be given to thr African nations. You really need to stop relying on groups.like the Stormfront for your information.

So, the African blacks were "helpless babies".

That really is.rather racist thing to say. True, Africans might not have been as technogically advanced, but that hardly makes the Africans helpeas babes as you claim. The Angolan colonist were hardly helpless babes when the Africans drove the Portuguese out of Angola. You seem the superiority that those in thr mother country feel toward those in their colonies, but you need to overcome that sense of superiority.


Again, even if Sub Sahara Africa was not as technologically advanced does nor mean they were biologically inferior or that they are nor as fully capable of as anybody else. While it would be just a denial of the historical reality to say that Africans were as trchnologically as advance, just as it would be a denial of historically reality to say that the ancient Celts and Germans were advanced as the ancient Romans, that does not mean they were helpless babes as you claim.

[Common Soldier]

After reading the recent posts I see the point. If slavery was so essential to the South one would think they would have been willing to shatter the union, fight a war where there best strategy was survive long enough to force a peace, and than continue that war years after it was clearly lost while there economies and lands and people were devastated.

That southerners, even the majority of them who were non slave owners were unwilling to wage such a war over slavery, is as clear proof as any thinker would need that slavery just wasn’t that important.

You clearly didn't understand the posts you read and what the debate was about. No one was denying the impotance of slavery to the American southern state and thr cotton plantation economy. The debate was rather on the importance of slavery's role in the non slave states of the north and the developement of the industrial revolution, a quite different question. Despite historical revizionist attempts to portray things otherwise, the manufacturing in the northern states was not being done by slaves. The degree for which slavery was responsible for nothern manufacturing and the accumulaion of wealth and capital that enabled the building of the factories that made the manufacturing of the industrial.revolution is what is under debate.

While the wealth created by the slave trade and slavery did contribute to the creation of capital (wealth, money) that made the industrial revolution possible, its contribuitions have been greatly exaggerated.. Unfortunately, it is a religious belief to some that slavery is the root of every single evil and problem, and slavery is responsible for creating all wealth, and they attack the character and personality of those who dare to sugvest otherwise. As with many religious beliefs, logical consistency is not important and.they respond with the logic and lack of rational thought that would embarrass a Flat Earther.


The roots of the industrial revolution go back a number of centuries, long before the Atlantic Slave trade. The industrial revolution is about using machines to greatly increase human production, resulting in lower cost. An example is the printing press, which greatly increased book production and lowered cost of books, allowig a few men to produce hundreds books in the amount of time he same number of men could produce only a handful of books by hand. African slavery played no role in its invention - it was neither funded by the profits of African slavery nor was it built by slaves - the printing prress had already been invented and had spread across Europe before Columbus sailed to America. Likewise other invention critical to the industrial revolution were not invented or built with the profits of slavery and its trade. The first steam engines were built with the profits of coal mining, being first used to pump out flooded coal mines to allow them to be continued to be mined.


As to your argument specifically, using your logic, that the Union fought so hard in a war that they knew would free the slaves argues strongly against slavery being essential as essential to northern capitalism as claimed. Certainly with the Emancipation Proclamaion in 1862, everyone knew a defeat of the Confederacy would free the slaves, yet we do not find leading American capiltalist opposing the Civil War.

[wanderwegger]

You clearly didn't understand the posts you read and what the debate was about. No one was denying the impotance of slavery to the American southern state and thr cotton plantation economy.

The debate was whether the non slave states need slavery too. Does the rest of the union need California and NY (1/3 total US economy)?

Or the union was hijacked by a minority (abolitionists) and a desire for America to enter into the Globality of Europe (slavery was well past unpopular). Think of the alt right today. Your logic sure does. (Its rational thought you mean every time you say logic by the by, machines have logic. Humans are too complex for pure logic.)

I agree though, no one is denying the impotence present.

[Common Soldier]

The debate was whether the non slave states need slavery too. Does the rest of the union need California and NY (1/3 total US economy)?

Could the US exist without California and New York? Yes. Even if Calfornia and New York formed 1/3 the US economy as you say, that would still leave the US 2/3 of its economy and still leave the US as one of the large national ecomies in the world. Would losing them hurt? Yes, but it would not be fatal.

Or the union was hijacked by a minority (abolitionists) and a desire for America to enter into the Globality of Europe (slavery was well past unpopular).

Who says the abolitionist were a minority by the end of the war? Americans could see where Lincoln stood by 1862, yet re-elected him anyways.

I agree though, no one is denying the impotence present.

Not sure what you meant by the "impotence present" What is "helpless/powerless present" supposed to mean? Don#t know if everyone agrees with that statement or not, since I have no idea what you are trying to say.

[wanderwegger]

You mentioned the impotence of slavery. Maybe you meant importance. I have always struggled when reading incoherence.

If you are interested there are lots of studies on how widespread abolitionists were. It would be the beginning of the war that mattered. Not by the end of the war. Lincoln rose up the ladder as an abolitionist speaker so I imagine Americans saw where he was before he was elected. You clearly did not know that part of his history.

See you missed the point entirely on CA and NY. The northern states benefitted from the southern slave economy. Many northern fortunes were built on slavery and slavery adjacent industries. Slavery was like Boeing. But bigger. Do you think Boeing is important to the entirety of the US economy or just to IL?

[Common Soldier]

Colonialism was great- that's exactly what you think.

I have specifically said a number of times that colonies are a not run for the benefit of the colonials. However, unlike you, I don't see colonialism as being the root of all Africa's problems as you seem to believe.


Colonialism did not help.Africa, but Africa is not fundamentally worse off due to colonialism either. The problems that plague Africa today would have plague Africa whether they were colonized or not colonized.

[Quote]
...and your point
[URL="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/the-dividing-of-a-continent-africas-separatist-problem/262[/quote]

The point is that if Africa was never united in the first place, a fact that you admit, then colonialism can't be blamed for dividing Africa since it was never united originally. Articles like the one you quote are wrong - they operate on the fundamnetal belief colonialism is responsible for all Africa's problem, rather than operate on the facts.

We already have enough of this racist crap in

Again you resort to attacking a person's character rather than their argument, making you the bigot.

Africa endows a large amount of natural resources that has been extracted and exploited for centuries.

You need to get informed with actual history, not the politics masking as history

The entire colonial period lasted for less than a cenrury, and even with the post colonial times it does not even add up to 2 centuries. Before that time, Africa's natural resources were obtained by trade, given by Africans in exchanged for goods and services - that is not exploitation. Any "exploiting" of African resource was done by Africans themselves, and that includes providing African slaves. Without the active participation of Africans themselves thr African slave trade could not havs existed for centuries.

Nowadays, foreign ownership of African natural resources is the prefered way that rich countries continue to dominate African states.

The foreign ownership provided the money and technology to utilize those natural resources the first place. Without the technology and capital foreign ownership provided, Africans would not have been able to obtain those natural resources. Most of the gold obtained from South Africa, the world's leading gold producer, would still be in the ground without foreign technology. Uranium ores would have been inaccesible and useless to Africans without foreigners, since native African technology lacked.the ability to separate the Uranium or an use for it.

In the past,the slave trade was one of the most lucrative transnational enterprises for the colonial powers.

Actually, that is wrong. Most European nations did not become African colonial powers until after slavery ended, and slavery brought no profit to most colonial powers.- they were not African colonial powers when they engaged in the trade. As a matter of fact, thr British spent money on anti-slavery patrols.- British navy anti-slavery patrols are a historical fact.

Also, Africans from the Barbary Coast engage in the enslaving of Europeans for a long the Atlantic Slave Trade, and unlike the African slaves, the Europeans enslaved by Africans were not obtained through trade.

[Common Soldier]

Fine. For example I don't agree with statements of this kind :" Muslims seems to lend support the views in Stormfront;"China is the world's most dishonest nation

This is factually incorrect. You will have to stand by what you said. And this is a crucial point of this discussion. [/quote]

Those comments were not made on the thread nor were they related to the topic. You have not actually answered.the quesrions I raised, just engaged engage in attacking character rarher than facts. I asked a half dozen questions and you did not address a single one. I don't recall.the Storm Front comment, but when a team one Muslims, not just one, blow up churches on Easter Sunday, when Muslim from moderate Muslims from around the world join ISIS armies and engage in rape and killing in foreign lands, it does unfortunately lend credence to Storm Front rhetoric - thr fact that these are just an action of a few Muslims is overlooked. The actions of these Muslims are among thr best recruiting tools for groups lime Storm Fronr, which you seem very familar wirh.


As for the Chinese being the worlds most dishonest nation, thst is the veiw based on studies, not just my view https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/ne...st-country-is/ https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/artic...st-study-finds If the South China Morning Post is a front paper for the Storm Front, please provide that information supporting your claim, so I can purge it as a reliable source. In any case, all this is not related ro the topicB, and the faft you resort to such sleazy tactics.instead.of answering the.points raised shows your lack of integrity. You would n

In my opinion, that's probably because gray matter matters: the left doesn't want to indoctrinate far right Eurocentric fanatics.

No, the left wants to indoctinate students with far left doctines and do not even pretend they teach history as thr 1619 peoponents admit - https://thespectator.info/2020/07/27...e-twitchy-com/ just demonstrates the dishinesty of the left.

Godinho has written over twenty books, including the magisterial The Discoveries and the World Economy-four volumes, on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, his work -still not translated in English- is little known in the English-speaking world outside of a circle of specialists. In the mid-1940's, he was forced by the fascist regime to leave his teaching position.

His work is not translated likely because it is typical communist apologenic work of thr period. Historians like him made excuses and lied about Stalin's atrocities. They only stopped lying about.the communist killings when such lies no longer could be sustained. Even growing up during the Cold.War the leftist historians managed to purge the story of the Urkaine Famine from thr history books. Works of historians of that era are not trustworthy.

Hume’s On National Characters. Common Soldier wouldn't have it better,

"I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.
No arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans the present Tartars have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but "tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly"

You are the one doing the quoting, so they must relect your views not mine. They are not addressing any points I have made, and I have repearedly state there is no significa t difference between human races. You are the bigot who keeps bringing up race, not I


There is a differnce in cultures, the ancient Romand and Egyptians were more advanced than the ancient Germans, that is a fact. But race has nothing to due with.

Ultimstely, you are the real racist, since you are the one bringing up race. That people of the past and even today had a bunch of nonsense ideas is not news. Even today, many modern Africans believe witch doctors and many even intelligent Americans still believe in astrology. But none of this has the slightest relation to the topic or the points I raised.

[Common Soldier]

This is not surprising, since the people who practice systemic racism are of the left https://spectator.org/systemic-racis...-lives-matter/ and leftist have opening pushed an historical agenda that is not about history https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/0...nal-narrative/ https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156784




An epsidoe in the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade is that of Benin and its of the sacrifice of 800 African slaves by Africans at the death of thd Dahomey king https://bahamianology.com/800-slaves...-dahomey-1858/ For all the evils of black slavery in the Americas, one evil African slaves in America xid not.facr that slaves faced in Africa was being murdered as human sacrifices at the death an African ruler. As history has shown, the numbers murdered could be quite large. And being sacrificed under.ines the narrative that is trying to be pushed that slavery really wasn't that bad in Africa. I doubt if you were one of the hundrrds of slaves murdered, you.would agree that slavery wasn't that bad in Africa.

[Common Soldier]

Africa leads the world in modern day slavery https://qz.com/africa/1333946/global...-in-the-world/ and an African country, which was the last country in the world to abolish slavery, only making it illegsl in 2007!, is now punishing those who speak out about slavery https://qz.com/africa/763470/the-las...ery-activists/.

Naturally, leftist such as wanderwegger and Ludricous seem to care more about slavery that has not existed for 150 years thsn the slavery that exist today.

[wanderwegger]

I am satisfied you have finally admitted systemic racism exists. I disagree with your whodunnit but getting you to admit you were wrong about systemic racism not existing is something.

That last paragraph is the worst type of racism mixed with utter stupidity. Why not throw in a denial of the Holocaust to round it off?

The same statements are found on the vilest white supremacy sites word for word just better spelled.

This is not surprising, since the people who practice systemic racism are of the left https://spectator.org/systemic-racis...-lives-matter/ and leftist have opening pushed an historical agenda that is not about history https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/0...nal-narrative/ https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156784




An epsidoe in the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade is that of Benin and its of the sacrifice of 800 African slaves by Africans at the death of thd Dahomey king https://bahamianology.com/800-slaves...-dahomey-1858/ For all the evils of black slavery in the Americas, one evil African slaves in America xid not.facr that slaves faced in Africa was being murdered as human sacrifices at the death an African ruler. As history has shown, the numbers murdered could be quite large. And being sacrificed under.ines the narrative that is trying to be pushed that slavery really wasn't that bad in Africa. I doubt if you were one of the hundrrds of slaves murdered, you.would agree that slavery wasn't that bad in Africa.

[Common Soldier]

In addition to the Atlantic Slave Trade, there was also the Arabic African slave trade that preceeded the European involvement of the African Slave trade. While not as intense as thr Atlantic Slave Trade, it likely involved comparable.number of slaves due to its longer duration. Nor was plantation slavery unknown in thr Arabic world, as the Zanj Rebellion (869 - 883 AD) in what is now Iraq demonstrated, where black slaves rebelled against their Arab masters becaued of intolerable conditions. This large scale Zanj (black slave) rebellion had been proceeded by 2 smaller Zanj rebellions. Large numbers of slaves were involved and the loss of life has been estimated to be 500,000 up to 2,500,000, and the revolt had long lasting effects up to the end of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258. After the Zanj Rebellion, the Arab world no longer engaged in large scale mass agricultural plantation slavery https://www.medievalists.net/2019/02...medieval-iraq/ Plantation slavery often is what led to the worse forms of slavery, domestic slaves even in European slavery were treated better than field slaves.

The African slaves shipped cross thr Sahara by Muslim slavers had a high death rate, estimated up to 50% https://www.fairplanet.org/dossier/b...m-slave-trade/, worse than the Altantic Slave Trade, (Study using data for Brazil and Cuba estimate slave mortality at 9.2% for Brazil up to 17% for Cuba https://iwritegigs.com/mortality-rat...ba-and-brazil/). Note, the losses involved in shipment of slaves, either in the Arab Trans Sahara Slave Trade, do not include total losses reuslting from the slave trade. There were orher deaths inovled in the slave trade, but those losses were applicable to both the European and Arab slave trade.

Although deaths on slave ships were higher than on voluntary passenger ships, even the crews on slave ships experienced more deaths, comparable to the slaves, although the crews spent more trsnsit time onboard ship (they included time ship Africa and back to port after trssnporting zlaves) and longer voyage times had higher death rates ("Transoceanic Mortality: The Slave Trade in Comparative Perspective", Herbet S. Klein, Stanley L. Engerman, Robin Haines, Ralph Shmolowitz, William and Mary Quarterly, LVIII no. 1 Jan 2001 pg 102)

Another difference is that while the Atlantic slave trade had a strong preference for men, the Arab slave trade often preferred women, the opposite. A study of French records of 177,000 slaves shipped, 47.4% were men, 26% women and 26.6% were children https://www.jstor.org/stable/182693?seq=1. The sex ratio of the slaves shipped could vary widely, with the Dutch occassionslly having rations that could excedd 2:1 for certain years but most of the time Dutch and other European ships lower ratios https://scholar.google.com/scholar?h...3D4S2JwpWd-UMJ.

[conon394]

This is not surprising, since the people who practice systemic racism are of the left https://spectator.org/systemic-racis...-lives-matter/ and leftist have opening pushed an historical agenda that is not about history https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/0...nal-narrative/ https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156784




An epsidoe in the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade is that of Benin and its of the sacrifice of 800 African slaves by Africans at the death of thd Dahomey king https://bahamianology.com/800-slaves...-dahomey-1858/ For all the evils of black slavery in the Americas, one evil African slaves in America xid not.facr that slaves faced in Africa was being murdered as human sacrifices at the death an African ruler. As history has shown, the numbers murdered could be quite large. And being sacrificed under.ines the narrative that is trying to be pushed that slavery really wasn't that bad in Africa. I doubt if you were one of the hundrrds of slaves murdered, you.would agree that slavery wasn't that bad in Africa.

I do believe you are spinning here. Dahomey it seems to me very much exits only because of the slave trade. The demand made a centralized conquest state possible and the supply of guns from Europe was critical to its professional army.

The exact nature of Dahomey human sacrifice and scale is a bit hard to pin down since it became a bit of foot ball for propaganda by those in Europe/England to use as both a reason to keep or oppose the slave trade - and later Europeans to defend colonialism.

A good review/survey is here.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/181135