But here is a demographic look at their history in the slave trade.
-----------------
and those who know Catholic trivia know about the various folks who became slaves in the Mediterranean, including St Vincent DePaul, who after coming back founded sisters to work in the slums and encouraged rich ladies to set up soup kitchens etc.
There was even a Catholic order who raised money to ransom Christian slaves.
the reason for America's first war after the Revolution was against the Barbery pirates, who were semi automous states under the Ottomans and who preyed on shipping in the Mediterranean.
why did it last so long? Because the Europeans paid ransom for their slaves. The Americans were a bit more prickly and after years of trying to negotiate, said up yours and went to war.
According to Robert Davis, between 1 and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries.[8]
and later, a second war had to be fought when the locals decided to restart their aggression. More Wikipedia article links:
- Arab slave trade
- Barbary slave trade
- Barbary treaties
- Islamic views on slavery
- Military history of the United States
- Second Barbary War
- Slavery in the Ottoman Empire
this war, by the way, is where the line "to the shores of Tripoli" comes from.
earlier in history, the Irish raiders took slaves (until they became Christian) and later of course the Vikings became notorious for providing British and Irish slaves not only for their own farms but for trading purposes to the lands of Andalucia, and Slavic slaves to the Byzantine and Islamic Empires of the Middle East.
and of course, the Romans and Greek civilizations were run by slave labour: In the days before modern machinery, you needed man power to plow the fields and care for the crops, and dig in the mines. Many were POW's, and made slaves since the alternative was to kill them en mass, but many, especially women, were deliberately kidnapped to use for sexual slavery or to do "women's work" e.g. textile industry, help in the kitchens and gardens, do the laundry, etc. I was startled to find such sympathetic descriptions of the woes of these women in Homer, because most literature outside of Classical Greek plays, ignore women's plight.
Here in the Philippines, the Tagalogs of the northern Islands were notorious for taking slaves before the Spanish, and the history is long and complicated by religion and by the fact that the laws weren't always followed... and later the Moro attacks, especially in the Visayas, destroyed towns and took locals as slaves, and indeed minor outbreaks of piracy continue through recent times.
so what makes slavery in North America different?
the racial aspect. Race was a "marker" that prevented assimilation, and this was made worse by the Racial laws in the southern USA, and of course, the Eugenics movement is the backstory: most of the British Eugenicists pointed to the Irish when they talked about inferior races, but the American eugenics movement included Jews, Italians, Irish and blacks as people not quite up to par, and as the other groups worked their way up out of poverty, it was the blacks who were left behind to let these types feel superior.
In history, often people are described as different because of ethnicity, not race: sometimes there is a debate if they are African or white, which is of course a modern racist interpretation.
Did King Tut have a black grandmother? Was Memnon, who fought in the Trojan war, from Ethiopia or Persia? Were famous North Africans from Roman Emperor Severus to St Augustine, what we considered "black" or Berbers? Did King Arthur have a black man among his knights? Good article on these hidden figures of history here.
Having worked in Africa, I am aware of the many ethnicities and races in Africa: Masaman has quite a few videos describing the various ethnicities there and also about the African diaspora.
but in the USA, especially in today's PC kerfuffle, it is being distilled into black vs white.
Well, Andrew Young back in 1977, quipped that the British invented racism, and he wasn't wrong. The Brits hated eveyone who wasn't "one of them", and this included the Irish, and the Jews.
But of course, every country has an enemy, and often it is tribal, based on ethnicity and culture and religious differences, all of which cause misunderstanding, and in America such prejudice usually disappears after assimilation into American culture and intermarriage. But for American blacks, even when entirely assimilated, they face prejudice due to their skin colour.
sigh.
No, I don't have an answer.
The outbreak of violence in the US is because of pent up resentment and the setback of unemployment and economic opportunities due to the covid virus.
but the white students seem to be doing it because it is the "in" thing to do, just like the anti war folks in the 1970s.
And just like the anti war movement, these affluent ill-educated nincompoops will leave behind people dead and devastated and go back to their affluent life and brag about how wonderful they are, leaving the deplorables and church goers to help in the rebuilding of the broken lives they left leave behind.
quick: Do you see any of these "karens" and proud lilly white demonstrators getting their little hands dirty by picking up the trash?
But of course, all of this is being directed by puppetmasters because of the upcoming election. And that makes me wonder why.
Because I remember 1968, and that was how you got Nixon.
But in today's world, it is ominous that the police are being destroyed by the affluent PC and the crime rate, including the murder of the innocent by drug and gang related crime is again rising.
And a lot of people untrained in how to use guns for self defense are buying guns, which is very worrisome.
Trump is keeping his gun loving minions under control, and Q keeps spreading the word that "we have it under control" so stay calm. (No you don't read that in the MSM, who only report on the crazy fringe members, but it is on the conservative discussion boards.)
Trump is willing to compromise: He just sent a police reform bill to congress... but instead of a discussion, the Democrats stopped it. Why? Politics of course.
This is very ominous: Because the one sided reporting and bias by the press is encouraging the fight. So who is willing to compromise in the toxic environment in the USA?
Sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment