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Thank you for your excellent reply. I stand corrected that regard. However, the fact that the period to which your refer is some 250 years in the past supports

Thank you for your excellent reply. I stand corrected that regard. However, the fact that the period to which your refer is some 250 years in the past supports my wider point that it is specious to claim that the the wealth of current-day first world nations derives from the historic use of slave labour.

eesmith 9y ago
Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"? How many years does it take for the benefits of slavery to disappear? I think it's far longer than you do. British slavery meant more income to the government, which lead to a better navy, which lead to the ability to defend the triangle trade. A better navy helped advance British imperialism. How might Trafalgar have turned out with a weaker British navy? British control of sugar production was built on slavery. But even once the slaves were free in a legal sense, the black population of ex-slaves was still at the bottom of the social ladder. The white landowners kept political and economic control for generations, and the profits went to Britain. In the US, institutionalized racism, not just in localized Jim Crow laws and sundown towns, but also in federal policies like redlining, prevented generations of blacks from getting the same economic benefits as whites. (See Richard Rothstein's “The Color of Law”; interview at http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-... .) I know less about British history, but I do know how many thought the "Anglo-Saxon race" was above all others. You earlier wrote: "Furthermore, the civil war that was waged to end slavery ultimately brought economic ruin to the southern States that had relied on slave labour." I don't think you appreciate the full impact of slavery on the US or British economies. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Agitation_against_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#A... : > slavery was entwined with the national economy; for instance, the banking, shipping and manufacturing industries of New York City all had strong economic interests in slavery, as did similar industries in other major port cities in the North. The northern textile mills in New York and New England processed Southern cotton and manufactured clothes to outfit slaves. By 1822 half of New York City's exports were related to cotton and from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History > By 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, cotton accounted for almost 60% of American exports, representing a total value of nearly $200 million a year. Even though slavery was banned in the British Empire, Britain still profited from slave labor carried out elsewhere. The cotton mills of Lancashire produced a huge fraction of the world's processed cotton. You know where that cotton came from? The forced labor of American slaves. Quoting now from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine : > When the slave-owning Southern States of America demanded secession from the United States of America and declared war in 1861, the cotton supply was interrupted at first by a Southern imposed boycott and then a Union blockade. The South's thinking was that it could force British support through an economic boycott. ... Of the 1,390,938,752 lb of raw cotton 1,115,890,608 lb came from America.(80 %) ... Confederate flags were flown in many cotton towns. Britain's economy profited from American slavery even until the 1860s, and they knew it.
- Supernaut 9y ago
  > Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"? Yes, I do. I concede that you have demonstrated that economic benefits from slave labour continued to accrue to the UK economy until the 19th century. However, it is simply not true to flatly claim, as did the OP, that "Most rich countries are rich because they build their wealth on free labor (slavery)".
  - eesmith 9y ago
    And the French economy. Quoting from http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-involved/europe/france/ http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-invol... : > French traders were heavily involved in the slave trade. From 1721-30, French ships took 85,000 enslaved Africans to the plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. In the 1730s, they carried more than 100,000. Altogether, about 1,250,000 enslaved Africans were taken by French ships. Even after France abolished the trade, 500 French ships continued slave trading illegally between 1818 and 1831. Quoting now from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-confronts-slavery-a-demon-of-its-past/2016/05/28/0bf61b3e-2128-11e6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html?utm_term=.febc40e755e0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-confronts... : > In the 18th and 19th centuries, France was among the major European slave-trading nations, capturing and selling an estimated 1.4 million people before leaders outlawed slavery in 1848. > The country’s coffers grew rich from colonial conquests in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, where slave labor generated the commodities that French merchants then sold in Europe. > When metropolitan France finally outlawed slavery — a generation before the United States — liberation brought freedom only in theory for many blacks in French territories overseas. > “Slavery was abolished, and the old slaves became citizens,” said the historian Frédéric Regent, a renowned expert on the French slave trade. “They even elected deputies. But the plantation economy continued with the same masters, who then became ‘employers.’ ” > “What was different between that and slavery?” Tin asked. “Nothing.” > This form of economic subjugation overseas persisted well into the 1960s, when France, crippled by two world wars, lost its former empire. Many argue that the injustice persists today in the form of socioeconomic disparity between young whites and blacks, increasingly confined to peripheral suburbs and low-paying jobs. > “It’s from slavery that we have the discrimination we have today and the racism we see in France today,” said Myriam Cottias, a historian and member of the government-sponsored foundation, in a telephone interview from Martinique. > “It’s not yet totally done in France. France has many, many institutional links to slavery.” Yet again, even though slavery was officially abolished, the "economic benefits from slave labour continued to accrue". Even to the present.

eesmith 9y ago

Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"? How many years does it take for the benefits of slavery to disappear? I think it's far longer than you do. British slavery meant more income to the government, which lead to a better navy, which lead to the ability to defend the triangle trade. A better navy helped advance British imperialism. How might Trafalgar have turned out with a weaker British navy? British control of sugar production was built on slavery. But even once the slaves were free in a legal sense, the black population of ex-slaves was still at the bottom of the social ladder. The white landowners kept political and economic control for generations, and the profits went to Britain. In the US, institutionalized racism, not just in localized Jim Crow laws and sundown towns, but also in federal policies like redlining, prevented generations of blacks from getting the same economic benefits as whites. (See Richard Rothstein's “The Color of Law”; interview at http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-... .) I know less about British history, but I do know how many thought the "Anglo-Saxon race" was above all others. You earlier wrote: "Furthermore, the civil war that was waged to end slavery ultimately brought economic ruin to the southern States that had relied on slave labour." I don't think you appreciate the full impact of slavery on the US or British economies. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Agitation_against_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#A... : > slavery was entwined with the national economy; for instance, the banking, shipping and manufacturing industries of New York City all had strong economic interests in slavery, as did similar industries in other major port cities in the North. The northern textile mills in New York and New England processed Southern cotton and manufactured clothes to outfit slaves. By 1822 half of New York City's exports were related to cotton and from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History > By 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, cotton accounted for almost 60% of American exports, representing a total value of nearly $200 million a year. Even though slavery was banned in the British Empire, Britain still profited from slave labor carried out elsewhere. The cotton mills of Lancashire produced a huge fraction of the world's processed cotton. You know where that cotton came from? The forced labor of American slaves. Quoting now from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine : > When the slave-owning Southern States of America demanded secession from the United States of America and declared war in 1861, the cotton supply was interrupted at first by a Southern imposed boycott and then a Union blockade. The South's thinking was that it could force British support through an economic boycott. ... Of the 1,390,938,752 lb of raw cotton 1,115,890,608 lb came from America.(80 %) ... Confederate flags were flown in many cotton towns. Britain's economy profited from American slavery even until the 1860s, and they knew it.

Supernaut 9y ago
> Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"? Yes, I do. I concede that you have demonstrated that economic benefits from slave labour continued to accrue to the UK economy until the 19th century. However, it is simply not true to flatly claim, as did the OP, that "Most rich countries are rich because they build their wealth on free labor (slavery)".
- eesmith 9y ago
  And the French economy. Quoting from http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-involved/europe/france/ http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-invol... : > French traders were heavily involved in the slave trade. From 1721-30, French ships took 85,000 enslaved Africans to the plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. In the 1730s, they carried more than 100,000. Altogether, about 1,250,000 enslaved Africans were taken by French ships. Even after France abolished the trade, 500 French ships continued slave trading illegally between 1818 and 1831. Quoting now from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-confronts-slavery-a-demon-of-its-past/2016/05/28/0bf61b3e-2128-11e6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html?utm_term=.febc40e755e0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-confronts... : > In the 18th and 19th centuries, France was among the major European slave-trading nations, capturing and selling an estimated 1.4 million people before leaders outlawed slavery in 1848. > The country’s coffers grew rich from colonial conquests in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, where slave labor generated the commodities that French merchants then sold in Europe. > When metropolitan France finally outlawed slavery — a generation before the United States — liberation brought freedom only in theory for many blacks in French territories overseas. > “Slavery was abolished, and the old slaves became citizens,” said the historian Frédéric Regent, a renowned expert on the French slave trade. “They even elected deputies. But the plantation economy continued with the same masters, who then became ‘employers.’ ” > “What was different between that and slavery?” Tin asked. “Nothing.” > This form of economic subjugation overseas persisted well into the 1960s, when France, crippled by two world wars, lost its former empire. Many argue that the injustice persists today in the form of socioeconomic disparity between young whites and blacks, increasingly confined to peripheral suburbs and low-paying jobs. > “It’s from slavery that we have the discrimination we have today and the racism we see in France today,” said Myriam Cottias, a historian and member of the government-sponsored foundation, in a telephone interview from Martinique. > “It’s not yet totally done in France. France has many, many institutional links to slavery.” Yet again, even though slavery was officially abolished, the "economic benefits from slave labour continued to accrue". Even to the present.