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Slavery dropped due to European Enlightenment values in the inherent dignity of man finally taking root among educated people in power. The cotton gin and the s
by lr4444lr 8y ago
Slavery dropped due to European Enlightenment values in the inherent dignity of man finally taking root among educated people in power. The cotton gin and the steam engine only made slaves more efficient and ramped up their quotas, not reduced the worth of their labor.
- DataWorker 8y agoNo, enlightenment values were and still are quite good at rationalizing the status quo. It was wealthy religious zealots that ended slavery, to the opposition of the businessmen and economic pragmatists.
- scotty79 8y ago> ... steam engine only made slaves more efficient ... Yeah, because so many slaves were trained to be steam engine operators. Slaves are only worthwhile if they do machine job and you don't have a machine and you don't have local population in deep poverty that you could just pay a little bit to do your thing and not care what they eat, where they sleep and whether they die or not. That's why slavery never realy caught on in Europe in industrial times. Europeans were cheper than slaves.