It's hard core history and let's addition DE shows that we do our improvised there's. No script are usually come in the studio. Remember where we were the day before right down some thoughts that might have occurred to me in just sort of maybe bullet point form or whatever, and then we improvise, and if we don't like it, we throw it away would you like it strings together with the stuff we did previously, but the reason that matters is, I dont have a real road map or idea of how? What we're about to start here is gonna. Go we take this journey together and then you look at what you haven't say or what is that there is no chance to in a gulf the script later double check things decide if this works, or that doesn't mean a time it out, and none of that is available to us, and I think that's part

White sounds kind of different than a lot of the cinema productions, but but this is part of how we ve always done it right. So I dont know how this is going to go. The people that have advised me that I've divulged would have been to talk about the need to people that I've I've talked to have told me. It is not going to go well just about what I do like gonna go well, they said you should not touch this topic It is a no win situation. Just go. Do we get to where the crowd pleaser topics are so many in other people will love. I wrote down a quote that sort of summed up the problem. In the reason, those people saying that its attributed. I would say that now, because every quarters of somehow debunks nobody ever If anything, they call it a saying in history apparently, but the Ohio State University, historic, Merci Davis, is quoted as saying that history is often is not our present politics project

get onto the past and you can see that easily a mean that is an obvious stable when you go and look at, for example, the brand new book they're coming out on certain historical things and how they feel ten d, without the tie it in its it's something that the editors, one retired, into the current events, immunity encouraged, but the problem is, is that that means a lot of the material that you might used to discuss this topic, that everyone tells me not to discuss today is going to be woven into the political act, of our current time to read the Zeit Geiss and if there's one thing we ve seen in our current times is a big part of the problems that no one except the sources of the other side and that the first thing you say in any discussion is who are your sources in the minute you dont like them its discussion over, but this is one of those subjects, that everyone should have as part of the

Sort of foundational knowledge, as my mother was useless, as you say, intelligent people know these things right, so certain bedrock of of a knowledge base. and you might not get any higher than that for me, because that's another reason, if you want to steer clear of the show like this- is because it's a monumentally huge and a person like yours truly is a completely inadequate dealing with it. I always hope that I can be one little title in the jail mosaic. That is the picture here and that that Kyle, has something to offer that's unique to one of the things. I thought, anticipating the criticism here and wanting people, if they don't already cuz. Many of you don't know all of the stuff. I'm wanting people to have this knowledge bases that I was going to steer clear any of the controversial sources. Now you you miss out when you do that, you lose a lot cutting edge ideas. You lose a lot of the pushing the envelope stuffs very inch

Thing things at one point I thought maybe I'll do a compare and contrast with a deal while I quickly became something that was up too high of an intellectual level for yours truly also, so I thought I'm going to approach this like which showed topic where we sort of dive in dive out- and I highlight things that I think are interesting- are important. It's not chronological it's not a history of, but it's something when I look at my archive seems like a glaring omission. It's it's the discussion of the Atlantic slave trade and that period in history and some of the ideas that are out there are some of the thoughts that matter on some questions that I think are Well, I want to say that their interesting, but some of them I would, I would say, are almost the if things to ask and no one asks them which is it may be?

I'm the wrong in the wrong there? Maybe they're, not the foundation of the rights of the people, would have asked him, but you can be the judge of that, assuming that without this script we ever get to that now we did a show quite a while back called addicted to bondage. But looked at the overall human institution of slavery going back in to the very beginnings of civilization. It wasn't as in depth, as that makes it sound, but it was more of a holistic look at the slavery question then dealing and I think it specifically tried to avoid the more recent version that was specifically mostly african in nature. To give a sense of how common this thing was in human history all over the world. When we examined the sorts of reasons that that might be, and you get into these border line of setting all sorts of lenses tools. got it. But when I was a kid- and this is what we said needing to divide episode- they were always promising the kitchen of tomorrow. Today,

all these labour saving devices. We're gonna take all the drudgery of life away from you, so you could go, enjoy your golf game or whatever it was in radar ranges stuff like that, but, as we had said, dick the bondage, the ancients and the people in earlier errors and the people and some places. Still today, they have the kitchen of yesterday today and is just as good, but instead of labour saving devices that are mechanical, they have people, they do the same. Job slaves were one of the original labour saving devices and when you re, the views of slave holders in slaves, societies they will often connected to the highest You know aspirations of mankind as a whole right, it's people who do the slave type jobs that free up the people push society forward and think and and right can come up with all these you pieces of art than otherwise would not be available as they have to go to the group

restore in the morning. The marketplace would probably be more apropos and pick up the stuff for tonight's dinner and then make it right and they clean up after it, otherwise I'm and how are we going to have time to right and red you'll see that all the way in the post, cologne he'll times in the United States rain. This is how societies push forward, even in a famous Athens, the era where it was democratic, right of sort of the shining city on the Democratic Hill for people. Looking back at the beginnings of things like democracy is an enormous slave state. Nice chunk of its population was enslaved, so what was once referred to as a peculiar institution, slavery is not. We live in the strange time now. Attack I'm where slavery is universally reviled. Now I did read that there were more

more than forty million people classified as slaves right now in the world, which, if true, would make it almost certainly this period in him, history where there were the most slaves. Forty millions a lot, but sometimes the criteria is let's slavery on a sliding scale and that isn't meant to be tried, but there's kinds of slavery and it's sort of on a gradient on one hand you have things like being a wage slavery, as some people would say right people than are trapped in jobs that don't make them enough money to live, but they get paid Then you have things like bonds, slavery, debt slavery, which is really the same thing, indentured servitude all. way down to the lowest level of slavery on the gradient, chattel slavery, chattel slavery is the is, is where we take human beings and we make them things. Maybe you would be more apropos, rather than comparing them to a hammer

or a chair to compare them to some sort of animal you'd find on a farm. That's how, because that the slaveowners would often try to keep them healthy. The same way, you would try to keeps livestock healthy, but it's a u own them. You can do whatever you want with them. That's chattel slavery,. Serfdom peasantry, there's all kinds of these things, it would fall somewhere in the category, but chattel slavery is the lowest of the low and that's the kind of slavery that world had gone on when Christopher Columbus, found the new world for the Europeans in the old world. How much that Europeans isn't even the proper term because- the old world, stretched from on the edges of Europe Right Ireland, Western France, Western Spain and which now Portugal right that does the edges of the wealth of Europe. The Europe Eurasian content and you follow it all the way through their own? I mean China

on the other side is connected to this pipeline and everything in between now there's not close contact, but silk is made Can it one way monies making it the other, in other words, that there are things like em diseases, foods codes of conduct and morality that are shared I mean the Mongols alone in the thirteen hundred. Twelve hundreds would have been spread and allowed this stuff against everybody else's will. So when Columbus roles up into the new world, the so called new world and lands. Person that his landing there is a purse. from the middle ages? And this is important to point out in a Columbus was a bad guy. I think when you look at his conduct as judged by the people, of his day. At the same time it hard to imagine somebody

else showing up and all of a sudden behaving radically different ready, they were not as ruthless as someone like Columbus, how much different? Are they gonna behave and how much difference decadent gonna make everything the follows afterwards, but the impasse and then you remember is if you look- and I always do this- if you look at when Columbus was born, in other words the world he was born in too, I think he was born the fourteen fifty's the fourteen fifties is like the war of the roses in England. Go look at her at a picture, a painting of what, people were looking like in the wars of the roses era. These are nights. This is me evil combat we have even yet or were just in Columbus's day progressing to the point we're we're getting into that period. Where you have the inquisition and people being burned, I mean look at what life is like for these people in the World Columbus,

born into they break people on the wheel. The executions are public, I mean so what's person was gonna, show up in the new world and just by modern standards behave. that was an ugly world. They were coming from an as I said, not notes. Attempting these days, blame it on Europe, but I mean this: is this the way it is in North Africa, what's now the Middle EAST Europe, of course, Russia, China, the mongolian Airy Indian, and this is a shared understanding. man's inhumanity demand and things slavery. Well, it's everywhere, and it's an equal opportunity atrocity In Columbus's day before he found the so called new world laborers were more likely to care about the slave his religious affiliation than their skin color, the Christian

in Spain would enslave the moors across into North Africa, the north african peoples, who I like Moroccans and Algerians today and those people enslave the Christians as well. The Turks had lots of leaves the Arabs had lots of slaves. Italians had slave markets are the Russians. Slave, the Mongols and slave everyone. The Chinese has leaves the Indians had slaves, they had slavery in Sub Saharan Africa with so called Black Africa, and they had slavery in the Americas before Columbus even got their similar pattern to the rest of the world to some people's had it some people's didn't. Amongst

people's that did practiced slavery? It was on the slavery gradient scale to mean there were, and you'll often hear people sort of trying to defend these tribes is not really being slave. Owning tries because the slave was more like a family member, a family member who couldn't leave and had to do whatever they were told, but that is a little different on the slavery gradient scale. Then someone who's captured in war and is a slave whose held as raw fodder for some human sacrificial religious. event that is apt. Coming right, you're going to be the star of the show, and, needless to say, things like skin color did not play a role, because the peoples of the Americas would basically, in a close to each other. Skin color wasn't playing a large role at the time Columbus arrived in the old world, yet either anyone could become a slave said in Columbus's, crew

found themselves on a ship captured by pirates. Through slavers end up in some slave market on Mediterranean Island find themselves auctioned off and again please slave and the sultans fleet, or something like that white slavery, as it was called the pulp comic books of the twentieth century, but play on that. A lot right, especially the women who ended up in the sultans harem, the white women. It was such a racial trope, but during this I'm period. There was some of that in that the Turks had Chris in slaves. Soldiers which is a different slave. level on the slavery gradient scale to tat could be some really powerful slaves. Slay you own lots of slaves in slavery. Thing defies easy classification. The bottom line, though, is is one of the things we, you start to say: ok now, why did this happen? The interesting questions that come into play is so how did this become thing we're all of a sudden above

powers in the world- were hooking black Africans. Up to the end of the product or early capitalist globalized, supply chain and lodge Stickley figuring out ways to start a pipeline. Human beings from the african continent over to the Americas down. There is obviously no easy answer to this. If there's any answer at all, it's not a two plus two equals for kind of question. Certainly so I started writing down. You must scouring the history books a bunch of the different ideas that were thrown out. There is major influencing factors to this whole thing and, as my list got longer and longer and longer, I started to realize that this really isn't a list that slavery per se. You could better described this ever lengthening list of influential factors, discoveries events as something that tries to explain.

What reality was like in the so called old world in the fifteenth and sixteenth century start with those like ice was like with economic systems like, in other words, you can draw from that is that slavery is so interconnected in that world that you can't tease it out like a strand in a rope, it touches everything it influences. Everything is such a basic part of the make up of things that is impossible to talk about the influential factors in the slave trade without just talking about the inch, influential factors in life. The one thing always struck me about this era, is because some of it especially economically begins to look like well there's a modernity to it it it's not the kind of economic system we have now, but we're clearly any evolved form of Are we descended from this system that about to develop in the fourteen hundreds because it

the first truly globalized system right, because it's the first time that the so called old world and the so called new world are aware of each other first time there including in the economy, the first time you have a global economy right and yet the idea that you could take a kind of a product, capitalism, any subject human bondage as one of the commodities that it works. With the same way, you would work with sugar or tobacco, or oil. Today, it's bizarre they. They seem to be from different areas like slavery should have already died out before we got to this level of ability to Axa mise Mercantile. operations right out,

already decided that things like people should be the officially traded products on the New York Stock Exchange rate and instead of You know these old ideas going way because they don't fit into a new modern paradigm. Would instead, you see as a fusion? Don't you of this very ancient human institution of bondage, mixing with the protocol modern economic system Renaissance, the first globalized you know sometimes you'll see history books, call it a commercial revolution remark until the list Revolution or trade revolution

an era where it would not be out of place and I'm sure it's been done and I feel like an idiot for not having checked it in advance, but I mean I'm sure an economist could write this history in a way that it makes total sense as crazies etc. If you take the human being part out of this, and you just focus on numbers and trade and profit and loss and well, you can make all of this kind of work. It's the moral part. The screws up. The whole slave trade thing And if you want to be a historical optimist, you can say that they were. There were events on a historical slavery. Time line that look like there's progress happening here and there are people will eliminate slavery, do away with slavery, make rules than a further constrict slavery, and I'm not saying they're, not progress, but when you make rules, for example, I believe it was one pope that said that Christians could be slaveowners.

change could be slaves, but here on after you can't have Christians slaves owned by non christian slaveholders. Now anything is progress right direction. But this to me sounds more like really have a problem with the idea of slavery. We should have a problem with people like us being enslaved, but again going to quibble with progress. Just going to point out that the historical optimists who want to make a point, doesn't things that often, if you examine them on the ground with a critical eye, look gum again progress, but look, more like your promoting the lowest people in your society, a leveller two up on the slavery gradient scale right. Maybe someone from channel slave to weigh surf over may serve to a peasant or from a peasant joining injured servant. You know, I mean I'm not again saying it's not progress, but historical pessimist would come back with yes,

doesn't seem to mean that much when you look at how many new peoples are gonna, be enslaved and how this is going to be turned into a machine. And perhaps you could compare the entire slave trade as its always existed as a mission right go to the Mediterranean, those Old trade networks in people may take, for example, Black Sea, the Black Sea's like a church, a slave trading highway that you take em from the areas where a lot of times it was the step people, the various tribes. There would make a living rating slavic villages, stealing people and selling them they'd, be transported across the Black Sea, a lot of times to Constantinople them from their them. three I mean it's it's a trade network in people when you add the modern stuff, do it and we have investors right a big firms and and of you, I just again, it could be told in the pages of the wall. three journal. This story, if you make human being

there is a legal commodity to trade in opium. Was that way for what it just make it a legal community than it is like sugar or tobacco or oil, and mind? Reels right oil doesn't feel pain, oil doesn't suffer human beings do that right and yet, supply and demand does is good of a job explaining some of this stuff, as any other than you can think of a mean look. We ve talked about it before not a historian and it's difficult to try to take the various strands in the story and rank them in a tree eyes, type of level of importance right. This is what happened in them. This was more important. I can't do that but I can bring in some of the strands there were going on around this time period to provide the context right. So let's go back to where we started about Columbus's birth period, because that's an inch, in time in there's a lot of things that are happening during that same time, period now start with the, fact that there is the beginning

as we all know, of something your history books call the renaissance, renaissance means rebirth and it was always associated with new ideas or a better way. To put, it would be old ideas that were rediscovered the rediscovery of classical civilization was the way my old history book. You stay, A bullet now modern histories do a better job of, as I think I alluded to pointing out that the people in Europe, for example, had gotten their hands on some of this ancient greek and roman stuff couple of centuries earlier there are pouring through the scientific side of this stuff. the renaissance. They start getting and they become popular right. These work never died out therein. Small little enclaves of knowledge, including in in the arabic language, to gets retransmitted, from it, but he wasn't in wide general this emanation and then during the renaissance. All of these ancient Greek and Roman Pre, christian, cultural and philosophical and artistic works so to blow into the

consciousness of the illiterate people in Europe, and it begins to change everything and to find a historical analogy now as it is to tread into science fiction territory because it A thousand years or more before the people of the renaissance gloom and finding a book fifteen hundred years old- and it's got all this stuff- we didn't know yet in it or culture, Nations. We didn't think about or philosophical ideas that we ever been exposed to, and then this stuff reaches internet high minded changes everything that's kind of it crazy stuff behind the renaissance, rediscovery of classical civilization, but what's funny as part of the room in that this is new to the people in Europe at this time periods, because they ve been living with centuries of in a one sort of mental construct that they were working with sort of excluded a lot of these pre therein

Tal construct. Ideas right, they lived in a very christian world, want one percent professor, by described once as a fanatical steaming cup of coffee, but all of a sudden gets an injection of power. Christian in a cream or half and half into the mix, and you can imagine what that does the turbulence of the time period upcoming is in part, influenced by all these ideas that a bunch of people who had a very, very, very, very christian. view and one that was enforced, remember this was the kind of mental thing that, if you deviated, me too much. You would find yourself in dire dire, dire straits. You could find yourself burned in this period. Having a world view too far too far off the beaten path right, so that all of us and bring in these people who were immune from punishment of me, you can't burn Aristotle at the stake, but all of a sudden people might read it

startled by the way is not a bad person to pivot offer this, because one of the things that the rediscovery of classical civilization did was expose the renaissance Europeans to this idea that slavery is just fine we're if you're too running away from slavery. But all of a sudden- and I remember- reading one historian who does cried the renaissance on love affair with the classical Greeks and Romans run infatuation with them right here, you're looking at this great civilization, was so great that you could actually read stuff from a thousand years ago that they created at it's better than your stuff or more interesting or different or stimulate he hadn't thought of that right. What accounts for some, the great society there's this little bit of you know wondering what the secret sauce of classical civilization, isn't the people in this I'm period couldn't help. but notice that these societies, whether you're talking about the ancient Athenians? What you're talking about these are slave states. Maybe slavers got something to do with me you start reading some of the ancient Greek justified

patients for slavery in some of the roman justifications for slavery, and you can't help but notice that these will become like this. Damned or justification that you will hear all the way up into in a like the United States Ante Bellum, one thousand eight hundred and fifty era, or something you're still here in the the lines that listen slavery is good for the slaves. With that philosophers line, you know better to be ruled by the reason of another than no reason at all All right, you be better off listening to your master, is decisions on life Gazelle you'll be happier person than if you made your own decisions. Could you not rational the other idea that comes from the ancient greek philosophers? This idea that some people just born slaves, writers, notes that created from birth, the gods willed it or what have you used? Some of you, born greek summit, you born barbarians, the barbarians or the slaves than those that other idea from classical civilization, which was absolutely adopted by later slave states and that's that slavery was good for everybody, because it allowed society

eddies cream of the crop, I'm not sure what the right word used for these people are bad, but societies best and brightest right. The most enlightened, thinkers and statesmen and Paulina. Whatever might be, it allows those people the time to concentrate on what only they can do ease them because there are slaves to do all the drudgery work right to make them the money on the farm, whatever it might be. Freeze them to put society forward only I being a man of leisure, condemn these people play there Roland Society just like the slave play their role in society, and you can also see a cosmic organization to it. All can't you see all fits together, the point b is in time period where maybe an historical optimists could see signs that you know, with this new modern world, maybe they'll, be a more modern view of human relations when it comes to things like slavery and then all of a sudden you get this intellectual competition read a school of philosophy. The kind of by

of example, argues for just the opposite right. Well, I didn't Greece or roamed have, although slaves. He also begin to run into a terrible if this could be on the Wall Street Journal pages to. But terrible supply and demand situation that various develop Many in this day and age seem to off a resolution force. Let me explain: let's go back to Columbus's birth, again rights of fourteen fifty issue. Fifty one. Fifty two in their by this time there have been advances. in European. Oh in going travel, that's a good way to put right, oceangoing exploration in this Of course, one of the more interesting things in all your history books to go a situation where, for the most part, human beings would hug code Lines with naval vessels to going into open ocean adventuring forth into the Atlantic in the Pacific. What have you, the Indian Ocean, now there

and this is part of their their charm and what blows your way about, Polynesian in canoes Vike in long ships they they had famously done this stuff, but there's a difference between some of that and the sort of regular, ongoing commerce that will be initiated by in a man's venturing forth into the open oceans with big ships, and when you go read the accounts from when this first starts. Writes a single gotta watch. Doubt Portugal, wrecking him, a Portugal, Canyon, the Castro. All these places of animal, most western part of the european so long with Ireland and you read their early accounts, venturing forward with the ship's. If you look at a map it but you're going almost nowhere. You want to say to yourself really that's a big deal going from you know, because to Portugal to that little island right, there is only a half inch on my map, something like that but back in those days there was a very

good chance. If you went off into the open ocean, even a short distance away, you weren't coming home, and it was the coming home with regularity, part the changed everything and it was different ship designs, different navigational tools, different theories, a bunch of the intrepid individuals who would go a little bit farther than last time and then a little bit further than that go see a timeline of portuguese and starvation off of their coasts of the islands nearby than the coast of Africa, and you know every year you can see there like going a little bit farther down the West Coast of Africa and eventually the around the Tipp got the other side of cross. The indian Ocean. does a whole lot of things. Obviously right. The first thing it does, though, is open up a direct an all too central and southern Africa, so called Black Africa Right Sub Saharan Africa. European

in Sub Saharan Africa have always been connected, just not directly right. So if, if Africans from Sub Saharan Africa move across their and up to the Mediterranean Sea and get transported the slave markets. In ITALY, for example, I mean that all happens, but its very different than having a direct in a european correspondence with the great african Kingdom south of the Sahara Desert right in the Sahara Desert one of the big reasons that that's not happened before this time, it's what's seven thousand five hundred and eighty days to travel across the Sahara Desert in this time it's a total death is on armies, can't traverse at I mean that there are some slave caravans and some trading caravans, but by law This is an enormous barrier and then about that, if you look at a map north of the Sahara Desert, if you're the Europeans trying to have direct contact with so called Black Africa, you have another problem minutes. It's

powerful north african states right, you have. You have it area there's a first year of powerful north african state blocking you from Central Africa and then south of them. You have the giants, Herod Desert! You could see why the sub Saharan Africans in the European required middle men, do much interaction before this time period. But what so? monumentally different about this era- is events really the Portuguese, making their way down the african Coast get to the level Let's south of where the Sahara Desert is, in other words, their ships, make direct contact with sub saharan african kingdoms and one of the first thing that they do is grab some of the people that they see on the coastline, throw him in chains and taken back to Portugal so arbiter, maybe of things to come. This is what's happening like right, around Columbus's birth and then in fourteen fifty three. Something famously happens that once again and they

supply and demand a conversation about a global trading patterns and the price of investments and all these commodities. The in forty fifty three Constantinople falls to the Turks. Have you go? Look at a map, Constantinople, modern Day, Istanbul rights, old, roman city, the becomes a later roman city would call. A byzantine city may be and then in one thousand. Four hundred and fifty three gets taken finally by the Turks, and if you look at Istanbul today, you can see how it basically controls access to the black sea. It's the nozzle on the wineskin bag that he is black sea and, as we said earlier, the black Sea is a major major slave transport zone in this is how you get your your, so called white slaves from the slavic regions and all their I'm all the way down, the major slave markets him, and when Constantinople falls the Ottoman Turks cut off. They divert the slaves at work

being from that area to the major slave markets in the Mediterranean to their own area of the islamic areas. The Middle EAST in places like that which had always had a lot of slaves anyway, but when they This now in our supply and demand situation, we have a supply squeeze ride. What would any good business person do all of a sudden, your access to raw materials were cut off or reduced, and that's a good way to look at this too. Big slavery, even though its like the currency, basically em you people are like money and you can get money for human beings or in a straight up currency trade. There they're worth value that way, but there also, if you consider it like a prime compete, and everybody else's business, It's the same way. If energy prices went up it ripples up and down everybody's life, doesn't it affects everything the price of meat in this in the grocers everything

so that's how the slave thing is too, because everybody needs slaves. There's were relatively constant demand and Sometimes I knew enlightened policies and making that situation even worse. For example, if you say something like a whirlwind: Christian shouldn't be slaves anymore. You just cut the market, that's available. In that raw materials. Category don't use it. So this is a time harry where there's a heavy duty demand supply gets curtailed and anybody in their right mind, gonna, look a new source of raw materials and his right around the same time period that the Europeans have made direct contact with Sub Saharan Africa, which is over It's been a big source of slaves, not to the Europeans, to the islamic states. For example, there was a big big slavery oh lasted more than a decade killed a time of people in.

Now. Modern day Iraq led by the book, the black african slaves, eight sixty nine a, I believe I beg rebellion it shows you how long these training patterns have been in a working. I mean if you're in african ruler and you d feature opponent in war. You take the captives and you saw for them, or you make them your own slave. and this is not a universal thing- it just happens a lot. That's a good way to put anything right. This is not universal, it just happens a lot people fall into slavery due to crimes and be punished by their own people. The bottom line is that, at a certain point, the Europeans, and when we say that now we really mean the portuguese I mean the English are not doing this yet, for example, but the portuguese start to realise that, rather than steal your own man that man stealing is another term that they used to use force later man, stealing rather than steal your own people, you could just tat and the already existing trade network in a make deal.

with rulers in these areas, and let them just cut When for some of the slaves there already capturing selling to other people anyway, a lot of people, are gonna, make a lot of money during this time period and that's another thing. That's worth dealing with is one of those strands to try unpack here and it's a key reason why even people who had nothing to do slavery, ostensibly, were impossible to disentangle from the slave trade, because money touched everything connected everything and you never want to say that monies unimportant, but indifferent time periods, things like and see, and trade are more important than others in the Europe after a Rome fell. There was an if you could see again the business graphs of a historic performance and economic output. Over the errors, I mean that's going to be a kind of a down period. There someplace return to more

harder systems. Trade was curtailed. It was in the middle ages again the part that was percolating beneath the renaissance and then exploded were you started to see the merchant classes develop and they became so. Power and they made enough money that they wanted to be more like blue blood. In the nobility you started seeing the banking houses that would eventually be very powerful arise. You started seeing trade increase in places like the Baltic, with a heavy attic league and all that and and the rise of the italian city, states, even during the crusades that were financing. These things ratsey begin to see modern systems of investment right and shareholders and all sorts of things that look again very modern. Indeed, even see it affect everything like exploration and warfare. So this is a time period in history, where a lot of places will just higher their defence forces and usually, though,

like an in ITALY. They hire a general knows a Condottieri and that's a word that can is connected to contract or, as you Hiram yours, the contract and they often come with their own armies, early signs a contract for two years. We will be the army of this italian state and this approach to dealing with things actually is involved in this numbers explorations. I mean this looks like a giant. A well invest, did well capitalized financial expedition. If it's it's entrepreneur, rio colonialism in a sense of Columbus. If you follow his career, he went and gave presentations to potential investors, like right out of a renaissance version of shark tank in a goes to these people and says I have a proposal. I'm gonna go in the other, direction. Each Asia and we can open up our own direct trade channel right this. Is it radio, this money making thing do you gonna, be like pier one imports in the fourteen,

I d to style version of it and he gets put off in the end. The investors don't think he's got his calculations right, but at one point the rulers of Castillo, who will eventually become the spanish monarchy, they decide. They like his idea enough that they dont want and taking it elsewhere, They give him some money to sit tight on it. It's almost like a renaissance version of a non disclosure agreement or non compete, but when Columbus, eventually who takes his expedition, he's acting as an agent of the monarchy of Castillo, read the spanish monarchy to be, he's not the spanish Navy he's also a percentage deal. Right? Well, a percentage deal doesn't sound like it's out of place when you're talking about establishing trade routes with already established great states in Asia. Since that was the plan, it looks very different. Indeed, when you stumble upon lands that are not what you thought and have people on it, who cannot military, early resist. You.

Then, if you're Columbus in you're getting per cent of whatever you find or put together or whatever this expedition turns out in terms of proceeds. What proceeds when you land in modern day Haiti or Cuba, well gets a little bit dicey. Doesn't it and once again, I think the angle I'd like to get this from now and we're gonna change this angle over the course of this discussion that will focus on different things at different times. But I'm trying to get into the know how impossible this is were playing a game here. I just little games to see if we can get a step closer to understanding things a little bit more in context with these people, I mean, if you take the human element out of this question. We forget about suffering and enjoy steps and death and torture and all the things that this involves and just think of it in you know a profit or law sort of way.

the story has it it's interesting? How, as I said, it, sort of falls into place a mean, take Columbus to start with here for a second I've read some stuff recently that suggest that maybe the traditional and interpretation of what Columbus was after may be wrong. I still think those are really outlier. Things are not going. Down that tangible, I wanted to acknowledge that in he may have told There's investors one thing and had a different thing in mind with, but the traditional of impression given by Columbus himself apparently was. That he was looking for another route to Asia. Why would he want this money. Asia is where and Asia, Asia and inadequate, because these guys have like a Marco polo level of of standing of Asia. What's more, it's like a time machine version. I was reading that one of the people they were hoping to hook up with was the Congo Con in order to make it so the trade deal with them, but they don't know the Mungo Cons not in charge of the

Maria any more right there informations like seeing the light of a star from so far away. You're, seeing in the past light of a star. Marco Polo is the past light of what Asia was, but they know that's where the good spices and all that stuff come from right. Think of the money involved the spices and all the good stuff from Asia in air quotes that stuff comes, the land route to the man. Turanian european part of the World Caravan. and all those sorts of things and generally in a merchant merchant, emergent hand off, and we all know, there's juice on each of those deals right so by the time They'd arrives in the in the matter. What don't wanna call it the Euro Mediterranean Theatre, North Africa that how these spices are older than on exactly fresh and I have been a lot of markups along the way to their very very expensive and what was the old television commercial with the crazy guy? You know, you know, cut out the middle men and save Columbus really made it too.

Asia in air quotes the middle. Man's gone and the spy will arrive fresh and you can tap into a completely ripe and ready to go and already operating in a trading operation right. All you have to do is make a deal, give them something and fill your ships with the good stuff and head back home. Everybody makes a fortune easy to calculate Columbus's percentage that Right Columbus has stumbled upon a completely different sort of business thing when he rolls up into the Caribbean. I had an investor once explain to me that he considers there to be two kinds of investments and he called them green bananas and yellow bananas, hello, bananas are investments that are going to be ripe quickly. That will pay off in the short term. Green and as other ones that require watering and fertilizing improving and maintenance and all sorts

investment to eventually turn into something that is paying off Columbus was adding, if the Asia destination thing that we always thought was true is true Colombia was lookin for a yellow banana deal any stumbled into a green banana deal. He is obviously found something valuable unease got to be kitty. Don't you think this was a guy? And if you were betting on it, you were gonna. Betty was going to die somewhere on the way you know off the map to the west, so just reviving is a victory not having his true mutiny, because they think that they are never going to get to any destination in a throwing him overboard and then going home or taking the shoe been himself going home and then living in in a shame and disrepute and embarrassment I mean so this is Victory, no matter what, but it's not what he was after apparently rages after an instant pay off and he's arrived at something and require some work.

the Good NEWS is. There is a lot labour force when he gets the new world and it's the indigenous people of the IMF. it right. There's millions of them we have already established the old worlds, attitudes about things like slavery and forced labour and all that kind of stuff. So it won't be any. Problem in deciding how to employ the indigenous labour one way or the other. But you got people here to turn green bananas in the yellow bananas right, create cash cows out of it places, extract all the the good job that these islands can produce, including sugar cane use in a lot of em tobacco juice and other ones that gross tobacco juice. You can see by the way in the letters Columbus rights back now, there's one you can read, you can find online right. I guess he's riding the treasure or something cuz of these are the investor type people and he's basically explaining. You know that we found great stuff and the potential

you sure, there's much gold as you want all this kind of stuff judges will require a little bit more money. I mean this is this is fully stuff that look What like one of those dot com start ups he owes telling his old line investors. I guess not exactly what we thought that this is made even better. Just need a little more money that around financing. but he's laying out all this stuff that this that this new fine he's claimed for his employers in Spain you're always ways it's gonna pay off gold in their stuff. The even grab off the natives ears are trade or trade for their brain. let's or other jewelry I mean that's movable wealth right now you have people which is we ve already explained during this period is movable wealth and Columbus will quickly. Do a couple of wages back and forth across the Atlantic and he'll take indigenous peoples back,

with him to Spain to show off in these people make great slaves or whatever, but they start dying quickly in large numbers, and that's gonna be the problem that crops up in this whole green banana long term, investment deal the indigenous p people's we're gonna, be the labour force here are dying, like flies from multiple causes. These causes are so fascinating extreme hardcore intense. However, you want to phrase it that it takes every ounce of my strength without a script here, to keep me anchored to resist the We G Board, like Paul of the story telling towards unbelievably fascinating nature of, shall we call it first contact fall out. I did a couple of takes were just one

forever I mean you would have been justifiable if you'd said something like I didn't like the show. I thought it was supposed to be about something else. I am trying to avoid doing that again, but it's worth pointing out that. What creates the situation that leads to the Atlantic slave trade involves the fact that these indigenous peoples, who otherwise would be the workforce, aren't around any more and the number one reason I don't know what you three four five six would be ranked, but its number one and then everything else. The number one reason for this is the germ, the german tastrophe and the germ task is Its mind boggling science fiction, like twilight zones, got all those elements that fascinate someone like me, but there's a little guilt in the fact that it's a holocaust and for the most part, it's a hidden holocaust. The majority of the people affected and and

victims of this are going to be in the interior of the Americas having caught these ailments from other indigenous peoples through the trade routes and everything that they have going and most of these places in the deep interiors of the four areas of the american continent won't be discovered for essential, or more when Louis by the way, finds the peoples and cultures of the northwest in places like that in and tell the people back in the Eastern United States what these

Here's your like! He has no idea that he's looking at remnants and survivors and rebuild errors and people whose cultures had been skeleton eyes. News numbers reduced by eighty to ninety five percent has never been anything like that in his book. The slave trade author, who Thomas calls in the population collapse, I'm always fascinated with things like the black death in Europe, but eighty five to ninety five percent numbers is much worse than the black death and, what's so fascinating about how Europe and places affected by the black death, or maybe you could even go back and say the Justinian plague earlier than that is what they do to society's. It's, not just the number of people who died, it starts destroyed.

the things the framework of societies in the though the religious bed, rock sorts of elements, the interaction between human beings, the hierarchy them in every thing it's turning Side down, societies become unstable. Survivors are like traumatized. I was regeneration and then, when it comes back again and takes out survivors well, as Charles See man had written about these diseases- and I mean this is the closest you'll ever find to a literal version. Where you could use the term Pandora's box and have it apply, because when the european show up- and it's not just the first in a crop of them- I mean it's. This. Establishing this regular back and forth is what really

the Vikings didn't spread a germ task prefer right when they were here in the ten twenties, but when it gets going, it involves all the diseases against a population that has never had any of them. Charles, he man road. Quote it was as if the suffering these diseases had caused in Eurasia over the past, Millennia were concentrated into span of decades and quote in his book. Inhuman bondage historian of slavery, David Brian Davis, put it this way to give you a sense of a mean if this is a pandora's box of of bad things that can happen to you. What exactly are these bad things name you watch in the Box, Davis Rights Court, the American Indians throughout the hemisphere had little capacity for resisting imported diseases, both temperate and tropical pathogens, including

small pox, malaria, yellow fever, influenza, typhus and the plague. Given the previous isolation of the western hemisphere, this disaster has been called a virgin soil pandemic. Even whites, he writes, suffered heavy mortality of the twenty five five hundred colonists who arrived in Hispaniola in fifteen o two one thousand die in a fairly short period of time, but the spam Urge were bewildered, he writes, and some even horrified at the Indian population, seem to evaporate before their eyes. End quote: he also rights that they couldn't just compensate for the disease deaths by increase in the birth rate, because the people of child bearing years whereas badly affected as the old and the young, took out everybody in terms of numbers. Well, because no one knows how many people were in the area

Because in the pre Colombian Erin, nobody has a good idea of numbers are percentages, and some of this stuff mean you keep. Your fingers cross might be answered by a dna type stuff in the future, but am Davis rights quote while specialists differ with respect to numbers which are necessarily somewhat speculative. We are clear: really considering the greatest known population loss in human history. That is more time Letty as a percentage of population, the population central Mexico may well a follow. My almost ninety percent in seventy five years, estimates for peace through an Sheila. He writes where the diseases spread well before the arrival of Europeans are almost as high that rate was even worse in the Caribbean? He writes where pestilence coincide, with the economy and a system and much mass slaughter estimates of his Fanny Allah's pre Colombian error, whack and I believe it's tie now. The population range from about three

thousand to half a million by the fifteen forties. There were fewer than five hundred survivors end quote now. The thing about the germ Tasker Fee is that for the most part, I'm sure we can quibble in there's ways you can argue that it will impact numbers. One way that, for the most part, I wouldn't have mattered, who showed up or what their values were to initiate. First contact. This germ task of Holocaust is happening anyway. The people who first showed up could have been angelic, pacifist and you're still gonna lose. Look. Let's pretend you can make it better by having a different, Firstly, we should only seven item is just it's a holocaust anyway, you look at it, but, of course, the people that showed up to initiate first contact are not angelic pacifists. They are, in fact, quite the opposite

and there is a sense here- part of it because Columbus's lucky may, if you believe the accounts he's he's landed in the garden of you he could just as easily landed in some island, fuller cannibals or you know he could have got really I'm lucky and land in one of those areas, the Americans have organised stage with organised militaries people ready to resist and fight, and lots of them was steady lands and new place with the natives Digg is people's. There are almost hopeless Lee aim and submissive and passive and friendly in sharing and opening curious and innocent. Look at that time period. These people coming from the old world Come from. Let's remember you would think that history would always be moving in one direction and we beginning less and less terrible to each other over time. Right sure really things being done, Dewey

other in this time period or not as bad as when we were practically animals and the very distant past, but you'd be surprised. Those of you who know this purely will know what I'm doing About I mean the area you talk for, like fourteen hundred to seventeen hundred its brutal and be We have been trying to figure out. Why forever? What's that the culprit that that is the usual suspects, although people make arguments, is, region, because this is when you have the great split in western Christianity, Protestantism and Catholicism, and that sort of turns the fire up, maybe literally in the intensity level. Was ethical wars in the world view in the hatred for each other and that, in the sense that the stakes are biblical in nature, the point is to look at the way. The spanish behave in the Netherlands go look at how the Turks Haven, the Balkans go look at the thirty years war and the apocalyptic see that is good The English in Ireland go look at their own. How about this?

a generation before Columbus's birth, Tamar lanes runnin around just east of here- and you know, killing fifty to twenty million people. These people come from there your political equivalent of the Serengeti, plain gonna unleash them in the Galapagos Islands and the Did genus flora and fauna There are going to become endangered. Pretty quickly, we obviously dont have the indigenous peoples account of these happenings. But we do have the hum accounts of people who were there defenders. I mean I'm thinking of one dominican, spanish friar, in particular, a name bar tell em Dellis costs us who is known as the defender of the Indians he's he's a famous figure

in places like South America. Even today, in spanish circles, he has a more mixed heritage because who's gonna love person that that paints, the country in such a negative light. There's something known as the black legend, which is a contention among some historians, that the the enemies of Spain nay, geopolitical enemies like the anguish of the dutch or religious enemies, like the Protestants of all stripes conjured up this, this terrible ledge The spanish cruelty that isn't deserved and Bartolomeo Dallas causes work is often say it, sort of the fountainhead right the origin of the black legend of trying to research. This a little bit night, I stumbled upon one hist rain who, in the minute, I read her sort of it you and the situation of ring true to me so that which had said was that the blue, legend itself into in terms of the facts on the ground is probably true.

What's going on in the Americas, for example, the people like Bartholemy jealous cause us talks about, but that the region, it's unfair and sort of propagandistic by singling out the Spanish is somehow unusually cruel, indifferent these people, these other trees that were often singling out the Spanish were hiding the fact that they themselves have a history in the Americas and amongst the slave trade. In all these things that have every bit as dark moments in black marks, the spanish stuff, so it's Ferris single them out for behaviour. All these european colonial powers will be engaged in one way or the other EL, as causes talks about the spanish tree one of the natives aside from the whole disease question, and he basically portrays them. The way we suggested like predators used to fighting and dying over the water hole in Serengeti who are unleashed upon people, that dealers costs

refers to, as gentle lambs always portrayed in the sort of a garden of Eden, light and maybe the beginnings of some of these ideas of the noble, savage, trope and delicate. says quote? It was up on these gentle lambs imbued by their creator with all the qualities. We have mentioned that from the very first day they clapped their eyes on them. The Spanish fell like ravening, wolves upon the fold or tigers and savage lions who have not eaten meat for days. The pattern, established at the outset. He writes, has remained unchanged this day and the Spanish, still do nothing, say, tear the natives to shreds, murdered them and inflict upon them untold misery suffering in distress tormenting hurrying. Persecuting the mercilessly We shall in due course describe some of the many ingenious methods of torture that they ve, invented and refined for this purpose, but one.

get some idea of the effectiveness of their methods from the figures alone, when the spy finish first journey there. He writes the indigenous population of the island of Hispaniola stood at some, three million. Today, only too hundred survive the ILO of Cuba, which extends for a distance almost as great as that separating validated from Rome is now to all intents and purposes, uninhabited And two other large, beautiful and fertile islands, Porter Rico and maker, have been similarly devastated, not living soul remains today on any of the islands in the Bahamas. He writes which lie to the north of his fanny Allah and Cuba, even though every single one of the sixty or so islands in the group as well those known as the islands of giants and others in the area? Both large and small, is more Fertile and more beautiful than the Royal gardens in Seville climate is as healthy is anywhere on earth, the name

if population, which once numbered some five hundred thousand, was wiped out by forcible expatriation to the island of Hispaniola Policy adopted the Spanish in an in depth, or make up losses amongst the indigenous population of that island. End quote so with this again, friars saying is that already the Spanish you're trying to figure out work around to their labour issues. People disappear on some islands, they go. At them from other islands and bring them in which depopulate the old islands, and then they die in the in the mines anyway. So you can only keep that up for so long.

Now the actual reading of dollars causes whose work is nightmarish. I was going to include one of the really horrible scenes. Dennis costs us talks about milk ease very graphic. It's it's! I'm that's group and levels staff. Me really horrible, but you can't differentiate one from another and are these things he saw himself in some more heard about, but it's it's That is anything you can listen to and it completely helps explain. Why, in addition to disease, there would be less and less of the natives, if not only you killing them, but you're scaring the heck out of them. They're gonna leave. So these are, being depopulated is due to several things, including these people fleeing. You know who wouldn't flee, but then you add to that the fact

that when the spanish start using the indigenous people that they have left for the purposes that they have in mind right, the creation of the processing plant them turn these green bananas into usable, yellow bananas. The work kills the natives Mandela's cost, It's about that! Any links it to these organised butcher rees because he will basically Say that after the men are all killed, the Spanish will take what's left and those are the people they get put to work and jealous costs as well, after the fighting was over and all the men had been killed this surviving natives, usually that is the young boys, women and the children were shared out between the victors? One got thirty another forty, a third as many as a hundred or even twice that number everything depended, on how far one was in the good books of the despot who went by the title of governor the pretext under

the victims were parcelled out in this way was that their new masters would then be in a position to teach them the truths of the christian faith, and thus it came about that a host of rule grasping and wicked men, almost all of them pig ignorant put in charge of these poor souls, and they do charged this duty. By sending the men down the mines were work, Conditions were appalling to dig for gold, and putting the women to labor in the fields and on them asters estates to till soil and raise the crops properly a task only four toughest and strongest of men Women and men were given only wild grasses to eat and other anew. Tricia's foodstuffs The mother of young children promptly, saw their milk dry up and their baby he's die and the women and men separated and never seeing each other, no news. Children were born the man he writes die.

Down in the mines from overwork and starvation, and the same was true of the women who care. Pushed on the estates the islanders previously. So numerous he writes began to die out as would any nation subjected to such appalling treatment. End quote in his book. The slave trade author, Hugh Thomas calls what's happening in the Caribbean during this time period, a population collapse and it warms that goals of every humanists, huh to hear somebody screaming out about the injustice of at right into the pages of the history books to it these represent that there were good people out. There were ready to stand for something like this in the defence of good people by the way, according to deal as causes himself, when he got to Spain, to inform the king of what was going on in the new world, he was talking to Spaniards on the street

people, he knew, and nobody had a coup that this was going on. They were completely ignorant of it reminds you of stories you here today about products that you like and are being made by virtue will slave labour in some poor country and with drowning in more media than you can shake a stick at. We don't hear the story, so not that hard to believe it is worth pointing out. The dealers costs us. His views on all this stuff will continue to evolve throughout his entire life and he ll start off as well Person Hill evolve into a sort of a middle version of himself and then by the end of his life, he will renounced some of the things: that he believed in the middle version of his life. He starts off as a guy who arrives in the new world, his father was there like right after Columbus brought this causes as a kid who go the new world perfectly seemingly ready to become one of those colonists. Right, he's gonna own slaves at a key action may be. Did I M going to do that lifestyle and there's a couple of things, they just change him.

One was he was an eye witness to the conquest of the island of Cuba, which seems to have shaken him to his car. He said something like he saw was there that no one should ever see and then as a famous incident- and I dont know true any of this stuff is it they all have a sort of a George Washington chopping down the cherry tree sort of ring to them. At the same time its gets its often cited as the seminal moment in his life like when the light bulb, goes off over his head. And again, whether or not that's true is questionable, but I loved because it's another example of somebody even or dealers, CASA speaking out sort of to the gods of history and leaving some example of a light in the darkness back then somebody complaining about the inhumanity and injustice of the way people were being treated and its recounted in the introduction to the penguin version I have a Dell has cost us is on a short account of the destruction of the Indies, threatened by historian, Anthony Pagan

and he writes quote. The story is now a famous one that morning, a recent arrival on the island, the Dominican Antonio Montesinos delivered, a sermon in the church of Santo Domingo, taking his text from Saint John He drew an analogy between them, natural desert, in which the evangelist, had chosen to spend his life and the huge in desert, which the Spaniards had made of the once fruitful court. End quote parent icicle island of Hispaniola and turned upon the colonists. Now, quoting the friar quote with what right he demanded of them and with what justice do you care these poor Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude. By what authority have you made such detestable wars against these people who lived peacefully, gently on their own lands. Are these not men, do they not have rational souls

are you not obliged to love the measure selves pegged in them? Rights quote the last three questions were to become the reference of every subsequent struggle to defend the rights of the indigenous p. Both of the Americas for lost causes, in particular. The third. Are you not obliged to love the measure, ourselves was guide his actions for the rest of his life. End quote now, as I said, Dela causes views will continue to evolve for the rest of his life and he won't believe at the end of his life, what he believes in the middle of his life, just like you didn't believe in the middle of his life when he believed earlier on. in the middle of his life, he thinks he has an answer to how to stop. This population collapse in this injustice. His

answer is to bring in other people to do the work that is killing the indigenous people and the other people he think should be brought in to do this are Africans from some Sahara, Black Africa. A couple decades later in his life, he will decide that no one should be slaves, but during this, I'm period? He thinks that this is the humanitarian answer and was so hard to get our minds around is that it actually probably is some sort of an advance, but it's a six Dean century version of a moral monetary in advance, which doesn't look like much of an advanced of those of us in the twenty first century There is also an element here of throwing one group of human beings under a boss in order to improve the humanitarian circumstance Another group of people are

Something recently- and I dont know if it was Fernando Cervantes, his book come on Conquistadores or a new book he has out, but it was talk about the extra responsibility that the portuguese and Spanish felt in this area, because They were the ones who had to write the original laws as compared to something like an forget where there was an already an ongoing slave trade, and they were just essentially customers. So compared to a drug situation, its work thing to be buying dry from the manufacturer or from a middle person. It's another thing to be setting up your own math labs and somebody appears to be discussions of rain different level of culture? billowy here and a lack of laws on how you run things right? It's on up to the spanish or the Portuguese, how the effort? in rulers in Africa handle the beginnings of the slave trade, but here at ground, zero in the Caribbean. Any is you have to organise it from the get go so Things are a little bit different, an you

And if you look for them find clear evidence of Troy, to somehow be something like humanitarian law. the laws strike us as nibbling around the edges and get frustrating and a lot of these laws that look like their done for the welfare of the natives are, in fact a sound, the business decision, sometimes those two things dovetail, for example, keeping the Aid is healthy, works in favour of both the dominican friars, who are advocating for their welfare and the business people who would like to see their product show up to market in good shape. commanding the highest available price or winning fifteen thirteen, the Portuguese, ass, a rule sang you can't have more than a certain number of slaves on a slave ship that is but they. Humanitarian benefit cause if you're on the slave should be, will be glad you're, not his pack tightly to your neighbors, you otherwise might be, but it's a good business It is too, I mean if we were talking

bout tomatoes here, you'd rather have them, show up to market unbruised and in the best shape right. So, Sometimes what might appear to be humanity Ryan in nature. Might just be a money. Question you and it's not always easy to disentangle those things. Now there is a huge move made by the rulers in Spain, I went eliminate slavery in the new world, like a rule, no slavery, so the p on the ground just come up with ways around it, including the fact that there is exceptions to the rule. I think he was Queen Isabella. That said something like ok, no slaves unless they're cannibals and so all of a sudden. All these slaves that are king on these plantations in the Caribbean just happen to be cannibals, see how that works, but its affecting the labour pool, none the less

and people who are not humanitarians, people that are worried only about the bottom line right. The figures, the profits of the accounting those people notice right away to that we'd better, be talking about replacement workers and those, placement workers are probably going to have to come from Africa in his book. The slave trade, which is heavily geared towards the economics of it all you, Thomas Rights Quote Philip to the african slave trade was naturally given by the trend. Words: the outlawing of indian slavery in the Americas. As a result of the agitation of our Dallas cost us and other Dominicans, an indicator of the mood in fifteen. Forty four is shown by a letter of Crystal Ball D, been event: a public prosecutor of the Supreme Court in Mexico to the king. Now quoting the letter to the king quote every day the gold mines or giving less profit because of the law of indian slaves in the air

If your majesty abolishes local slavery, road Benevento, there will be no alternative to allowing blacks into the land at least in the mines. End quote now: that's for Mexico. where there was a ton of movable wealth when the Spanish conquered that area, but one should take away all the stuff. That's there. I mean the goal that sitting out in buildings and decorations mean the movable. Well, then, it's all about ok, how do we get the in the well the land. I returned the green bananas in the yellow bananas and if there is not going to be native, somebody's got to do the work and, as we had said, it was only a generation before that the Europeans have tapped into african slave trade and the Africans are an alternative for any number of reasons, the first one and the most obvious Is there they're right? There's huge demand explosion during this period and here's labour there. So that might be number one reason, but there's a bunch of other reasons in the country

each to some very uncomfortable realities, including one again treating human beings as though their non human and having an exchange rate that reminds one of a currency exchange rates are and how many dollars to the pound. Emily Deutsche marks to the Franco. Many young end the rouble. How many indian slaves to the african slave. This is like a land mine and I feel like remain counties all throughout this discussion and so on of how we should approach these cultural M position they can explode in our faces cause they're a combination of offensive, we're dealing with people with a completely different mindset, there's a bunch of The go into this night thought we're going to deal with it together. We ve got to this I am, I am going to look at it and look at it from all sides, we're gonna, unravel and try to untangle. What's goin on here. How do we untangle something like this famed historians, slavery, David, Brian Davison, inhuman bondage, has this

line, and what this essentially is is something that historians can see writ down, this isn't anecdotal evidence. This is that exchange rate, the humanist Ange rate from one type of human, with one color skin and from one culture to another type of human with another color skin from another culture. Davis rights quote throughout the new world, colonists agreed that the labour of one black was worth that of several Indians. End quote. no one David says: colonists in this case means early first contact colonists, us the Spanish and the Caribbean, the Portuguese, in Brazil, The going rate is multiple Indians for every African. now in an earlier era, people like the Greek,

Aristotle, and what not might consider that assign right there that you should be a slave. Obviously, there good added they make good slaves, that's a sign that their therein that class of people born to be slaves, and if you go to light Anti Bellum South, and maybe the eighteen twenty two in thirty, is aging forties. They'll make it at all the racial question right will. That's just how that's the naturally that's the genes, and you can see it in the people much there just born that way, the key concept of race as we understand it today develops during this era and if its valuable to learn about this error? If for no other reason than that, considering the importance of the. Concept of race in our modern world. Before this time period, it wasn't like people were all kumbaya and didn't notice. You know the difference between Us and then the them group was just a lot bigger and you skin color, was only one of many things that played into it for an ancient Greek, some one who was

from Africa they would call them Ethiopians. Probably that was in the ancient world agreement of may be thought of. The Miz opens sure they might have had some issues with them, but just like they tat issues with the skins in the Thracian in the apparatus and the Persians. I mean this difference in color that separates people of every nationality into groups of people that are only designated their skin tone that comes from this era, MA historians have done a wonderful job of weaken deactivate. This land mine in front of us explaining why you might pay more or if you were a slave owner or might have to pay more for an African, the sub saharan african slave. Then a native american slave, and it has to do with completely logic and understandable reasons that we wouldn't We stand today in the free labour market. Simply

based on the value to the employer, that's a weeds and freely remark simply based on the value of the slaveholder for retaining free market. I we consider this, for example, besides the fact that the labour is there, which is huge. Africans come from the old world which me means that a lot of the things that people take for granted amongst people of the old world includes the four kids, I mean they understand things that just come with the territory that everyone would be expected to know, and if you didn't know them, it would impede your ability to be a functional. Her or slave. I mean how about horses you go to the new world and remember they don't know about horses? They don't know about cattle. These are the things that are a very big deal- I mean horses cars and trucks and and lanes and railroads all rolled into one in this period. If you add a word, or a slave who couldn't,

right a horse couldn't care for a horse was scared of horses. I mean that make them a lot less valuable right there than someone from the old world, and there were several african try, sub saharan african tribes than that were famous for dealing with horses were right. There you pay more for someone who could deal with horses in the free market if you're running a ranch than someone who can't what about our agriculture large scale, agri business the new world they of course planted things did farming, but there was a lot of honey and gathering going on, was a much. It was a much less rigorous agribusiness kind of style and people there didn't know what they were doing when you started to put them into giant teams of of workers under overseers immediately, but in Africa they had large scale agribusiness. they grew all kinds of stuff. In fact they do things in Africa that the Europeans want to grow in the new world, but didn't know how to grow very well in the new world, so the act

We can show them how rice was a perfect example. So what again, if we're talking about free labour here and you're, trying hire someone for your rice, growing business to your hire. Someone who doesn't know how to grow. Rice has never worked in agribusiness or do you hire someone who's worked on. Many farms knows how to grow right and knows how to grow rise, so well, you're going to show you how to grow it all of a sudden. It's not you hard to see why one Africans, it might be worth more than multiple indian slaves. there was another reason that was brought to me that I hadn't thought about that. Very interesting, and I forgot I apologize. I should have written down where I'd seen it, but someone had made the point that, when your tongue, think about original slaves. You're, not gonna, let second generation third generation talking about people who are captured in Africa and am my thanks to Brenda E c. events in the historian who wrote what is slavery where she reminds us that the trauma

that is slavery, starts much earlier in the process that we think it does. The actual capture can be dreamily dramatic and the time between capture and making it to the coast to get on the slave ship is often well more soon severe and than what most of us ever deal within our lives and that's before they even get on the slave ship. which, as we know, is awful in its own right, but the p that are being captured in Africa are often being captured in wars and the people you are getting are often warriors. These are soldiers and, with comes all kinds of things and, as I was making a list of these things, and I was reading historians talking about them. You couldn't help but notice, there's a lot of cross over in what would make a valuable soldier to a commander and wouldn't what would valuable slave to a slave owner or a laborer to a free employer, can take, for example, physical fitness, these are people.

they have taken care of their bodies, they ve train, they ve worked out daring in good shape, their strong right. They ve. Probably we probably done calisthenics exercises in all kinds of things that puts them in good shape. To begin with, then you talk about things like discipline, and the ability to fall commands working groups efficiently a command, others like an officer and the ability to be Tough and resilient mean these are all qualities that in soldiering and in a labour force free. Or slave and finally, The Africans from Sub Saharan Africa have a seat, for power and there's no other way to put it. A superpower that has served them well for millennia and now terrible nasty. Ironic twist makes them a better

laborer in the new world Also- and I've always it s sort of an invisible pathogenic force field over. Their entire region of Africa The disease is that this force field, contains within it kills outsiders reliably mean it keeps the riffraff out of central and southern Africa for looking at it from a native whose the live with these diseases from time immemorial, but that doesn't mean central Africans, for example, dont get malaria they do they just don't suffer as badly due to thee. You know in here It is long term resistance that they ve developed rather as a standard medical staff, as we all know what it means The natives are less affected by it outsiders go look at your classic history of the pith. How

but wearing white explorers going into deepest darkest Africa and how lethal that is for them during this time period, the Portuguese are gonna start setting up forts slash trading posts slash holding areas for slaves. All up and down the african coast ran off the right off the mainland and the people there station. There are going to die in droves, also actually remember an ongoing discussion back in college. I would the other his major the history geek over whether or not Alexander the great could have conquered sent well in southern Africa. I was on the side of the people who said that he could not, because his whole army would have died from the disease was my. Argument. Forget the Sahara, I'm enough of an Alexander fan to think he could have handled the logistical nightmare that that would have been, but

there is no logistical defence against In a malaria or in that area The truth of the matter is of Alexander's army and Alexander had died from disease, and Africa, Alexander, probably, would have ended up dying, then from the same thing that actually killed him in Babylon, which nobody knows what that is, some people poisonous nefarious. But if it wasn't, it was probably one of those diseases like malaria that would have Destroyed Macedonia in Macedonia in Army, had it ever made it to sub Saharan Africa, but the point being that when the Africans are taken to the Americans to the new world, they don't die. Anywhere near as quickly as the native American, the indigenous peoples do and they don't even die as quickly as the Europeans do. This is a super valuable commodity. Obviously, if you own people, because you run

have one that live longer than one or two or three that didn't now. Is this going to work in the face of the african slave act. Now it's going to be something back we prolong the agony of slavery, meant they got to live longer before they expired on the job in some of these because they were able to rationalize not even taking the invest meant money that would be used to make life a little easier on their slaves, because they were gonna die anyway. The investment wasn't even worth it. Just from the death, and they did so That's the very long winded and multi faceted, examination of how the heck Africans got stuck into this logistical soup. Why line that was developing now between these two worlds? That

up until recently had not been connected or even known of each other's existences. Now, just because you have african labour in the Americas, starting doesn't mean native american slavery died out. In fact, there's going to be quite a bit of it. They may not work well in the mines or the agribusiness area, but there's plenty of Europe in slaver. I read that word and one of the new histories and in its being used in place of slave owner in slave it's a lot harsher, but probably should be right, and so so, if you're in slaver, there's plenty of jobs on your farm or in your household or in your kitchen nor Who knows I mean we forget the element that destroy the hidden between the lines element of sex slavery in the whole slavery question, but its enormous, so lots of things that some one would find the native population value for, even if they couldn't do this sort of jobs.

other they're bringing in old world people to do, and I think it's worth for a second examining the numbers a bit in what we're talking about your time to zoom out now that we ve laid found Asia for how it got this way to what it is and then how it develops. Storing Brenda a Stevenson from you see allay whom we hold it earlier in her book. What is slavery goes over the numbers a little bit, and these are all difficult to figure out occasionally, because sometimes the wreck are great, and sometimes there not, but she said Is that most of the historians dealing with this subject now agree that some twenty eight million Africans or enslaved and sold between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries with us, the fourteen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds when she says cool approximately twelve point, five million left for the Americas in the Caribbean. About

Sixteen million purportedly were traded not across the Atlantic, but rather to North Africa, the coast of the Indian Ocean and throughout the Middle EAST the eleven million or so who arrived in the Americas did not account for the millions, some believe at least four million who die. It is part of the slave rating warfare during the forest Marches to the slave trading coasts or who pair, in the middle passage, the ocean trip from Africa to America result. Scurvy and other diseases D. Duration, starvation, harsh treatment or suicide nor does it measure she writes the millions who lost their homes and families and who were physically display. As a result of the trade end quote, and you can trace the development of all of this, so economically. As I said, this is what makes the whole period seem like it's beyond it sell by date,

the mind so sottish unique to shake your head out of the lethargy when you just assume we're talking about free labour, here, but you're, not I mean You can see how the slave numbers go into orbit in terms of a growth serve as soon as some of these early places in the new world start churning out the first really popular, yellow bananas right green bananas turn into the yellow bananas and the young? banana in this case is probably sugar. Is hard to get your mind around what a big deal. Sugar could be, not a big deal. Now I mean it's just in everything. Its ubiquitous, you don't even think about it. It's not that expensive, but what if it was what, if they only made it in a few places in one, if there was no good alternatives, Can you imagine the value of this? What would you pay right

go to war. Over the, I mean it's fascinating to think something that is like thinking about power. Or in terms of value in Egypt, it doesn't even compute yet to think of oil It's a think of something that really big in our world now. The point is all of a sudden there's a sugar boom. When I'm you know year, and other places, all of a sudden develop this huge appetite for something they didn't have a huge appetite for before they have to have it and doesn't grow in a lot of places, even four Columbus Mesa's. To the Americas, the the Spanish the Portuguese. Have some islands from the earlier age, governor stuff that, in a leads step by step to Columbus and the one they're out sort of off the african coast or out into the landing. A bid can grow sugar, and so the instantly start turn in those places into in a little growth centres.

but they're going to pale in comparison to what's going to happen in the Caribbean and in Brazil, where these place turning to sugar factories run by human, labour and churning out wealth of the sort that can keep whole countries afloat, but the demand for labour is never ending, whereas in the Americas you will have a very unique situation in North America during the famous american slave period. Were slaves are able to keep their pop elation levels up. through marriage and birth rate. That happens. Very few other places. Normally. This is a one way trip and children and are not part of the deal historian, David Brian Davis. Put it this way, and this is his by the way. I'm is a little bit of a long corporate. It's his way of despair, being the green banana yellow banana thing. The coming in

taking the movable wealth first and then figuring out. Ok, what's the long term wealth in this place? And how do we get to it? And he writes quote why, European settled each new world colony in a special and often for two, this way, we can I also see a more general pattern being repeated from his. Fanny, Allah and Brazil in the sixteenth century, Virginia and Carolina in the seventeenth first. He writes we noticed strongly human element of greed, A desire for instant wealth from gold and silver, whether still and from Indians seized from Spaniards by dutch, british, french pirate ships or gained enforcing Indians to work in the mines for mineral wealth. He continues the own here's, the green Bananas quote in a second and usually later, alternative colonial leaders turned to cash crops such as tobacco and especially sugar, produced by

Slaves imported from Africa after initial experiments with the indian labour. For reasons we will later examine the african workers could never come close to reproducing their numbers, except in the Chesapeake, in the seventeen twenties and inside Carolina half century later. Hence he writes the need for a continuing and growing stream of labour from Africa to make up for the slow mortality, clear, new land and found new colonies for cultivation. Much If the new world then came to resemble the death furnace of the ancient God Moloch consuming african slaves. So, creasy numbers of europeans- and Your white Americans could consume sugar, coffee, rice and tobacco and quote net- might sound harsh to some people, but one could make the case that That still applies today, we just have

in a slave labour or close to slave labour, in some places producing supplies that not just a man, can anymore, but everybody uses and consumes- were still addicted to bondage. The terms may be a little different, though, under the benefits, more spread out And this is a good time now that we ve sort of laid the foundation for how did this even come to be too take a more blitz addition oriented approach here. Because, as I said, I'm not qualified to give you the histories of slavery, but we should talk about some of the really interesting aspects of it and the first one here is this: lack of an ability- and maybe it's just me- and maybe I lack the imagination, but I'm sharing with you the fact I'm having a hard time, seeing really plausible counterfactual in this situation,

No other alternative things that might have taken place as opposed to this nightmarish outcome because there's a factual that are really easy to imagine the classic one Louis play within the United States maybe they do in Britain to is what, if the bridge, he had won the Revolutionary WAR, the American Revolutionary WAR, because that could easily have happened. It's not that to imagine, that's literally ace sort of a turn of fortune kind of thing whereas something like imagining a significantly different, an unfolding of the new world, in the first century, or to me that that, to me looks more like a mudslide like a force. nature sort of deal where the best intentions of the most humanitarian of people in any of these societies. Would drowned out by the sheer cry. of momentum of the time I mean

in a week even talk about it, but it's only a little a couple years. I think after Columbus finds the Caribbean King he's found thee Asia is, he would have called it when somebody actually goes. The other way Vasco Da Gama around Africa into the Indian Ocean does find Asia in air quotes, precipitating what I It is probably immediately after just for inflation and all tat sort of financial nonsense, but I think can easily say, precipitating the greatest financial. Boom. In the history of humankind, globalization one point out right all of a sudden. The whole world is connected trade routes with regular shipping, odd eight had in the money that could be made in Europe. As we said, transitioning from a period where things like got your name and your birth in your aristocracy in your blue blood and all that stuff really mattered as to whether or not you can participate in a lot of different things and that was being blown open by all

things are in a professional tied into the plague and population. This the brazilians of of way, to try to untangle the rope that represents the Zeit gazed in this era, but money he's not a bad way to sort of frame. It. I think, we're you can judge human these. How quickly you bounced back of this is like an inevitable mudslide. That's gonna bury this a lot of people in this first contact soda period, how long to take you do morally and humanitarian sort of collective sense. dig your way out of the mudslide read how long I long till you rebound from this tragedy that a creation of forces that no one had ever seen before, fused mentalities that are only very recently, having the middle ages reflected back to them in their history. The rearview mirror.

These kingdoms and empires and states are all in direct competition with each other in places like Europe and when the Americas are discovered Lee and or Competition GIS seeps over the Atlantic Ocean into the new world and at the spanish and portuguese they were gonna keep the new world all to themselves just because they got there. First, there crazy history, geeks Yours truly always enjoy talking about the treaty, a toward the sea as the one where the Pope brokers this deal, whether the porch, He's in the Spanish get to divide the undiscovered planet in. two between them thinking they're going to actually make this deal. Stick with the rest of the countries of the world is not me does have

The fact that, in the reason the Portuguese can have a stranglehold on the African Atlantic's trade stuff is because they are the ones who get according to that treaty control of of the west african Coast, where their building all those forts slash, holding pens. So it has an effect, but the English will become the British in the early. Seventeen hundred right as part of this changing from kingdoms in two states- They'Re- not gonna, pay attention to this once there is the religious schism you know between Catholicism and protestantism in other people, that, Catholicism, don't pay any attention to anything the Pope's as anyway, I don't care Dana the Americas Right These other countries are in a crash. The american Private Party there just can it be a little behind places? Spain, the whole time I mean Spain, Albion, like California, Texas. You know in the not too distant future. Remember it's gonna, take hundreds of years to explore all this new country and the other your

the powers of about fifty seventy five hundred years behind them every step of the way, so the spanish and portuguese, this head start and then, when you their country's arrive. They have all the ways to make up for lost time, though, like stealing the spanish stuff, through piracy It is the great age from all the pipe so around really the p reed from about fourteen ninety two in Colombia, stumbles on the Americas and about eighteen hundred. Is the period in which you look at this area, and you see the giant risk or new world version and all these islands, change, hands and warfare happens and other settlements, and the French can involve the british get. While the Dutch get involved. The unions, The danish the Norwegians get involved that the price for entry right now in order to play this new world colonization game, you to have a significant fleet right. You have to be a naval power, the countries they get locked out of this giant,

in a gold rush right, the globalization one point: oh Gold rush fever time are places like central european landlocked countries, Now there is no Germany at this time right. Germany's a bunch of different states it coalesce for several hundred years, but what means is: there's no giant german state with the german fleet. They can send the german fleet out there to participate in all this. Why does this even matter will be as you know, in the early nineties, hundreds one of the complaints that led to the first war was. This idea that there were countries that had gotten there and the free Was place in the sun and then word other countries that were left out when all that was taking place with the game, a musical chairs started before they were even a country. Well, the period where the enemies of the Kaiser, in Germany in the first world, war were getting their place in the sun is this period and after the Spanish, portuguese, take some of these places from the indigenous peoples, the people

from the old world come over and start taken from the spanish and Portuguese. It's like that that cheetahs were the first arrivals and they started eating, although peaceful afraid, overs in Hispaniola, and then after a signal again period of time, but not that long. The lie and from the old world arrive and start pushing the cheetahs into deeper into the interior, see these iron change hands between the spanish and French in the French and the British in it, and it's a giant game, a musical chairs for a couple centuries. Yellow see the beginnings of settlements in the places where the Spanish didn't even gaol. The Spanish will be in places like Florida, for example, they won't be in places like Massachusetts or Virgin yeah or what's now part of Canada, but the french and English will. The Dutch will too I mean they settle New York, originally right, New Amsterdam and These different peoples are going to bring the

general way of doing things. The institutions in the culture from the EU pain old world, but because of the subtle differences between each of them right. The English from the French, the freight from the Spanish, the d I'll admit in all these places will be a little bit different treatment of the slave. For example, a little bit different, deleting be one or two communities that won't even allow slavery in them. In North America by and large, you get the the general consensus that laborers unbelievably necessary any short supply It's also interesting as if you buy ended the premise from thee primary sources and I mean from multiple different nations cultures errors made over hundreds of years. You can read plea after plea, after from these people in the Americas. Writing back to the old country, saying if we don't have more slaves, then we can That'll this place at all.

and they do not necessarily have to be african slaves, and this is also the Pirie Worthy famous indentured servitude. error really takes off big, but it doesn't here, that many of these people are talking about free labour in any way shape or form at either can be slaves or indentured servants, or something like that, and if you take there are humans at face value. When I can't figure out at this is somehow civil lack of imagination or the blind there's that are put on because these people come from a different Erin, a different economic system. But if you take there events at face value as though there saying that if the America's had been found with the modern era. Is sort of values in mind right where we pay people for work? simply wouldn't be saddled with that. We'd still be stuck hundreds of years later on, the eastern seaboard still trying to chop down the primeval forest in the east paid labour. I mean it's interesting to contemplate. the. What is here in an hour

we're dealing with one thing you can say, though, is The numbers are borderline shocking, even for someone who should know better like yours truly in human bondage, David Brian Davis Rights gives you some statistics that show you the amount, of people that are coming over from the old world to the new world, and I all you can say is. I should enormous listed these numbers and tell me if this doesn't shock you David Trace Court in rhetoric. it appears that the entire new world enterprise funded on the enormous and expandable flow of slave labour from Africa, though in forty Eddie five Columbus transported, some five hundred native american slaves to Seville and dreamed of a profitable slave trade of american quote. End quote Indians to Iberia. Italy, Sicily in the Atlantic Islands, some African slaves arrived in the Caribbean, at least as early as one thousand five hundred and one by one thousand, eight hundred and twenty

Eight point: seven million slaves had departed from Africa to the new world, as opposed only too six million whites, many of them convicts or indentured servants who had left Europe. Thus, he writes eighteen, twenty african slaves com, the two did almost seventy seven percent of the enormous population that had sailed toward the Americas and one thousand seven hundred and sixty to one thousand, eight hundred and twenty December flow included. Five point: six african slow aids for every European from AIDS in twenty two one, eighty, the Africans If trade most of it now illegal content you d ship off from Africa, nearly two point: three million more slaves, mainly Brazil and Cuba and court. That's an astounding number. I mean the majority of people who emigrated to the Americas until eighteen, twenty were black, and it wasn't because

That's what everybody wanted in terms of a racial make up in this new world. It's because of the labour shortage- and this was the way these people solved it. I have no evidence to prove it handy but I would assume this is probably the greatest labour shortage in global history, and you can see changes in the market to fill it over the centuries him in. As we said, the Portuguese dominate the slave trade early build all kinds of four Some castles off the coast of Africa become the initial People running this thing build the foundation, build the infrastructure, but then, at some point than actual sort of supplant them and then, after that, the British will supplant the door genes in terms of dominating the slave trade and all governments, we should point out tax. It rightly tax the slave ships, they text. transactions are so the government is, is making money directly off the slave trade in the nay poor that India will everything you can think of.

Including building the infrastructures of a lot of these cities in Europe Brighter- in the new world too, but it gives vested interest in the slave trade. Doesn't it and over time. can see that the people who were being made slaves will change in the labour shortage will be handled by different groups are mean initially, as we said around column, this time period soon afterwards, the He slave numbers are dominated by the natives, the indigenous peoples and then, by about the sixteen hundred you see sort of a rough parity righted native people forming, maybe like a third and I'm just these a rough ballpark estimates, but but the natives forming like a third of the slave numbers, indentured servants from Europe right and people who are essentially temporary slaves, forming a third and Africans forming about a third Frederick Douglass, who I have always considered to be sorted. The black founding father he's

one of the more impressive human beings in american history. If you ve not read it, autobiographies he's, got more than one he's just wonderful end, and he tells the story of encountering some irish guys when Fred Douglas is a slave and he helped them with some labors that they're doing enough their done moving some heavy stuff. You know either the irish guys find out the Douglas is a slave. They knew it before, but then they ask him a key question: they are YE slave for life that the irish people would probably have been familiar with the indentured Servitude idea, where you might be essentially a slave, and you could be sold and all those kinds of things, but there's a time limit on it. After that, your free convicts think I was usually double the time limit before your free as a sort of indentured servants and the car eggs have formed a large chunks of many societies in Australia. Had a lotta comics, the United States had a lotta convicts. You know his party

early Jean pools and done I had to tell these. People are now that he was a slave for life and by that means that not only are you is there no time limit on when you're automatically freed, but your progeny, kids, are slaves to which other Densher Servants- that's not a thing, after about the sixteen hundred? You can see the demographic change there will be native american slavery in some parts of of the mare because might some we would argue you still have that, but that's never going away per se, but in great cities of the American EAST. That are starting to develop you're, not gonna seat. Of native american slavery, even in the areas around the Caribbean, it's going to start to be dominated by by the late sixteen hundred Shirley, seventy nine is by the african slave trade and the come, needs that develop to fill this labour need em and we were, just sort of making a a fanciful comparison. When we call this sort of

the capitalism monarch of capitalism it's been described before in the company. That's in Britain that handles a majority, the slaves it's called, the royal african company so mean these are slave trading companies and its big big, this, because the slaves are doing every kind of job you can think of. In what is slavery historian, Brenda III Stevenson says: quote. by the beginning of the sixteen hundreds, the increase in the Trade in slaves to accommodate sugar and tobacco production, as well as gold and silver mining, also meant an increase in the numbers of persons in Africa. Europe and the Americas involved in the trade and the numbers of new world locales were african workers arrived sugar alone. She writes account, for the labour of seventy percent of the african imported slave labour in the new world over the centuries end quote. These islands have certainly gone from having

green bananas of Columbus's day to thee. Fully, saleable and very valuable, yellow bananas in this era and Stevenson right quote The expansion of sugar cultivation beyond Brazil in the MID seventeenth century generally to british and french islands in the Caribbean was specially important in the development of this crops, dominance and the courts, spawning growth in the numbers of Africans imported to cultivate it? These locales, she writes, included Jamaica and send a maying with. Planters, you dominated the world market along the british Islands of Barbados, Saint Kitts, Antigua and the free Colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe, other crops aspire. Like a cow in Brazil and tobacco in Barbados, also FED this early agricultural boom by the eight Jeanne Century Coffee and

they go were also important. Slave produce exports. End quote: She then goes on to show some of the other jobs being done in places like Brazil, but you could say the same thing about North America. We think of these large plantations and agricultural work these people are doing. Everything stephenses quote agricultural work was what occupied most enslaved people. They also in other sectors of the early colonial economies, those in the four centuries of the Atlantic trade who came to reside in Brazil, for example, were also minors. Herders D stick servants, carpenters, we'll rights, fishermen and lumbermen at or performed others. Skill old or day labour work in Spanish King Colonial America, particularly Mexico, in slaves, sixteenth century Africans, many like the How can I think it's icon, who are from gold mining regions of Ghana were

in gold and silver mines? End quote Stevenson's talking about Brazil there, but you and say the same thing about North Amerika before the American Revolution cause the northern territories had slaves back in those days too, and they did all kinds of jobs and the funny thing. About it is that what that does is preclude you from having some sort of example. Then apply to slavery in general, because there is no, we used to think of it as a classically agricultural thing right: picking, cotton, nor harvesting, sugar, God forbid it, for everybody in the mines were the worst stride, the Romans in the ancient world. They sentence the slaves to the minds amuse almost the death sentence, but Frederick Douglass autobiography talks about the first time I ever saw slave and the big city in which were him was Baltimore. He was from a rural plan.

patient, and he says when he got to Baltimore solid slaves were like there. He thought they were practically freeman as far as he was concerned. Right now, overseer with a whip watching everything they did, and he blamed it on peer pressure. The reason he said that slaves were treated better. He says, because none of the masters wanted to look like they mistreated their slaves. In front of everyone else, you think about it more like a possession right. If you have a fancy car you don't want to get all run down and look shabby right away in his reflect badly on you and he was saying, for example, could he was always hungry? It seemed like when I was reading his writings back at home on the plantation, He said that no one would want to be accused. Baltimore of starving their slaves need thought that this peer pressure meant that the act slave and a better life than it had in a back on the plantation, where no one can see what your doing to your slaves, which brings me: do you know a part of the story that I keep

Oh I keep wanting to inject in here, so I remember it myself if that makes sense, but it's it's it's a kind of a hidden part, but you can deduce it so easily right, it's it's like when they find planets without actually see the planet, but they can see that there must be a planet out their based on what's going on with the other ones. I read an article on and it was a writer. I don't remember if she was writing for the New York Times the Atlantic or something like that, but she made a comment but how every time she looked in the mere she was reminded of a rape in her ancestral trees, somewhere writer, her Mary skin color was a lasting legacy to slavery in it actual assault question that we forget and that's not an african Atlantic slave trade, you- that's a slavery issue going back to the beginning of recorded history right. This is

I mean they buy slave specifically for the concubine aspect of it in some places, but even if that's not what you have them for the lack of legal protections and oversight, and all that kind of stuff means you're gonna get that anyway. and what I mean by that is, if is if you are those slaves in Baltimore that looks like you're, practically a free person to Frederick Douglass. That's isn't protect you If you're, some lady who works in the house where the in slaver lives and you cook for their family and you're, practically a member of the household and die- and you know you're celebrate holidays with them and in a new European though in the privileged you know realms of the slave society? As other slaves would view it doesn't that, when the lights go out at night, you're not subjected to sexual assault all the time, in other words without the legal protections just because you're outward situ

Asian seem so much more enviable No one knows what's really going on here, except as that one woman had said you can tell by the color of her skin, and end the many writings that are made about the fact that that everyone knew that the masters of sleeping with the slaves and everyone knew whose mixed race child belong to whom, but everybody got kind of discreetly kept their mouths shut about it. While they were talking to someone who might be the child stepmother anyway, But, needless to say, you didn't have a lot of people writing accounts of this for the history books that's a problem with a lot of human suffering right if you want to have first hand, accounts of wood like on the slave ship crossing the Atlantic. Those are not easy to come by those p, didn't publish a lot of books. There are some is a book I picked up, because a Brenda Stevenson was quoting from it call pioneers of the black at

attic, which is several different slave narratives, but they're not. always easily quotable kinds of things. What they do show you, though, isn't it Will you can't generalise about the slave experience slaves in the Americas. You can make it tension between those who were born in Africa as free people and had to make the trip over and those who were born in the Americas like Frederick Douglass, is born in the Americas. He never was a free person for becoming a slave. He never to do that terrible ship travel across the Atlantic, so their certain things in he can't relate you and then other American born slaves wouldn't have had to go through. That would have been a shared experience that everyone who came from Africa would have been able to relate to, and one of them things that you know it.

I have yet to be reminded about things that, after you hear about them, seem obvious, but you hadn't thought about them. So Brennus, Vince brings it up and then after she says it, I'm noticing it everywhere and it was about what these enslaved people go through before they even arrive at the ships to take them across the Atlantic. To the Americas, causing your minds. I you they go well, it starts off. They become slaves in than they get on the ships in that's horrible and then the whole start? No, it starts long before then, and what most of these people will experience between they are capturing and the arrival at the coast to get on these ships. any one of their experiences would be the worst experience. Most of us have ever had simply the branding alone would be something that would be in the forefront. Of your mind today. Had anybody ever taken a glowing hot piece of metal and stuck it on your skin for a significant period of time right and that's just one of the things they get to go through so Stevens and talks about it, though she talks about

the different ways these people can become enslaved and there's all sorts of different ways as I'd be alluded to earlier and before we can Sid our ourselves. also morally advanced. Let's understand that, if I can she's in the right framework. Many of you will agree that you'd support a kind of slavery under the right conditions and in its conditions that Africans enslaved people under two, if I said, somebody committed some heinous crime and then for the rest of their life. They were going to have be involved in hard labor in order pay society back. A lot of people think that that was a just sentence, and that was a kind of sentence that could get people put into slavery in Africa. There were a bunch of other ones. Of course, simply owing money could give. you in trouble being a captive in war? Was a classic and my central african history is not good, but I was right:

that there was a series of rather large wars between african rulers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the by product of which is a lot of slaves to sell afterwards, and so this was workin for every one right. We have ground zero production for this logistical supply chain that provides labour for the new world and, as fate would that we have a lot of war is creating a lot of product so again while their hard right all the african slaves? You can transport and so Stevenson talks about the the trip from initially becoming a slave to simply making it to the coast to get on the slave ships is normally where we think the bad part starts with. That would be wrong. Stevenson. Rights quote in slaved Africans therefore entered the Atlantic aid through numerous avenues. as sold war, captives, kidnap victims, social outcasts, Criminals as tribute payment or

drawn from a pool of bonded laborers, traditionally found in many western and central african societies, some were sold from one locale in Africa to another and then eventually soul to Europeans. Bow for the market in the Americas, the trips they took. From their earlier places of residence or servitude to the coast for embark meant the Caribbean or beyond, could be hundreds of miles. often she writes they were sold and resold along the way to the coast. They March in single or double file, change, each other, with only the clothing they had on when taken eating and drinking. Only what their captors provided, exhausted. Undernourished physically cycle. Logically and sexually abused, and often deal I drafted as well. Some came ill. Others perished en route was only the beginning of their travails. In their travels, end quote.

She says, then they get putting these giant sort of prison facilities awaiting transport after their sold, and then the two and sport thing. This also blew me away. I didn't think about this either because it's not something that occurs to you. So James woven in freedom, points out that the key ingredient in terms of how now Steve. The transport was on these wooden ships from Africa to the new. world had to do with how long he had to be on the ships right. The longer you were on it, the worse. It was because, if you're being tortured, the longer you're being tortured the worse, it is. But then he says something that I didn't realize, which is that these ships picked up cargo. Oh a little like the airport transport boss, often does were instead of just picking you and taking you to the airport, it stops at many different stops until it has a full boss, and then, at least for the airport, said these shit You're staying offshore in Africa off the cuff

near the equator right. So it's hot as hell with people below decks until they get enough people to leave for the new world and are we and give you a sense of how long it might take before the ship is filled up enough to leave with p below decks in chains in a. often size, amount of personal space and woven rights quote Africans off. Spend longer on board a slave ship, anchored off the coast of Africa, Vinnie crossing the Atlantic, the ship's acute they did their human cargoes slowly from place to place where there were no facilities for holding Africans on shore, the ship acted a floating prison until the mask decided that he had had enough enslaved people to set out across the Atlantic. Some shit little more than the hawks acted as permanent offshore prison

passing on their captives to other ships ready to sail in the seventeen century. He writes dutch ships An average of one hundred and twenty days on the coast, british it's ninety four and later the Dutch spend an average of two hundred days on the coast, French, a hundred and forty three in them too late eighteenth century british ships, Benda written seventy three days on the african coast. End quote me says that one fact that stands out from the wealth of information is that millions of Africans spent months see before they even left for the Americas and if the amount of time you're on board the ship is the key question in terms of whether you live or die or how long the torture continues. You can see that the situation is worse than most of us originally thought

The part of the story- I'm a little more familiar with as most of us are, is the horrors of the crossing itself, because it is so infamous it's a little like the trips in the closed rail cars to the concentration camps in the Holocaust where, The suffering that goes on, while in transit is so famous because it so terrible people sort of marked by the experience Walden talks about how the slaves, ships were known to just smell, terrible, like says pits and cesspools, and you could smell the miles away down wind, but to imagine what it must have been like to be changed into a space about the size of a coffin while arm everyone else's around you doing what everyone else does, while just living and surviving for months now.

marriage cited? This is hard to get your minds, have woven points out, something once again that I didn't even think of. If you want to take the rush him on approached all this and see it from every fr side. He was pointing out that the people who are there ones who run the slave ship itself. There often terrified to, and you might have for hundred slaves on a ship with seventeen crew members and the seventeen crew members can be terrified, also mean you're. Stuck there on board with a lot desperate people and if you actually look at slave revolts as a thing which will do in a little while the Valley majority of them, happen on board ships within sight of the african coast because it sort of the last chance for these people to get away for their severed from their homeland, and they understand once there on a sight of land how much their chances drop of ever getting back home again. But the accounts are legendary of what it's like in some in the holds of these ships and die

take one out here from someone who went through it. This isn't an author, it's an eye witness and when he, describes what he calls the necessary tubs, the necessary tubs or what passes for latrines. In these shipboard situation another thing woven points out that is worth remembering. Is that to travel by ship. During most this time period is harrowing for people who pay for the privilege much less. What it's like. Four slaves and dumb in the book pioneers of the Black Atlantic, which is it relation of several different slave stories slave and I hope I pronounced his name, directly allowed away acquiesce no points out what it was like. Baloney acts for him when he makes this famous middle passage, crossing nieces quote the stench if the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, then dangerous to remain there, for any time

some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air, but now the whole ships cargo were confined to gather. It became absolutely pestilential, the closeness of the place and the heat climate added to the number in the ship which was so crowded that each had scarcely to turn himself almost suffocated us this produced copious perspiration, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells brought on a sickness among the slaves which many died, thus falling victim to the improbable. Avaricious. I may call it of their purchasers, wretched situation, he says was again aggravated by galling of the chains now book insupportable and filth of the Knesset every tubs into which the children often fell and were almost suffocated. The reeks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered

A whole, a scene of horror almost inconceivable, end quote, and it goes on for months. Slaves jump overboard to get away from it committing suicide, some believing that there go back to Africa, for they die some refuse to eat and, as a rule, bonds are brutally flogged the person the slave. I just quoted said that he saw a white sailor flogged so horribly that he died in that they threw him overboard, basically pointing out that the people that were doing this to the slaves in his mind, had no human feeling at all and would do this to each other which scared him even more and once again we have the hidden part of the story, which is the rape and the many insinuations of girls and female children

and young male children being raped by the crew continuously across the journeys? Are you have these people who are almost dying whose own time to get out of the hold and out of the is to be part of a sexual assault, the stories are about trauma, inflicted Upon trauma, in a way that one has a lie: The oral question that one can ask of something like this How long would it take a family to have The pain and effects of trauma at this of a level melt away me. Would your children being to pick out things in their life that are the result of the trauma that we went through in a situation like this would but your grandchildren, in other words, how long until this sort of pain and suffering? How long till the ripples caused by it die out, then that's assuming

of course, that these people live very long. Tons of them die on the journey, and it's this real catch twenty two if you're looking at this from a business sense, because you have a vested trust in packing the ship as closely as you can get it many pieces of cargo on there is you can cause a course that means more to sell. But there comes a point where you're hurting your own cargo and they start dying at greater rates if you pack them too much like sardines. So perhaps there is a funny when you start saying that the only protection these people have in terms of better living conditions, is because of their worth as a commodity, doesn't stop them for being thrown overboard in droves, sometimes sometimes to collect the insurance money. there's a reason that this middle passage has been so mythology eyes in the history of slavery because In terms of horror,

experiences that people go through areas right up there near the top of the list able to hold its on with many of the worst things that you can think of throughout history- and we should point out once again that this is something that has and to people who are on their way to becoming. the slaves. This is sort of the welcoming experience to their new life, one of the things that they do to you in debate class. I know a lot of you. Ve gone through this too, is to give you a side in a debate that you don't agree with and then force you to defend it, and I imagine if we were in some cosmic court of Law- and you said that I had to be the

tourney, representing the passed on this slavery question. Now against the attorney representing the present. I think I point out that there is all sorts of laws that I can name from multiple com trees over multiple arrows. The designed to make them. Situation better for the enslaved people, men women in one of them earlier, with the problems I'm busy ran into trying to enslave the indigenous peoples of the Americas when the queen of steel? Who also happens to be the one funding his mission in that little piece of awe of monarchical capitalism said This is why my admiral slaving my subjects right. While France had something called the code nor in the sixteen hundred Britain had rules on slaves how many slaves you could put on the ship. I mean the the attorney for the past, defending

history, would say: hey listen. I can cite all kinds of laws, measures, debates and things that were done. To address this very issue is not our fault. It didn't come far enough to me. Your modern standards, we even though it does work and you wouldn't have gotten anywhere near them. If we hadn't taken the early steps like Code Anwar and the queen of ass steel and limitations on the number of slaves, you can have one ship and eventually things like going after the slave trade. It's hard, though, because the world is a what's the line from see from government in the Lord rings, its tricky and yet I know exactly what motivations aren't you have to be careful, I mean you know is: is it Limit on the size of slaves capacity, something done for the benefit of the human being, things that are the cargo or are you do in it to protect product, you gotta be

Therefore, I were, human beings were a little trick see, but I think the Tourney representing the interests and conduct of the past would say that there are things that they point to the show that they were trying. If you wanted to critique, that, from the other side, the lawyer representing modern times would say: will you enforcement was terrible and when did this ever work out in favour of the people that the law of the sea was to protect winded. Anybody ever have to pay any penalties. When was anybody ever discovered investigated or taken the task winded any slaveowners go to jail or pay a fine for the treatment of the people you see what I'm saying is that you can have all the laws on the books doesn't mean anything actually happens, but a lawyer representing the pass would have some ammunition in saying that they did not tell. ITALY, nor this issue by

when you see what one of these slave markets are like when these people arrive on these ships to the Americas, it's just it's impossible, not to be critical on how anyone could look at this and think it was ok, as reading one account on, then it was Abraham. Lincoln was an interesting figure when it comes to slavery, to and Abraham link account there was written by someone who was with him once in this, as in the eighteen fifty source, it's quite a bit of time before he becomes president, and they said that they were walking through the city street somewhere I'm going from memory here, but that they had chanced to on, a slave market were sale was taking place, and I think it was a woman that was being sold and Lincoln, friends said his his fists would just completely clench and unclenched. His jaw would get height, and he was saying something to the effect that this was just so wrong and so many levels. It makes one wonder how many people have to have a sort of softening of the heart or a change in outlook

before that manifests in a change in society, because you know you can you can blame anyone from the past. You want for the conditions that existed, then the defeat I could easily be I'm just one person. What do you think I can do all by myself the same defence. You would probably use if somebody five hundred years from now in a more critical something in our I mean how could you people drive cars as long as you did, I'm just one person. What am I going to shut down the car industry? That's how people in the past might have responded to using. How could you put up with these slave markets look at what this is these p? bill, are like pieces of meat and if it doesn't make you a man, has it made a brain lincoln, what's wrong with you, we listen to these sorts of eye. Witness accounts of what the slave market was like it is. fastening, so they often began at the sound of they are a gun going off or a drum being sounded and p. Who were sometimes not to me, reminds you of your pardon me. Reducing this to Christmas shopping but like the crazy

she's the on television, sometimes when people away outside a facility until midnight and everybody goes in their meal ripping products, no one person, you need- and I said so, the crazed kind of thing right get the best before What else does and when you let everybody in at once, like that, it's a free for all this is a free for all. You know of people buying people in his book slavery, world history, Milton Meltzer, describes as a typical a market sale and says that sometimes the affairs were done privately, with an advance sale that had been arranged ahead of time, but normally it was the sort of in a doors When at noon at the sound of a gun, you know grab whatever you can kind of deal, does the official name for it among some was the scramble and he writes court.

the walking skeletons had been disposed of. He means the really sick they there. They were sold sort of in bulk right away, get them out of the way less than a dollar a slave. Obviously he sank as they often died, and then you bring out the good product. He said after walking skeletons had been disposed of the healthy, slow came next summer, they would be marched through the town behind Bagpipes and drawn up for inspection by planters or their overseers in the public square. If indian factor handled retail sales. He took fifteen percent of the gross and another percent of the net returns. The quote. End quote scramble, however was the customary way of handling the sale by agreeing with the buyers, are fixed price was set for the fork categories of slaves, man woman, boy and girl a day. For the sale was advertised when the hour. came a gun was fired the doors the slave yard was flung open and a horde of

purchasers rushed in quote with awe the ferocity of brutes end quote, said a man named Falcon Bridge, a slave ship surgeon who witnessed several scrambles each buyer. Meltzer rights bent on getting his pick of the pack try I do in struggle the largest number of choice, slaves by means of a rope, the sledge waves, helpless bewildered terrified we're yanked about savagely torn by one buyer from another somewhere, so poor, made by one such scrambled on the island of Grenada that they hurt, themselves. Over the wall and ran madly through the town once can bridge saw a scramble about shipping Kingston Harbour when the buyer swooped indices their prey about thirty. the slaves leaped into the sea, but all of them were soon fished out. End quote. He then points out that, when this law waves were bought a second time. The first on their bond is on the coast of Africa and their branded there

and he says now, when their bought again their branded again. The experience of being sold for the Africans arriving from Africa is a little bit different than the experience of being sold for slaves who already been in the Americas, the differences, usually one of close family. relationships. It was rare for the slow from Africa to be taken with family members and have their company companionship the whole time, so they weren't as often separated from close family members during the scramble kind of slave, say but once you get to where you have an, inter internal slave trade. Were slaves were born in the Americas are being sold from one or to another will now you have something. That's part of this human disaster here that is the break up of families, which is part of this huge, huge, lingering trauma from slavery. As we said, how long does it take for a family to

the ripples of of pain go away, while, if your skin colors indicative of some of that pay- and that makes it very difficult- and if you ve had people in your family we severed from their family, at last, a long time to Frederick Douglass talks about one of these sales, where he was, on a plantation that had been in someone's hands for farewell and then all of a sudden that person had to sell or they died. I think, and then you have valuation, how much of the slaves worth as part of the overall estate, and then you liquidate the assets right and he says quote, after the valuation then came the division I have no language to express the high excitement and d thanks Zion III, which were felt amongst us poor slaves during this time. Our fate for Life was now to be decided. We had no more voice in that decision than the brute some, to whom we were ranked A single word from the white men was enough again

stall? Our wishes, prayers and entreaties to Son forever the dearest friends dearest kindred and strong ties known to human beings. In addition, the pain of separation. There was horrid dread of falling into the hands of Master Andrew He was known to us all as being a most crew. Will wretch a common drunkard who by his reckless mismanagement and profligate dissipation, already wasted a large portion of his father's property, we all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the georgian traders as to pass into his hands, for we knew that that would be are inevitable, condition a condition held by us all in the utmost horror and dread. I suffered more anxiety. End quote one of the things that I noticed. While reading a bunch of different slave accounts you tended there are certainly people that that met every sort of condition

and you can imagine but seemed to me. There was a big division between them: the slaves that were rarely or never sold so their whole lives. in one circumstance and the slave, the result over and over and over again, I Douglas is one of them people were every time your sold. It's like a new chapter in the book, that is, your life like rolling the dice, and am I gonna go to a sadistic sociopath. Now, I'm gonna go to somebody who grated on this on the slavery curve is so bad ass, Frederick Douglass heads add that he always measured the kindness his master by the standards, the kindness set up amongst slaveholders around them and so slavery is granted on a curve. You takes every as the condition that you have no control over and then you judge how well you're doing you know based on that compared to people in a similar situation. The point of

What Douglas was saying, though, that perhaps the Africans The Africans had been severed from their families back in Africa. It's not that they don't have this pain. Is that had happened, pre voice, gee the slaves who get to see their children sold away from them or their spouse or their parents, while for some people you'd rather be dead ones you. So when we talk about the extremes of the human experience, these are the kind of things that all by themselves would be on the nasty list. But when you realise that this Atlantic slave trade combined numerous things that by themselves would be on your top ten horrible list. It's a cornucopia of atrocities. And there was nothing we should point out to prevent this incident, this type of Vincent from happening over and over again during the was of a slave lifetime. Right I mean you can have kid

After you're, you know your pen and were sold off and they can be sold off to or you could be sold. I mean when you think of the power that this gives a slave older over a slave. Its men surmount of leverage? Isn't it and it may help explain that most hard To get your mind around phenomenon that you, you will run into with the primary sources of slavery, which is what do you make of it, slaves annual for example, in the primary sources in the United States later on. Will you make the slaves and its aid. We should point out definitely a minority but who loved their masters or professed that they do. It is this. The Stockholm syndrome at work is this room emphasising the past when they were interviewed later, is this more like what Frederick Douglass was saying where your grading, this sort of slavery curve

if you had a master, that would take into account your feelings about perhaps holding a sale were your children might be sold, often separated from you for life and an owner who wouldn't give a hoot about that now you might develop some sort of weird affection for your own or too. I guess somebody who at least gave you the time of day in terms of humanitarian concerns, but it is weird theres many aspects of slavery that are weird one thing, though We do need to sort of mentally understand in its tough because You know when you're doing what I'm doing here- and this is always been the problem with history since Herodotus on is how do you pick examples and things to emphasise, and how do you avoid cherry picking or making something look potentially worse or better than it really was cause? You know, I can pick nasty hers, slavery story, after nasty, horrific slavery story and I'm not sure I chronicle, of the bad things done to slaves over the arrows in

Many of us much more above the idea that we can really be awful to each other in the slavery is one of those things it's horrify. So what are you? beyond that double there. Some interesting questions, have I we say I'm not qualified to give answers, but in any one can ask questions and a lot of my since revolve around this idea of a society that figures out a way to trans warm a significant number of people in the slaves and keep them in that condition, because remember this is not one might compare this to business as we ve been doing in entrepreneurship and trade in and all these kinds of things, but ground zero, once slaves become slaves and end up with their supposed to be. You know in terms of final sale, you're working here and I own you how is this all: keep people working

a free labour system. You have carrots that you hold out to employees and if they don't do what you want. You reduce or eliminate them right. Ah, you don't do it got a job. I want. I want a lower your pay, you don't do it can a job. I won over a long enough period time, I'm going to fire you. But what is you deal? with labour that doesn't want the job in the first place and is in paid anything. How do you get those people to work or that's where you move from carrots and sticks literally in some cases, In the world that fear may, just around Jason T sharpely describes this system, that's based on force and that is in a very real non exaggerated sense, a system of violence, one that make sure that slaves and upward they're supposed to go do the job that there's a.

I used to do when they get there if they dare to run away or escape that will find them return, them to their place of origin in turn. of ownership and then punish them, and then Entire system devoted to prevent any sort of insurrection, rebellion rising up or resistance is a system right. We Americans like too Fine. When I was growing up, we always used to use a fake german accent and poked fun it. The gestapo question where they would ask a person in Germany, and let me see your papers because in the United States, of course, being free people who could go wherever you wanted to. That was something we made fun of accepted. Didn't acknowledge the fact that there were lots of people that had to show their papers or not get into will trouble or be beaten or worse than they were slaves in the south when they were out at night part of the system of violence here in the controlling of forced labour

required an entire edifice to be developed about the sort of thing, the slaves in the United States. When you read the accounts, they had a phrase that I kept running into. I didn't understand what it meant for the longest time, and the phrase was sometimes they said, Patty Rollers, and sometimes they said Patty Rollers, and it did make says to me until I finally sighed again in context and it dawned on me they're saying petroleum: Now that you know what the term met, so they heard it and it became a bastardize version of petroleum Patty roller patter roller, but the pattern. Rollers were these people that were part of us somewhere in somebody, places. It was like jury duty every now and then you are required to us. Europe is a person who went around checking slave passes a hunting for runaway slaves, all that kind of stuff, It's a societal piece of the framework and structure that keep a slave society running and it's all based on fear and violence. and by the way Sharpers first quotes slow

every apologist is what he calls him. Brian Edwards and who said that force and violence was the only and the Fraser Useless impulse to action in which to which a slaved person can respond read like ass: it, you can't get their wage gap, firearm and sharply rights that the violet at ground zero, the bottom line when you're a slave on the plantation wherever it wherever you are as the whip, the lash he writes quote individual in slavery is wielded the lash, the most obvious instrument of attempted terror not to mechanically pro odd slaved people so much as to inflict fresh Lee stinging examples of what could befall the they displeased and then slaver story. Edward baptized has aptly characterize this. As assist of torture for compelling labour and outward obedience from enslaved people

and the seventeenth century traveller also describe this as us. Damn of torments and excessive torturers. Those are quotes in slavers throughout the colonies, sharpely rights terrorized enslaved women and men with rape and its lingering trauma, and they threaten them with the possibility of physical pain, humiliation, confinement, or reassignment too difficult. Labour, They also use the shadow principle to threaten to supper eight families through sale and send an individual to a new and slaver who was more sadistic or. Position in the economy involved, more gruelling labour regime in wielding these instruments of fear. Shovels. Rights in slavery is deliberately exploited. People's human ins to avoid doing whatever might lead to pain or loss

coercion in slavery, he says, depended on fear of violence. End quote: Frederick Douglass explained it in an interesting sense here, he said he was kind of a troublesome slave and after he gone Baltimore and then returned to the plantation. His master, felt it sort of gotten unruly in some negative ideas me wasn't anywhere near as valuable to many more so he was going to send him to a slave breaker to be broken and This describes this is a man who didn't even have much money, but he was lucky lucky because he was known as a person who could break slaves and because of that people, troublesome slaves would lend this man their slaves. For years we get the free labour, while he bore them, so he benefited and He would return the slaves back to the slave owners like a

Trained animal but broken dog, and by the time he was done with this breaker, of people Douglas, says he'd finally been turned into a slave transformed into a brute. He said, and it's a very famous passage, and he writes quote if, at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery. That time was during First, six months of my stay with Mr Covey he's the sleigh breaker were worked in all weathers. It was now or to art or too cold it could never rain blow Hale or snow too hard for us to work in the field. Work work work, scarcely more the order of the day than of the night, the long his days were too short for him and the shortest knights to long for him I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this disease when tamed me, MR cope.

Succeeded in breaking me. I was broke, in body, soul and spirit. My nap elasticity was crushed. My inner languished, the dust Position to read departed and the cheerful spark that link about my I died the dark night. Slavery closed in upon me, Behold, a man transformed into a brute Sunday was my only leisure time he wrote and this in a sort of a beast like stupor betweens. Leap in wake under some large tree at times I would rise up a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope that flickered for a moment and then vanished, down again mourning over my wretched condition. I was sometimes prompted to take my life and that of Kogi, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear.

My sufferings and this plantation scene now like a dream rather than stern reality end quote. In slavery, world history Milton Meltzer has a first hand account of an eye witness observer that was in Haiti in the period I'm sure was before hum this period. The Frederick Douglass is called, I just did was taken and they describe what the slavery is like in Haiti. On these back breaking sugar plantations and Swiss Trout learn. Gerard shun Tron, I believe it's pronounced, described the slaves at work that he saw who went to the fields it a break, and sometimes quit only at ten at night, and he said quote. They were about a hundred men and women of different ages. All occupied in digging ditches in a cane field

the majority of them naked or covered with rags. The sun shone down with full force on their heads. Sweat role from all parts of their bodies, their limbs weighed down by the heat fatigued with the weight of their picks by the resistance of the clay e soil baked hard enough to bring- their implements strain themselves to overcome every obstacle em full silence, reigned exam Jim, was stamped on every face, but the hour of rest, had not yet come the pit lest I of the manager, patrolled the gang and several foreman armed with long whips, moved periodically between them, giving Stinging blows to all who worn out by fatigue were compelled to take her asked men or women young or old end quote now. As we said earlier,

If you study history- and I know many of you- do there's nothing shocking about this- the condition of these people, the circumstances or anything like that, the part that begins to feel wrong. Is the error that were in where this is still happening. As I said earlier, this sea, seems like an ancient institution that is out of place here and to have all of the modern techniques of commerce and business logistics and supply and supplying in all these kinds of things applied to such seemingly outdated sort of entity, it somewhat jarring is the strangest part to me of modern day slavery, because you see the same sort of stories in the past, but they seem to belong in the distant past, and you can see the effect. It's have on some of the people who can be pretty introspective during this time period, say, late, seventeen hundred early eighteen, hundreds, I was reading a book,

how the word is passed by Clint Smith and it's about sort of legacies of american slavery that he can see when he travels around, and he goes to Thomas Jefferson's, home. and engages with some tourists who were there going through a tour afterwards, who were surprised. Find out about Jefferson Slave pass and all that and Smith has a very interesting line where, because all of us were Thomas Jefferson fans and if you like, the dear, that all men are created equal. You know that the declaration of independence stuff mean all of that is Jefferson and Jeffersonian. And yet the guy is almost like a metaphor. for the country as a whole and the weird sort of dichotomy, that the United States is because he is at once this great proponent of liberty and freedom and all men are created. Equal

who is also a slave owner and who was an intelligent enough and so for where enough individual to realise that this is a contradiction and Smith Rights quote. what's fascinating about Jefferson is that this is a flaw of which he was wholly cognizant. In notes on this, eight of Virginia, he wrote quote: these are Jefferson's words. There was. doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produce by the existence of slavery. Among us, the whole commerce, but master enslave is a perpetual the exercise of the most boisterous passions. The most unreal meeting despotism on the one part and degree reading submission on the other. Are Children see this, he writes and learn the imitated for man, is an imitative animal, the parent storms. The child looks on catches, the linen of wrath

it's on the same errors in the circle of smaller slaves gives a loose his worst of passions and nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny cannot but be stamped by it with These peculiarities The man must be a prodigy. He writes who can retain his manners and morals. Undue praised by such circumstances. End quote tonight: in question to ponder. Isn't it the effect of slavery? Upon The slave owning group of people in the society Jefferson saw the future too he's a very interesting figure. You had a line in that same document notes on the state of Virginia written, one thousand, seven hundred and eighty one one thousand seven hundred and eighty five in between that area points out that he sees the iniquities involved in

every he sees the end of it in the distance, and he wrote quote for in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is true, that of the proprietors of slaves, a very small proportion indeed, or even seen the labour and can liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis fiction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God that they are not you violated, but with his wrath. Indeed, I tremble for my country, when I reflected God, is just that it's just cannot sleep forever. That considering numbers, nature and natural means only a revolution of the wheel of fortune and change of situation, is, among possible events that it may become probable by supernatural, interference, exclamation, point,

The almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest get change already perceptible the origin of the present revolution, the spear of the master is abating. That of slave rising from the dust condition modifying the way I hope, preparing the auspices of Heaven, for a total, man separation and that this is dispose, was in the order of events to be with the consent of the master. is rather than by their extirpation end quote a person who is a man of science, and he understood the basic ideas of someone like him: Isaac and one of Newton's laws is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and that most

basic of human emotions, revenge would seem to be other new, Tony and also wooden did, and if you saw what were being done to these points, people all the time around, you wouldn't You may be tremble for your country when you realise that God is just. And when you worry that, if masters don't- and this slavery thing that the slow if I may turn around and make them more slavery in the United States did not end the way did, although it ended with a civil wars- and maybe that's Jefferson's worst case scenario, but what? If, instead of the civil war in the Emancipation proclamation ending slavery, the way it did. What? If that never happened, we can preserve whom, as Jefferson, does there that at some point it goes away. But how does that happen?

the civil war in the Emancipation proclamation of me. Does it go out with a whimper or does it go out with a bang and, if use, something like that in the future. The same way Jefferson says he did right there. What would you warded off. It is a very interesting debate, it happens in the United States Senate in eighteen, the year, eighteen hundred and in many of the people in the text of the Congress of the centre of many. This, the people income was at that time period. These original representatives, because the constitutionally become the law of the land in seventeen, eighty seven. and they're having a debate over one of the many slave laws that was around and why of the representatives, a guy named George Thatcher, whose from main, but at the time he's representing Massachusetts, he get gets up there in you, read this in the congressional record and he talks about essentially disarming this hand grenade that the country was

worn with right slavery is a pre existing condition in the United States right. Here for hundreds of years. By the time the United States is formed and as pie the deal for all these to join together right as it was a kind of a deal. There were a lot of slavery, independent states that made this a condition for entry. So if you can talk about getting rid of slavery, we're not even going to be involved. In fact, we dont even conceive. That to be something. The federal gum it has a role in talking about in this debate, eighteen hundred was: was a little for that, where the guys, like George Stature, who was sort of an early abolition, is saying yes, the federal It does have a role in the slavery question cause it's a political evil and they were debating over things like is at a political level, is an immoral evil. And I went out and got a hold of a book in the south. Rightly, nursing

North Carolina in nineteen thirty five. So I wanted to get away my brother's to be very careful about sources. I want to be very careful about getting things that seemed acceptable to everyone and it's written by a professor North Carolina believe he was William Sumner Jenkins, and the book is called pro slavery thought in the old South, any talks about this sort of back and forth between? very early sort of american abolitionist. Representative and someone from Georgia named James Jones and basically- being argued about here is George Stature is saying: either we get a handle on this hand grenade or it's going explode and blow us all up and Joe comes from Georgia. James jumps. He doesn't disagree with them, but he disagrees with the whole premise of everything else: and William Sumner Jenkins Rights quote at the turn of. Century from seventeen? Ninety nine eight hundred spot again took place in Congress on the slavery issue, Thatcher of

Massachusetts asserted that Congress had the power to legislate on the subject before, slavery was a political evil. End quote: now using a term that the Romans also use that slaves were enemies right. Their enemies within Jenkins continues quote, He meaning Thatcher, declare the seven hundred thousand. Slaves were public enemies, and now quoting Thatcher quote a greater evil than the very principle could not exist. It was answer of immense magnitude. It would some time destroy the body politic, except a proper, gestation should prevent the evil. End quote, We sang there. We write the right laws to have a soft landing from this. In a disarm this hand grenade or it blows up and kills everybody and the river

and it is from. Georgia, disagrees with him that slavery is even the bad thing and then says if these people are public enemies. Why on earth? Would you let them go? James Jones of Georgia replies to at your of Massachusetts by saying quote, the gentleman farther says that seven hundred thousand men are in bondage. I Ask him how he would remedy this evil as he calls it. But I do not think it is an evil would he have these people turned out in the United States to rap. the murder and commit every species of crimes. I believe it I'd have been happy for the United States. If these people had never been introduced amongst us but I do believe they didn't mislead benefited by coming amongst us end quote who is basically saying this was a brain just in condition might have better had never been here, but thanks you know to God on their part, that they were because they ve Bennett

did immensely and me that's pretty cheeky right there. So lucky they ran into us if they could be our slaves and we could civilized them. Although humankind has a long history of that rationale being employed, doesn't it but what both these men are seeing is a disaster in the future. They just have different sorts of attitudes about the best way to handle that but knowing that forever action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Would you be Ok, sleeping on a plantation with slave labour, yourself. Would you feel safe doing that? There's a much used quote from a woman whose she was aunt. slavery, but I think she married into a pro slavery, family or whatever she was an actress named Fanny Campbell, and in the eighteen hundred she's had to sleep on this it at this plantation in this town was Charleston. I believe- and she pointed out that the town itself, we said that you have to have

sort of our assistance, violence in place, a system to keep these. Public enemies, these enemies within under control. and she talks about that and then talks about how weird it is to think that you have these enemies within, but their within your house, and she wrote Her diary, I believe it was quote. A most Dennis tolling of bells and beating of drums of the first EU. of my arrival in Charleston made me home fancy myself in one of those old fortified frontier towns of the continent, meaning Europe where the Thaksin sounded and the evening drum beaten and the guards that is regularly every night, as if invasion were expected in China. Austin. However, she rights it is not the dread of foreign invasion, but of demand. Dick insurrection, which occasions these nightly precautions Of course, she right it is very necessary where large class of persons exists, in the very bosom of a community whose interests are known to be at variance and ink

compatible with those of its other members, and no doubt these daily and nightly. Precautions are but two Flynn drawbacks upon the manifold blessings of slavery. Still she writes I should before going to sleep without the apprehension of my servants cutting my throat in my bed even to having a guard provided to prevent their doing so end quote. there is a primary source, lead I believe it was that's recounted in melted book slavery, world history and its from a french family that is living in Haiti. I believe it is, and it's just a few Emily right, there's nobody else, but the mom, the dad, the kids and theirs I've a bum. And they live with two hundred slaves, Africans or african descendants Melter says that the french colonists in Hay

the other day in like it and expressing you know how they feel- and I just want to point out if you're scared of your slaves, because you understand that things have been done to them, that would give them grievances how much scared. You gonna be with a ratio of two hundred to five. and by the way, note that this slave holding family is asking for pity, because their stock with These slaves a day on court have eighty four in existence which must be eked out far from the world of our own people, we hear number five whites Father my mother, my two brothers and myself surrounded by more than two hundred slaves. The number of our negroes were domestics alone, coming, almost thirty from morning to night, wherever we turn their faces, meet our eyes, no matter how early we awaken, they already are add sides and the Custer

obtains here, not to make the least move without the help of one of these negro servants brings it about not only that we live in their society, the greater portion of the day, but also that they are involved in the least important events of our daily life. Should we, outside our house to the workshops. We are still subject to this strange propinquity. Add to this, the FAO that our conversation is almost entirely to do with the health of our slaves, their needs, which must be cared for, the manner in which they are to be distributed about the estate and their attack. to revolt and you, come to understand that our entire life is so closely identified with that of these unfortunate that, in the end it the same is theirs and despite Ever pleasure may come from that almost complete dominance, which has given us to exercise over them

what regrets do not assail s daily because of our inability to have contact and correspondence with others than these unfortunate. so far removed from us. In point of view, customs and education end quote David Brian Davis. As this great question, it's just the kind of question that we would ask two were he asks and he says no matter what your skill set or your training he's is: can you imagine trying to be the person whose job it is to keep a hundred and fifty or he says even fifty slaves in line, makes They work all the time at maximum speed, punish them for any get out of line It goes on to tell a story about his own time. Many years ago, in the Navy

being intimidated by a bunch of african merit in sailors than as an eighteen year old he'd been told to go order around it's so easy to do necessarily and the job requires the sort of treatment of people But today we would think Only some sort of sociopath would be willing to do, and yet he was common. This does so harking back to that Miss Jefferson idea that somehow course. In society, because it would be difficult for us to imagine a person that would be comfortable. Meeting out the sort of punishment that was absolutely common and ubiquitous in the slaves assize? Could you be a person with a whip good do it for a half hour. Could you do it with them? screaming the whole time. Could you do it to? If you were your guy, could you do it too to a female, your female. Could you to a child lemmings, you I'm saying Frederick. This: has one of those in need

It is a great I witnessed for some of these things because he's good, telling you how it made him feel. and watching somebody it could We I mean again imagine watching this happened to a total. Stranger, ok, could you go? that today watch somebody being beaten with a whip for a half arc Watch that ok? Now imagine it's not a total stranger it, your daughter or your spouse or your parent museum, saying here, because that's what it was for Douglas and had no choice. You got to watch this and stand there. Bawling up your fists, clenching and unflinching clenching jaw looking at every one else, as you all watch this scene together and letting the thoughts I'm through your head, we will cut or can you imagine what would be running through your head is somewhat he's beating my spouse or daughter. I'm thinking that this is so intolerable, I'm just going to kill them now and live with the consequences, and I read story

after story of how these overseers deal with those sorts of situations, because these sorts of students were somebody's gotten pushed too far and most of the time it's an attack the the establishment sort of thing? It's it's non compliance and The stories often have these overseers that bill ass three times, and then they just shoot you in front of everyone else and they half due to Maine. control of everyone else. Friend Douglas was ass once in a crowd of on fire of his who were white folks, but who didn't understand how these revolutions didn't happen? We wouldn't take their. What did you just overthrow these people? You are numbered them and Douglas a try. Defined how he could explain to these people that did not grow up under slavery. How, that sounds so easy to them. But they dont understand mean imagine being Douglas a situation when he sees his aunt. Why?

but, by the master, this isn't even the overseer, because he was saying the overseer was an absolute sociopath, but buddy with the master risen was not particularly wonderful either, even if he wasn't a sociopath, and this is what We wonder about how many people could do this today this guy was not, unusual, and this is what he did as Frederick a glass and everyone else around him had to watch Douglas rights, quote. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most high rending shrieks of unknown of mine, whom he The master used to tie up to a joist and whip on her naked back till she is literally covered with blood. no words? No tears, no prayer

from his gory victim seem to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose, the louder she screamed the harder he whipped and where the blood ran fastest there he whipped longest, he would whip. make her scream and whip maker hush and not until overcome by fatigue. Would he sees to swing the blood clodded Cowskin I remember he says the first time ever witnessed this horrible exhibition? I was co the child, but I well remember it I shall never forget it. Whilst I remember anything, it was the First of a long series of such outrages, of which I is doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. it was the bloodstained gate the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass.

was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feeling with which I beheld it end quote. wanting to kill the person doing. It is not an unusual feeling. There was a wonderful book called voices from slavery and it's one of several. That's been produced with original primary source, remembrances of slaves. So during the great depression there was some people call it to make work per. ram, but it shows you how a make work programme during you know a tear economic crisis can end up benefiting all of us, because these p that were hired by the government went around and got all of these surviving slave to tell stories that they could put in the archives that they be available for all of us today. Now they come with all of the problems that first hand accounts that are that are given in decades The events always have, but there still priceless

his reading, one where the slave, it was me interview. He was eighty seven years old at the time. This was the nineteen thirty is, I think I will use being interviewed. He about watching a relative who is nine months, pregnant being beaten by the overseer and the overseer Doug Especial Hole for her stomach? Avadian, so she could lay down and have a place for the stomach. While he hit her with a whip for a half hour and she ended up giving birth during the process, and he said this. The ex slave had said that he wanted to He was why the hunt, the man down and kill him and the over see you're, just to show you how complicated these stories are in real life, as opposed to the two dimensional way. We simplify them for history. Writing the overseer, who did this that the Ex lay wanted to kill was himself black. In our little mental experiment, try to view things from all sides. The rush him on approach hard enough to view

from the side of the overseer. You're lashing the poor black slave to begin with, isn't it I'll? Try the mind flip that it's going to be? If you happen to be a black person and a slave, perhaps to write beating another person of your own color in your own standing for the person that owns you. Both I mean wow. That is so wrong, and yet the question that is so intriguing in this story that I should me over the edge this time to. Finally in a brave the enormity of the subject matter and dive in here is when we decided it was so wrong Obviously, when these people are being wiped out in these two eyewitness accounts that I mentioned, this is between the eighteen, thirty, eight eighteen, fifty It was ok as it happened. But if you d done it forty years,

Fifty years later, it wouldn't have been so what's the difference, and it brings me back to her of phrase. and I dont remember where I first encountered it, but I I ran into it. Events during the same time period where things changed in the slave outlook. Let's call it the the attitudes and it had to do with public execution which had for several hundred years, one might say forever, but specifically for it for several hundred years previously been public spectacles of intentional torturing and suffering broke people broken on the wheel having hot iron's new stuck on them. I mean just public torturing and in an ever spectacle, sport fun. Entertainment, amusement and in a practical lessons, but the same era. It was dying,

out- and somebody had referred to it as part of a revolution in sensibilities. We today might say something like humankind during the seventeen hundreds developing more of a modern view of something like you, vanity and how one should treat one another, but you and see it across a wide range of things, and over and over in these stories? You will see these historians point out that we need to take into account when you hear how terribly be slaves were treated we shouldn't judge this on the modern scale. We should judge it on the scale of how poor people, criminal, calls all kinds of different people were being treated in these societies that had nothing to do with slaves or race rights, so the benchmark of of humane tree It was at a lower level anyway, and in the seventeen hundred you can start to see some, as I said, changes in sensibilities and slave he's one of the main issues that this becomes something that makes

I mean, the voices that rise up by the eight. Seventeen hundreds that are anti slavery are for all intent And purposes missing a hundred years before. And James, woven in the very first paragraph of his book, explains: let's use it again, the flipping of design geiss and how quickly not just attitudes, but the cool structure of the world that required those attitudes not to change, were forced to change when the attitudes did and woven rights quote on the of the french Revolution, all of you Europe's major maritime powers at a number of thriving colonies in the Americas were keen have a share of the transatlantic business of slavery, shipping after kids to the Americas and use them and their offspring to labour, mainly in agricultural work, was a lucrative concern, No one seemed able to resist

a century later he writes those same nations had banned the slave trade. Freed all their former slaves and were now vehemently opposed to slavery. Not only was there antipathy expressed in the upper echelons of power in formal politics, government and diplomacy, but it also caught the imagination of millions of ordinary people, people who were increasingly well informed, via the explosion of literacy and the world of cheap print. To make the point more crudely, he writes the late eighteenth century, most Atlantic slave owners and slave traders felt confident that they could ride out any criticism of slavery by the late nineteenth, century they had all vanished and only eccentric would have felt confident to defence every publicly in the West end quote. I always have hold back the reins little bit when I find periods in history like

is because the danger is that your fall into wiggys history, thinking W Hiv The more modern academic term would be to say that you were thinking in a logical sense. This idea That is the best way to describe it, as that great quote always attributed to Martin Luther King, but I don't think he was the first to say that the of the moral universes long, but it Ben's towards justice and suited the whig view of history there. We're making progress and it may be to stay forward one step back money, how kind of progress, but it's moving in the direction of getting more humane meal better for everybody more inclusive know what everyone say, and these days most historians don't think that when it might be a dangerous delusion to think that way, because there might be a little com, licensee in this idea that don't worry its own work out the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice in unless it doesn't also. Let's not forget that one person's justice could be another person's Manson,

like a murderous atrocity, so you never know where that kind of thing. I think the one aspect of this, though the it's me come away with any net positive, is look at what was accomplished. Look what's possible! That's what this history experience here teaches us where it doesn't teach lessons. It is an example. Look at much change towards our modern point of view would be a good way to put it but you see, and what amounts to one long human lifespan here. And you know we're not talking about global public opinion deciding they wanted different Sweet Erin tea. We ve been saying this is the legacy system of all legacy systems. It slavery. Centuries old in the Atlantic slave trade form millennia, old, ancient in the institution form up in the economies. The light

styles, the downstream profits of everybody. I mean woven into the fabric of society entrenched and if they can flip that iceberg, they prove it can be done. Right icebergs can be flipped and the reason we should take heart as we have a few ice. varies in our future that may have to be flipped under similar sorts of constraints, financial, institutional woven into the fabric of our society, money. I read that at the start of the civil war, the value of the american slaves in the south was estimated to be forty eight times aims the annual spending of the american government. Obviously the american government spent a lot less them, but none the less that that's a challenge, their. If everyone decided overnight that they had an epiphany in history in history, has shown that slavery was wrong. We're gonna get rid of it. You're still gonna have these practical matters

Afterwards about who is to pay for this, in a levelling up on the humanitarian scale whom he had left holding the bag right. When property turns back into people, different countries will have different solutions for that particular problem and they freed there slaves. But the point is that they worked it out now, the past finished on my shoulder wants to make sure I emphasise it. This was no rainbows and unicorns kumbaya. Period in history right wooden. Humanity went from here to there on the slavery question. I mean it's more. Like a birthing thing, I mean it's really bloody adds its transformative and history when it is transformative is often nightmarish me. You can have multiple revolutions, you gonna have blood, slave revolt, you can have reins of terror, civil wars, global wars of conquest, but you know

wig historians. Amongst my listener, ship would say something like what you you know: that's just the step backwards on their bunny. Our progress that she's gonna break a few eggs to make historical omelette just be just be glad you're, not one of those eggs, yet all of those course of events, the civil wars, the slave revolts, the revolutions are going to have profound implications for the slavery question and in yet another example of how the pen proves to be. My dear and the sword, or at least deadlier. In some cases you can see that some, of, what's going on in seventeen sixty seventies Emmi. This is weapon ized philosophy. This is age of enlightenment. Thinkers having their ideas, made action and you'll see this in other areas too, I mean what is Karl Marx if not a weapon

the philosophy or maybe weapon, ized economics. These are all thinkers right and lecturers and writers who have their classroom theories, put into practice by people pointing guns, one another. The funny thing about it is the ideas of things like the american Revolution. Do not sound radical two people today. How could, hey those ideas in the ideas of the french revolution in those idea, from some of these guys in the enlightenment form the basis for in our concepts of thing like human rights and everything today, but when first showed up? There are lots of places where you start talking about that stuff openly and they were kill you they'll executed. A lot of these societies have tsars our holy Roman, emperors or absolute ruler. Heck. There's a lot of places, you'll get killed in the twenty first century, world spouting

ideas of Thomas Jefferson, for example,. You can see. Movement on the attitudes toward the slavery question before the american Revolution breaks as you'll start to see the really tiny just starting abolitionist. Movement gained some traction. There's a famous seventeen. Seventy two decision in Britain over a slave who runs away from his master, while there in Britain and then gets recaptured than the court rules hey, you know we don't have to follow the law. wherever you were made a slave, which I think was Boston, so your free here and that here ramifications, but then, when you get the amount I can revolution what you see, he is the great hypocrisy began and it's the kind of hypocrisy that just over the course of time, is unsustainable, a chasm

is created that can be widened by people on the ant I slavery side of things. The hypocrisy is the lead. in the declaration of independence, and by that I mean in the journalistic sense that you're never supposed to bury the lead, put it right at the top All men are created equal right. What do you do with that in a slave society? Rather declarations as we hold these truths to be so evident that all men are created, equal and die by their creator with certain unalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What do you do if you live in a slave society, but you actively believe that David Brian Davis said this is the greatest weapon in the arsenal of american abolitionists the ability

the a the mere up to people, and Hey your home, country is about this. How can you stand for this hypocrisy? He writes quote. The strongest card in the hands of american abolitionists was there a bill, led to indict the entire american nation. For what appeared to be the most hypocritical contradiction in all human history a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created. Equal happened so to be the nation by the midnight in century with the large The number of slaves in the western hemisphere- end quote to show that the slaves instantly picked up on this hypocrisy There's a great story: I'd never encountered it before, but I saw it in several sources when I was reading for this conversation and it involved one of these protests that

happened in the early periods of of sort of them. The bubbling of the cauldron of the American Revolution The shooting war broke out. So seventeen sixty five. I think it was in South Carolina and a bunch of that Olenin we're going to the town square where everybody sort of was to protest. I believe it was the stamp back those and their yelling all of the rhetoric of the revolution in a liberty, liberty. We will not like King George, enslave us all these kinds of things, and I guess watching all this, along with everyone else, is a bunch of actual real black slaves in South Carolina. the sources were not clear. whether or not this spontaneously happened right at that moment, which would have been cinematic and that's how I hope it went down or if it has, a couple of days later, but apparent we, the slaves, picked up on the hypocrisy and and started shouting the same slogans in the town square, calling the residents and basically giving

clear idea that they faced with David Brian Davis, referred to a revolution within a revolution if they're not careful when they decide to break away from the king critics and enemies and added Series of the United States also used this obvious contradiction between the marketing material and facts on the guy to ridicule. The new country, british writer, Sammy Johnson and I'm going from memory. But it's a famous Corti said something like how is it we here. The loudest yelps of liberty from the ivory of negroes, and you almost got there feel when you read the founding documents there There was a bit of wincing on the part of some of the founders of the issue I mean. Perhaps that explains why you don't see the word slave openly. Very often, I'm trying to think of any time you see.

and of course slavery is written into the constitution, is written in other documents is mentioned in the declaration, but not by name their reason for that, and if there is What would it be? I'm gonna say some of these people. Might have noticed the contradiction. We already used, the quote from Clint Smith's book where he points out. Jefferson was aware. So he has such a hand in this writing. Maybe he just decide certain inconsistent. sees dont need to have attention drawn to the mom. Just guessing the French of core, we'll have a revolution right after the american one. There's a lot of cross pollination early on people. Don't always know this good, but the French helped the American. Revolution, a lot guiding Lafayette was famously a frenchman that that we held close to our hearts, its and then, when the french Revolution started one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine, which is the year the US constitution, signed in one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven goes into effect, so their clothes behind

Jefferson's in France, helping Lafayette draft things like that, declaration of the rights of man and the citizen, I mean these are to the French what these DEC racial of independence and constitutions are to the United States and guess what Tom Jefferson's gonna hand in both of them. When you read them. This sounds like humanity, taking a step forward, but Jefferson is all by himself a perfect as we symbol of the hypocrisy. here's a man who's gonna hand. In writing. Two of the most influential bed, och, foundational documents and statements in coming up with the language in the approach and everything for what modern human rights are all sort of based on any owns hundreds of people, and yet he becomes a Powerful voice in the early American Republic for

curtailing and eliminating the slave trade me. What do you make of a guy like this there's a lot of historical figures like this by the way right, these ones who may be are responsible for things that we all consider too good things today, but who, when you examine their individual lives, make them hard to root for lotta heroes? Are that way the hope says of heroism decision requires that we in or sand off those rough edges Wash em the two dimensional Convenience store cardboard cut out figures so that we can use them for a purpose writer to celebrate a message or one of our finer stand up. Moments in history be like that person may be going be like Thomas Jefferson you don't want to talk about all the weird stuff and there's some other weird stuff, which is its not just a Thomas Jefferson thing. It's a

the sign of their times thing and it's bizarre and there's a pay, those there. That must be connected, certainly to the Atlantic, black slavery thing, but maybe slavery forever, but it's above my paygrade to try to GO analyzed what's goin on here, but maybe you can so just explain it to you wrote because it says something on what it says but sesame. So we all probably heard the Thomas Jefferson, had a slave that he was sleeping with, namely Sally Hemmings. And for a long time there were Jefferson supporters who denied that he really did fall there are six children with her, but recent dna tests would seem to settle the matter now. That's not the strange part, as we hinted at before, and I didn't know how to even handled slave rape thing I mean you could do a whole. Just nothing but story you don't know where to draw the line and the horrific newness of slavery right. It could just be example, after example. The right things, a perfect example,

but the Sally Hemmings thing is weirder right as I can. I can understand the sadistic lust fills honor scenario. Jefferson's is different. Solicitor with the weirdness here, Jefferson's wife dies at thirty three years old, leaving him mean agree stricken apparently, because she didn't want her children to have a step mother. She made him promise that he'd never marry again and he said he won't so he ends up taking. I think she was fourteen when they travel to Paris together, who knows when any He was consummated young, Sally Hemmings. young Sally Hemmings is a slave. but to be there's no photos. But when you re description, she's described as someone in the parliaments of the southern slaveholding language at the time who could pass for white light skin long, chestnut hair. If I recall well, it shouldn't surprise anyone anybody about this, because Sally Hemmings is only one quarter: black she's she's at three quarters white slave, but the rules of the time dictated the

was now that's not even the really pathos oriented part. The fact that she's, the half sister ever since now dead wife is because Jefferson's now dead, wife's father had his if die on him to just like Thomas Jefferson, and he took a slave concubine just like Thomas Jefferson, it was Sally Hemmings, his mother, who was also by racial. I think she was half white and so when they have children together, right, Jefferson's, white, wife's father. And his slave. They. are one quarter black and three quarter white. Now this isn't even the part that blows my mind yet Jeff Of course, and Sally Hemmings, I guess, have six children what that means, is that those six children are one. Eighth Black and seven aids, white and yet due to the absolute We bizarre rules of the time period, their slaves and they work

Jefferson's plantation for Jefferson, their father when the whole thing is bizarre, and it involves these elements. Were you gonna wait a minute you're still their dad? Wouldn't you feel any family sort of connection I ended its. I don't even know how to begin to psychoanalyze that But it is twisted strange and you don't know how to measure that, next to the obvious contributions, the guy made to the cause of human freedom and the language that is so important and that you were the reason you know it. So important is even slaves will be using it. One of my favorite stories of a slave revolt in the early United States, happens the same year, that congressional conversation that we quoted early right between Thatcher of Massachusetts and Jones of Georgia on that Eighteen hundred and eighteen hundred there was a rebellion called Gabriel's rebellion. I think it's known ass,

now, like so many of the north american rebellions, it's nothing in terms of size but these things rarely take off. They rarely involve a lot of people in North America and there's a lot of reasons for that. But when this A revolt is crushed and they they do the after act, report the interrogations righted like forest fires and we're gonna find out now, how did this thing get started? the stories that come out of this- and this is sometimes you Know- let's be honest- chinese people are sometimes being tortured forever Nation will say whatever that torture is one hears. You have no way to know, what's real and what's not, but it's interesting that one of the sea They said that they were going to have a flag that they would carry from plantation planting of the rebellion, was going to spread and the flag was, have the words death or liberty on it does, of course, is just a variation of the Patrick Henry line. Give me liberty, give me death, which these slaves all would have known. what's more, when one of the slaves is captured and interrogated, he supposed to us

the interrogators. I have nothing more to tell you that George Washington would tell his captors work, He seized by the British, that is, the hypocrisy thrown right in your face. Isn't it. by the time this Gabriel's rebellion is thwarted in eighteen hundred or the Thatcher Jones Debate is taking place in Congress. Something interesting is happening in the history of slavery is both about to get much better. and much worse, much better, because the forces of Aunt I slavery thought are begins. Two coalesce and and become powerful. Besides public opinion, That is spurred on by pamphlets, magazines and editorials and newspapers and all this kind of stuff, that is, the sort of public opinion shaping.

we know they call it activist journalism, maybe today That's having an impact David Brian Davis, give some statistics and their big data points is a good way to look at it, but he says that the first national abolitionist petition campaign to end the slave trade in Britain. kicked off in one thousand seven hundred and eighty eight and the year before in Liverpool that asked people to sign a petition to end the slave trade and in this industrial, working class, northern british city, that was a shipping town that benefit directly from slavery,. the first time they had a chance to do so more than ten thousand people signed the petition, and you think ok, that's interesting, but its trends were looking for. Right the very next year, those ten thousand or so people had mushroom. Two hundred thousand.

four years later and estimated four hundred thousand in Britain signed the similar petition. So you see this growth rate where you're just wondering what the Hell's going on here. This is a this is a swing in public opinion. Davis has a line here. Were he points out that this swing in public opinion caught the slave owners by the prize in Britain, the, U N, is their equivalent to the American South or what they sometimes called the west indian interests, those of the people and young, Jamaica and Barbados. Those places and Davis rights Quote in seventeen. Ninety two, the government, meaning the british government risk Five hundred and nineteen anti slave trade or anti slavery. Petitions containing some three hundred ninety thousand signatures, the West indian interests were stunned. As the press big. And promoting the cause and a popular

movement arose to boycott slave grown sugar. Much is the north american colonies had earlier boycotted british imports. End quote: keep saying that slavery seems like an ancient institution out of place in a world. This modern will doesn't this sound. A very modern sort of response. So this is all stuff will you could say hey. This is real progress Things are in a chain in their changing fast mean in what is slavery. Brenda EAST even runs down the list of abolitionist and and black assistance societies, the crop up, and she, now. This is one of the early ones in seventeen. Seventy five and then goes down this whole list through seventeen, ninety four suggest nineteen years and from basically little or nothing to their coming out every year with a new one. So you-

clearly see that there is this demand in this fervour towards this, and religion is becoming a huge part of this. The quakers are going to have it be an enduring part of their by identity now and they they started out with slaves do and they had to figure out in MIKE chasm way, would societal have to figure out later on what we do with the people's lives? How do we were goes up, but once they did, they have a fervor and they will they will communicate with their religious brethren on both sides of the Atlantic. As will these abolition, societies need begin to see leading the way, but the United States not far behind, but what this does is it begins to create a push back. If you will places that are much more addicted to slavery, beginning from our mildly sort of resigned in and saying. Yes, it's a terrible institution. What you gonna do to active actively becoming defensive about it and

in some cases, touting the fact that they are slavery. People have an hour on this is positively good for everyone right, but but that will create a divide between the places where public opinion is beginning to be changed and the places that dig in their heels and say you know hell. No, we won't go to your antislavery world and parties to look at the human element of this too, it's not just everyone levelling up in an inner humanitarian sense, but the economics of in all our changing free labour in the United States, especially in the north, is becoming much more important and a cat is about slavery for a lotta reasons, including the fact that, even if they don't care anything a whit about what's happening to the slaves if it impacts the paycheck the end of the week that they feed their family with they may hates, every just as it depresses wages or takes jobs we also

the note and cause it's it's it. We would be fools not do that. This amazing turn around on the slave trade, especially in with America, can I'm from racism, alot of people just not thinking that, we need more Africans in this in a wonderful gods country it can stem from overabundance of slaves. The Americas are going to have some have North America can have something happened. That didn't happen in a lot of other places, the birth rate is going to increase, so you don't need to, continually refresh the supply line from African necessarily the way you do in places where they just work there. Death and then bringing replacements, but will be fools not to notice, you're, seeing sort of an alliance between black activists and Frederick Douglass is a perfect example. Here goes to all these groups as a living example. You know you want some empathy for these people, who are our are so different from

you and live in such strange conditions compared to you will hear Frederick Douglass dressed in the suit and tie too speak to you about his life and what he went through and it just becomes a phenomenon. Brenda Stevenson in what is slavery? Rights quote. Revolutionary era, blacks, slave and free hardly relinquish the legal fight to end the trade or the institution of slavery to whites. As early as the First years of the seventeen seventies, they began visually and in small groups to petition just ledgers and sue in courts for their freedom, most of their efforts were, however, underground it by religious philosophic. call, meaning the enlightenment. She says and legal arguments that alive with the ideals of the American Revolution, their efforts, therefore were supported in part by NASA and but growing anti slavery, sentiments held by whites, the lack of Egon

Make incentive for slaveholding in many of the northern states also contributed to these complimentary efforts. The results of the combination of advocacy from blacks and whites were tremendous Lee. to the gradual regional isolation of the institution. End quote the gradual regional isolation of the institution was place, is where slavery He was still unbelievably valuable, so it's going last in Brazil even longer than it does in the United States and the United States. Something happens in the seventeen nineties that will completely chow change. The equation, it's almost as if right when it seems like it would probably be in everyone's best interests. to solar jump on this. Were phasing in slavery added soft landing. There slavery. It's almost like. You know that

The gods of history say well. What have we throw a little bit more money on the other side of the scale? It's almost like it's to tempt humanity right, o slavery is a bad thing now. What if I give you more money in the middle seventeen? Ninety is a guy named Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin and the ECB ta make situation in the American South explodes and there is very little like in Hue Thomas in the slave trade rights quote In one thousand, seven hundred and ninety slavery in North America, as opposed to north american participation in the slave trade to Cuba and elsewhere, seem to be in decline, but Eli Whitney fateful invention of the cotton gin on Missis fan Greens Plantation Savannah Georgia. During this, bring of seventeen. Ninety three and the realisation that, with the room, of all of this great hindrance. Hitherto too.

large scale, cultivation of cotton aces, that's the taking of the lint from the seeds that used to hold them back. He says he then quarter contemporary sources says that one negro their words could produce fifty pounds of cleaned cotton the day, then he gives statistics and you know you- can see similar statistics and other books, but the like is hard to find elsewhere. He says that the year before the invention of the cotton gin that seventeen ninety two a mere, what's basically hundred and thirty, nine thousand pounds of cotton was exported by the United States, which is the same amount. He says as guy in seventeen. Ninety four, so that's two years later, right he's is the figure had leaped I remember, was a hundred and thirty nine thousand pounds to a million six hundred thousand pounds in eighteen hundred that six years after that, she exported almost I'm just rounding off.

eighteen million pounds and in One twenty cotton exports, he writes reached thirty, five million pounds, so let me that again seventeen ninety two, it's one hundred and forty thousand pounds one thousand seven hundred and ninety four two million six hundred thousand lb in one thousand, eight hundred and eight Million pounds and in eighteen, twenty its thirty five million pounds, and it is the Fiber of the industrial Revolution and the Americans South is supporting the end. Austria, world. The money is incredible James. Warm and says that at the outbreak of the civil war, cotton was worth more than all the other? U S, exports put together so that the new

Fourth is industrialized, and you'll often hear that before the civil war that we have an industrialized north and an agricultural south makes it sound like the south, can't hold it only economically and all were They don't have the diversity of products and they don't have the industry that the north, as they don't of the manufacturing the north has, but they have the oil the yellow bananas that is cotton and there's nothing else like it. Now. It's the new sugar write em this potential new gold rush comes a brand new amazingly huge need for slaves, and you can chart the growth in the numbers of: U S, slaves from the, cotton genes invention onward, and it's a straight up graph, This is where the? U S finally becomes major slave player, because in

eighteen hundred is Reed, said there'd been about seven hundred thousand slaves that numbers going to explode both from exports from other countries, Africa, mainly but also internal slave trade in internal population growth in Hue, Thomas Rights quote, in seventeen. Ninety, there were only half a million well acclimatized slaves in the United States. should them of the second or third generation he means out of Africa. Between eighteen hundred and eighteen. Ten slaves within the United States increased by a third, and there was there, wasn't He's of nearly another third in the next ten years to eighteen, twenty by eighteen, one in five. He writes. the slaves in the United States numbered over Third of all, slaves in the Americas. This trend would continue. End quote So more slaves making more money right

same time. You have and unprecedented growing abolition movement. That's fervent these Things are on a collision course aren't. Then it doesn't look like it's gonna end all that. Well and of course, there is a third force involved here. That kind of plays into the abolitionist argument a little bit, which is basically, let's just say, do the right thing to do the right thing, because it's the right thing, and then there is this veiled sort of threat that, if you don't do the right thing, because it's the right thing, bad things will happen to you. It's almost Carmack there. The carrot right encouraging us to rise to our better natures. The stick is provided by the captive people themselves. when we say earlier, the fuse bomb. Well, sometimes bombs have to go off.

For the potential of an explosion to be realised. Interestingly enough, the wind bombs do go off, metaphorically speaking, the anti slave crowd, will say see. This is what could happen. This is why we have to move on abolition and the pro slavery people would say see. This is what happens when abolitionist stir up trouble again. A recognizably, modern dynamic there right. but it's not an idle threat on the part of the abolitionist to say: hey, let SK level up in our humanitarian level or face the consequences. consequences are well known to everyone. Slave revolts don't happen as often as we might think they should in history given the circumstances and what we might think we would do in the same situation, but that's because These societies are very aware of how precarious things could get and it's not, play paranoia if they are out to get you, as the saying goes.