The Atlantic Slave Trade mixes centuries of human bondage with violence, economics, commerce, geo-political competition, liberty, morality, injustice, revolution, tragedy and bloody reckonings. That sounds like a lot, yet this show merely scratches the surface of this enormous subject.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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.
Andy slave owning societies, especially on the ground, in the places where slaves or a big part of life are well aware of. The grievances
that are building up on a people write that newtonian revenge idea for every action, there's an equal and opposite real,
and if you were the slave awning society, you are going
to try to protect yourself from the equal and
but the reaction in some of these places, if you have black scan it,
this will be the equivalent of a totalitarian made twentieth century state. Show me your papers.
point is: is it that often explains why you don't,
see this as much as we would think. It would happen every week that, in the fact that the
penalties to those who are involved in these things, and sometimes everyone around them, including a nice swathes of innocent people, just make sure you clear out the whole cancer is unbelievably gruesome.
The lynchings and hangings in the
nineteen century are probably
The best thing that could happen to you it could get along
Worse and its intended
you be as gruesome as possible. They cut the heads off these people, put him up on pikes in in the streets where people can
see them in the modern era. Basically, it's supposed to send a message right, the more gruesome,
the more the messages sent I mean take, for example, what
going on on a place like the island of sand aiming which is a french colony that will be known as Haiti later in history. The records,
we're combed by a marxist historian from Trinidad. His name was see our James
is quoted in slavery, a world history by Milton Meltzer and James, went through the official report?
So what was being told
Who officials was going on and
The alarm James grants quote
There was no ingenuity that fear or depraved imagination could devise, which was not employed to break their spirit, the slave spirit and sad
by the lusts and resentment of their owners and guardians, irons,
the hands and feet blue
acts of wood that the slaves had to drag behind them were
They went the tin plate mask design
to prevent the slaves eating the sugar cane, the iron collar?
whipping was interrupted in order to pass a piece of hot would on the backs of the victim salt, pepper, citron cinders.
Aloes and hot ashes were poured into the bleeding moons.
Mutilations were common limbs ears and sometimes the private parts
deprive them of the pleasures which they could indulge in without expense there
asters. He writes poor.
Burning, wax on their arms and hands and shoulders empty
The boiling cane sugar over their heads burn them. Alive rose
did the month. Slow fire is filled them with
on powder and blew them up with a match buried them up to them
neck and smeared their heads with sugar that the Flies
devour them.
Fasten them near to nests of ants are wasps made them eat their excrement.
drink there urine and licked. The saliva of other slaves. End quote Meltzer
says that these were not the mad acts of crazed colonists but says
The James asserts that these were the normal features of slave life with those were the feature.
Of your life. What would you do about that? What lengths would you be willing to go to change that situation? And what would you do to the people that put an kept you there? If you had a chance to get your hands on them, as I say, and the television commercials results may vary, but no one would be surprised if a blood bath happened
and there were people prophesies in yeadon in seventeen. Seventy french enlightenment rider he Omri now almost sounds like,
he's saying either you get your act together. European society or you're gonna get what's coming to you and no one will feel sorry and if thing
happen badly, who you
the blame and he says that it's time
stop maybe appealing to the humanity of the slave owners and started,
willing to their self interest and he wrote quote: let the ineffectual
calls of humanity.
We no longer pleaded with the people in their masters. Perhaps they have never been attended to and any public transaction
if then Ye Nations of Europe interest alone can exert its influence over you
listen to me once more, your sleep
I stand in no need either of your generosity or your councils in order to break the sack religious yoke of their oppression, nay,
you're speaks a more powerful language than philosophy or interests. End quote. He then point
There are slaves societies that have already lost.
Bunch of slaves to something known as maroon age, which means they run away and create their own societies and start to create communities, and- and so he says that you ve already got a couple of these and then he says this is sort of these are the little indications
the bigger earthquake coming. He says quote: these are so many indications of the impending storm and the new
grows only want a chief sufficiently courageous to lead them all
the vengeance and slaughter. Where is this great
man. He writes whom nature owes door afflicted, oppressed and tormented children. Where is he
He will undoubtedly appear. He will show,
himself. He will lift up the sacred standard of liberty, end quote
his weapon. Ized philosophy. Isn't that and he's warning about what will happen if you don't pay attention to it,.
And you can see how dangerous something like this would look to slave holders.
as when Reynaud, sacred standard of liberty is raised all
the downtrodden see their opportunity at the same time, to throw off the yoke of slavery right. What screws
of slavery voles most of the time is small little groups of people revolt in their Christ. What everybody did it at this,
time under cordon,
did leadership Rinaldo?
If saying, you better find
soft landing from slavery before that happens, or it's gonna be a blood bath. He says
the signal itself will precipitate a massive response quote:
This venerable signal will collect around him. The companions of his misfortunes
They were rush on with bore impetuosity than torrents. They will lead.
behind them in all parts indelible
traces of their just resentment, Spaniards, portuguese, English, french, Dutch, all their tyrants will become the victims of
fire and sword, the plains of Amerika will suck up with transport the blood which they have so long expected
and the bones of so many wretches heat?
pawn one another during the course of many centuries, will be bound for joy
the old world will join its plaudits to those of the new in all power.
in the name of the hero, who shall ever
For the rights of the human species will be blessed in all parts, trophies will be erected to his glory. End quote:
What rain always saying here? Is it enough
to some great black leaders going to arise that can unite these people and coordinate their activities and then its game over, especially in these places where the sun
slaves outnumber the the slaveholders eight nine ten to one now, in fact,
this right. These may not be rainbows words. He had several contribute
Here's working on this work that I just quoted from it it may be. One of the contributors is words, but Renault is gonna, get the majority of the blame or the credit depending on which way you view this there's going to be
in the writings to this real sense of once this happens. It's going to
turn about his fair play time and the Euro
Her right know I'm going to assume, but not sure says that the black codes
gestapo like Codes that Blackfoot
Living under in some of these places are going to be replaced by the White codes, and the white coat
if they're, only as bad to white. Folks, as the black codes word, a black folks are going to be terrible, you didn't have to be in
lighten mint genius to know that the slave revolts were coming. He talked about so
these maroon societies, but they're always been slave revolts, comes with the territory financed slaves there either.
And try to run away, which is the number one way that they sort of revolt or they're going to ban together and try to take their freedom. The vast vow
ass the majority of those who took this.
Option died, the lucky ones quickly, maybe like a
fighter in Spartacus his army, that loses their life fighting against the roman legions. That would be a good death compared to what happens to slaves, who fall back into the
and therein slavers after revolt the punishments that those people get. I mean they're, legendary and their meant to be almost theatrical. Some
times in terms of display, because it sending a message to the slaves that are still around. Don't try this again look at what happened to these people who died
Try so everyone's aware of the odds right.
The best case scenario is visible. You can see it in the Americas. All during this period is connected to that word.
used earlier, marooned or maroon age? Those are people who creates
to run away from their in slavery in places like Jamaica, for example,
and they run off into what the Australians would call the Bush and they meet up with other people who run away oftentimes indigenous people in these places are also part of the story, and so
but surely, as their numbers grow, they create communities that can start
defend themselves a little bit and most of all provide a place for,
the people who are still enslaved to figure
out how to get to amend the number one question has to be when you run away as what's the first thing I do which direction
I go while this provides an answer to that question. You go towards that direction and try to find
the maroon community and they're gonna, be looking for you and maybe they'll even be able to help. Why
off your pursuers. If you can get to them, these things could get very big by the way and become very important
In the sixteen hundreds in Brazil, enough of this,
if we managed to run away for a big community to develop, and this involve both the Dutch and the Portuguese and be fighting with regular troops at one
a five thousand estimate of five thousand person community was was destroyed. Only
have another one arise. I think that was between fifteen and twenty thousand people, and the Portuguese had to attend
and when they eventually steamrollered after a while
the leaders of that maroon community. I think committed
suicide, rather than subject themselves, subject themselves to what happens to people after slave revolts, but through the seventeen hundred you'll, see these maroon communities pop up. So if the choices in a slave,
volt- are losing your life or becoming part of the maroon community. It's no brainer right, the maroon cabotage, the best case scenario, but after the french Revolution, a door opens to a potentially better case scenario. If you're looking at this from a slave point of view, if you're looking at it from a slave owner point of view, it is the worst case scenario: what, if the slaves one what if, instead of the choices being a loss or a stalemate in a room,
Kennedy. What if the slaves were victorious, that's got to be the worst nightmare, the worst case scenario for a slave owner and the best case scenario for a slave. I would think, but when his that ever happened, we go look at your history books
successful slave revolts, especially large successful slave revolts, are really few and far between a slave in the Caribbean, for example the Americas anywhere in the seventeen hundreds. What do they have to look at? That would give
any hope at all many long shot chance at all men. There are a couple of notable slaver billions in the seventeen hundreds before the french Revolution is one in Jamaica called TAT.
Keys war and there's another in the dutch colony of bees in seventeen sixty three, I think
and both of those involved, I think it was hundreds in Jamaica, a few thousand in Berbeus.
They were both crushed, although they had both had l, which is an interesting little twist. That's going to come back and surprise the colonizers, who are pretty sure that these people, that they've enslaved her and in some cases,
capable of producing intelligent leadership more on that in a second, but when the Jamaican
rebellion taxis war is crushed and when the
oh yeah, ember bees is crushed the
british in Jamaica and the duchy in Burmese are brutal, mean the burned to death, a bunch of people who were involved
revolt. There was a execution that I hadn't even heard of that the British are said to have used,
in Jamaica, where they chain up a prisoner and starve them to death, and it said it took like a week to die, which must mean that they don't give him any water either any, and every heard that I don't think
but it shows you know successful slave revolts, four slaves to look at his inspiration. Consequences
Our through the roof, when the inevitable happens so
these slave rebellions, that have happened if happen, we, the people, have no hope what our gods green earth will happen. If you give them hope and of course, as we ve been talking about it, sort of irony that the people that end up providing this outlet to help might be a good way to put, it are a bunch of mostly wealthy white.
Males of property, some of that property being slaves.
North America, in the
seventeen seventy rights attack is worse in seventeen. Sixty the burmese revolts, seventeenth,
step three. So you miss that by like a decade or a dozen,
there's an all of a sudden, the rationales change- and you have this hip
critical situation that can be exploited in the language and when the amount,
can revolution happens. The pandora
Box of intellectual contagion is opened. The french revolution a few years later manage
to create even more virulent strains of this dangerous intellectual idea and spreading
even farther and there's a lot of
ambiguity in the language of both the american and french versions of these enlightenment documents. I mean, for example, when the
declaration of independence, as all men are created equal. What's the status of women in that line.
The declaration of the rights of man, the citizens, as all men are free and equal? Does that include slaves, non white folk? It's well, it's
begging for clarification, isn't it and in seventy ninety, so
representatives from the french Caribbean, where the French have
so slaves come to Paris, to talk about
Their status,
and how it relates to the language coming out of perishing all this highfalutin marketing material about equal rights,
can freedom and all that, so these gentlemen show up in Paris and ask for there's their equal rights. These men are from the french colony of sand. To me we mentioned it earlier, it's Haiti now it is the
richest of all the french colonies and these men are being discriminated against because of their african heritage, and I say african heritage because you don't have to have very much african heritage at all in a place like sand, meaning in the seventeen hundreds to be
screw emanated against and a term that we would use for these men today. Maybe you would say that they were
I re
be woefully inadequate, as seen from the people of a place like sand, a maying who would require much greater
levels of specificity as to the percentages involved in the racial mix.
By racial, wouldn't tell them enough about your background. They're gonna wanna use words, and I had to look this one up. I was so fascinated with the word. I looked it up:
hope it's not offensive, but almost all of them are going to be. The word was quadroon
and a quadroon, is somebody who is a quarter block when you
live in a society where it's important enough to have words to denote that law.
Full of ancestry. You know you live in a race obsessed, place and Sand Dominguez race obsessed.
Historian Jeremy DE pumpkin in his book facing racial revolution, which is a book
of primary sources for his reading. The male of these people
insane domain during this error there were about to get into, and he says the first.
They mention about anybody that they talk about in the in the letters is their racial make up, so that this is the primary lens through which they view the
so we have to view it through that a little bit ourselves
there has always been bigotry. There has always been prejudice. There is a way
an f, no centralism in human history. That's just humanity garage arranging greek right. How many those authors divide the world into two kinds of people, Greeks and bar
Marion's, that's not unusual at all. How many indigenous peoples name for themselves? Are the people or just people,
what does that mean everybody else's. So this is not abnormal at all, but it's not the same thing as modern racism.
Which you see really developing in forms that look familiar to us in the sixteen hundred and seventeen hundred. So that's pretty recent and the
days. Everybody discriminated against everybody, except for those wonderful societies that mess up the curve. Couple of these policies
places some other societies where they just like
sickening welcoming untrustworthy, but otherwise most humanity is a little standoff fish, but that's not the same as racism where it's based on skin color its soup.
Sadly connected to the ingrained biology of the people involved in one group, is inherently inferior and that all dates from this era, in fact, I was reading Hopkins Book that we just reference and he was talk,
about the fact that the island colony, where these people who come to
There is one thousand seventeen ninety where they come from is
is ground zero. Unlike the birth of the pseudo scientific side of racism, this is so.
the darker side of the enlightenment. We ve been praising the liberty and equality and freedom sided thing, but it all
comes with this side, which is really sort of the early building blocks of modern science. So I suppose we
get to where we are today without these people Lang the brickwork for it, but at the same time
you get these outrageous sorts of
Seemingly you no scientifically proven. Ideas like some raises are inferior and others are superior. I mean pumpkin rights quote
revolutionary sand damning was one of the birthplace of modern pseudo scientific racism in seventy
I d, the Baron de Beauvoir, a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and arts in CAP Francais, which is in sending became one of the first authors to assert unequivocal
Lee, that blacks were an inherently inferior species of humanity, quote no, quoting the baron different
the White race, physically and morally, their faculties, so to speak, non existent end quote: are then Paul
Can points out that none of the letter writers that he was looking in a red whose rate mail he was reading endorse
your view. He says, although they all accepted the notion that whites represent
a higher level of civilization than blacks,.
In what is slavery, historian, Brenda E Evens and says the same thing about the american Founding fathers, the bay
equally? None of them considered blacks, their equal, but what
tells you was how commonplace this view is at the time and think about what a war,
view. That is right.
That's your reality, and you judge everything through that prism. Think about how that changes. Your decision
making the way you
value, wait situations.
Now going hand in hand with these kinds of scientific, pronouncements and attitudes.
our changes in the law on the ground, so the people the become troublesome
for society's, like sand, Domingue or not the slaves, because they know their place because their kept in their place through force and violence. It's the people who have
african blood, in other words, whose ancestors had been slaves, who are now free
Whose status in this society is sort of floating? What happen
If some of these people who have black ancestry,
very rich running plantations. Does that make them the completely
Local superior in the hierarchy to poor white artisans and you can do
again to see laws written to make sure that every
keeps their place, no matter how well they start to be doing in society
and you'll. See. Laws like this throughout the America
as in indifferent slave states in a law be different, as we said before, the experiences
in all these different slave societies based on, we know who the mother country is what the dominant religion is, the way slavery develop the cropped involved. So so there's no unanimity, but this is a good example of the trend
so. A sand, for example, is one of these areas, because it's part of France that covered by the code moi
which was the sixteen hundreds era rule
those governing how slaves could be treated and went on so so setting may be minimum standards you could say
it was never well enforced and everything else so long,
the boy author of adventures, of the new world rights quote
the code nor stipulations about emancipation. However, like
those regarding the treatment of slaves were steadily.
under mind during the eighteenth century, attempting to come
the increasing size and power of communities are free people of color coloni.
administrators required masters, who freed their slaves to pay. Liberty
Taxes
Gradually made african ancestry illegal liability. End quote
In other words, they were getting tired of slaves being freed and turning into these kind of people, so they were
charge Slaveowners money if they wanted to free their slaves? The liberty tax.
And then he references the seven years war, which came not that long before
the American Revolution, was between Britain and France, and he writes quote in
Wake of the seven years war, scattered discriminatory legislation against free people of color was sick,
the ties and expanded a seventeen. Sixty four royal decree forbade people of african descent to practice, medicine, surgery or pharmacy.
The next year, another decree excluded them from working in legal professions or in the offices of notaries. A seven
Jeanne seventy three law made illegal for them to take the names of their masters or why,
relatives on the ground that such a practice,
drawing the there are several quotes here from the original d,
Gimme, the insurmountable barrier, which public opinion had placed between the two communities which government had wisely preserved end quote there
more attempts to make sure that the lines between the various communities are more definitive
he drawn, he says: naming conventions were required so that you couldn't name your child, a name, the confused somebody is too maybe they're there.
Netteke heritage, and then you,
couldn't start getting uppity. He writes, quote
seventeen seventy nine regulation made it illegal for free people of color to quote affect the dress. Hair styles
dial or bearing of whites. End quote and some local,
Ordinances do was said, forbade them to riding carriages or to owns
certain home furnishings by the time
of the revolution: free colors, he writes were subjected to a variety of laws that discriminated against
them solely on the basis of race. End quote:.
Doesn't that remind you of, like
Sumptuary laws
you saw this in Europe during the period where wealthy, but non blue blooded merchants were starting to make more money than some of the blue blood nobility back when in a year.
was so class conscious,
based on birth, and it was
upsetting to society they sometimes made. These rules are just said. It doesn't matter how much money these merchants. Have you not allow to wear this fabric? That's just for people like us are no matter what you do, no matter how much money you have you can even where this kind of fur on your neck. That kind of thing.
So what they're saying here is no, how
they plantations. You may on no matter how much money you make, no matter how many sugar cane field you harvest and no matter how many slaves you own. Yes, these free people of color own something like a hundred thousand
and of sand mean slaves, which is weird but the white.
minister saying you still won't be equal to a poor white artisan on this island.
And what all these laws on sand, demeaning and all the ones that are part of the same trend in the seventeen hundreds in other places in the Americas,
what they're doing
creating a permanent hereditary caste system
based on well ethnicity,
the racial origin background
skin color. All these sorts of things.
Something by the way we still live with. Today, when I was born the decade I was born, this casts just
was still legally maintained in many. You
states, were an african American,
could try to get into a hotel room and there might be a sign in the door. That's whites only, and that was legal, so we're
less than a generation away from that time period and that stuff begins during this
Eric as before this essay several hundred years before in the Mediterranean, for example, you might have seen all the same sort of bigotry, prejudice and laws directed against certain kinds of people, but it
likely would have been for different reasons, wouldn't surprised. Anybody, for example, in fourteen hundred
fifteen hundred in the Mediterranean to see this kind of stuff over one's religious affiliation right Christians, Muslims, Jews,
this kind of stuff. This is
skin, color asp
though, in the seventeen hundred that we live with today, where this becomes an important issue,
you and you have all these rationales and all of a sudden- you have you know,
Startles old slavery, ideas dressed up in a powdered Wigan and color
with early enlightenment, science and poof. You get this boy
A new era that these
by racial gentlemen in Paris are protesting and who wouldn't, I believe I said
Did they got there in one thousand, seven hundred and ninety, but these people got their different times and it's the one thousand seven hundred and ninety and one thousand seven hundred and ninety one national assembly that there that there try
to get on their side and in fairness,
the French National Assembly, during this time period, of which I am nothing like an expert. It say, Toby,
in time there in the middle of the french revolution. So if the
people from sand? A maying who are complaining about the hypocrisy of these ideas and demanding redress of grievances? Don't get what thereafter? Maybe it's just a sign? It
times. After all, there are gonna, be kings and beheadings, endear, teens and reign of terror in the not too distant future
disaster in the not too distant? Future is exactly what the
his representatives, these by racial representatives, from sending a warning about in a speech
in seventeen, eighty nine in Paris, Vincent Nine, who is a wealthy planter from sand a maying he's mixed race. I believe he's quadroon, I'm not sure, though
making a quarter black, but he owns a lot of slaves himself, he's one of the wealthiest free people of color
in the colony, and he tells this proof.
Region, audience that you better do something quickly, and I have
proposal, but if we don't do something, disaster will strike and he said quote: if the most problems
An effective measures are not taken if firmness courage and can
system see do not Anna made us all if we do not quickly.
Bundled together, all our abilities are means and our effort, if we sleep for an instant on the edge of the abyss,
Let us tremble at the moment of our waking. Blood will flow out.
Property will be invaded. The fur
its of our labour destroyed and our homes burned
our neighbours, our friends, our wives and children,
we'll be slaughtered and mutilated
the slave will have raise the standard of revolt.
The islands will be no more than a vast and fateful inferno with commerce
destroyed. Four,
will receive a mortal wound and a man
the tool of decent citizens will be impoverished, ruined. We will
lost everything but gentlemen. He said
There is still time to avert the disaster
the assembly wishes to admit me if it authorizes me to draw up and submit to it my plan,
I will do so with pleasure and even gratitude, and perhaps
I will be able to contribute to the warding off the storm that rumbles above our heads end quote. If you're,
at this speech by Vincent OJ,
and you're in the audience
and there's a revolution going on. We should point out. A lot of these revolutions can also be called civil wars because there
all the people on one side? You might be royalist and not be interested in this conversation Aubert, assuming that you support them,
the early revolution and the government in the National Assembly. Your listened OJ say that this terrible does
I stood on the horizon. If we don't give free people of color
What all of our
you know, materials are saying: our are our principles. Why wouldn't you Jim
Do it seems like a win win? Doesn't it, but that's because you have to take into account the
their interests that are always in play and in the past
in especially the distant past. A lot of the little new wants is involved in the yes, we're going to say it again: site gazed at any time period gives squad
and eliminated, but look at your own life now and how many little inflows
Susan strands of reality, are playing and pinging off one another. It's like that in the past two and a lot of
strands of the same ones that we deal with today about money sending is worth so much money and their appeal
in Paris and one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine going to similar groups that Vince and Jose and James Raymond they're, going to ride with their going with
brand new small fledgling abolitionist group in France called the friend of the blacks and they're going around trying to make their case that this needs to be
improved and send a man, but you also have representatives of the very wealthy class of people make in terms of money and sending doing the same thing. Imagine Washington
DC today, with all the lobbyists mishandle
where so much money and there's so much clout. In that I mean, let's start with the fact that it is
the dream of every Columbus era explorer when they look at this place and thought what it could be some day when they
yellow bananas are ripe. Imagine what you can achieve your sand, Dominguez, a colony
that shares in Ireland with another colony,
the spanish Santo Domingo, as we said but say
Dimming itself is about the size of Vermont. Annie
controls half the world
approximately half the world's coffee and half the world sugar during this time period. How much would a country B
profiting today. If they controlled half the world supply of sugar in coffee and
this time period was actually more valuable cause with others:
but if we have now, it's not as it's not as a year
make a commodity, but at this time period Sandy Mings control of those two commodities makes it one of the most problem
colonies in the world,
France's most profitable colony represent forty percent of France's foreign trade, a pretty
This is a ton of other things that dont dominate the world markets and the fifty percent level indigo
tobacco, cotton. The port is thriving and bustling and busy all the time. I read one author that said that the
profitability of Sandman during this time period is, is
greater than Brazil and Mexico put together
to the original? U s: thirteen colonies, combined seed
an idea of this management. It's it's a giant oil while on a little island and the planet.
Or in France saying, do you really want to tinker with this system that produce
in this kind of wealth, but here's the thing
that system involves things at that are direct contradiction to the declaration
of the rights of man and citizen and stuff, like that, other James, woven in freedom, explains we're all. This wealth comes from quote
The entire system depended, of course, on african slave labour
by seventeen. Eighty nine about six hundred thousand were at work in the colony over.
previous century, some eight hundred thousand Africans were landed there in red
in years, Africans had been arriving in huge numbers. Almost
quarter of a million in the six years between one thousand seven hundred and eighty four and one thousand seven hundred and ninety sometime
thirty thousand or forty thousand Africans disembarked. In a single year,
Large numbers of them were young men, and many have
prisoners of war in Africa, I e they had military experience,
Slaves now greatly outnumbered the french troops based in the colony, and it was the year
p military, their offshore navies and their colonial garrisons that form the ultimate guarantee of security against dangers posed
by the enslaved end quote.
Well, it wasn't just enslave workers, though hunt
Tens of thousands of free workers in France depended on the
sand exports for their livelihood and if your brand new fledgling unstable revolutionary government, you sure, as hell better care what hundreds of thousands of people whose
support. You are championing and hoping for and relying on you better hope they keep their jobs to, but
kind of explains the other forces at work that might keep
reforms from happening.
you need to do to keep this storm from breaking. So it's
complicated- and I don't understand at all for me- to get into all the ins and outs of the affair
of sand a meeting in the revolutionary government, things that it does or doesn't do so far.
To say that a lot of time to tries to walk a tightrope and remember this is an unstable government. There's gonna, be all
all kinds of things in the future. Here, as we said, that threat
this government and make them keep their eyes right on what's in front of them as opposed to something going on in a faraway colony, even one is valuable assigned to me, but they have
pay attention. When you know the horrible
there's that look bad go down. One of those horrible affairs is going to happen in one thousand seven hundred and ninety and one thousand seven hundred and ninety one were upset with the
would have tightrope walking that the national assemblies doing manages maybe
to go to the United States and get a bunch of weapons, then go back to San Domain and launch an insurrection
not an insurrection designed to get slavery overturned because after all OJ and others are slaveowners, it is a an inn
direction to demand an end.
discrimination. It will not be
particularly heavy duty insurrection and it will get cross.
and OJ and the other
Should the insurrection will take refuge on the other side of the island in Santo Domingo, but the spanish authorities will end up turning them
virtue the french colonial authorities, who will kill them, though
I couldn't find the right number has suddenly nineteen twenty twenty one of the top leaders, but
instant OJ in another man, are going to get the sort of treatment that their there don't do in France, anymore,
and- and that certainly is passed it sell by date in terms of what people are willing to put up with they're gonna break.
Vincent Oceana, we'll those
you who I know about the history of executions yesterday very specialised field, know that one of the things that they did in the fridge-
revolution, and this is again the humor
Terry and base line is sometimes so low that what sounds like improvements are strained sometimes but
the french revolutions famous symbol. That's
often associated with it- is the guillotine right, the beheading machine, the geese
The team is designed to be a humanitarian improvement to what was common
he done before the gear team. What's gonna happen,
Vincent O, DOT, J in early one thousand, seven hundred and ninety one as part of his punishment for leading this insurrection, is exactly what the
A team was invented to be an improvement over
the breaking on the wheel is horrific. I have not found a first hand account of OJ particular version of it. I did, though, in David Guy,
this is both the Haitian Revolution find the actual sentencing and the reason it's important has cause to be broken on the wheel can happen all.
For two different ways and the sentence determines the way it's done. Sometimes they can kill you first and then break your body after you're dead
but that's pretty merciful. Normally, that's not how it is, and that's not how it apparently was in ocean
his case, but they take him to the town
Square and they do this in front of every one. The first part of the sentencing statement like
he's out the charges and what they are accused of and found guilty of the neck,
thing it says, as as part of making amends for that- and this is this- goes back to us or the renaissance era- executions they have to go.
a candle and ask amends and say they were wicked and that sort of things are they
debase you and make. You say that everything that all your free
died for everything else was wrong and meaningless, and then they kill you
sent in says after they have to do the carrying the candle around part quote.
Thereafter, they shall be led to the main square of this town,
Where, on the side opposite the one used for the execution of whites, they shall have
Their arms, shins, thighs and pale
this bone broken while alive on a scaffold erected for this purpose. The high execution
should then place them on a cart we'll, with there
faces, turned toward the Heaven for, however long it pleases God to maintain their lives there
after their heads shall be cut off and exposed on stakes. End quote:.
In seventeen ninety one when this is carried out, this is a horrific, barbaric.
Deliberate Lee spectacular sort of events
It sends a message by saying we're. Gonna do this to you.
Did you notice also that part of what was supposed to mean
get so debasing is. Is it
how like they have dual execution sites and they even have a different one for blacks and whites to be
killed on and you have to go to the one for blacks? I mean this whole thing is full of symbolism. This is meant
intimidate, timid
Editor and it is
and to send a message? But the question that's interesting in this whole sand. Demain discussion is who is the target of this message
nor does what is the message trying
convey other than the obvious right? If you
launching insurrection, this could happen to you, but are they targeting the mixed race people? Maybe they targeting everybody, because
The french revolution is doing to send a soon to be.
Haiti is
tearing it along its already existing fracture lines and that's what makes what's going to happen so complicated
James Woven described it as a witches brew.
anarchy is sometimes thrown out there, but I had been looking for a short pithy description.
Of just how many sided and divided this place
and I didn't run across anything that was just right in any of them.
that I read. I stumbled upon a quote online by french historian
Four goes. I did not read his book, I'm sorry to say, but
the setting up of the situation is brilliant and gives
you a real idea of what kind of fractures were talking about forego see rights quote
whites, Mew, Laos and blacks loved each other. The poor whites
couldn't stand. The rich whites, the rich whites despise, the poor whites, the middle class whites were jealous of the aristocratic whites. The whites born in
France looked down upon the locally born whites, Mew envied, the whites despise the blacks and were despised by the whites
free, negroes brutalized, those who were still slaves haitian
one blacks, regarded those from Africa as savages every one. Quite rightly
lived in terror of everyone else. Haiti was hell, but Haiti was rich. End quote.
so. You get an idea here that, what's about to happen, is going to be a lot more complicated than just
one group of people like the mixed race, people fighting the White plantation owners, it's going to be
a seething cauldron of changing sides and alliances, and I mean think about
this one aspect alone. There's gonna be something like a race war in sand, a maying which side do the mixed race. People join
complicated that might be, and what, if you had family on both sides, we always like to say in the United States about the: U S, civil
or that it was brother against brother, and you can find examples where that's true, but in here
neither mixed race population. There is dealing with it as
often is not family on
all sides right in that
we'll colony, which side do you join.
Now this isn't an issue until August, one thousand seven hundred and ninety one to remember Jose's executed in February that same year, because until then it's just a quick
between the way
it's on the island and the mixed race. Folks, the slaves, as one of my histories, put it
or on the sidelines, watching
they are not and when you have
thirty two, forty thousand whites on the island and thirty to forty thousand free people of color on the island. When the four huh
three thousand six hundred thousand enslaved people on the island decide
that they're going to get involved, they become the major player right away.
And leaders emerge which shock thee
the whites on the island, many of whom were
used to believe that this isn't some how white led, abolitionists or priests or people dressed up with charcoal darkened skin, leading and organizing everyone here, because
their racists world views will not allow them to imagine that there
By the way. This is not me saying that this is in the dude, the writing right. Their lead,
home. I mean they soundly conspiracy theories, but they refuse to believe that the peace
that they knew his slaves are capable of doing what they start doing on the twenty first of August
de ninety one and one of them,
MR leaders to emerge is: is a person known to history as book men sometimes called Daddy book men and am law
around the boy in a ventures of the new world, described
Him this way saying quote
most visible leader during the first days of the insurrection was Boekman who had worked.
first as a driver and then is a coachman
man was in his believed, a religious leader,
a role that would have earned him respect among many slaves. End quote: he then says:
there's this religious ceremonies happens: I've read other accounts and it sounds positively cinematic. Given it actually went down this way
slaves or meeting at night in a sacred
Spot with them
thunder in the lightning going in the rain pouring down in that supposedly seen as it is a good omen and book
is there.
du Bois, says. Other accounts describe him officiating alongside an old african woman, and he describes it from
I'm a resource, or
I can resource, saying quote with strange eyes and bristling hair end quote or
he says a green eyed woman of African and
can descent name, Cecile Famine and then he says, quote:
at the ceremony. Bergmann apparently proclaimed now, quoting Bergman,
the God of the White man calls him to commit crimes,
our God asks. Only good works of us, but
God? Who is so good orders
revenge? He will
direct our hands, he will aid us.
throw away the image of the God of the whites who thirsts for our tears and listen
the voice of liberty. That's
in the heart of all of us end quote to walk, continues, cool
Those assembled took an oath of secrecy and revenge.
sealed by drinking the blood of a black pig sacrificed before them. It was a form of pact here.
It's probably derived from the traditions of West Africa. End quote: we don't
have accounts from the slaves who are part of the hit team. Is that then take off in sir
of plantation owners overseers anyway,
really that they run into as they go from plantation to plantation, killer
almost everybody they run into and destroying the abode
the refineries and then setting the sugar cane fields a light. We do have accounts and you have to be careful, because these are the accounts that are gonna be,
used in the American South to justify all sorts of of restrict,
persons on people,
of color to begin with the slaves, also
It's also going to be something that has- and this happens in every heavy dew
he slave revolt. One has away cause you're reading the accounts of the victims, who were earlier, the victim miserly of having sympathy for the people who
or on the unjust side of this you'll see this in the Second World war. All the time rightward when a troll,
these things are done.
by they morally superior side
king, morally superior outcomes, and yet innocence are caught up in the
years all the time, and there are plenty of debates about how innocent women
or children are in a slave society. They ve been a part of it, so these
first hand accounts are top, but if they're all you have some times well
abolitionists, we use this kind of material to argue that this is exactly why we have to get rid of slavery, a sap and slave proponents. We use these sorts of
stand, accounts or alleged first and accounts or rumours are first hand accounts as well
to say: are you kidding me? This is exactly why we can't lighten up one bit and by the way, all this
because if you abolitionist stirring of trouble in the first place and you'll, see a lot of blame for the right,
of man and the citizen, and all these kinds of enlightenment ideas, philosophies, they'll, say with a sneer career
in all these people, in accounts of finding pamphlets,
declaration of Rights of Man and the citizen in the in the pockets of assassins on the island.
does an anonymous account of an author who was asleep in his
abode on the night
The twenty second of August, which is in a really when they leave,
Council, just getting going
Anonymous Arthur said that he was awoken.
port at the sound of a gunshot. My dog who was lying in the gallery near my bedroom, started to bark loud enough to wake me wrong
we irritated by this continual barking. I got up to quiet him down and then went back to sleep. Fifty
In its later, the poor dog started up again even more insistently, but, alas, it was too late to wonder what was happening. The blue,
Ex had already taken over all the paths around the French were
for the plantation owners house hearing them
because they were making. I jumped out of my bed and shouted who goes there. A voice like
dear answered me. It is dad.
At the same time, I heard a considerable number of gunshots and the voice
a horde of blacks who filled the house with the.
Terrible words, kill, kill,
seeing what was happening and having no way to escape around to get my pistols lucky
for me they were not loaded, I say
equally because if they had been, I wouldn't
defended myself. I
killed some of these assailants and would not have been able to escape succumbing to their blows. End quote the fact that that author survived and was able to give us an accounting of what he experienced is remarkable. I got his account by the way out of Jeremy Deep Hopkins book
facing racial revolution, and when you read his account there are echo
and vibes that sort of remind me of reading about the early in a week's of
cambodian genocide, the killing fields in the nineteen seventies. This feeling of complete
unsafe unless you are
lack of safety amongst the rank and file like any of these regular poor soldiers who were slaves five minutes ago. They all want to see you
they could kill you at any moment and sometimes the only thing
keeping you alive is an officer that says: don't kill him. In this case,
the anonymous author of this account says that the person who told the underlings not to torturing kill him was boekman. The very slave who allegedly conducted the ceremony in the thunder in the lightning in the reigning got this thing
started, saying according to the anonymous author himself, who knew Boekman that he came in and said this is a good white man, don't kill him.
book man himself, will not make it very far into the slave revolt before he began
Was a casualty and they will parade his head cut, often attached to a pike, the white colonists will thinking that surely
this must crush the revolted. This one really unusual leaders done away with, but the way
Colonists are gonna be horrified to find out exactly how many good leaders the
slave class can produce and the mixed race people on sand domain can as well.
The revolt by the way starts off with them.
I believe these numbers are not in their more negative trends. Probably the numbers were supposed to start off on the first twenty four hours:
two thousand slaves who will go
from plantation to plantation, to plantation, picking up more slaves along the way, and perhaps even for
choices on the
slaves, you might think. Ok, I don't wanna get broken on a wheel. I'm just gonna stay here with my family in some
these cases. They may not be given those choices and that's very revolutionary, like also right, you're not allowed to be neutral pick aside, and if it's not our side, you die here and now
so who knows, but we go from two thousand and two
twenty four hours to an estimated ten thousand in four or five days to a hundred,
thousand being the number you most often see not enough, I believe that, but let's say it: seventy
I dont really believe the roman slavery
numbers either because who believes any of that kind of stuff see ya know
the largest slave revolt is in history, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that if this
since the largest slave revolt ever its top three and that's gonna, create an entirely
different situation than the other slave revolt that have happened
well, since the roman arrow or may be since that one in the eight hundreds in the Middle EAST, I mean it
have a problem here. Taxis war makes the history books with with
few hundred or several hundred slaves in Jamaica and the one in Berbeus with three or five thousand slaves is notable. What
happens when you have a hundred thousand and a hundred thousand that outnumber the white colonists. It's it's
going to be a bloodbath, and it's going to be there
sort of pressure that creates
concessions that one
could never have expected to have happened, then that's what's going to change the history of slavery
you're on the ground. By the way, though, when this in a first couple of
weeks of this thing starts what you're seeing is something that everyone
fears in history and thinks about, but it rarely happens. It's a race war
and I am fascinated by the extremes of the human experience I think, being a slave and sand domain is one of the extremes, the human experience, but so
being a white
colonist. Maybe euro tenure
boy and you're in the north of sand, aiming when this whole thing breaks out. It's terrifying right.
terrifying to be a slave before this revolt terrifying to be a white colony
afterwards and, let's be honest, when you read the accounts, terrifying to be a slave insurgent terrified me image, I mean: there's gonna, be massacres committed in this next twelve or fourteen year affair by all sides right. Whites mixed raise an slave side,
and they are going to be VIC
on. Although sides of massacres, its horrific there's an account the german deep,
and include in his facing racial revolution.
Haldeman Odyssey it's another one of these ones that some
sensibly anonymous and this person
talks about arriving in Santa Ming, having a wonderful lunch, and you can imagine that the White Colonial
clothes and enjoying themselves Rina, while there being serve tee in what run any disguises who wrote this accompanied, gets a message that
laser involved, but the north, where they have their plantations
rush up there and you get a first hand.
What's going on in the infernal.
This- is disaster Ville and the account pigs
up with all the locals, while the
Fires rage around them in the slaves, are tearing stuff up and destroying things and hacking people to death. They all join on on this families plantation- and he writes, quote the
And families among our neighbours met together with our plantation them.
armed to face the storm, the mothers wives sisters were lamenting and gathering in all haste, a few precious effects,
desolation and fear were painted on all faces.
The sky seemed on fire, gun
could be heard from afar, and
bells of the plantations were sounding the alarm. The danger
increased the flames
each moment were approaching an enclosing about us. There was no time
and allows we fled. He continues, and this is probably by
both reality and yet also a trope. This is what this revolutions
gonna have to live down in terms of atrocities.
Suppose it I witness, but
trying to whip up. You know
hatred and loathing back in places like France, for the slight
class here. Rights quote the victims
escaped it. Swords point came
swell the number of fugitives and record
to you watch the horrors which they had witnessed. They had seen
unbelievable, tortures to which they testified. Many women, young beauty,
woollen virtuous perished beneath the inn
but Miss caresses of the brigands. Among
the cadavers of their fathers and husbands, bodies still palpitating
you were dragged through the roads with atrocious acclamations young children, transfixed upon
the point of bayonets, were the bleeding
Flags which followed the troop of cannibals, these
pictures were not exaggerated and I'm more than once saw the sorrowful spectacle. End quote.
These images are going to be picked up by the mass media of the time they are gonna horrify,
the societies of North America, South America, Europe I mean this is going to be such
scandal that some of the abolitionist are even get a look at this and say: well, you know. Maybe you deserve to be in chains. Then, if you can't separate,
the guilty in the innocent gonna. Be here
up as an example, especially by the pro slavery people of the savagery. Here. Look at these. These are more
stirs of deserve slavery, but it's never whites addressed
that the very things or the functional equivalent of the very things that these slave rioters are doing in hot blood. During an insurrection with all the pen,
dump revenge and everything else. In going on right of a moment, it's never quite pointed out that the functional equivalent of what they're doing here,
was done to them right before this revolution started, I mean,
Let's remember the list of things that the
historian from Trinidad.
See a James had said: rising smeared with sugar and devoured by the ants being wrong.
did on spits. I mean there's a couple of stories that make the rounds here. One of a carpenter beings, Saudi into with saw
another of some colonists being nailed or something to the door or of his barn and then having his limbs chopped off one by one with axes by the slave rioters.
well, my goodness. It was just back in February, which is only months ago. The
the legally. You know entrusted
the majority of these colonies, sentenced
Vincent O, J and another guy to be broken on the wheel, legal,
in public. I mean it's. The fund
no equivalent. But the sympathy comes
and these sorts of things are happening to people who look like the people that are reading the mass media about it very quickly.
The colonists are pulling out cannon
error arming the citizens. They are
making rules that says every ship that is in the harbour has to stay there. All the sailors have to take their arms and come on on land defends the enclaves
white colonists and, just in case save those ships. In case we all need to evacuate the first hand accounts Tom.
About the entire area being cordoned, often any time any black people fall into the hands of the white colonists. During these early stages, there,
interrogated, tortured
Sometimes a wheel is put up just for that purpose. One of the people in
I, the white enclaves, says and then lined up
Hence the wall and executed.
prisoners are not being taken very often and decide that takes the most of all, believe it or not. The slaves ass, though, be talk about trading white prisoners for concessions, the sitting,
nation, though quickly becomes nasty,
the extreme. The blue
like slaves go from using far
implements and things like machetes to using the weapons that they capture and then overtime becoming very good with them. They go from
fighting as a rabble to fighting, is organised
troops in a sort of a skirmish, ambushed kind of formation and the sorts of
seen you begin to see, are well what you might expect in a violent race war.
the right to Bonn ventures of the new world quote some contemporary sources about in a way
going on. He says that both sides were at a guy,
ray stalemate. At a certain point now, quoting sources from the seeing quote,
the country is filled with dead bodies which lie and buried
the negroes have left the whites with stakes driven through them into the ground, and the white troops
I take no prisoners but kill everything
black or yellow, leave the negroes dead upon the field. End quote: do more than quotes. Another contemporary source uses cos,
The heads of white prisoners placed on stakes, Sir
did the camps of the blacks and the corpses of
prisoners were hung from the trees and bushes along the road that led to the positions of the whites end quote.
this seems to me to be the very definition and the epitome of a race war, and a huge component of this is
Van revenge to a degree which I can't imagine, then you see it when
the the Haitian revolted. This slave insurgencies gonna go through multiple different stages for the next twelve fourteen years. This first and
she'll stage is where this rage is just exhibited to
agree it never goes away, but you can see,
The enjoyment of having the tables turned. Jeremy DE pumpkin relates a famous account
One of the most famous first hand accounts of the early part of the slave revolt by a Frenchman name. I think the last name is pronounced gross and he falls into the hands.
Of I guess you could call him sort of a mid level commander he's the boss of a group of slave insurgents and they throw a bunch of the colony
They capture, including this fella, named, grows into a dungeon, and then they pay
brutalize, some of his compatriots and
way that they do. It is reminiscent of the very things that were done: the slaves or one point grosses in this dungeon anxiously
a man out, and they throw a car
guess back in later and ask if they
recognize their friend and he been given hundred
of lashes with a whip. And then he said, Gun
out inserted into every orifice incomes is body and then blown up which, if you recall the historian from Trinidad Account, is an exam
thing that was supposedly done the slaves, but there's a certain in a we would call it sadistic. But when it's a pay back,
thing, I'm not sure the normal labels apply
quite the same way and
Mid level, slaves name slave commissioning was Johnny. That's the anglophile version of the name and gross relates what happens in its.
sounds like something out of a nineteen fifties: pulp comic book
with a white explorers are about to be thrown into some big black kettles
eaten by the natives. It's that kind of horrific nets, but this is real stuff
gross says they don't know. What's gonna happen to them until they see this job
me showing up with a hangman and a body
guard. He says of negroes em. You lot owes who conduct themselves into their presence and then, as soon as he sees
the hangman. He knows that therein trouble, he writes, quote our fate
then we thought no longer dubious
as it was for
of our miserable companions were unshackled conducted,
the bottom of the scaffold, were he Johnny had them
hide like so many victims to exercise.
His vengeance with the greater relish this inhuman monster, measured out the ground and the hangman dared not lift the destructive weapon without his order which, by a watch
in his hand, was given era
quarter of an hour when these poor afflicted wretches were a gasp of death
We beheld Johnny the Mule Lotto Delete IE and the new.
grow Goddard amidst these horrid torments cutting
his meal, two of them
whom they had thus butchered
trusting the other two like a foul ready prepared for the spit toad fashion,
and drinking their blood end quote Lee
author grow, says that he and his compatriots were forced to help. Do all this right. This psychological twisted nest there.
The idea of making everybody wait exactly fifteen minutes for the next act to happen.
You imagine.
Sitting there waiting for it to happen and looking at each other and in your head trying to figure, I mean it's diabolical.
So the next day they take out more the prisoners and they had to do all
This again and gross rights quote
repetition of the same. Tragic barbarity succeeded the next day and so on bare shea.
Our commander was
doom to another torture.
Johnny immediately caused one of his hands to be severed, and then it
standard him upon a ladder where he received two hundred lashes, they afterwards
conveyed him in a cart to the town of Grand Riviere, where he was
splendid from a stake fixed in the ground by a hook
here's TIM under the chin. This unfortunate man
living in this condition. Six and thirty hours.
The time Johnny had him taken down. He still palpitated this man,
stir whose thirst for human blood could not be allayed. Envy
did a fresh torture which
that of roasting, the remainder of the prisoners alive on a spit end quote, but this is the part of the peace that than is also interesting
before he can kill all these people, a group of sleep,
waves and a commander shows up assessed
the situation, talk to the people involved, tie
Johnny up to a tree and has him shot and then
Poligized, is and asked if they,
needed anything. Would he could get them write them
the mind reels, but what you're seeing here is the
transition from the moment of sheer hot blooded revenge and crew
guilty, and all that is pay back to something more.
Stable, were you begin to see an attempted
control on. So that's why a lot of historians will divide what's call
the haitian revolution into multiple chunks, because each chunk rubber
hence a changing in the way things are in the global situation and remember this is tat
I did the hip to the french revolution. So very soon,
The french revolutions gonna veer off in other directions and Sand Dominguez Gonna go with it. I mean the next
phase in all this is going to be when,
ants goes to war with most of Europe, its famous room in the revenue
canary period, but one of their enemies is going to be Britain, and one of the battlefields is gonna, be this whole caribbean area
sand amino get swept up in this, but what that
means. Is that the french guy
for me. This revolutionary government that is gonna go from a relic
Fifthly, liberal and enlightenment like right with Jefferson and Lafayette in those people to increasingly radical and then it'll go conservative after that period and then Napoleon will get in charge. So there's lots of stages of the french revolution to and sand dominion. Just the re swore
issue going on there? Their part of the french revolution to you got rich white planters were with the royal aside and poor white artisans, who have a simple
for the ideas of the revolution, so it's gonna get very complicated, but sandy
as a target and to because of its wealth. It's also target because this
slave revolt- here, that's going on month after month after month, now is
bad influence on all the other slaves societies nearby right. So the British would like to get that taken care of
but their slaves societies in places like Jamaica, that's very close, don't start getting
as upset as the french colonies are and an after a certain number of months in sand a maying, it does spread other french colonies, the real
and all this matters, though, is because the French
government, is going to be forced to make concessions during this whole affair that they pay
probably wouldn't have made otherwise, because they're going to be faced,
with choices like make, this concession or
who's the entire island,
and all of a sudden, the kind of things
Vincent OJ die
trying to achieve and could manage to become very
negotiable. Once the question is what what are you? What are you gonna? Lose everything how about you? How about you make peace with those
mixed race, individuals. This is one of the things that, for example, happens, make peace with the mixed race. People get him on your side so that the White Colony
and the mixed race folk can together in a stop.
the slave revolt and all of a sudden because of the threat to the island and everything else, the french gut.
when in Paris will grant
and really enforce the equal rights that Vincent OJ had died, trying to achieve the French will send a twenty,
eight year old sea. To me, I look at it now I got twenty eight year old. This is a kid. A twenty eight year old, commander
and six thousand troops in than six thousand more troops to sort of enforce all this sort of stuff, and this guy- and I can- I can help
we believe this, but remember, there's, there's a long distance and there's no telegraph or anything like that for instant communication between what sand domain and Paris of this twenty eight year old sometimes has to make command decisions on the ground and he's going to be,
confronted with these kinds of choices and at a certain point here
going to decide first at one part of the island and then
in the island in its entirety to free the slaves, because if he does,
and they're gonna lose the island to either the British, the spanish next door, and when this twenty,
your role does this
representatives, Roseanne Domingo and talk to the increasingly radical revolutionary french government, the
recently radical revolutionary french government decides to back
this twenty eight year old and sort of own it like they meant to do it all the time, and if you want to get one of the best examples
the duality of this right. It's both living up to our
marketing messages and, oh, it's, a brilliant geo, political, ideological coup
into the remarks that George Denton of the
evolution. Illusion where I want these french revolutionaries who would like so many of them will end up a victim of the french Revolution in his head cut off.
He will stand up in front of the National Convention and base
quickly say you know. This is something we should done long time ago and it's gonna screw the English. She said quote
representatives of the french people. Until now, our
creese of liberty have been selfish and only for ourselves, but today we proclaim it
The universe and generations to come will glory in this decree. We are
claiming universal liberty. We are working
future generations. Let us
launch liberty that the colonies
the English are dead today, end quote and that's not
type or because there will come a point in this whole haitian revolution thing where
British will come and try to sort of conquer sand to that's what
Arms moves like this, and what the french government is essentially saying to the slaves of sand. A maying hey, you're, free now by this
governments decree. If
british women take over the island. There can arrange slave you and put your masters back in charge of things because
what they're doing in their islands. So you better fight for our collect
freedom, you were gonna, lose the island entirely, will sure will grant in freedom to the slaves right.
more with the French have done here is- is declare themselves in solidarity with every slaves society around the world right in that
portray their enemies like the british and the Spaniards as them as the protectors
of the slave system- it's brilliant
all this is going on and we're not getting it real detail about the intricacies of the of the haitian revolution
But some of the leaders that are going to be produced by this thing
you're going to be some of the more interesting people on the history. The region I mean, there's gonna, be a guy who's like the George Washington of Haiti,
to solve it sure, was gonna come to the fore during this period. He's gonna be a fantastic leader of soldiers and he's going to be
the one who actually out maneuvers multiple different empires right, the British, the spanish and even the French to win the freedom of this island, eventually
he's gonna have to work all kinds of aid,
those isolate people- I mean it's brilliant chest playing and it's going to take one of the greatest
GEO political figures in all human history to put an end,
to his maneuvers, to create a
free society and an equal society in sand, aiming Napoleon Bonaparte. What happens? It involves
how late is eventually Course Napoleon in one thousand seven hundred and ninety nine one thousand eight hundred gets control of France he's this most
lasting of characters, he's an emperor who will be an autocrat and who prey
finally will demand you. The kind of obedience autocrat do but he's able
Because of the way he rose to power to sort of rap himself in the clothing of the revolution,
and somehow portray himself when he wants do as the defender of the rights of man and all those kinds of things.
but that also hamstring them. He can't just go crush in liberty movements. He's gotta be a little bit more careful than that, but when he looked at them,
situation in sand San domain. He wants
gold mine oil well back. He wants the yellow bananas to produce again and the wealth of that island has been destroyed by the uprising
oh Napoleon's, gonna, send one of his generals happens. We his brother in law, guy named Leclerc back to the island. This is the last phase of the fight
for sending he's gonna, send Leclerc as the guys
back to the island with troops and their jobs going to be too
outmaneuver all the various leaders, the mix race leaders to salvage you're. All those kind of people isolate them promised them things like hey. You can have your freedom and you can have money. You can have all this. Just let's abandoned his holding and crush the people they can't le corpse can have my twenty six thousand french soldiers and
you're going to get their rear ends handed to them. First of all, you have to
if, if the Russians can have things like general winter, which is one of their sanctuary when the winter comes of it practically
General furthermore general mind when the when the thaws happen in the House
places him. If immovable quicksand will then the Haitians and the
bill of Sand, a maying can have field marshal fever, can't they sound like something out of w care, paean Cincinnati, but I'm thinking more about Samson and the Bible and how
Samson had you know the strength with his hair and in his enemies, got a hold of them and cut the hair off and he was abused by them for a while, but in the hair grew back and with it came and ice powers,
central and southern Africa, had had that pathogenic.
fan shield that had kept out all the non
girl in southern african rabble for for so long. But it turned against. You know african interests, because
it made them the better choice
four slaves in the new world right as they say,
some resistance to these things. They killed the indigenous people, the Europeans, in a sort of
worked against them in an ironic sort of sense for so long, but here in Santa meaning the pathogenic
defence shield, defends
revolution and the deaths
from the diseases of the european military forces is bad
any I've ever seen at any time. It's it's absolutely astounded
first of all, the British in one thousand, seven hundred and ninety six one thousand seven hundred and ninety seven one thousand seven hundred and ninety eight are trying to reconquer-
the areas in the Caribbean and have had revolts and everything they will send out the largest expedition. Sir, I think during this time.
period from enable sense, because the British don't tend to put very
Very large armies and the field, but they'll send like two hundred ships. Thirty thousand
Forty thousand guys to these islands and the disease will crush them.
They will start calling the West Indies a cemetery. They will have revolts by troops in Ireland who are
port who don't wanna, go it's a death sentence and if you
not dying from the disease. You have to deal with the rebels and the slaves, and these people, who are now getting very organised and fighting very well- and I mean look at your and friends- has created an army.
That will drag you out into the hinterlands and kill you
like. A north vietnamese regiment right, some
my favorite stories, though, as they are absolutely
horror shall moments come from.
this time, purely because of Nepal,
in general, the clerk who, by the way, will himself die.
yellow fever, which is one of the prime killers? Yellow fever is absolutely horrific and its it'll
only kill the majority, but you have malaria, you have a ton of right. The pathogenic defence force field is
devastating Leclerc die from it too, as I said, but not before, he is able to write accounts and some of the
accounts. Are crazy, suffer
Apple Leclerc actually owns a plantation in Santa
in one of the ones in the area that's been scoured by inside
regions and he writes in account of going back there.
and it is
No, what the adjective is. So, let me read you the account and an again with all these accounts is it
who is it not true? I dont know, but I've heard things in history
read it sound similar. I mean one
reminded of when the Romans were able to get back to the battlefield at the tutor, burger, vault right, the tutor burn forest after the germ
and tribesmen destroyed them there and saw with the german tribesmen had left for them to find. When there's echoes of that in the clerks. Writing, so Leclerc takes you with him
with his soldiers and a bunch of these people who own land up in this territory as they march back in force today,
burned out area. Leclerc says quote from
distance. It looked like universal desolation
Our ruin was complete. Why
person, hardly recognize the sight of his own plantation, the other plantation
a friend he sought in vain what the fire had spread.
Shared hands even more destructive than the flames had reduced to dust. We fell.
does that we were marching on the ruins of the world sad playthings of fate.
The plantation owners makes
with the main body of the army drag themselves along lost in contempt,
nation of their misery.
soldiers and civilians all shared our sufferings. No black
No animal, no live
creature, interrupted the silence of these deserts
can only by the rumbling of the cannon and the slow, measured pace of the troops. End quote Leclerc says that they see scaffold
old stained with blood ruins ashes. Trees hung with their heads of colonists, already pewter refining and then says they saw
something even worse quote as they advanced they came across
so horrible sight, o what an abomination
oh inventive, genius of cannibals, what did we see white hand
from the wrist up coming
of the ground with the fingers pointing upward we stood, petrified
I'd did. They belong to bodies buried here,
Paris, idle hands, torn them from living victims. These,
in that I must have held in my own,
Ah, they no doubt belong to a father, a friend, a mother. They might have
just sign the man you missions of some of these monsters who had insulted them in their agony, who had made, kill
a game. These whites had been torn apart,
their sufferings were over. What a terrifying rest,
their shades hovered over our heads end quote any means their ghosts.
At one point in this story is again one of those where you think. Ok is this believable or is this hyperbole purblind? I dont know, but it's wonderful Leclerc says
gets to his own plantation, but his house is gone. The places level
but there's two building standing
because slaves were living there or something, and he says he went into one of them. The contained his library and its untouched
pristine, any walks up to his copy
of rain all's book which she all of which is the book we quoted from that had said. You know if only the blacks can overthrow the the whites
coming and the great leaders going to be. You know raising the standard of liberty in and then eventually you know what are now. The black codes will be turned around a become the white Codes and Leclerc says he can
into his study, and that book is open to that page. In other words, he suggests
the people who burned down his plantation,
we're very aware. Raynolds writing saw the book spared the room opened it up to the page so that when the people came and found
What they had done, they would see the reason in print written by a Frenchman. Methinks that sounds just a little
two nicely wrapped up in a bow story, wise to be believed what it's the way Leclerc wanted to frame it that's interesting! Is it and end
the fact that the very next lines are about how he absolves
in also develop of any guilt in this saying that in evil beings,
can twist any ideas into evil ones, but what's
interesting and hypocritical about all this is look
Europe is himself twisting re enlightenment ideas in a way,
a to do something
that has to be on the on the shore
list of them of the worse things you can do to any one, his job there and it's a secret mission, essentially
to re,
dude slavery in a place where it's been done away with magic
slave, getting your freedom and then having somebody come in from the outside
and changing their mind, look
understands and so does Napoleon that this
to be a secret mission. Otherwise there can be a ton of push back.
They know they have to get to sound overture out of the way, though, he's too formidable
in eighteen, o one which is right before you know the clerk arrives. Late you're gets a cow
institution passed for sending. It makes him leader for life, but at all
so does some things that are astounding when we think about how far we ve come since fourteen ninety two right,
I mean overtures aging. A one constitution says quote.
there cannot exist. Slaves on this territory, sir,
here too, it is there in forever abolished. All men are born, live and die. Free and french end quote, so you see he's not saying we're, not a part of France anymore
he's, saying that those ideas of the revolution that you ve been saying will were put him in our constitution to just to be safe. He also said in the cost
asian quote: all men, regardless of color, are eligible to all employment. End quote: he says all
quote: there shall exists, no distinction other than those
aged on virtue and talent and other superiority afforded by law in the exercise of public function? The law
is the same for all whether in punishment or in protection, end quote
it is right after this constitution is adopted, didn't
holy Incense Leclerc over to San domain on his secret mission to basically overturn everything in it and the clerks job is to do it so, the by hook or by crook, and the one thing that can happen cause it will completely ruined the whole plan. Is it
gets out that his job is to reinstate slavery. Cause venue-
have a revolt by the
slaves on your hand, and you can't let the mixture
people know that you know what what
happen. There will essentially created a caste system based on racial May
began rider their revolt got
get rid of Tucson Louvre tour because he's not gonna stand for in other regions
Vision of slavery he's no angel by the way, but nobody that comes to power
a war of racial extermination going to be angelic, but he will be
outmaneuvered by even friendly allies is alot aside, changing all the way through this whole thing were allies wall of his and become enemies, but he'll end up
seized by the French thrown on a ship sent back to France dies in a cold french jail under potentially mysterious, Sir
stances. But, as Leclerc says, in a letter back to France, deporting
it is not going to do anything. There's two thousand liters of this thing. You'd have to deport.
Only a little bit before he will die of yellow fever. Leclerc will write a note to the Navy minister, I dated on September thirteenth eighteen o two and its reprinted in
David gases, the haitian revolution- and it gives you a sense of how things are going and he writes quote
To give you an idea of my losses, the sub
regiment, arrived here with one thousand three hundred and ninety five men. It has at present eighty three sickly
and a hundred and seven in the hospital the rest have perished. The eleven
Light Infantry arrived with one
Thousand nine hundred men it has
more than sixty three men in service and two hundred and one in the hospital the set
the first, which received about a thousand men, has now
nineteen serving the colors and a hundred and three
three in hospital. He continues
is the same with the rest of the army.
Try and imagined, and my position in a country,
there's been in civil war for ten years and where the rebels are convinced that we want to reduce them to slavery. End quote:
not suggesting they don't. He said,
lasting. They know the plan now and their fighting
with enthusiasm, renewed enthusiasm and renewed hatred. This is
along with the very first part of the sand me
A pricing rightly the initial massacre,
at the very beginning. This is going to be the cold blooded, maybe even more disturbing side of the whole thing and it's not gratuitous to get into the violence, because we need to understand this.
The sort of news making the rounds, and it is influencing people and
fluency them through their own
prism of perception right. They all draw different conclusions from what we seeing here, but the stories
absolutely send a chill up your spine
stuff and on both sides. So one of the things.
In I
Primary sourcebook, the Haitian Revolution, is, he has a witness account from a fur
java, Sir shorter near the ended. This thing when things are getting really bad and at the end, of course, the British now so are on the other side again and their helping the rebels in sand. A maying and the generals are switching sides and and the powers shifting
curiously and then against the french quickly and atrocities are happening in gagging, Prince the account of a free
officer name, be Shaw, who first describes
The french soldiers deal with the blacks, and he says, quote
Drowning is the usual way of putting to death black prisoners. I've been
that on several occasions, thousands were drowned at the same time.
Bodies were often seen floating onto the shore
humanity is a casualty here, though,
you're caught in the town, secretly plodding against the French are hanged. Those
I've done most harm as leaders or otherwise are burned or devoured by dogs. The commander and
she has brought many large dogs from Havana for this purpose and court, but, as we ve said right, we're
change is positively newtonian for every action. There's an equal and opposite reaction in this french officer describes the equal and opposite reaction and says
quote. Thus, we are no longer surprised to learn that the least of the
tortures, our prisoners endure is to be grilled or barbecued
song between two planks have their eyes
is torn out with the bail hook and then be slashed with cutlass and be hauled up
under the armpits too,
spire under the blows of a cudgel or be given
the burning, ankles torture or other
to be made to reveal information. In short, he writes
every violence that the most refined cruelty could invent to be shot is a favor. What a war, good God, the fish
just days of combat in Europe do not expose the soldier to the suffering that the small
a skirmish or amber,
here can lead to end quote how're you, if you're, the French, ever going to push these kinds of people that have been resisting for a decade or more likely,
this back into bondage. How are you going to reduce them to the level of channel slaves once they ve had this level of commitment to being free right in them
and have been experiencing for as long as they have the French understood,
and the problem. These people have been corrupted with the
your contagion of liberty, and that makes for
Slaves now maybe you can a deep programme. Some of these p
That would be. The modern word idea lie
Jake Lee reboot them so that they can be subservient again and put up with all of the degradation of slavery once they ve been free,
from that right. Have that spirit that Frederick Douglass edge came out when he contemplated freedom, shoved back into the bottle like the genie in the lamp, but for those that
are irredeemable you're gonna have to kill them.
If it's all of them, then you're going to have to kill all of them. David Brian Davis Rights Quote and by the way Davis is going to introduce some people in the distorted that we have talked about yet some more on that in a second and he
rights quote in the fall of eighteen o two when Leclerc died of yellow fever, while pleading to Napoleon for more troops Christophe.
and thus Alene two of sand means generals deserted the french Look
successor, general Russia BO then resorted to a policy of at least partial genocide. The French concluded that send him
could be pacified only by it.
Sturm in most of the existing black em you lotto population, which could lead,
You're be replaced by african slaves. End quote. He then says
this racial war. This stage in the haitian
revolution of eighteen o to age, no three carried profound implications. He said for everybody.
Black em you Lotto specifically and then says, quote
Poland's reversal of french policy, showed that away
nation could re institute slavery, strip the freedom
and of slaves of their rights and kill
in children of the stigmatized race, if their families
contaminated with ideas of liberty. End quote. He then points out basically that the French were never gonna, get the chance to do this, because they're gonna lose
The disease combined with very large armies, commanded by multiple Haitian, as that still
officially Haiti, now that you don't know what to call them in their not really the slaves of sand, a mink anymore
commanding large armies. Thirty, forty thousand, maybe fifty thousand people.
and the British are helping because the in a war
that the perennial war between the british and French is ongoing, and sometimes british interests will change in french and ritual change if it help
hurt, the other side and, in this case
Britishers on helping the Haitian Revolution and when the French have to leave in
disgrace in like eighteen, o, three they'll flee to their great arch enemy Britain, ships. In order to be
taken off the island, so they won't be mass occurred. This means that haitian leaders had defeated at one time or another
whole affair- spanish armies, british armies, french armies, royal
storm ease and the guy
calling the shots by the time. All this is over he's a ferocious character is all I can say in and
pictures some slave in rags. These are people who are dressing like black versions of George Washington or Napoleon
Duke of Wellington. I mean they're in those kind of napoleonic uniforms and the and the
send the feathers and the whole thing right, bright, colorful outfits, but they look like their african
because they are and
soon as this war with the French for sending, is over this
ferocious. Jean Jacques De Celine wants to make sure that the island and its population becomes entirely
four kin and stays that way. He'll order, and even the mass culling of all of
whites in Santa meeting once he takes over an absolute white genocide,
some of the most scary stuff.
you'll ever read because in early
Eighteen o four. He
issue: a declaration of independence that sets up this route.
Holly Tory genocide is the way I read one account put it
the genocide in response,
another genocide right that won the French we're going to do to clean them,
all ideologically in and and rid the population of the intellectual contagion by burning out those infected with a well two sides can play that game and the sort of things that
and this gene Jack Dessalines, says
Declaration of independence for Haiti
and in the subsequent announcements of some
months later, which is really sort of justification.
For the genocide that he's going to inflict are well, there are few,
things like it in history and most of the things like it come from a really long time ago, not relatively recently.
but not only is it frightful and scary and intimidating one author, I rent called it see thing: it's meant to be
in the same way that the free
Colonists wanted there's spectacular executions to send a message to be horrible
and talked about and high profile genes
dessaline feels the same way and says so
the lines from his declaration of independence. When you, when you know
what's gonna happen. Next are frightful
I mean he says, for example, quote for fourteen
years, we have been the victims of our own gullibility intolerance defeated not by
french arms, but by the pitiful eloquence of their food
she'll proclamations when they
for shall we tire of breathing the same air as they do. What do we
in common with this murderous nation, its cruelty? Compare
do our evident moderation, its cause
unlike our own, the why
sees that separate us, our avenging climate,
tell us
they are not our brothers and never will be if they find ray
huge among us. They will
again seek to cause trouble and to divide us end: quote infancy
in a were all of your loved ones, and he mentions sisters, brothers, children and then he says these people, these vultures aid thumb winning
do about that. I mean there's a lot of implied things here and his speech after
some of this genocide has been carried out, delivered a proclamation deliver at the end of April. Eighteen, o, four and
and by his secretary chasm that this
flowing language doesn't necessarily a roll off the tongue,
his former slave he's more
do or not a talker, but his secretary put some words into his mouth. That will frighten
slave society still on the planet that reads it and he connects.
This unbelievable blood, letting in the stories, are insane and forty foot pools of blood the people
the walk around cause in a stacks of huh.
Grids hundreds of white bodies or are on both sides.
You just terrible terrible stuff and dumb by the way notice how
This murderous human being is time
his ideas to the ideas of the enlightenment right he is the employer of the weapon, Ized philosophy and
as with everything else that sounds relative.
The innocuous, and maybe even high minded moral sentiment when written on the page and read by the audience, sometimes looks a little bit different in
active than in theory, doesn't mean it's wrong. Just means realities a lot more messy, and here we have a person who institutes genocide, connecting it.
you gonna human rights and the preservation of such things, and comparing himself to the
avenging angel of the entire continent in all of the indigenous peoples. For hundreds of years
by the way who wanted to call his army at one point, his army of slaves and free coloured people,
the army of the Incas. So you know where he was thinking. He thought about calling it the sons of the son and he announces in late April. One thousand eight hundred and four, that you know justice is being an ass
did, and he says quote. Finally, the hour of vengeance has struck and the implacable enemy
he's of the rights of man have received the punishment their crimes deserved. I raise,
over there guilty heads my arm that, for too long
had been restrained at this signal or die
and by a just God your hands. Divinely armed set the axe to the ancient tree of slavery and prejudice
in vain had time and still more than
I abolish go politics of the Europeans encased in
triple armor you stripped away.
this armor employ
did on your own breasts, becoming like
your natural enemies, cruel and pitiless like an overflow
torrent that roars up routes and carries on
before it your revenge
passion has swept away everything in its impetuous path. May
ass parish all who tyrannise the innocent all oppressors of the human race. Yes, we have rendered under these true can
balls war for war, crime for crime. Outraged for outrage,
Yes, I have saved my country, I have avenged America end quote this
Ruler is the one who will rename the whole place Haiti after and indigenous name for the place, at least that's what I read and go on to proclaim himself emperor.
for life will do what Tucson Lou Mature also did before him region.
state of form of labour that if it's not slavery, sauna looks a lot like it, the implication being. That's
How some kind of forced labour is required to get this Egon?
again, she started again. The whole area of sand aiming is just devastated and not producing anything like what it used to
producing. Everyone would love to have a gold mine workin for them, so he's going
do that and then, within about two three years he's going to be assassinated, but what Haiti's gonna be in history? The slave trade is the knife at the throat of these slaving nations
The warning that, like rain, all sad, if we can't appeal to your humanitarian nature, what how does it feel to have a sharp blade pressing up against your skin metaphor,
speaking in eighteen, o seven within about a week of each other, and that's only a couple years after those courts. We just read from John Jack gasoline
both the United States and Britain with Britain about a week ahead of time, but apparently no consultation between the two are both going to prohibit the Atlantic slave trade and not just for themselves, but eventually for every one. Britain will go from being the greatest.
Slave trading nation on the high seas to seizing every slave ship that they can find the United States on the very
first day that the United States is allowed to. Under the United States can't constitution. There was a twenty year: prohibition on the federal government of the United States, prohibiting the slave trade
day that they're allowed to which is January first, eighteen, o eight. They do, let's not yet
all rainbows in unicorns about this. There's lots of reasons for this, some of which are very high minded and once again, when you read Thomas Jefferson,
stringent arguments for this and he'll be the one that signs the whole thing into law. He sounds
the greatest antis slave person. You ve ever heard in your life. He does so hard to get your mind or on the man it can't. You could literally cut
paste what he said and put it on and anti slavery flag.
but you don't know. While these people are doing this and in Jefferson's terms, you can read his writing, though,
and realize he's a bit of a Nostradamus Damas end. He figures out
for the genocide in Haiti ever even begins way back in seventeen. Ninety seven that the fuses
now, and he has this phrase. The GIS sticks into my head, but this is what the knife to the throat means.
We're gonna, be the murderers of our own children.
The letter to join
Tucker on August, twenty eight, seventeen, ninety seven and in it he said
talking about Santo Domingo, which was their name for sand demand which will become Haiti.
and he says we're gonna- have to have a soft landing from theirs and it's gonna have to be sooner than than we thought. Jefferson is already suggesting
That it may be too late for a soft landing from slavery, but there's a lot of important question that would have to be figured out, and he says that this
first chapter which has begun. He says in San Domingo and then
succeeding ones. He said which will show how the
wait you're gonna be driven out from all the other islands. He says that should prepare our minds for thinking about this and then says quote
and the sooner we put some plan under way, the greater
there is that it may be permitted to proceed peaceably to its ultimate effect, but if something is not done and soon die
We shall be the murderers of our own children. He didn't quotes a latin phrase which
means the breezes warning the sailors of the coming gale and then can
and use has already reached us. The revolutionary storm now sweeping the global be upon us and happy if we
make timely provision to give it an easy passage over our land from the past
this state of things in Europe and America. He wrote the day
which begins, our combustion must be near at hand
and only a single spark is wanting to make that day tomorrow. If
begun sooner. We might.
Probably have allowed a lengthy operation to clear ourselves, but every day,
This delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation. End quote. He scare
This isn't high minded enlightenment
Ideals he's seeing the murder of his own children, maybe he's.
in the: U S civil war, and maybe he seeing Haiti.
And I'm sure there are people intelligent and knowledgeable enough to tease out the importance of all the individuals strands that make up reality in the story. No everything from the impact of the abolitionist movement that's grown around the.
world the effective changing economics which incentivize different things in more marked,
times than they did earlier. The you
levelling up, maybe of global.
more rays and attitudes towards morality, the impact of religion, which is also tied up with the abolitionist movement. I dont know what value any of those things should have in relation to anything else and, of course, slave revolts and the threat of violence as well.
I will say that in eighteen, ninety three, which is ninety years, it's a nightmare anniversary of the haitian revolution, and it is also thirty years since the Emancipation Proclamation free, the slaves
it states, a very elderly and not that far away from death. Frederick Douglass will give a speech in Chicago so that, like the kicking off of the world's fair, there's an exhibit there.
Involve Haiti and he's been a representative to Haiti for the United States, so he's invited to speak to a crowded is called by a contemporary source quote,
Fifteen hundred of the best citizens of Chicago and quotes or think rich, powerful white eating
I need your no kumbaya time for black folks. There's lots of lynchings going on knowing
Rights at all I mean it's, it's nothing to look
back on as some sort of rainbows in unicorns era for racial harmony,
But it's interesting to note the reaction of this crowd to this speech, because the speeches one that
raises what happened ninety years previously in Haiti, a
race WAR whereby
both sides were exterminating each other and the worst atrocities imaginable were going on and when Frederick
Douglas says things about the room,
pollution that are over positive. The crowd applauds when he declared
eyes the fact that the haitian person coming to the United States nor hey
impression that will be treated me very well and in the same all over the world will be discriminated against and treated unfairly. It shouldn't be that way. The crowd applauds mean. This is not an audience of of black folks or white.
radicals this is the power structure, and this is a famous speech by Frederick Douglass, where he points out. You know his maybe zero dollars and two cents on the question of how much did all these different things- abolitionism economics, morals, slave revolts? How much did each of them playing the whole thing? He said,
the transcripts of the applause is mentioned when it happens quote in just vindication of Haiti. I can go one step further. I can speak
give her not only words of admiration but words of gratitude as well,
has grandly serve the cause of universal human liberty? We should not forget,
that the freedom you and I enjoy today that the freedom that eight hundred thousand
colored people enjoy in the british
India is the freedom,
that has come to the colored race, the world over
is largely due to the brave stand taken by
the black sons of Haiti ninety years ago, when they struck for freedom, he said they
building better than they knew,
their swords, were not drawn and could not be drawn simple,
for themselves alone. They were linked and entirely
with their race and striking for
their freedom. They struck for the freedom of choice.
Black man in the world and quote, and then my transcript says
prolonged applause, while I'm not going to argue with Frederick Douglass about what he thinks the most
and strands of all. This change in the Zeit gazed were I'm just going to say that the fact that that audience in that era, comprised of those particular people apply,
like that, and the applause is over and over and over again is a sign
that there was something else at work to a pinging between
changes in our attitudes and d
and that our attitudes change.
That story that we
just ended the conversation with the one where Frederick Douglass was being interrupted by wave after wave of applause by
the best citizens and airports in Chicago it's now.
worthy that that is a northern state and then
eighteen nineties had that speech been given in a place like Atlanta,
It might have been received quite differently and I'm sort of fascinated by the reasons that might be because
We ended this story because the story was about the Atlantic slave trade, specifically
in the middle as far as a lot of people are concerned right, we still don't get the last sixty seventy years of slavery in places like Brazil in Cuba and the Southern United States, where the big last hold out in the Americas, maybe that's from
the day and if so my entire life
on the question of bondage will be a three part. Syria's rentals first one was about the institute
she is a whole world wide. This current one was about the logistical part of them of the Atlantic.
Slave trade. It may be, the last part, someday you'll, be about how it ended in places like the United States, but it's worth pointing out that it ended differently in somebody,
hold out places, and maybe there is
interesting stuff to mine from that
I leave it to more intelligent people than yours. Truly, I can pose the question may be. You have the answer, but we ve been
comparing this too and diction hold hermit addicted to bondage. Is there a difference between an attic deciding that they have had enough
What they're doing or that it's bad for the more than its wrong or any number of things were, they might decide for themselves, and it is true
I'm from you to stop this behaviour that I'd that I do
too often, and that is not good for me. Long term versus someone who simply has an outside authority come in and say: okay,
not doing this anymore, we're taking the stuff that you have a habit for that. You hope to and we're gonna prohibit you from using again. So those people didn't
come to their own conclusion- that what they were doing needed to stop somebody
stop it
In the? U S, south, for example- and you know when you make these state,
it's like saying: the Germans in the Second World WAR, while the Germans in the Second World WAR, might have had a whole lot of different ideas. There, not one group of people who were generalizing but the
Eric and South never came to the conclusion as a whole that slavery was wrong, that they should get right.
It then it was an abomination. Then it was passed its
historical sell. By date, those
things were never a part of the equation right away.
asked earlier, I believe in how long would have taken the south to
An eighth slavery on its own had not been a: U S of a war in the man's a patient proclamation. Amene Cuba did it in eighteen, eighty six, which is the year Geronimo surrenders in the american indian wars, as they were called then
sort of officially end battle wounded, knee still gonna happen. That's more. A massacre
Brazil doesn't officially abolish slavery until eighteen. Eighty eight that some of the twentieth century.
so these last hold out who have a time
slaves laughed are seeing their
individual stories end differently than sort of the global version they did not participate in this.
sort of levelling up of public opinion and the turning of the iceberg during the time it turned their like the last
workers in a world that moved past cigarettes, I want
If that changes, how subsequent history went? The other thing
it's kind of worth pointing out
Is that you will often hear people talk about how slavery
and more than a hundred years ago in and people need to get over it.
Their ignoring the fact that it didn't really and a hundred years ago, because we
the United States civil war to just use. The american example only ended many
of the same elements free.
Slavery, are put back into place, not all of them, but many of the same elements, including the one element that we still live with today, this in
Harry did skin TK
are based caste system, which
probably would have died out by now if it hadn't been around. Even when I was a kid legally
As we said in the south, it was legal for places to say
that they were only going to have white stay in their hotels or why
its eating, their restaurant there's famous photographs of Doktor, Martin Luther King being handcuffed at a lunch
counter in southern restaurants
plea for having the audacity as a black man to sit. There rose,
Parkes on the bus. I mean these are famous stories that happen, not that
long ago. So it's not
white slavery, but it's not
I'd freedom, either an
and after the nineteen sixties, this caste system
still lives in the minds and hearts of many people. I dont know
a natural amount of time to estimate it would take for that to die out. But I do think we have to remember that if something like that looks like
really retrograde or backwards kind of thinking that it is can
acted to an era where the people who came up with this thing still had the middle ages, reflected back at them in their historical rear,
mere.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter. The addresses at hard core history for
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You deserve, it is worth dollar Dan and Ben would love to have it back a show? It's all we ask
go to Dan Carlin DOT com for information on how to donate, to the show, hey everyone back for one quick. Second, to talk again about battle
died virtual tours. You may have heard me bring them up before I hooked
with these guys during the first bit of covered when they
were doing live tours of places like battlefields in France, in it
in all of a sudden, were shut down, and this is the way they figured out how to
it from that is so many other business owners have had to figure out what to do in the same.
circumstances- and I love the way, these guys did it- they converted the battlefield tours into virtual
things and allowed them to utilise a bunch of different elements that obviously window been available.
Alive situation, and I'm not saying this is superior to alive situation. They both have their strengths and weaknesses.
What I am saying is, if you say
of all, the money is an American gotta Northern France in and walked these battlefields. First of all, there will be,
Things missing that you won't understand. You have to come home and read about later, which you get as part of these battle guide virtual tours, when you do those bud
Likely. Are you next week after you get home from what would be an expensive and long trip to France to do this?
want to go to Russia and visit Stalingrad right, but you do that in the virtual sends you can go on a different, a battlefield tour every day.
There are different ways to access them by the way, there's a lie version which you can be up
and if it online when they're doing live and the historian is there- and you can ask questions and all kinds of things like that too, that's a real time,
thing, but then that goes into the
arcadians available for you to download anytime anywhere right. Is that as a sort of a hard copy version.
when you can buy those individually, you can sign up for a subscription service,
that's all of them and they have new ones all the time. I just think if you're a military history fan this is a this is a gimme kind of kind of thing, especially for
gift for people in the EU may know who are also military history fans. This is a fun thing in it.
worth trying if you'd like to just try and get fifty percent off, you can go to battle guy
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doers, see what it's all about, but we're talking
but something that combines in it
Technology like drone images, three sixty and satellite imagery on the ground. Video veteran accounts period, footage photographs, it's an
Interesting mix of things that, if you are in
did in this kind of stuff, manages to illuminate the complexity of these battlefields in way,
that is difficult to conceptualize in any
the situation, those of you out there who read books. You looked at maps who ve seen movies
You try to get a mental image of things. This is one of the
s ways I've ever discovered to do it. I hope your check it out good about a guide dog seo dot Uk Forward Slash Dan Hyphen Carlin, give fifty percent off to see what I'm talking about.
Transcript generated on 2022-03-09.