From: Dhu on Gate <campbell@neotext.ca>
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Does Slav Really mean Slave?
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2024 23:54:55 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
On Tue, 17 Sep 2024 21:56:48 -0400, Dave Smith wrote:
> On 2024-09-17 7:14 p.m., D. Ray wrote:
>> Dhu on Gate <campbell@neotext.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> If I was to hazard a theory, Slavery is an African Invention,
>>> exported to the rest of the Wierld startin' about two million
>>> years ago.
>>
>> Note that slavery still exists in Africa.
>>
>> <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa>
>
> Of course it does. It has been a cultural institution there for
> centuries. Slavery was common among a lot of cultures for a long time.
? Centuries? We've been outta Africa for more'n a few of those.
> Much of the ancient world was built by slaves. A number of European
> cultures practiced it. It was common among the native people of North
> America. The Africans turned it onto a major business. A number of
> African nations made a major industry of warring on their neighbours to
> catch people to be sold into slavery. The European slavers were rarely
> involved in the capture of slaves. They just went to the ports and
> loaded up with slaves that they bought from Africans.
>
This is approximately true. It's an environmental thingy, I'd say. We're
a species of African beach-ape and in Africa society doesn't need to make
any investment in the "individual" so we're all just commodity. In the
north countries society needs to keep you alive long enough to be useful
which can take 20 or more years investment. If you'd sailed into somewheres
like Korea 500 years ago to buy a load of slaves you'd have have been obliged
to take _all_ of them or none. And the first slaves brought into 'Merica
were Scotch and Irish "indentures" and that worked out _real_well_ (/not),
lemme tell ya...
Dhu
> FWIW my son lived in Uganda for close to a year about 25 years ago. One
> of his friends there was a Sudanese guy whose grandmother owned a number
> of slaves.
--
Je suis Canadien. Ce n'est pas Francais ou Anglais.
C'est une esp`ece de sauvage: ne obliviscaris, vix ea nostra voco;-)
Duncan Patton a Campbell