Why do many New World cities/countries have higher murder rates than Old World?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

The primary reason that plantations turned to African slaves was pretty simple. Native American slaves died off too fast, and even European indentured servants had high death rates. In contrast Africans were both somewhat resistant to Eurasian diseases like measles, along with tropical diseases like malaria. This meant they were literally worth more to plantation owners, because they were a more dependable labor force. It also meant over time that all of the agricultural endeavors in warm climates in the lowlands (everywhere malaria became endemic) which didn't rely on African slaves tended towards failure.

European governments also banned enslavement of Europeans and mostly outlawed slavery in Europe itself. This is why slave ships could not ever stop in Europe while carrying African slave cargo.

But capitalism without the appropriate law structure to protect human beings is why slavery proliferated. Landowners in the New World wanted cheap labor for their plantations. What's cheaper than free?

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Landowners in the New World wanted cheap labor for their plantations. What's cheaper than free?

The cruel irony is that paid labour probably would have actually been cheaper in the grand scheme of things. With slaves you had to buy them, house them, feed them, and pay for security to make sure they didn't escape. With paid labourers all they'd need was a wage - which in a time before minimum wages and labour laws was not a lot.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by eschaton

The primary reason that plantations turned to African slaves was pretty simple. Native American slaves died off too fast, and even European indentured servants had high death rates. In contrast Africans were both somewhat resistant to Eurasian diseases like measles, along with tropical diseases like malaria. This meant they were literally worth more to plantation owners, because they were a more dependable labor force. It also meant over time that all of the agricultural endeavors in warm climates in the lowlands (everywhere malaria became endemic) which didn't rely on African slaves tended towards failure.

You are completely ignoring the moral and intellectual arguments for slavery popular at the time, in favor of simply focusing on the proximate economic causes.

There were entire fields of pseudosciences (which can be grouped together under the umbrella term "scientific racism") that were used to justify the institution of African chattel slavery. It was the natural order of things. And these weren't fringe ideas at the time - it was mainstream science. It might make some people uncomfortable, but to ignore this aspect of slavery is intellectually dishonest, and yes, it is a whitewashing of history.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Who's taking it personal? This is just history.

So you're denying that widespread racist beliefs about the inferiority of Africans had anything to do with the African slave trade? Whatever lies you need to tell yourself I guess

The fact that Europeans could easily sail to Africa, pick up slaves from slave traders and then sail them across the Atlantic was far more important as Africans being the source of slaves than some racist ideology. Do you think if Europeans were more racist towards SE Asians they would have expended the time and energy sailing across the world to enslave them? No.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

The cruel irony is that paid labour probably would have actually been cheaper in the grand scheme of things. With slaves you had to buy them, house them, feed them, and pay for security to make sure they didn't escape. With paid labourers all they'd need was a wage - which in a time before minimum wages and labour laws was not a lot.

I'm not sure it would have been cheaper. There would have needed to be a coordinated slavery ban across the colonial possessions in the New World. Otherwise, the empires that banned slavery in their territories would be at a competitive disadvantage from those that didn't. The slave empires would be able to undercut their nobler competitors on price in global markets for sugar and cotton. Additional to this, slaves factored directly into the net worth of their owners since they were assets.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

European governments also banned enslavement of Europeans and mostly outlawed slavery in Europe itself. This is why slave ships could not ever stop in Europe while carrying African slave cargo.

But capitalism without the appropriate law structure to protect human beings is why slavery proliferated. Landowners in the New World wanted cheap labor for their plantations. What's cheaper than free?

Slaves weren't "free labor" though - not unless you inherited them from your parents and then bred more (icky way to talk about it, but still).

Again, you can go back and look at the cost of things back the 18th century. Native American slaves were dirt cheap. White indentured servants were middling price. African slaves were the most expensive. It was well known that anyone coming from Europe had to be "seasoned" first - which basically meant the period it would take after they contracted malaria and/or yellow fever to see if they would survive and get strong enough to do field work. Black slaves could essentially work as soon as they were taken off of the slave ships.

Note this wasn't ever an issue with the native-born white population however, because for the most part they got the deadly tropical diseases during childhood, meaning they were fine as workers by adulthood. But even in these cases sometimes in the worst climates (like around Charleston and Savannah) the slaveowners would leave the plantations in the summer, sometimes even leaving them in control of black overseers because the local climate was just too deadly for white people.

It's also worth noting that a big part of the reason why some parts of the Caribbean (Guyana, Trinidad, etc) developed a large South Asian population is because after slavery was abolished in the early 19th century by the UK, there was still a need for agricultural labor which a free European population wasn't going to be able to meet.

Originally Posted by badrunner

You are completely ignoring the moral and intellectual arguments for slavery popular at the time, in favor of simply focusing on the proximate economic causes.

There were entire fields of pseudosciences (which can be grouped together under the umbrella term "scientific racism") that were used to justify the institution of African chattel slavery. It was the natural order of things. And these weren't fringe ideas at the time - it was mainstream science. It might make some people uncomfortable, but to ignore this aspect of slavery is intellectually dishonest, and yes, it is a whitewashing of history.

I am not ignoring them. The racism mostly came later, as a justification for practices which developed organically due to economics and climate. If you look back to the writings of the 17th and the 18th century, people were much, much less racist than the 19th century. They more or less justified slavery for the same reason that the ancients did - they had the power, Africans did not, hence it was fair game.

Racism developed because of slavery. Slavery didn't develop because of racism.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I'm not sure it would have been cheaper. There would have needed to be a coordinated slavery ban across the colonial possessions in the New World. Otherwise, the empires that banned slavery in their territories would be at a competitive disadvantage from those that didn't. The slave empires would be able to undercut their nobler competitors on price in global markets for sugar and cotton. Additional to this, slaves factored directly into the net worth of their owners since they were assets.

Theres a simple way of calculating this(I saw some article that did years ago but I forgot what it was called). Look at the GDP of the US(or South in particular) before and after the Civil War. Of course, the first years after the war we would expect a lowered GDP but after some time we could accurately judge which society is better for the country economically.

The late 1800s were incredible as far as economic growth in the US, I just don't think most of that was created in the South...

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Theres a simple way of calculating this(I saw some article that did years ago but I forgot what it was called). Look at the GDP of the US(or South in particular) before and after the Civil War. Of course, the first years after the war we would expect a lowered GDP but after some time we could accurately judge which society is better for the country economically.

The late 1800s were incredible as far as economic growth in the US, I just don't think most of that was created in the South...

The mid-1800s coincided with the end of the agricultural and beginning of the industrial revolution. The invention of heavy machinery, like the cotton gin, led to a collapse in the price of cotton and also a collapse in the demand for slaves. What's cheaper than free labor? Free labor that can do 100x the work for a fraction of the cost. It is very similar in principle to what's been happening in the Rust Belt for the past 40ish years.

The realization of this as well as hearing about the slave rebellions in the Caribbean is what led to pressure on governments in the U.S. to abolish slavery. But post-Reconstruction, southern landowners (mostly former slave owning families) continued to exploit black laborers (mostly former slaves and slave offspring) through sharecropping.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Obadno

Because there isn't an attempt for academic honesty they want to rail against the USA and "whites" generally, which is racist. I've been accused of benefiting from the racial degradation of Natives and Africans despite my family being poor factory workers and at least one LITERAL prostitute from eastern Europe that didnt get to America until the early 1900's most of them not until after WW1.

But hey I got blue eyes so I guess I benefited from Cotton plantations from 1804 Georgia.

You did indirectly benefit from African slavery and Native genocide. There wouldn't have been a wealthy country for your poor refugee ancestors to immigrant to if it wasn't for slavery and Indian removal. It's like today, every non-white immigrants from Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc. benefiting from the people who died during the Civil Rights movement, which allowed them to immigrate in mass to the United States and not be subject to Jim Crow. I don't think people should beat up people for this fact, but to not acknowledge that reality is factually incorrect.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I am not ignoring them. The racism mostly came later, as a justification for practices which developed organically due to economics and climate. If you look back to the writings of the 17th and the 18th century, people were much, much less racist than the 19th century. They more or less justified slavery for the same reason that the ancients did - they had the power, Africans did not, hence it was fair game.

Racism developed because of slavery. Slavery didn't develop because of racism.

Science didn't even really exist as a formal discipline until the 17th century, so yes, those scientific theories used to justify slavery came later, when the transatlantic slave trade was well underway. However you should not conflate that with the idea that racism itself developed because of slavery. That is a self serving exculpatory statement, as if the real victims of slavery were the ones who were forced to become racist to justify it. It's more accurate to say that racism and the institution of slavery were mutually reinforcing.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by goat314

You did indirectly benefit from African slavery and Native genocide. There wouldn't have been a wealthy country for your poor refugee ancestors to immigrant to if it wasn't for slavery and Indian removal. It's like today, every non-white immigrants from Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc. benefiting from the people who died during the Civil Rights movement, which allowed them to immigrate in mass to the United States and not be subject to Jim Crow. I don't think people should beat up people for this fact, but to not acknowledge that reality is factually incorrect.

I guess he isn't protected by the U.S. Constitution, either. How could a document written when his great-great-grandma was still turning tricks in Warsaw possibly be relevant to him?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by goat314

You did indirectly benefit from African slavery and Native genocide. There wouldn't have been a wealthy country for your poor refugee ancestors to immigrant to if it wasn't for slavery and Indian removal. It's like today, every non-white immigrants from Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc. benefiting from the people who died during the Civil Rights movement, which allowed them to immigrate in mass to the United States and not be subject to Jim Crow. I don't think people should beat up people for this fact, but to not acknowledge that reality is factually incorrect.

As a society, I think we all do.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by goat314

You did indirectly benefit from African slavery and Native genocide. There wouldn't have been a wealthy country for your poor refugee ancestors to immigrant to if it wasn't for slavery and Indian removal.

There wouldn't? Other countries did exist back then, you know.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by niwell

Are we seriously trying to compare the (non) merits of Antiquity era slavery to chattel slavery during the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade? Society as we would recognize it operated in a fundamentally different manner, to say the least. Talk about academic dishonesty...

This could have actually been an interesting topic but yet again, ruined by a few usual suspects.

Lol how is it dishonest? Can we not compare different practices of slavery? I also compared it to our modern slaves in Asia that make our clothes and shoes.

Sure these are all very different types of slavery but they are all slavery in one way or another.

[jd3189]

I now see that the discussion is more informative and civil at this point, which is a relief.

It makes sense that racist ideas came during and after slavery in order to justify continuing it. Which goes to show that people will legitimatize anything if it benefits them. Nothing inherently wrong with that unless there is another group on the other side that are taking the shit end of the deal.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by goat314

You did indirectly benefit from African slavery and Native genocide. There wouldn't have been a wealthy country for your poor refugee ancestors to immigrant to if it wasn't for slavery and Indian removal. It's like today, every non-white immigrants from Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc. benefiting from the people who died during the Civil Rights movement, which allowed them to immigrate in mass to the United States and not be subject to Jim Crow. I don't think people should beat up people for this fact, but to not acknowledge that reality is factually incorrect.

Lets sit down and actually think about what this means. We are all either benefiting or not from the world and place we happened to be born into. If you want to go back and look at every atrocity and every good deed and add them up and try to determine how sorry you should or should not be about your existence ...good luck

I find the whole exercise and this way of looking at the world to be pointless and exhausting not to mention unquantifiable in any meaningful way.

Are we all benefiting because at some time in the past our ancestors conquered the lands we now live int? Yes thats true of everyone of all times. Are we all probably hurt by bad decisions or conquests of others on our ancestors... yeah I suppose we are too.

When you follow this line of thinking it basically leads nowhere or in an endless circle of who did what to who first. Excuse me if i don't wish to take part in the navel-gazing process of determining who was wronged more across the eons.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I guess he isn't protected by the U.S. Constitution, either. How could a document written when his great-great-grandma was still turning tricks in Warsaw possibly be relevant to him?

quite an absurd jump to a conclusion.

The constitution is still the governing document in this country so it very much impacts me and how my life goes. Conversely my whore great great grandma and her terrible career have nothing to do with my life.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

There wouldn't? Other countries did exist back then, you know.

Yes, there were other countries back then. Yet, Europe was rapidly losing people because of war and famine. America was the shining light to the world, because of it's growing wealth (built off of slavery) and abundance of land/resources (facilitated by native genocide). European serfs were able to leave Europe with nothing but the clothes on their back and make a way in a country that finally treated them like humans. The caveat being that non-whites (particularly blacks) would bare the brunt of the new world's social ills.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Obadno

Lets sit down and actually think about what this means. We are all either benefiting or not from the world and place we happened to be born into. If you want to go back and look at every atrocity and every good deed and add them up and try to determine how sorry you should or should not be about your existence ...good luck

I find the whole exercise and this way of looking at the world to be pointless and exhausting not to mention unquantifiable in any meaningful way.

Are we all benefiting because at some time in the past our ancestors conquered the lands we now live int? Yes thats true of everyone of all times. Are we all probably hurt by bad decisions or conquests of others on our ancestors... yeah I suppose we are too.

When you follow this line of thinking it basically leads nowhere or in an endless circle of who did what to who first. Excuse me if i don't wish to take part in the navel-gazing process of determining who was wronged more across the eons.

Did you even read the post? I literally said this is not about guilt tripping anyone. I was pointing out a logical fallacy in his statement. Nothing more, nothing less.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Obadno

quite an absurd jump to a conclusion.

The constitution is still the governing document in this country so it very much impacts me and how my life goes. Conversely my whore great great grandma and her terrible career have nothing to do with my life.

Are you implying that slavery in the U.S. in the subsequent events do not influence everyday life in America? Is institutional racism still not a governing ideology in American society? Culture is hard to change and black people were subject to state sponsored violence and oppression much longer than not. Millions of Americans were alive pre Civil-Rights and these aren't exactly ancient people. Hell my grandfather was a grown man with a family when MLK was assassinated and he's still kicking.