Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
Europeans get a bad rap for slavery...more than most...because these empires were at their peak when the practice was at its peak and unlike anything before them, they had vast empires and logistics to sustain these far flung colonies and thus the Atlantic slave trade was born. No one before Europe had the capability to mechanize the slave trade the way Europe did and by the time the European powers were on a steady decline, the practice itself was on its way out. Americans knew it was bad as early as the Revolutionary war era. The Europeans banned it long before we did.
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Europeans do get a bad rap for slavery. You're right that it's probably an accident of history that Europeans became the most prolific slavers. But the real reason we care about the transatlantic slave trade more than say the slavery practiced by the Ottomans or the Tehuelche of Patagonia, is more immediate and present - It has had by far the biggest impact on the modern world, and it will continue to have repercussions far into the future. Our entire political culture today, with its deep divisions and acrimony reflects the far reaching legacy of slavery. Even the things we talk about daily in this forum, the growth and decline of cities, poverty, crime all bear the mark of slavery. Some want to put history in a box, bury it or pretend that there is a clean dividing line between the past (when "we could only tolerate so many blacks") and the present (when we suddenly became tolerant?). What people like jtown fail to realize about history is - we are living in it.