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good satire...
I recently took a course entitled "Romantic Masculinities" and one of the core arguments of the class was that the Abolition movement in both Britain and the States was not so much humanitarian as ruthlessly pragmatic. There was a difference between "abolition" and "emancipation." Some abolitionists did not envision the end of slavery, but the end of the Middle Passage. I've read parliament discussions from the time (early 1800s), and it is clear that some Abolitionists wanted the continuation of the slave trade through mass rape. Rather than importing slaves from Africa, they imagined it would be more efficient for slave masters to impregnate their female slaves to produce more slaves. The importation of slaves was very costly: the ships, the labour, and many slaves that had been bought (sometimes from other Africans) jumped overboard because they preferred death above the conditions of slavery.
But you are correct on one point: Europeans and Americans certainly have not cornered the "market" on Empire. The Xin Empire of China was viscious, employing millions of slaves captured in imperial wars to build the great wall of China, and the Mayan Empire was intrinsically and pervasively totalitarian, nevermind the Arabs who colonized Africa before the Europeans ever even got around the tip. I think the Belgians were particularly bad. The colonization of the Congo killed over 6 million Africans. Talk about genocide! But the British were pretty bad in India...Some of their colonial army were treated worse than some "house slaves" in America! And Canada has certainly been no angel with its own First Nations...
The whole issue is rather complicated...
posted by
Trevor_Cunnington
on January 10, 2006 at 11:32 AM
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