http://www.lewrockwell.com/sobran/sobran166.html
Slavery in Perspective
by Joseph Sobran
The recurrent fuss about Confederate flags has always struck me as silly,
and never more so than now. I've been reading Hugh Thomas's impressive
history, The Slave Trade (published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster). It's
one of those books that shift your whole perspective on the past.
Thomas covers the Atlantic slave trade from 1440 to 1870. It was a literally
filthy business from first to last. More than 11,000,000 Africans were
brought to the New World, while countless others-probably about 2,000,000 �
died of miserable conditions in the overcrowded ships en route.
What I didn't know is that fewer than 5 per cent-about 500,000 � of these
Africans were brought to this country. Some 4,000,000 were carried to Brazil
by the Portuguese, 2,500,000 to Spanish possessions, 2,000,000 to the
British West Indies, and 1,600,000 to the French West Indies.
All this puts something of a damper on the assumption that slavery was a sin
specific or "peculiar" to the American South. The slaves had been Africans
who were sold to European merchants by other Africans who had enslaved them
in the first place. Several of Africa's proudest empires were built on the
sale of slaves. For centuries Africa's chief export was human beings. When
Congresswoman Maxine Waters speaks of "my African ancestors' struggle for
freedom," she doesn't know what she's talking about. Slavery was an African
institution long before it spread to the South, and there was no abolition
movement to trouble it. When Europe banned the slave trade, African
economies reeled.
So it's rather comical for American blacks to sentimentalize Africa and
stress that they are "African Americans" while cursing the Confederate flag
as a symbol of slavery. Africa has a much better claim to be such a symbol.
Slavery still exists there, in Sudan and Mauritania and probably elsewhere.
As Christians, white Europeans always had a bad conscience about slavery.
They wrestled with the question of whether Africans had immortal souls and
natural rights. Even Southerners who justified slavery as a positive good
felt that it needed justification.
Pagans had no such qualms. They no more felt they needed to justify owning
slaves than owning cattle. Slavery was a fact of life, and slaves could be
killed, mutilated, and even eaten without compunction.
In the Arab world African slaves were highly prized as eunuchs. They were
used as guardians of harems and as civil servants, some of whom amassed
considerable power. But many young African men died in the process because
of inept or infected castration. The prevalence of eunuchs probably explains
why African slavery didn't leave the Arab world with a race problem. Given
this history, it's ironic that so many American blacks adopt Arab names to
spite the white man and to achieve a supposedly independent "identity."
Thomas indirectly punctures another cherished American notion: that Abraham
Lincoln "ended slavery." Lincoln is mentioned only three times, very
briefly, in the entire book. Against the huge backdrop of the slave trade,
he was only a local, marginal, and rather tardy figure. By 1850 it was clear
that slavery was doomed throughout the Christian world. But just as we
exaggerate our role in fostering slavery, we exaggerate our role in
destroying it. We Americans tend to be self-important even in our
self-flagellations.
The slave trade was so vast that a European might speculate in it, and
profit by it, without ever seeing a single slave. Such distinguished authors
as John Locke, Edward Gibbon, and Voltaire drew income from it. Voltaire was
especially hypocritical. He took the self-serving view that it was less
immoral for a European to buy Africans than it was for other Africans to
sell them; and after denouncing the slave trade for years, he "accepted
delightedly" when a merchant offered to name a slave ship after him.
Thomas tells the whole story without much moralizing. He knows the facts
speak for themselves, in all their horror and pathos: people stolen from
their homes, robbed of their freedom and even their identities, often dying
namelessly amid unspeakable squalor, with no families or friends to mourn or
memorialize their passing. The ones who survived to be slaves in the New
World, though unenviable, were relatively lucky.
But in the end, the Christian conscience prevailed.
Thank God.
June 16, 2001
Joe Sobran is a nationally syndicated columnist. He also writes "Washington
Watch" for The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper, and edits SOBRAN'S, a
monthly newsletter of his essays and columns.
Get a free copy of Joe Sobran's lecture, "How Tyranny Came to America" by
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Copyright (c) 2001 by Griffin Internet Syndicate. All rights reserved.
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