Posted on 09/05/2014 3:49:06 PM PDT by Ennis85
So I was reading an online review of the book "“The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” that was critical of the assertions made in said book that slavery was significant in the growth of the US economy. The next day I came to look at it again and found out it had been removed. The reason because apparently quite a number of people had found it racist and offensive.
This is the review itself in its entirety before it was removed:
“FOR sale: a coloured girl, of very superior qualifications…a bright mulatto, fine figure, straight, black hair, and very black eyes; very neat and cleanly in her dress and person.” Such accounts of people being marketed like livestock punctuate Edward Baptist’s grim history of the business of slavery. Although the import of African slaves into the United States was stopped in 1807, the country’s internal slave trade continued to prosper and expand for a long time afterwards. Right up until the outbreak of the civil war in 1861, the American-born children and grandchildren of enslaved Africans were bought cheap in Virginia and Maryland to be sold dear in private deals and public auctions to cotton planters in the deep South. Tall men commanded higher prices than short ones. Women went for less than men. The best bids were for men aged 18 to 25 and for women aged 15 to 22. One slave recalled buyers passing up and down the lines at a Virginia slave auction, asking, “What can you do? Are you a good cook? Seamstress? Dairy maid?” and to the men, “Can you plough? Are you a blacksmith?” Slaves who gave surly answers risked a whipping from their masters. Raw cotton was America’s most valuable export. It was grown and picked by black slaves. So Mr Baptist, an historian at Cornell University, is not being especially contentious when he says that America owed much of its early growth to the foreign exchange, cheaper raw materials and expanding markets provided by a slave-produced commodity. But he overstates his case when he dismisses “the traditional explanations” for America’s success: its individualistic culture, Puritanism, the lure of open land and high wages, Yankee ingenuity and government policies. Take, for example, the astonishing increases he cites in both cotton productivity and cotton production. In 1860 a typical slave picked at least three times as much cotton a day as in 1800. In the 1850s cotton production in the southern states doubled to 4m bales and satisfied two-thirds of world consumption. By 1860 the four wealthiest states in the United States, ranked in terms of wealth per white person, were all southern: South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia. Mr Baptist cites the testimony of a few slaves to support his view that these rises in productivity were achieved by pickers being driven to work ever harder by a system of “calibrated pain”. The complication here was noted by Hugh Thomas in 1997 in his definitive history, “The Slave Trade”; an historian cannot know whether these few spokesmen adequately speak for all. Another unexamined factor may also have contributed to rises in productivity. Slaves were valuable property, and much harder and, thanks to the decline in supply from Africa, costlier to replace than, say, the Irish peasants that the iron-masters imported into south Wales in the 19th century. Slave owners surely had a vested interest in keeping their “hands” ever fitter and stronger to pick more cotton. Some of the rise in productivity could have come from better treatment. Unlike Mr Thomas, Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains. This is not history; it is advocacy."
Once this review was taken down this apology was then issued in its place:
"Apology: In our review of “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward Baptist, we said: “Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.” There has been widespread criticism of this, and rightly so. Slavery was an evil system, in which the great majority of victims were blacks, and the great majority of whites involved in slavery were willing participants and beneficiaries of that evil. We regret having published this and apologise for having done so. We are therefore withdrawing the review but in the interests of transparency, anybody who wants to see the withdrawn review can click here."
All I can say is wow.
Unbelievable. GTFOOMC if you don’t like it here!!
If someone wrote a book about the history of slavery, US slavery would probably only be a short chapter.
Slavery was outlawed in the U.S. less than ninety years after the country declared its’ Independence.
True, but it was evil, nonetheless. Now, obviously, we cannot change what those who went before us did, but neither should we make light of it.
Boy, did you ever hit the nail on the head.
Slavery has been part and parcel of the human experience ever since there have been humans. Whether the slaves were captives from war, bought or traded for food, horse, whatever, slavery has ALWAYS been around.
Our Judeo-Christian roots, via Europe, finally stopped the trade for the West, north of the border.
Besides, I've been to Africa (Kenya) and KNOW that American blacks are a ZILLION times better off HERE in the USA.
Those with ANY brains know that.
The American chapter on slavery would be pamphlet size.
I think the reviewer was right. Slaves were treated terribly, like, well, slaves, but it was economically counterproductive to physically damage a slave and reduce their productivity. Because of the prohibition on importation, by 1860 slaves were extremely valuable in the currency of the day. Indeed, most Southerners could not afford to own a slave.
As late as WWI, Portugal turned a blind eye to slavery in her colonies, specifically, Angola.
Cacao, instead of cotton...
Nor should we make ‘heavy’ of it. The evil men do lives on well enough by itself without helping it with exaggeration and cant.
Or diamonds in the case of the Belgian Congo.
Not all slaves were treated badly. Some were actually treated very well if for no other reason than they were a major investment. That said, being treated as pampered livestock is still being treated as livestock.
It is worthwhile to read “A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America”, George M. Stroud, 1827
Truth offends liberals.
Probably makes it worse.
Black Rednecks and White Liberals - Thomas Sowell
Vikings took slaves from Engalnd, Wales, Ireland, Norway (until a jarl attacked their pirate outpost on Orkney), they took slaves from Russia, Germany, France, and anywhere in the mediterranean. Slaves were sold to Turks and were never heard from again. Viking slaver pirates were the scourge of every ocean for hundreds of years.
I saw a copy of one of my ancestor’s will and he bequeathed his “negro” to someone. I found it to be quite chilling but they were considered property. Not something any of us are proud of.
Slaves in a primitive time were sold to a distant land and never heard from again?
did you expect they’d write?
:p
/s
it is ironic that blacks who claim to hate slavery, and say they are slaves now when they aren’t in america, join islam, a “religion” that allows slavery of non-islams as a “nice” way to treat them.
i know some were treated well enough that when slavery ended they stayed working for their former owners.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.