Ya, slavery never existed prior to the founding of Jamestown.
Hmmm...he forgot the part about the Spanish and Portuguese arriving in the New World some ninety years before the Brits, and their brand of slavery was much harsher, never mind the fact that African slavery began inside Africa.
C'mon UK gurdian, credit where credit is due. You uncredible fiction publishers!
The “native” Americans had slavery down pat long before Europeans set foot on the continent.
England was one of those colonial slave-mongers.
I remember when the Guardian won Ohio for Bush, with their “please don’t vote for Bush” campaign. Superb!
Are North American democracy and free enterprise to contrast with "African slavery, Native American genocide and the global tobacco trade", or we they added to emphasize just how bad it can be?
And from Wikipedia (take it with a block of salt) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade:
The first slaves to arrive as part of a labor force appeared in 1502 on the island of Santo Domingo now modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic. ... The first African slaves to reach what would become the United States of America arrived in January of 1526 as part as a Spanish attempt at colonizing South Carolina near Jamestown.... El Salvador, Costa Rica and Florida began their stint in the slave trade in 1541, 1563 and 1581 respectively. ... The 17th century saw an increase in shipments with slaves arriving in the English colony of Jamestown in 1619.So there was a more than a century of slave trading in the New World before Jamestown and nearly a century in North America before the English got here.
This was just a weak attempt by a historically illiterate Guardian writer to claim that the United States is at fault for all the evil in the world.
Between 1450 and the end of the nineteenth century, slaves were obtained from along the west coast of Africa with the full and active co-operation of African kings and merchants. (There were occasional military campaigns organised by Europeans to capture slaves, especially by the Portuguese in what is now Angola, but this accounts for only a small percentage of the total.) In return, the African kings and merchants received various trade goods including beads, cowrie shells (used as money), textiles, brandy, horses, and perhaps most importantly, guns. The guns were used to help expand empires and obtain more slaves, until they were finally used against the European colonisers. The export of trade goods from Europe to Africa forms the first side of the triangular trade.
..........Snip ................
The transport of slaves from Africa to the Americas forms the middle passage of the triangular trade. Several distinct regions can be identified along the west African coast, these are distinguished by the particular European countries who visited the slave ports, the peoples who were enslaved, and the dominant African society(s) who provided the slaves.
So, for example, Senegambia includes the Wolof, Mandinka, Sereer and Fula; Upper Gambia has the Temne, Mende, and Kissi; the Wndward Coast has the Vai, De, Bassa, and Grebo. (A forthcoming article will look in more detail at the people and kingdoms involved in the slave trade.)
Slaves were introduced to new diseases and suffered from malnutrition long before they reached the new world. It is suggested that the majority of deaths on the voyage across the Atlantic - the middle passage - occurred during the first couple of weeks and were a result of malnutrition and disease encountered during the forced marches and subsequent interment at slave camps on the coast.
Conditions on the slave ships were terrible, but the estimated death rate of around 13% is lower than the mortality rate for seamen, officers and passengers on the same voyages. (Again, a forthcoming article will discuss 'mortality rates of the trans-Atlantic slave trade'.)
Trans-Atlantic imports by region
1450-1900
Region
Number of slaves
accounted for
%
Brazil
4,000,000
35.4
Spanish Empire
2,500,000
22.1
British West Indies
2,000,000
17.7
French West Indies
1,600,00
14.1
British North America and United States
500,000
| 4.4 | |||
| Dutch West Indies | 500,000 | 4.4 | |
| Danish West Indies | 28,000 | 0.2 | |
| Europe (and Islands) | 200,000 | 1.8 | |
| Total | 11,328,000 | 100.0 | |
| Data derived from table II as presented in: The Slave Trade by Hugh Thomas Simon and Schuster, 1997, ISBN 0-68481063-8 |
|||
As a result of the slave trade, five times as many Africans arrived in the Americas than Europeans. Slaves were needed on plantations and for mines and the majority was shipped to Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Spanish Empire. Less than 5% travelled to the Northern American States formally held by the British.
Source: http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa080601a.htm
The Celebration of Jamestown is the Celebration of America. Without America, you whiny Lefty Limey, you would be speaking either a) German or b) Russian right now, and without America, in a few short years Muslim madmen will be telling YOU exactly what you can and cannot write on penalty of death.
Faced with despots and tyrants old and new, leave it to a Liberal to decide that the biggest threats to world freedom are tobacco and slavery, a concept WE in America kicked over the side a hundred fifty years ago. If slavery is a going concern in the tiny, minuscule academic circles you function in, you might remind your fellows that slavery is alive in this century...it's in the Sudan, and it's against Christians, a persecuted minority group that you in the UK seem to have fewer and fewer of. (As cathedrals go, you in England have some very beautiful examples of completely empty architecture.)
Wake up and start loving your own heritage, Jasper.
There was no slavery, African or otherwise before Jamestown?
The 500th Anniversary of Columbus founding America was also marred by the PC police. There were very few celebrations of that. The 400th Anniversary celebrations lasted a year, I read.
Another no-nothing critic.
Anthony Johnson was black, and one of the first 20 blacks brought over to Jamestown as indentured servants
Anyone ashamed of American or Western history and culture should be forced to live outside the West. Put this bastard in Saudi Arabia or Communist China. Let him compare and contrast civilizations. Then make him apply for a visa to come back to the West.
They can stop blaming it on the US now!
Before 1400: Slavery had existed in Europe from Classical times and did not disappear with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Slaves remained common in Europe throughout the early medieval period. However, slavery of the Classical type became increasingly uncommon in Northern Europe and, by the 11th and 12th centuries, had been effectively abolished in the North. Nevertheless, forms of unfree labour, such as villeinage and serfdom, persisted in the north well into the early modern period. In Southern and Eastern Europe, Classical-style slavery remained a normal part of the society and economy and trade across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic seaboard meant that African slaves began to appear in Italy, Spain, Southern France, and Portugal well before the discovery of the New World in 1492.
From about the 8th century onwards, an Arab-run slave trade also flourished, with much of this activity taking place in East Africa, Arabia, and the Indian Ocean. In addition, many African societies themselves had forms of slavery, although these differed considerably, both from each other and from the European and Arabic forms. Although various forms of unfree labour were prevalent in Europe throughout its history, historians refer to ‘Chattel Slavery’, in which slaves are commodities to be bought and sold, rather than domestic servants or agricultural workers. Chattel Slavery is the characteristic form of slavery in the modern world, and this chronology is concerned primarily with this form.
http://www.brycchancarey.com/slavery/chrono2.htm
They want us dead.