Slavery....good for African-Americans?Follow

Upon seeing the lost sandwhich did your coworker jump up and shout:

"That's what happened to that thing! Man, that's been bugging me for the last 2 years and 27 days. I swear I was going crazy. Man, Wow! That's a load off my mind."

On average, sure.

If you asked someone "Would you rather be born to a very wealthy family or a family of dirt farmers?" most would choose the former because, on average, wealthy people have a higher quality of life. Broad trends.

Well, the point remains. Regardless of the theory that some slaves were pampered pets (and by the way: prove it), the question is couched in general terms.

To the OP, my suppositions (based on an assumption that the Africa/America/Europe slave trade had never started):

Africa
Not much different to how it is now. Slavery was already going on among African tribes - we just elevated it to an industrial scale.
We'd still have raped the place though. Dutch, Portuguese, Belgian, French, German and of course Brit opportunists were already there for Gold and other valuable ore, Ivory, spices, timber, missionary work. . . Slavery was just a financial bonus.

Europe
The Industrial Revolution (which spawned steam engines and railroads and the subsequent development of the internal combustion engine, mass-production, enhanced mining, metallurgy etc etc) in the 17th and 18th Century were a direct response to the need for faster turnaround of cotton spinning and weaving.
The cotton was Europe's major by-product of slavery.
We'd probably have developed the technology, but without the exacerbation of the cotton market, I guess 100 to 150 years later.

USA
Would the southern cotton industry have been as successful with paid laboUr? I doubt it. So a less prosperous confederacy.
Would there still have been a civil war?
I suspect not.
We could be looking at a 21st century confederacy in what is now USA, with decent odds it would be part of the British Commonwealth like Canada and Australia.

And African Americans?
Without the cultural memory of being systematically repressed and brutalised by a specific demographic, the current understandable bitterness might not be there.
Snoop Dogg would be rapping about growing roses, Michael Jackson would still be a black mentally ill man (instead of being a white mentally ill girl) and Chris Rock's standup Routine would be 1min 12secs.

As it is we've ingrained a mistrust that will probably endure for another 200 years.

No one is asking for their opinions. In fact, their individual opinions aren't even relevant.

I didn't originally bring them up. Complain to DaimenKain.

There wouldn't have been a civil war, because the southern states wouldn't have had the population or the prosperity, not to mention the motivation, to consider secession.

It's ironic that adult male slaves were counted as 3/5 of a white man in the population polls, in that the resulting increase in population gave the southern states the political clout to press the issue of expanding slavery into new territories.

But that's not the issue here, or I suppose it isn't. I confess I have no grasp of what the issue IS, here.

1) No "Americans" were involved in the early slave trade. (they didnt exist yet)
2)Alot of "Africans" were, good way to get rid of & profit off of people from other tribes you have conquered.
3) On the Hitler question, you could easily argue that he was significantly responsible for the creation of the modern state of Israel.

oops, my dinner is ready

Anyone who has paid much attention to history knows it is just full of ironies.


(Nobby, those speculations built on the original speculation were brilliant. We can never know if they are anywhere close to what would have happened, but they are certainly something to think about. Myself, I think that there were a lot of things converging that birthed the industial revolution, so I think saying 100 years delay in it is a bit unrealistic. I suspect that wool and hemp manufacture would have stepped in, but that may have taken a little longer, since although both were readily farmed, certainly the cheapness of slave grown cotten was a factor in how fast industry grew on it's back)

Edited, Mar 22nd 2007 3:49am by Aripyanfar