Word: slaving
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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TIME: In the later chapters of the book, you look beyond the economic effects of slavery and discuss the even more consequential effects of slavery on culture and self-identification. What were the cultural ramifications of the African slave trade for Europeans, New World whites, Africans, and African Americans? How did it impact their self-identification...
...ELTIS: Early modern Europeans were, obviously, first of all French or Dutch or English or Spanish, but in addition had some concept of "Europeanness." Africans identified with some much smaller political/cultural/religious entity. The trauma of the slave trade and slavery meant that in the New World Europeans added "whiteness" to their self-concept. Africans on both sides of the Atlantic also broadened their concepts of collective identity. European colonies extended rights of denization (a preliminary to citizenship) to those coming from any part of Europe ? including Jews ? before such rights were available in the respective mother countries. Evidence from slave...
TIME: In what way were European aspirations in Africa thwarted by "African power"? To what degree was the slave trade a result of European/African compromise and agreement (as opposed to simply being imposed by Europeans...
...Africa (eg, Sao Tome). Europeans attempted to establish plantations in Africa in the late seventeenth century. They did not have the political and military control to do so and were forced to treat with Africans as equals. The plantations were established in the Americas instead, and the expensive transatlantic slave was necessary to bring them labor. In this sense the slave trade was a result of African strength. Europeans bought slaves, they did not obtain them through European-led raids...
...ELTIS: Document after document on the slave trade shows human beings making matter-of-fact decisions about the lives of others as though they were pieces of merchandise. There is no hint of guilt or recrimination. It is because we cannot understand this mind-set today, that, difficult as it is, we have to attempt to distance ourselves from modern values. If we do not do so, we will not come to understand how such things could happen, and if historians can't do this, then they have no function beyond story tellers...