Word: slaving
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...life would be molded in a different society and by a different set of relationships with other people. It would be nearly as difficult for this scholar to understand the ways we thought as for one of today's scholars to imagine himself a member of a slave society. Except that today's scholars carry an additional burden. Aware that their writing may be used to illuminate or obscure the situation of contemporary American blacks, many historians of slavery begin to tread warily at the edges of inter-racial relationships, whether they're considering slaves' resistance to planters or planters...
Genovese's discussion of the economics of slavery is illuminating. Because of his sensitivity to the transience of economic patterns, he's sometimes willing to question not just prevalent conclusions but prevalent assumptions. For example, he questions the significance of measuring the material incentives offered the slave. He suggests instead that people sometimes work as eagerly for collective satisfaction as for individual advantage, and that the most important incentive for shucking corn zealously far into the night was the community life that came with...
Genovese's treatment of the slaves' system of beliefs--a new breed of Christianity, fusing African and European religious traditions--is even more central to his book, studded as it is with quotations from the Bible and slave spirituals. Genovese argues that Christianity let the slaves maintain their dignity as people, and refuse the temptation to hate their individual masters instead of the class system that included good and bad masters alike...
Incredibly, the Krupp's achievements surpass those of mere munitions making. Perhaps it is worth recalling the 100,000 slave, laborers in at least 100 concentration camps operated by the Krupps during the Second World War. As testimony at the Nuremberg Trials showed: Alfried Krupp's exploitation of slave labor was worse than any other industrialist's. Nowhere else was there such sadism, such senseless barbarity, such shocking treatment of people as dehumanized material. His power was absolute and therefore absolutely corrupting...
Company files show a barrage of letters to the S.S. and Gestapo commands demanding more "Subhumans" (French, Jewish, Russian or Eastern European) for the factories. Krupp officials in company uniforms selected prisoners for slave labor from those destined for the gas chambers. Krupp factories within sight of the crematoriums--or in the heart of German cities in plain view--produced the weapons of Nazi Germany with the labor of its victims. These workers were housed in dog kennels, in public urinals, tents and tunnels...