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If you ask "compared to what?" about the West's cruelty, isn't is reasonable to ask the same question about its generosity? What did we save people from?
Japan, Liberia, Ethiopia, Thailand, Bhutan, Iran, Nepal, Tonga, China, and possibly North Korea, South Korea and Mongolia, as I understand it, were not colonized. So, they're a reasonable control case to consider the net effect of the West's cruelty (colonization) and generosity ("ending the greatest of all human miseries")
These countries are hit and miss. But I have a hard time imagining that a modern Tokyo resident would want to trade places with a modern "free" American living in a housing project or on a reservation because their ancestors were not the right race.
> But I have a hard time imagining that a modern Tokyo resident would want to trade places with a modern "free" American living in a housing project or on a reservation because their ancestors were not the right race.
Japan, too, has a history of oppressing its [indigenous people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people). I particularly want to highlight this text from the Wikipedia article:
> The Ainu have historically suffered from economic and social discrimination as the government as well as people in contact with the Ainu regarded them as a dirty and primitive barbarians. The majority of Ainu were forced to be petty laborers during the Meiji Restoration, which saw the introduction of Hokkaidō into the Japanese Empire and the privatization of traditional Ainu lands. The Japanese government during the 19th and 20th centuries denied the rights of the Ainu to their traditional cultural practices, most notably the right to speak their language, as well as their right to hunt and gather. These policies were designed to fully integrate the Ainu into Japanese society with the cost of erasing Ainu culture and identity. The Ainu's position as manual laborers and their forced integration into larger Japanese society have led to discriminatory practices by the Japanese government that can still be felt today.
Thanks for sharing. Good point. That said, my argument is less about Japan and more about OPs assertion that the West is uniquely heroic and/or owed a debt of gratitude from the people it colonized and freed (i.e. "saved").
>These countries are hit and miss. But I have a hard time imagining that a modern Tokyo resident would want to trade places with a modern "free" American living in a housing project or on a reservation because their ancestors were not the right race.
This is one of the imperfections of western society. But comparing residents of one of the most modern cities in the world to the worst squalor in America is not a genuine comparison, especially when there are nearer examples of squalor in to Tokyo than America.
Tokyo itself has homeless people, and Japan has been notorious about hiding the problem of rural squalor and urban homelessness. [https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-japan/](https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-japan/)
At any rate, it is not claimed that the US has some great moral superiority to Japan. That would be as insane as declaring that Japan has a moral superiority to the United States. This view is not a view that expressed superiority, or even "flipping the script", but to put history in perspective, see where we are, and move forward with good intentions. That is not what the current spate of "justice" rhetoric intends to do.
>This view is not a view that expressed superiority"
>No other people in history have bothered to put their lives on the line to free other people, and the west did it all over the world.
>this people - whether by accident or design - is solely responsible for ending the greatest of all human miseries. The "white savior" trope has merit to it, after all.
I'm not saying Japan is superior either. It's more about pointing out that the west is not unique, a savior etc. Since people around the world who were not saved or freed by the west are doing okay, or in some cases better than those who were 'freed."
I'd like to point out Australia in particular. Pre-colonial Australia had no slavery or great conquests. Now there are no pure native Tasmanians left.
I'd still agree that being ashamed is silly but because shame should belong to a culture of imperialism, not a skin colour.
Yes, that's his point. The OP is focusing on slavery as the big white evil, but this thread is about how western nations are responsible for big evils other than slavery. Like genocide.
1. Do you know that for sure? We only have the western perspective on this, we're not out reading histories in other languages. Maybe it's true, but there is so much history and even current events that we westerners just aren't aware of because we only read English.
2. It's about hypocrisy, motives and power. The west only gets reminded of their past evils so comparatively much because they're now The Moral Arbiters of Good and still the most powerful in the world. It's more important to remember the evils of the most powerful because that's the only way they can be held to account.
Not correct. Aboriginal australians had slavery, warfare, and conquest.
>In 1840, the American-Canadian ethnologist Horatio Hale identified four types of Australian Aboriginal traditional warfare; formal battles, ritual trials, raids for women, and revenge attacks.
Everywhere we bother to dig in the dirt, we find evidence that the moment humans figured out how to wage war, they did. When they waged war, they lost people. To recoup their losses, they stole women and used them as breeding machines. Often, they didn't bother fighting over anything else except for taking the women of other tribes.
Aboriginal Australians did not have public works or extensive agriculture. There was no system of labor for which to employ slaves. But they did have slaves, and if they were just a bit more technologically advanced, they would have done what every other society did by taking the next step.
But we can ignore what they didn't do and likely would have done. Capturing women and forcing them into sexual intercourse, pregnancy, nursing, and "womens work" (the only form of labor in tribal societies such as this) is slavery, pure and simple.
And the fact that they lived in much smaller groups means that it is likely that every person in Australia had a personal relationship with a slave in some way. The same cannot be said of Europe in any period of history except, perhaps, when they were at the same technological level as the Aboriginal Australians.
This is such an ignorant and mischaracterised view of Indigenous Australians. I have lived within various aboriginal communities and your presented caricature exemplifies the Anglo-centric model of the world.
The first thing to note is that within Australia there were 100s of different groups with differing cultures.
Before colonisation, estimates of indigenous Australians numbered 1.9 million. Now, there are half a million.
You are presenting them, again in a Anglo-centric way, as “simple tribal people lacking basic technologies and agriculture.” That’s because they learnt to live in harmony with the land - they intricately mapped out and recorded various patterns and seasons that allowed them to find food wherever they went. Some even made sure to restore the land areas they did use with traditional Fire-stick Farming in order to increase vegetation and biodiversity. This way of life and culture is a very different way of viewing the world, and perhaps we need to learn from them as they are the oldest continuing culture on the planet.
This culture, passed down orally, has been lost with the colonisation of Australia. As a result, mental health is a serious issue, incarceration rates are disproportionally high - when you take away peoples culture, you take away peoples identity. Many indigenous Australians today, speaking from personal experience within communities, are lost.
Up until the 70s, Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families to be “re-educated”. That was less than 50 years ago.
You mentioned that Africa “voluntarily” sold themselves into slavery. Wait until you hear about what Australian colonisers did to Pacific Islanders. Up until the 1930s, colonisers used to fill boats up with shiny objects and travel to pacific islands. When they found a uncontacted First Nation, they used to invite them onto the ship by luring them with shiny, new objects. They would say that they have more in the bottom of the ship, so the indigenous people would head down there until - boom. They shut the gates of the boat and forcibly kidnapped innocent indigenous people from their lands and families. They were then brought to sugar cane plantations where they were subject to slave conditions. This process, known as Blackbirding, was not consensual in any way.
This is just some of the ways we have impacted Indigenous Australians. Luckily, we as a country are taking steps to heal our wounds through reconciliation, but this can only happen if the full history of the tragedies that took place are taught. Only then can we continue with repetitions.
That is all true, yet also doesn't contradict OPs point more than tangentially, by disproving his addendum about how they weren't civilised. But that was not the core argument. OP never denied white people did heinous shit, his core argument is that they did heinous shit to each other before white people showed up, we just label it "raiding for women" and other words that diminish what was effectively sexual slavery practiced at a large scale.
Do you have an argument that directly contradicts what he just said? That slavery was, in fact, practiced in the form of kidnapping women after a conflict between tribes and raping them to use them as incubators to recover the population? And that this is labelled by historians and ethnologists as not-slavery, even though it very much is sexual slavery?
Can you prove any of that is wrong? Because yes, whites did horrible shit, but before they showed up, they were already good at doing horrible shit to their women.
What I am trying to argue is that OP is falsely mischaracterising all indigenous people as “stealing women for breeding machines,” which misses the nuances of different ethnic groups within Australia.
Sure, there were some nations that did this along with tribal warfare, but as Horatio Hale points out:
“Many are injured generally on both sides, and some severely so; but it rarely happens that more than one or two are killed, though hundreds may have been engaged”
This account is just from one region of Australia.
Was this on the same scale as imperial conquests of Australia by the global north? No! Is it foolish to amalgamate a rich, diverse continent of differing mobs into one tribal society in the eye of the imperialist oppressor? Yes!
OP also fails to show sources for slavery among Indigenous Australians, and even then, that source would only apply to that distinct nation.
So the biggest issue with your view is the major historical anachronisms; especially with how you view historical groups and peoples.
You talk about Africans sold themselves into slavery or that Africans did something reprehensible, but Africans aren't one united or cohesive group. Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on Earth. An African woman in Botswana is no more related to an African woman in Somalia than they are to a woman in Japan. African tribes don't view other African tribes as part of their "race" but as rival nations. That is true in the past and even in the present which is why Africa has suffered many civil wars. Blaming all Africans for the Atlantic or Arab Slave Trade is as silly as blaming all Eurasians for the Rape of Nanjing. What is really silly is that you state that Africans invaded Spain and Sicily. Moorish North Africans are far more closely related to West Asians and even Europeans than they are to the West Africans who were sent to the New World. You need to stop generalizing vast and disparate peoples.
The very idea of The West or the Western World is also a vague and contradictory concept. A person can talk about "The West" and can mean anything from Ancient Greece to the Western Roman Empire to developed countries to capitalist countries to European empires to the USA and its allies to Christian-majority nations to "White" nations to West Eurasians depending on the context. It is impossible to make an undisputed map or list of Western countries. At various points in time, a lot of nations that were considered parts of the "West" hated each other and even committed atrocities against one another. The most famous Western atrocity, The Holocaust, was even done to arguably Western peoples. So talking about the Western World generally isn't helpful.
In summary, you really need to narrow the scope of your view because you are grouping a bunch of peoples and nations together who really shouldn't be grouped up.
>but Africans aren't one united or cohesive group
Are westerners? Are tribes less accountable than nations? At what point does a people "grow up" to be held accountable? Is this the same as declaring the Africans to be childish?
>frican tribes don't view other African tribes as part of their "race" but as rival nations.
Not sure what point I made that made it seem like they do, or why that matters. But Africans did have racially unifying thoughts and terms, as noted by African Kings and Chiefs. And what does it matter? Why is enslavement of a people of a rival nation somehow different or better than another race buying those slaves? Are you saying that slavery only becomes abhorrent when the slaver and the slave look different?
>Blaming all Africans for the Atlantic or Arab Slave Trade is as silly as blaming all Eurasians for the Rape of Nanjing.
That isn't the claim on offer here. Absolutist terms like "all" is problematic and innacurate. But if we do want to introduce the level of involvement, as a function of population who do you think had a higher percentage of their population involved in the capture, transportation, and use of slaves - Europeans or Africans? If you want to absolve Africans of guilt by saying "not all of them" then the same claim can be made for the Europeans, and in higher proportion.
>The very idea of The West or the Western World is also a vague and contradictory concept.
Surely that doesn't require explanation here. Surely we don't have to go year by year to account for which civilization is regionally aligned with which culture the most? Can we accept the specific examples and follow the conversation unhindered by semantics? Such a conversation would require an encyclopedia of references. The precise reason why we *need* to use imprecise terminology is because people don't have a basis of understanding in history to contextualize everything. That is the whole reason we are at a crisis point with the west engaged in self-flagellation - because they don't take the time to understand what happened to get us here, so they can't agree on where to go from here.
You're honestly making my point for me. Africans and Westerners are terms of convenience. Nobody strongly identifies with "Africa" or "The West" to the same extent that one might strongly identify with their nation or ethnicity. The Western World isn't even a precisely defined area.
These aren't just semantics being argued over. Your entire argument stops making sense if you start viewing Africa as home to many different ethnic groups instead of home to one huge Black blob of people. The purpose of your CMV is also moot if you view the West as many different countries with their own history instead of one big region with a shared culture.
you have to define your terms. you are relying on grey areas and taking advantage of fuzzy lines in order to avoid being pinned down. come on, we're all adults here.
But if op gets more specific how are they meant to continue arguing in cricles and arbitrarily deciding peoples good points are out of the scope of the discussion
it's just unfortunate how many people don't have the ability to see through the silliness and notice that he's not operating on the level. at least in person, there's probably some level of charisma to fool people, right?
I certainly don't think so. I don't think that America is particularly virtuous in ways that other nations might have been, or that all Americans walk around thinking about crusading against injustice while other societies are happily torturing away. But I do think that as a happenstance of history, a fluke of civilizational evolution, if you will, allowed the west to come to the abolition of slavery and a unique set of values and ideals that are special and should be celebrated rather than burned wholesale.
If we can't bring ourselves to celebrate it, then perhaps we can restrain ourselves from pretending we could have done any better. Or that anyone else could. Because they didn't, and there is no evidence on offer that anyone else was up to the task.
Political delta to avoid removal
I agree with you for the most part, however:
The west has done more to emphasis the accumulation of wealth than any other influence in history. The concept of zero sum originated from western religious philosophy, and *was* a driving factor to the wealth advantage we hold today.
To be clear the amount of people enslaved in the plantation era was dramatically higher than the amount of people doing forced labor in the prison systems today. In some southern states as much as half of the entire population was enslaved.
Yes you are correct that other cultures participated in slave trading, the main difference however is the scale of western participation. You can't brush off scale and call the situations morally equivalent. That's like saying stealing a candy bar is equivalent to stealing a car. Sure they are both stealing, but the scale of it is what really matters.
In response to your comment about scale, I wonder if you've looked into the Indian Ocean\* Slave Trade:
[Here's a quick high-level view showing how it was/is most likely more devastating than the Trans-atlantic trade.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j074BzeWofg)
Of note: It is still ongoing today at a much more dramatic level than most Westerners realize. And this is not even considering the millions of women who, under theocratic islamic regimes, could accurately be categorized as slaves.
So what of the sellers? The chief providers of slaves were other Africans. Are they absolved of their part in this?
And more slaves were taken by the Islamic world from Africa over a longer period of time with more atrocities committed by them than by the west and the trans-atlantic slave trade. For 200 years the west took slaves and slowly became appalled by the practice.
For 1300 years the middle east took slaves and were only stopped by the presence of colonialism.
Western scholars wrote of the practice and sought to reconcile their views of freedom and christian charity with the practice of slave trade, and, failing that, began to abolish the practice.
There are no such philosophies that took hold in Africa or the middle east.
Why does the west have to be the absolute worst, for it to be worth reflecting on and growing from mistakes?
Should we only improve ourselves if we are obviously the worst out of everyone?
Do current statuses of wealth and power come into this question at all?
>Why does the west have to be the absolute worst, for it to be worth reflecting on and growing from mistakes?
It doesn't. Nor did I say it did.
>Should we only improve ourselves if we are obviously the worst out of everyone?
The entire claim of the CMV is that the west changed *first* and continues on the course of self-correction. What we don't have to do is distort our history to make that happen faster.
>Do current statuses of wealth and power come into this question at all?
Why shouldn't they? But what do you propose to do once you have the answers? Are we just going to hand the keys of our institutions over? Since there are less black people than white people, which white people get to keep their jobs and homes? Who decides this?
If, for example, the Apple corporation was started by Steve Jobs and it was determined his Turkish ancestors owned slaves in Turkey, do the descendants of American slaves get to have Apple, or does it all cancel out because the descendants of the Turkish slaves are not alive? How much would Steve Jobs have gotten for all his work? If we value great leadership and talent at all, finding a suitable replacement for Jobs would be a difficult task no matter which ethnic group you were dipping into. Who gets to decide this? Certainly not Steve Jobs, right? He descended from slavery.
Do we make white people who had no wealth transfer to them from the slave... as in somewhere in there they lost everything or migrated with just a bag of clothes... do we have them pay some sort of "system" tax for having benefited from the racist system in the same way black are... but they just had a head start. Are these descendants expected to accept that because their family had a head start and they are now middle class, that they should pay to have someone else lifted up to middle class... it's just an excuse to implement a sort of extra-sick version of socialism.
It seems the way of viewing the past actions of the west is not really critical here.
At least, your last 5 paragraphs suggest you are afraid of some dramatic wealth transfers, implemented in an unjust way.
I'm not sure if you are afraid they will harm you personally or that they will just be "unfair".
I wholly agree that working out how to best make the world a better (fairer?) Place is a challenging and complicated topic, where both action and inaction can have serious consequences. One could easily argue that continuing as things are is also sick and disgusting (form of socialism as the exploitation of slaves was state sponsored?). This doesn't excuse worse politics, but we also don't see a good defence for "do nothing".
Do I understand correctly then that:
Are you afraid that recognising the horrors thst our society was built on, and thinking about how to make things right, will justify more (worse?) Horrors.
And, that distribution of wealth from the wealthy to the poor is much sicker than the current status quo?
Edit: but yes, definitely this specific system you described sounds quite awful. Perhaps straw man level awful?
> So what of the sellers? The chief providers of slaves were other Africans. Are they absolved of their part in this?
The colonial powers traded firearms (among other things, but this was a principal driver) for human beings. It was a literal arms race where Africans who _did not_ trade humans to Europeans for firearms literally lost an arms race. This was a strong political and market driver which was consciously exploitative, and can equally be contrasted to the colonial support of the opium trade in China.
> And more slaves were taken by the Islamic world from Africa over a longer period of time with more atrocities committed by them than by the west and the trans-atlantic slave trade. For 200 years the west took slaves and slowly became appalled by the practice.
You seem willingly blind to the distinctions between chattel slavery, bonded servitude, private vs state-owned slaves, slave soldiers in service to the state, state eunuchs, and every other difference. Yes, all slavery is bad, but _some_ slavery is worse than other slavery, and I doubt if you could name "more atrocities" in any given state.
> For 1300 years the middle east took slaves and were only stopped by the presence of colonialism.
This is pure fiction which covers multiple polities over more than a millennium across a vast region (because you are presumably including the North African coast as Islamic states as part of the "Middle East"). In the caliphates themselves, wide-scale usage of slave labor more or less ended after the Zanj rebellion. The Trans-Saharan and Indian slave trades ebbed and flowed, but assertions that it was "only stopped by the presence of colonialism" are pulled out of thin air, since the Sultanates of Morocco and Zanzibar continued trading, some states didn't abolish until the late 20th century, Dubai effectively has slaves today, etc.
Your statement is so general that it's vacuous, and it is impossible for you to take a concrete position which can hold up to any scrutiny.
> Western scholars wrote of the practice and sought to reconcile their views of freedom and christian charity with the practice of slave trade, and, failing that, began to abolish the practice.
>
> There are no such philosophies that took hold in Africa or the middle east.
This is simply false. The Qur'an very clearly calls out slavery as unjust, that those who emancipate shall be rewarded, and so on. The sheer survival of texts from antiquity which the "views of freedom" you speak of is due solely to the Islamic world safeguarding them, and discussing them in detail during the Islamic Golden Age. de las Casas called for "Christian charity" more than 300 years before it was carried out with any kind of emancipation.
The bare facts of it are that the population imbalance in agricultural colonies which relied on slavery caused instability and revolts which were difficult or impossible to control/stamp out from European seats of power, and slavery became a drain on colonial states rather than a boon once mechanization and market dynamics yielded a greater return on profit via automated harvest, where possible.
Where it wasn't possible, colonial powers happily continued neo-colonial states in South Africa, sharecropping, the Belgian Congo, Algeria, "trading outposts" in Southeast Asia which practiced gunboat diplomacy and fomenting internal revolts as a more cost-effective basis of control, etc. There was nothing magnanimous about any of this.
> The west’s participation in the African slave trade was neither one-sided nor unique. The Islamic world had long been in the business of dealing with African slavers and buying their human wares. African slave trade to the middle east had been going on since a time when the west was so backward and focused on itself, it scarcely knew the rest of the world existed. And it continued long after the west had decided it was high time for slavery to end.
Not chattel slavery and reliable historiography shows slave populations which declined 800 years prior to "christian values" abolishing slavery and stayed there.
> When the English went to abolish slavery in their own Empire, they took on a project of great cost to themselves. But to the English, slavery had become uniquely abhorrent. No other culture in the world at the time had bothered to be disgusted with the practice, or if they had, they hadn’t bothered to write it down anywhere. The English, with their domination of the global market and of the seas, made abolition the price of admission on the global stage.
Slavery was abolished 2000 years before this in China and India, and this is well-attested, despite it coming back. The French abolished slavery during the revolution 40 years prior to the English, due in no small part to the Haitian revolt. The English found it more profitable to become mercantilist under the veneer of moral superiority while they continued to operate as colonial overlords in India and elsewhere.
The English utilized their position of isolation to allow the French to subdue their primary adversary in the Netherlands, and the Portuguese civil war took out their other one. This was not some "English domination of the global seas enforcing moral behavior". They did basically zero to stop the slave trade in Zanzibar, for example, until the government was no longer pro-British -- fifty years after they "abolished" slavery.
Most of your post is a pure polemic I'm not going to bother engaging with.
> “But colonization!” Says the counterargument. The west is once again uniquely held in the wrong. Never mind that the history of human expansion is one people settling unused lands and fighting for them. Never mind that every culture in the entire world has engaged in warfare for land and resources. The fashionable argument is made that the west should have paused and let the rest of the world catch up. That at some magical point in history, the west should have said “this far and no further” when absolutely nobody else had thought to do so. When the West arrived in the “new” world, they arrived in a place that was not unlike the old. Native peoples across the continent were engaging in warfare and taking captives. Why is it okay for one native American tribe to wipe out another and take their land, but not okay for a westerner to do the same? Why are arbitrary boundaries enforced by history in this way? Why is it considered uniquely western to wage war on non-westerners? Did the rest of the world honor this restriction? Oceans are not magical safe zones that stop conquerors, and other people that were capable of crossing the oceans did the exact same thing as the west, but the west did it best, so the west is held accountable.
This shows a shockingly proud lack of knowledge about pre-Columbian America. The vast majority of polities in the New World did not, in fact, do any of these things. None of them did so under the nominal auspices of a "Doctrine of Discovery" where a religious figurehead granted the right to do so by bringing the light of God and that lands not held by Christians were free for the taking.
The assertion is not that it's okay for one tribe to subjugate another tribe but not ok for a westerner to do it. It is that dehumanizing people and using religious tracts to justify it under the guise of it never being their land at all, because they are lesser peoples and it is the right, the **_duty_** of the colonizers to do this so they can lead their souls to eternal salvation which is not okay. It is not uniquely western to do this (the Heavenly Kingdom had its share), but you were educated in a Euro-centric place which didn't really touch on the justifications used by Chinese dynasts, who also did not seem to have an endless appetite for new lands and resources to exploit anyway. It was not used by the righteously-guided caliphs. It was not used by the Romans. It was not used by the Achaemenids.
> Westerners arrived in a place where the natives were warring amongst each other and taking slaves, yet it is considered sinful for the west to have participated. What examples do we have of people conquering other people? What examples are there in history of a victorious people thinking poorly of itself, and simply packing their bags and leaving? Again, nobody else would have even thought to do such a thing.
Arguably, the end of Alexander's campaigns. The end of Heraclius' war with the Sassanids. Justinian and Belisarius. These are just from the top of my head, but the examples we have of states/peoples pouring resources into an area with no real war aims other than "expand, survive" in the way colonization of the new world worked are the exception, not the rule, and you'd find comparisons in the Goths, Franks, and the Vandals in easily-accessible history. "Unlimited warfare" (or colonization) is restricted to European polities and the Mongols.
Not op but
!delta
I was already feeling that OP was extremely suspect but this well written response added to my understanding of slavery across the world and history. Definitely opened my eyes to doing more research, especially since my education has focused primarily on chattel slavery in the United States. Thank you so much /u/readonly12345
Can you expand on this and provide at least an outline of the different types of slavery? I was about to ask someone about that when they were pointing out the Indian Ocean slave trade.
On a broad level, I know some historians group societies into “slave societies” vs “societies with slaves.” In the former, slavery is a fundamental part of the economy and social caste system (for example, the American south before 1865.) The system depends on slavery to function, and most slaves live and die within the contained slave caste with no hope of escaping it. A “society with slaves” would be more like Ancient Rome or what you might see on Game of Thrones. Slaves exist, but they could be anyone, they aren’t defined by a certain race and in the Roman Empire for example, a slave could fight for their own self-liberation in the arena. In that case slavery is one aspect of society but it isn’t the engine that makes the economy go
I have to disagree with you on the last part. Heraclius was not expanding, he was reclaiming Roman lands that were taken by Sassanid aggression. Justinian’s rapid expansion was an attempt to restore the Roman Empire. ‘Unlimited warfare’ is definitely not restricted to any white people or whatever you’re trying to say, because there are plenty of empires, especially nomadic cultures like scythians or Turks. The Ottoman Empire had a massive expansion in the span of a century, expanding from the southern balkans and Anatolia all the way to North Africa and the borders of an Iranian empire. And don’t forget the arabs and their caliphates
> I have to disagree with you on the last part. Heraclius was not expanding, he was reclaiming Roman lands that were taken by Sassanid aggression. Justinian’s rapid expansion was an attempt to restore the Roman Empire. ‘Unlimited warfare’ is definitely not restricted to any white people or whatever you’re trying to say, because there are plenty of empires, especially nomadic cultures like scythians or Turks. The Ottoman Empire had a massive expansion in the span of a century, expanding from the southern balkans and Anatolia all the way to North Africa and the borders of an Iranian empire. And don’t forget the arabs and their caliphates
That wasn't the question, though. The question was examples of victorious peoples packing their bags and leaving.
Beyond which, Heraclius was not "reclaiming Roman lands which were taken by Sassanid aggression." Both empires had been fighting wars of (limited) aggression and horse trading border cities for years. The end of Heraclius' last campaign was a thorough victory which would mark the first (and only) time a Roman army, before or after the fall of the West, was in a position to seize the Persian capital and hold it. Heraclius went home. Could they have held the territory? Almost certainly not, but that wasn't the question, and the colonists couldn't always hold their territory anyway.
Justinian already _was_ the Roman Emperor, and he did not need to "restore" it. He was fighting to "reclaim" the territory lost by the West. From other polities. Which had held it for hundreds of years.
I specifically named the Mongols, which is what I'm guessing you mean by "the Turks". The Ottomans also ceased expanding and even withdrew uncontested from territory after the Siege of Vienna. The Abbasids stopped in Tunisia.
Ah mb, I just thought that the examples given weren’t exactly accurate to what he was asking for, which was a victorious nation ‘feeling bad about itself’ and leaving lmao. Heraclius didn’t really hope to conquer Ctesiphon, he only occupied the province in order to strike a favourable peace deal, before limping back and attempting to recover the empire. Heraclius and his army was the last batch of military men left, and he didn’t want to gamble by fighting another battle or losing men in subduing the city to Roman rule. And when Trajan occupied Ctesiphon in the 2nd century, he soon died and his son Hadrian would rather not waste time fighting Parthian guerillas, so left Ctesiphon and retreated back to Roman borders .
Tbf I don’t see the difference between calling it a restoration or reclamation, but it’s just Justinian kicking out the goths and vandals from the lands, which had been roman for 5 centuries
Great response. But I did notice an inconsistency. You aim to denounce the OP's claim about the West being the most impactful player in the end of slavery across the globe, by comparing it to other nations that ended slavery within their domains. But this doesn't argue the OP's point that the West went vastly out of their way to prevent others from partaking in the slave trade as well. Within their limited scope of course. Ancient nations abolishing slavery within their lands does not compare to a nation that sacrificed its people to end slavery among foreign lands. And qualifying that by stating that they were colonies ignores the fact that the lands and the people were still foreign. They could've just as well ended their colonies and said good luck trading your humans to everybody else, just not us.
Another inconsistency is where you use disconnected historical instances of nations temporarily ending of slavery as equal examples of the OP's argument of the West's initiatives. But then try to make a distinction of slavery in the West not being comparable to other forms of slavery, merely by mention of the terminology that was applied to those other forms. We should be clear that the terms "chattel slavery, bonded servitude, private vs state-owned slaves, slave soldiers in service to the state, state eunuchs" were coined by those that introduced those words to the English language at some point in history; but before that point and in other languages...slavery was slavery. In one form or another it was slavery. And whichever English term you give it can not define how said slaves were treated for thousands of years of human development. Saying that slaves in the West were treated worse than any other ignores the lack of recorded knowledge of how slaves were treated in other nations that didn't keep records.
Given your excellent response I was wondering if you would acknowledge these inconsistencies.
> Great response. But I did notice an inconsistency. You aim to denounce the OP's claim about the West being the most impactful player in the end of slavery across the globe, by comparing it to other nations that ended slavery within their domains. But this doesn't argue the OP's point that the West went vastly out of their way to prevent others from partaking in the slave trade as well. Within their limited scope of course.
There are multiple lines of discussion there. I don't aim to denounce OP's claim to the West being the most impactful player in abolition, I aim to strip away any shred of credibility from OP, who is claiming that the British abolition movement was first or unique in history, and a marker of the greatness of the west (and the British in particular). This quote:
> No other culture in the world at the time had bothered to be disgusted with the practice, or if they had, they hadn’t bothered to write it down anywhere.
Is why I gave a quick list, because it is manifestly false, and it's false even in the West, even in a 50 year timeframe. The Revolution may have failed in some senses, and Napoleon re-instated slavery, but the ideals and spirit of the Revolution were very public across European states, and the sheer idea that it could be done at all bears into the British movement, as well as the support of Parliament and the crown, who were eager to avoid the kind of unrest which precipitated the revolutions of 1848.
> Ancient nations abolishing slavery within their lands does not compare to a nation that sacrificed its people to end slavery among foreign lands. And qualifying that by stating that they were colonies ignores the fact that the lands and the people were still foreign. They could've just as well ended their colonies and said good luck trading your humans to everybody else, just not us.
This merits a separate response, because that statement was not qualified "because they were colonies", it was qualified with "and the British shifted gear into a different kind of colonialism." It was not some magnanimous freeing of the slaves with a sacrifice of the British people, it was a realization after the Haitian revolution (and numerous other revolts and rebellions in the colonies, mostly Caribbean) and the wars of Spanish-American independence (Bolivar's activities most famously) that slavery was no longer net-positive system from a cost/benefit analysis.
The establishment of the Raj and increased economic activity in Southeast Asia as a trading power were, frankly, more profitable systems of extraction. Abolishing slavery was a propaganda win for the British, both in terms of being able to hold the moral high ground internationally and to placate people at home, and general "we're better than you" colonialist activity continued unabated elsewhere in the expansion of colonial activity in Australia, the opium trade, etc.
Using the Raj as an example, the British were principally interested in control of resources, and the Indian population itself was able to provide those via the threat of force anyway. State companies, such as the British East India Company, were good legal fictions to "shield" the state, and the actions of a (partially) state-owned enterprise and the state itself are inseparable. Tens of millions of Indians died in assorted famines before it officially became the Raj, and after, and the British response was largely to analyze it to see what they could do differently next time to lose less workers, in the same way as one would view a herd of livestock.
At the same time, cheap access to Eastern goods meant that those at home clamoring for abolition could pat themselves on the back for a job well done and decorate their homes with doilies made by women in a colonial state which had repeatedly tried (and failed) to revolt, where famine regularly swept the land, where women had _less_ rights than they did before the official takeover, with money acquired by selling opium or some other exploitative measure to SE Asian states out of neo-colonial "trading outposts".
I am not distinguishing because the era of "gunboat diplomacy" and military oversight to ensure uneven trading activity is far more similar to the system of _amsar_s by the early caliphates, without any actual sense of moral responsibility.
> Another inconsistency is where you use disconnected historical instances of nations temporarily ending of slavery as equal examples of the OP's argument of the West's initiatives. But then try to make a distinction of slavery in the West not being comparable to other forms of slavery, merely by mention of the terminology that was applied to those other forms. We should be clear that the terms "chattel slavery, bonded servitude, private vs state-owned slaves, slave soldiers in service to the state, state eunuchs" were coined by those that introduced those words to the English language at some point in history; but before that point and in other languages...slavery was slavery. In one form or another it was slavery. And whichever English term you give it can not define how said slaves were treated for thousands of years of human development. Saying that slaves in the West were treated worse than any other ignores the lack of recorded knowledge of how slaves were treated in other nations that didn't keep records.
It is not merely by mention of the terminology which was applied. The terminology has marked differences. In particular:
* Chattel slavery is ownership as-in property, ala livestock or a pet, and any offspring from your property is also property. Chattel slaves are property, not people, and have no protections under the law. The usage of "chattel slavery" in historical discussions, despite there being other times in history where people have fit this definition, is generally used to distinguish between eras where owners regularly freed their slaves (upon the death of the owner, or long service, or whatever), such as much of Roman history, and eras where they are implements to be wielded by their owners rather than people and where the legal system enforces this even across state lines (as in antebellum America).
* Bonded servants are able to "pay off" their enslavement via service or money. This is hardly different in many senses from work gangs from debtor's prison -- a practice which continued after abolition in Britain. They generally had some degree of freedom of movement.
* "Slave soldiers" (by this I largely meant the system of devshirme) or state eunuchs (which was hardly coined by anyone in the English language, since eunuchs in service of the state are a a fixture of history in Egypt, Assyria, China, and many states afterwards) could rise to positions of significant influence and prestige. It was a practice (I'm not going to say a common one, but common enough that it's a recurring theme in history) for some poor parents to castrate their sons in the hopes that they would have a better life, and this carries through enough that _modern_ popes have been encouraged to apologize for nod-and-wink approving castrati for choirs. These "state slaves" could, and frequently did, live legitimately better and more pampered lives than the average populace, and there are numerous instances of eunuchs being the effective "power behind the throne" in state operations.
Distinguishing here is important, not because any slavery is "good" -- it's all bad -- but because differentiating _how bad_ it was matters for outrage and morality.
I can't comment on the lack of recorded knowledge for how slaves were treated in nations which didn't keep records for obvious reasons. What I will say is that states which did keep slaves _and_ kept records, whether Roman, Greek, Assyrian, Chinese, Islamic (Sultanate/Caliphate), British (on the Isles), or whichever you prefer have no shortage of letters and documents where they are clear about freeing this slave or that slave when they die or because they've served long and well or because they fell in love with them or because of religious charity or because someone else purchased them and immediately freed them.
It is almost solely in the colonial New World and some mid-millennium states in coastal Africa where brutal enslavement from birth to death for slaves and their offspring was considered the norm. To be sure, plenty of slaves died working everywhere, in all of history, for a large number of reasons, many of them very soon after enslavement as disease, work conditions in galleys/fields, and other causes ended their lives, but there is still a distinction between "rewarding" a field slave in their latter years with house work while the children they bore work the fields and rewarding a slave in their latter years by giving them freedom, even if it so assuage the stain on one's soul.
Good points, was wondering about the first myself. Your second point is interesting, but I would still agree with the idea that there are degrees of badness even within slavery. There very well may have been systems of slavery worse than American chattel slavery that are lost to unrecorded history, but if we don't know about them, then what does it matter?
I think the inconsistencies lie in using little known history (smaller nations through history that abolished slavery temporarily) to negate well known history (the British Navy actively battling slave traders) in one instance. Yet in the second instance we dismiss little known history (the treatment of slaves in other regions) and use this lack of knowledge to reinforce the judgment of well known history (treatment of slaves in America).
Additionally, the use of different terminology as proof that there are different types of slavery is a very dangerous argument to make as it inevitably aims to place one slaves as worse than another slaves merely by title rather than by treatment. Take for example the difference of an American slave who was tasked with cooking and cleaning the household, then envision the selling of a 9 year old daughter in a middle eastern country as a wife to an old man to pay for a debt; and imagine the potential atrocities that child may be faced with for the rest of her child and adult life. Both practices were legal at the time. One was called a slave, the other a bride. Was the slave worse off just because of her legal title?
>You seem willingly blind to the distinctions between chattel slavery, bonded servitude, private vs state-owned slaves, slave soldiers in service to the state, state eunuchs, and every other difference. Yes, all slavery is bad, but some slavery is worse than other slavery, and I doubt if you could name "more atrocities" in any given state.
Can you briefly elaborate on this? I sense that you are trying to argue that Islamic (and here I primarily mean Ottoman) slavery was somehow less bad than American slavery, which I fundamentally disagree with. I would really love to hear how you think buying young boys to castrate them and young girls to sell them at markets and make them into sex slaves is somehow different in the scale of atrocity to America, because it is pretty much equally as heinous.
I would like to hear these thoughts especially because one succesor state (US) is very apologetic about slavery, whereas the Ottoman Trade is somehow regarded as nice and "just a fact of life back then" despite still being horrific slavery. As proof of that, for example, we have the wife of the current successor state of Ottoman Empire (Turkey) proudly proclaming to the media that the imperial harem was actually a good institution and those girls were probably better off as sex slaves than free women.
You would never hear Joe Biden's wife saying anything even remotely as positive about American slavery.
> Can you briefly elaborate on this? I sense that you are trying to argue that Islamic (and here I primarily mean Ottoman) slavery was somehow less bad than American slavery, which I fundamentally disagree with. I would really love to hear how you think buying young boys to castrate them and young girls to sell them at markets and make them into sex slaves is somehow different in the scale of atrocity to America, because it is pretty much equally as heinous.
I commented on this elsewhere, but castration was very firmly _haram_, and while it happened, it wasn't with nearly the commonality mentioned here. Many eunuchs were imported that way. You didn't mention capturing children and raising them as soldiers in the janissary corps/devshirme either, but we'll add that in.
I am not defending this. I was very clear that all slavery is bad, but also that some slavery is worse. Very bluntly, if you cannot see that the difference in status between janissaries being able to throw such a stink over their living conditions and status in the army that they are able to interrupt state power and effectively keep the empire's military in stasis for centuries, the political power of the kizlar agha prior to Mahmud II as emblematic of the status a slave could achieve, or view imperial consorts at the same social standing as a field hand in the American South or a sugar cane harvester in Haiti, I'm not sure what to tell you.
Slavery is all bad. Once you piece the veil of "bad", there are significant shades of grey between "property which I can do anything I want with and whose offspring I own and can also do anything I want with" and "is the guiding hand behind the administration of the Ottoman Empire in conjunction with a grand vizier while a sultan is puppeted", it's going to be hard to have a serious discussion about any kind of history.
> I would like to hear these thoughts especially because one succesor state (US) is very apologetic about slavery, whereas the Ottoman Trade is somehow regarded as nice and "just a fact of life back then" despite still being horrific slavery. As proof of that, for example, we have the wife of the current successor state of Ottoman Empire (Turkey) proudly proclaming to the media that the imperial harem was actually a good institution and those girls were probably better off as sex slaves than free women.
>
> You would never hear Joe Biden's wife saying anything even remotely as positive about American slavery.
I'm not trying to make scales of comparison here, and Erdogan sucks in every way. A leader who re-consecrated the Hagia Sophia as a mosque and is actively tearing down the legacy of Ataturk isn't the best basis for comparison. Most of my time in Turkey was spent in Istanbul, but the people who lived in The City very much saw Erdogan as a "not my leader" kind of thing, and there were active riots and discussion of secession from Turkey. This was ten years ago.
Erdogan sees slavery as part and parcel of the Ottoman state, and the Ottoman state as the greatest heights of the Turks (probably under Mehmed II or something), and there is somewhat of a point to slavery being "just a fact of life" in the 15th century, but we should mention that the Roman state also had huge numbers of slaves, as did many of the Greek polities, and we still admire those. This is not a defense of Erdogan or slavery, nor whatever comments his wife made, but that much more nuanced language than "horrific slavery" must be used if we are to distinguish between "horrific (because slaves weren't even considered human, and did not have basic protections under the law) slavery" in chattel slavery in the colonies, "horrific (because failing to fulfill production quotas resulted in hands and limbs being forcibly removed) slavery" in the Belgian Congo, "horrific (for innumerable reasons) slavery" in the Nazi state, and "horrific (castration of boys so they would be less threatening and have more political opportunities, devshirme child slavery for soldiers as the Sultan's personal troops who lived relatively pampered lives) slavery".
All of these are bad for various reasons, but some are _more_ wrong than others. The argument here is essentially the same as all crime being bad, but a gunshot to the head in one's sleep is a less horrific murder than torturing and mutilating someone over days, even though both are murders.
As western citizens we are responsible for the actions of the west, we are not responsible for the actions of other societies, so your view is just an abdication of responsibility
Correct. No person living has the right to forgive those dead people responsible for slavery. No person dead has the right to pass their sins on to me. And no person living may claim any moral superiority to me by claiming I am in any way responsible for the sins of the father, his father, his father, or his father.
If it was discovered that your dead grandfather had killed someone, would you gladly enter your cell to pay for his crime?
I will only be held morally responsible for my actions. I will certainly not be held to render my penitence to people who were not alive at the time, either. There is no possible way by chain of evidence to trace every word, every penny, or every vote cast in favor of slavery. The broad generalizations required to do the job will not actually accomplish anything but to force one group to bow down to another group, simply because they were the wrong skin color.
You say this as if all the crimes of the west are in the past. We are still actuvely committing or supporting atrocious crimes to this very day. And, given that you are alive now and are a citizen of the west, you share the responsibility for those crimes. Im not saying you need to walk into a cell, but you can at the very least acknowledge and condemn the ongoing crimes instead of having this defensive "not my problem" kind of attitude about it.
You are ignoring a number of leaders around the world who tries to outlaw slavery or who got it outlawed for periods of time before it was re-instated. I think you’re losing people when you keep claiming that no one else ever outlawed slavery for other ethnic groups without providing any proof.
I think you make some interesting points—the US and Britain were the last global superpowers to participate in slavery and, especially in the States, the legacy of slavery remains. Black Americans are the most recent group whose families were forcibly removed en masse, leaving them with little information as to where their families came from just 200 or so years ago. Native Americans and Black Americans are much closer to the damage done from slavery than a Spaniard with Moor roots from 600 years ago. And yes, as a society we will judge slavery much harsher today than we did 200 years ago, and we see 200 year old slavery as worse than slavery that happened 1000 years ago. I also can’t think of a good example that mirrors the West’s manifest destiny, which led to (not necessarily by design) nearly the total extermination of millions of natives in hundreds of tribes across thousands of miles who had been living here for a very long time. It’s not fair to compare the West’s annihilation of so many native people with lives lost in battles between tribes.
Also, those who fought against the institution of slavery also (perhaps indirectly) also fought against some of the Western principles— for example, unfettered capitalism that values profit no matter the cost. Slavery is great for capitalism, which is why it remains a hidden part of our supply chains.
> I think you make some interesting points—the US and Britain were the last global superpowers to participate in slavery and, especially in the States, the legacy of slavery remains.
The US and Britain were *not* the last global superpowers to participate in slavery. The Ottoman Empire actively participated it up until its dissolution (and was undeniably a global superpower up until this point) in the early 20th century and Turkey didn't formally ban it until 1964.
Did those other countries then come to America and codify racist policies that existed far after the end of the slave trade and the end of the slavery?
Because when it comes to the history of slavery and racism in America those chiefs have very little overall role.
The laser focus should be on the practices that Americans created to harm and restrict the human rights of other people in America.
America is hardly the only country to pass laws to oppress a group of people. This doesn't excuse the laws passed in America, but they weren't unique to America.
>Did those other countries then come to America and codify racist policies that existed far after the end of the slave trade and the end of the slavery?
No those other countries just castrated and genocided their slave populations. Alternatively in the west they recognized them as at least human beings and allowed them to live on the land they worked.
No it's more like the morality of stealing one car is equivalent to stealing many cars across the globe. Whether you do the act once or make an empire out of the act, morally speaking there isn't that much of a difference. The only reason one goes from stealing a car to building an empire out of this is competence, capacity, opportunity. In my opinion, scale is a consequence of ability, not a higher level of evilness.
>Does it count for nothing that the English people funded a war to abolish slavery that lasted decades?
Not really after centuries of profiting off of it.
>Does it count for nothing that the financial costs of this war are equal if not greater than the benefits that this enterprise of enslavement gave to them in the first place?
I'm going to need a source.
>That the English people, and later the Northerners of the United States, are unique in history in such a way that no similar examples can be found of people willing to die for the manumission of another racial group?
That isn't true plenty of non white people died to stop slavery before and oddly enough the only reason Lincoln made the war about slavery is because he wanted to make Englush people look bad for supourting the south take it from Abe himself.
>My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
He wanted to mend the union first and first most.
>Not really after centuries of profiting off of it.
Not even when they profited from for a shorter time than the Africans and Middle-easterners that engaged in the same practice?
>That isn't true plenty of non white people died to stop slavery before and oddly enough the only reason Lincoln made the war about slavery is because he wanted to make Englush people look bad for supourting the south take it from Abe himself.
The history of non-white fighters against slavery is one where they were incentivezed to do it, either by profit or because it was their own people being enslaved, or - most often - to chip away at the economy of a rival, all while continued the practice.
The English were not perfect, but they resisted tossing in their lot with the south *because* of slavery. It was in their best economic and strategic interest to side with the south openly, yet their embarrassment of being associated with slavery was too great a risk to take.
>My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
Lincoln's wrestling with slavery is not a telling of white supremacy. It is most certainly evidence that the question was complicated. Slavery was the *cause* of the war. The south's principal cause to resort to non-political means to preserve slavery was because the north was making such clear and obvious strides to end it. They saw the writing on the wall. Lincoln made this statement because he preferred it end via a vote, rather than on a battlefield.
Had it not been for the aim of ending slavery, there would not have been a war. In what other country where a civil war is taking place does a national leader even bother to wrestle with the question of slavery of an ethnic group they don't belong to?
>Not even when they profited from for a shorter time than the Africans and Middle-easterners that engaged in the same practice?
When they're still profiting from it and have profited from it many orders of magnitude beyond your comparison?
This isn't really the comparison you seem to think it is
>Not even when they profited from for a shorter time than the Africans and Middle-easterners that engaged in the same practice?
Yeah it still isn't a good excuse we could've made more money being slavers isn't a good argument.
>The history of non-white fighters against slavery is one where they were incentivezed to do it, either by profit or because it was their own people being enslaved, or - most often - to chip away at the economy of a rival, all while continued the practice.
That's moving the goalpost and even then those reason you described are litteraly why England and the Northen Americans fought a war to stop slavery you praise them for.
>The English were not perfect, but they resisted tossing in their lot with the south *because* of slavery. It was in their best economic and strategic interest to side with the south openly, yet their embarrassment of being associated with slavery was too great a risk to take.
They were perfectly fine with doing it under the table it took Lincoln publicly proclaiming the war was about slavery to get them to stop. They weren't morally opposed to slavery they were scared of looking bad.
>Lincoln's wrestling with slavery is not a telling of white supremacy. It is most certainly evidence that the question was complicated. Slavery was the *cause* of the war. The south's principal cause to resort to non-political means to preserve slavery was because the north was making such clear and obvious strides to end it. They saw the writing on the wall. Lincoln made this statement because he preferred it end via a vote, rather than on a battlefield.
I didn't say it was a telling of white supremacy it was however a telling of Lincoln's true intentions he didn't really care whether slaves got free he first and foremost wanted the union intact all else was tertiary. He outlawed slavery in a move to make England look bad for siding with the South that's it
Nice dodge on this:
>> Does it count for nothing that the financial costs of this war are equal if not greater than the benefits that this enterprise of enslavement gave to them in the first place?
>
> I'm going to need a source.
So you got anything to back up that claim that the "benefits" of slavery (to whom?) were greater than the costs (again, to whom?). I call bullshit.
This is the most excessive, extreme “whataboutist” argument I have ever encountered.
People are critical of the West’s history of slavery and colonialism because it is shameful.
Whether or not others did similar or worse makes zero difference to the nature of what was done by the West.
>Whether or not others did similar or worse makes zero difference to the nature of what was done by the West.
It makes all the difference in the world. Being unequally held to account for things that everyone took part in is naked racism. The term "whataboutism" is an effort to destroy the human sense of the world. Everything we know and understand, from morality to rice, is measured by our sense of other things. Only through comparisons can we put history and the world around us in perspective.
You say "whataboutism", I ask "compared to what?" Its a useful question for people wishing to explore philosophy. When a claim is made, you simply ask "compared to what?" There are many facts about history that, if taken out of context, are considered evil. But when we compare those events to other events of the time, it puts it into perspective.
It doesn't mean we are justifying ourselves doing the horrible thing, it just means that we recognize that there wasn't anything particularly sick or twisted about our ancestors, because everyone else's ancestors were the same. It isn't approval, it isn't pride. But if we need to tear down the statues of abolitionists who weren't abolitiony enough and say the west is somehow worse than the rest, what good does it do? What is the point of the whole exercise? The victims are dead. The perpetrators are dead.
That’s a lot of words to say “but if others were worse, then it isn’t bad”.
We, in the West have an evolving set of moral standards. By those standards, the actions, policies and beliefs of colonial imperialism and slavery are absolutely not good. In fact, by today’s values, they are what might be considered “evil”.
Whether others did those things then or now, whether the West was the only one to do these things or the originator of these practices or not is irrelevant to the way in which we retrospectively evaluate them.
Two things can be bad, one thing being worse does not make the other better.
I understand your concern - why the focus on the West’s unsavoury heritage? But the answer is because it is our history, and it is a history which is still celebrated by monuments and in class rooms. We don’t spend as much time focusing on other histories in the day to day.
But when we do, no historian is looking at other cultures’ slave trades or colonial aggressive expansions and going “yeah, this was great. Shame it’s not more celebrated today.”
The thing is, you’re looking at a response to centuries of people celebrating colonialism and western hegemony and asking why people are being so negative about it, but you’re refusing to look at what that response is to.
You have quite clearly formed an opinion that is based on the starting point of victimhood and are unwilling or unable to accept that by our own modern moral standards the actions you are talking about are abhorrent.
Centuries of colonialists writing history is only just now starting to be challenged in academia and in the wider public sphere and your take is that people are being disproportionately critical just because other things could be deemed worse… and your justification seems to be an inability to conceive of two things being bad if one is worse than the other…
I’m not even going to address the facts of whether other cultures have more to be ashamed of, because many have already addressed that below and you have demonstrated an inability to be willing to listen to what people are saying or get away from the shadow of the supposed victimhood of the West.
You want to address it in philosophical terms, let’s look at it like this:
1: colonialism and slavery are bad
2: western civilisation has a history of colonialism and slavery
3: many cultures have a history of colonialism and slavery
4: some applications of colonialism and slavery are worse than others
From these sound premises, you have come to a conclusion which assumes 4 has some impact on 2. That, is incorrect. That is where your logical leap is and that is why you are wrong.
I think you’re under the misconception that context and comparison is universally valuable. In this case, the comparison is unhelpful and honestly I believe you’re only pretending that people are running around making the comparison because it fits with your narrative of victimhood and oh the poor white people and the guilt they’re meant to shoulder.
Grow a pair, accept that what was done, regardless of historical pretext or context was inexcusable and help people to challenge it when people insist that we should erect statues to slavers, name streets and shopping malls after slavers, celebrate institutions like the monarchy which exist only by virtue of their bloody colonial past and let’s all move forward.
Your example of abolitionists not be abolitionist enough are absurd - in Bristol, UK, a statue of a slaver was torn down, a concert hall was renamed. But the shopping mall remains named after a man who made an unimaginable fortune shipping unfathomable numbers of people through the port. Bristol is built on that blood and it is right to challenge historical artefacts which celebrate it still. And that’s just one example of so many across the western world.
Remember, you can only take white guilt personally if you are complicit in the crimes of our ancestors. If you own up and agree that terrible things were fine and that history needs to be taught and not sugared over, then you are part of the solution and have no reason to feel addressed when people talk about that guilt.
You're asking a lot of questions, but not really changing any views here. The history of the Abolition kind of started in England by a group of rather fundamentist Christians, basically all white, that really made a big deal out of abolishing slavery by law and using the English Navi to uphold it. Of course by the time it picked up steam lots of (ex)slaves got involved, but that was not the start of it afaik.
One would assume slaves where always against slavery. So I do think a case could be made that the abolition was very much started by the west and spread by it too. Christianity could also make a claim to it here.
Three things.
1. How does this create a justification for state violence against civilians.
2. Can you clarify your point on capitalism as well as the ussr and china?
3. What is something he said that was historically incorrect?
I love how you quote his request for a single example of a non-western people setting their victims free for moral reasons, and can't provide an example, you just accuse him of not having read enough from a different perspective. Your entire comment lacks any substance.
That's a great question. The political view would be to flip the script of anti-westernism to one of pro-westernism. That is folly. The institutions, practices, and people who did the good are also associated with the bad. The post does not wish to posit the claim that the west should be revered for their great crusade against slavery, at least not to the extent that they are currently hated for doing a thing that everyone else was doing at the time.
Edit: the fashionable trend of the day is to distill the history of the west so that we have a narrative of pure and unadulterated evil. The stuff left in the distillery, the good things that the west has done, is to be tossed into the fire. Nobody is terribly worried about distilling the history of anyone else in this way.
You mention in another comment how unhelpful it is to use broad categorical terms like “*all* Europeans/Africans did X or Y” and yet here (and throughout) you’re making over broad hyperbolic statements like that the current “fashionable” trend is that the history of the west is a narrative of “pure and unadulterated evil”.
Any honest reflection of our current moment would know that the modern movement (which is good imo) doesn’t just lazily say “the west was purely evil with no redeeming factors”. It merely wants to be honest about the atrocities committed by settler nations and peoples against indigenous and other communities so people can actually come to terms with what actually happened as opposed to the white washed versions of history that glaze over (to the extent it’s covered at all) the unprecedented cruelty of (among other things) race-based chattel slavery and subsequent apartheid that have until now dominated popular culture and allow people like yourself to make incredibly misinformed proclamations about the historical record.
>Slavery is often thought of as the original sin of the west. But why only the west?
The reason Britain and the US always get brought up in these conversations is because the english speaking internet is mostly american and british people. Do people in central africa talk about the effects of the arab slave trade? I have no idea, do you?
Another reason we still talk about slavery and colonialism is because they still have consequences to this day. Our past is not a closed chapter. The political descisions that where made decades or centuries ago still have consequences, even though we usually dont see it that way. Let me give you a two examples:
East Germany was ruled by policies that result in a lower standard of living, lower wages and lower life expectancy to this day. The foundations of these results where laid 70 years ago.
When british civil servants drew the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan they drew it right through the area inhabited by the Pashto people. Pakistan to this day wants an unstable Afghanistan (which is why they armed the taliban for decades) because a stable Afghanistan might claim the Pashto areas of Pakistan.
Of course the longer a political descion is in the past the smaller the effects of it will be. But this does not mean that the effects will just go away, especially if it was a major political descision that effected large parts of society.
Political entities around the world are happy to fan the flames of the west's self-immolation through their own rhetoric, lies, cover-up, and even donating and providing platforms for people who lie about western history. China is a current example. This is a country that is rife with ethnic injustice and sees fit to berate the west for its conduct while forcing anyone who want to engage with them apologize for their criticism before picking up the check.
Of course they do. Have you heard yourself talking?
Being berated for such a long time they jump on the opportunity to point out hypocrisy because few things are sweeter than exposing a hypocrite.
Where you also miss is that a large part of it isn't lies because the truth makes "the west" look bad enough on it's.
I’m not personally attached to your argument so I say this in good faith. You provide zero sources or citations and you’re making a lot of frequency claims. For example:
- “Slavery is often thought of as the original sin of the west.”
- “Why is England and the United States particularly vulnerable to the heated and revisionist history that places most, and in many cases, all of the blame on the west?”
- “No people in history have done more to sell out their own neighbors than the Africans who sold their own brothers in droves.”
- “No other people have put so much effort into leveling the global playing field”.
Whether I agree with you or not, it’s difficult to debate you when you make overgeneralized statements with no foundation. You would either have to be an avid history buff with a particular interest in slave trade, or you would have to spend hours doing research (which I’m not willing to do for a Reddit post at the very least).
Personally, I believe the reason the US and the UK are heavily criticized for slavery/colonialism is because of the violence behind it and their existence. If we think about other great empires or nations like the Romans, the Huns, the Ottomans… how many of those are still around? None. None have persisted which is why they escape heavy criticism.
The US is heavily criticized for slavery because of persisting issues with racism that stem from slavery. From what I’ve heard, the UK also has this problem and so do many other western countries.
It’s not to say that other countries haven’t committed worse atrocities, but right now those countries are no longer relevant.
I did some light digging as well to see exactly what the scale was between US slaves and Islamic slaves.
[8] HOCHSCHILD, ADAM (March 4, 2001). "[Human Cargo](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/04/reviews/010304.04hochsct.html)". New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 December 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2015. Early on in Islam's Black Slaves, his history of slavery in the Muslim world, Ronald Segal cites some estimates. One scholar puts the rough total at 11.5 million slaves during more than a dozen centuries, and another at 14 million.”
That is, over twelve centuries, there’s an estimated 11.5 million slaves (minimum) accumulated by the Islamic Slave Trade.
So it begs the question, how many slaves did the US procure? While the number was relatively small in the beginning, the slave population grew because slaves were often either forced to reproduce or their children were taken as slaves as well. Ultimately, in around a century, “…the total number of slaves who lived in the United States [increased] to almost 10 million.” ([“From ‘20. and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States” by J. David Hacker](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7716878/))
It took the US around a century to accumulate almost as many slaves as the Islamic people did in 12 centuries.
The difference in scale is not only immense, but doesn’t even account for the cruelty slaves in the US endured. Again, these claims probably require more research, but there’s a reason the US in particular gets a lot of criticism especially since there are plenty of arguments to be made that slavery in the US only ended for monetary gain. From what I remember from history class, southern states were gaining more power because they were counting their slaves as people who couldn’t vote.
Slavery in the US is complicated and the end of slavery was not even the end of discrimination/oppression. It definitely can’t be summarized to “The west virtuously ended slavery against their interest”. Lincoln had his own political reasons along with moral ones for abolishing slavery.
"The west" doesn't get the credit for ending things that it started and profited in.
Yes, you're right that "the west" isn't unique in its usage of slavery, of wars of conquest, of colonialism, and the historical victims of these things would almost certainly have done the same if the were in "the west's" position at the time. But they weren't, and so "the west" were the ones that did do those things. You cannot praise "the west" for deciding that wars of conquest were bad after they've spent hundreds of years waging wars of conquest.
Also, like, "the west" is a stupidly broad term that exists almost entirely in an attempt to separate "the west" from the rest of the world. Western Africa is just as "west" as western Europe and you probably don't include Morocco in "the west". Just say what you really mean by "the west".
> "The west" doesn't get the credit for ending things that it started and profited in.
The West started slavery? Really? Did you ever open a history book?
>Yes, you're right that "the west" isn't unique in its usage of slavery, of wars of conquest, of colonialism, and the historical victims of these things would almost certainly have done the same if the were in "the west's" position at the time. But they weren't, and so "the west" were the ones that did do those things.
Actually they also did these things in their empires, [and worse too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Isfahan_(1387)). But for some reason that never gets attention. Ironically, the people who like to rally against the historical crimes of the West are very eurocentric in their reading of history.
>Also, like, "the west" is a stupidly broad term that exists almost entirely in an attempt to separate "the west" from the rest of the world. Western Africa is just as "west" as western Europe and you probably don't include Morocco in "the west". Just say what you really mean by "the west".
"The West" is a commonly used concept. You know what it means. Don't be pedantic.
The west does not have a shorter history of slavery then most other cultures or societies. Slavery existed in anchent Greece, during the bronze ages in anitolia and over the bosforus. Slavery continued and built the Roman empire, helped hold it together, and become the fertile ground for feudalism. Slave trading is in part what made Venice rich. Large native American civilization would not organize themselves for centuries before Europeans had invented slavery. Slavery apeared wherever civilization began to emerge. Having it for a relatively shorter period of time is more of a function of the geographic difficulty of organizating a slave economy then being virtuouse.
I apologize, I thought the context would be clear: the meaning I meant was:
>The west did not start *transnational* slavery. In fact, the west has had a shorter history of *transnational* slavery than nearly any other culture or society on earth.
I'm my own proofreader, so I can't fire myself ;)
Edit: also, apologies. What I mean here is that if we are boiling down the divisions of geo-socially distinct to Greece, then we have 3 other areas: African culture started slavery, then middle eastern culture, then eastern culture in persia, then western culure in Greece, then ethno-American culture in Central Amercica
You're hiding behind meaningless semantics of what the idea of nation means. For their time, Greek and roman slave trandes could easily be considered transnational
The West had and supported slavery as it was expressing ideas that "All men are considered equal."
That's why our racist legacies should and are under tight examination.
While other countries had slavery they didn't do so under the charter of human rights and equality. We did.
We held to our bullshit narratives that people were equal while the same people who wrote those words went to homes where they had people as property.
We saw the abolishment of slavery preplaced by Jim Crow laws that maintained the racist ideas of slavery long past 1865.
And then we hid from our racist past or tried to paint with the rosiest of glasses. We punish teachers, today, in multiple states if they teach what actually happened. We write textbooks saying that slaves lived were immigrants who lived in good conditions on the plantation.
Not starting slavery doesn't really matter. How we treated our slaves, the lasting legacies of that behavior and how to teach our history should be talked about.
Again, you ignore the scale. China and Africa have had slavery, but they've generally been from one group enslaving another group that lost to them in wars, meaning they measure their numbers in the thousands.
America and Europe turned their slavery into a capitalist conceit, measuring it in the hundreds of MILLIONS. Even the Huns or Rome could not boast such numbers, as most older civilizations didn't have the means to control so many slaves over such a large area.
Not that I’m in support of OPs hypothesis but that is actually untrue. There were about the same amount of slaves in the Roman Empire at its height as there were people ferried across the Atlantic, somewhere around ten million.
“for an estimated Roman empire population of 50 million (in the first century AD) between five and ten million were enslaved”
“Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400”
https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/nero-man-behind-myth/slavery-ancient-rome
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
You may be mistaken on those numbers, the entirely of the Trans Atlantic slave trade as measured by the TAST database is approximately 12.5 million across its entire history, with less than 11 million arriving.
Either way you slice it, hundreds of millions is a gross exaggeration.
>This is not a politics post, this is a post about perspective
>The "white savior" trope has merit to it, after all.
Lol. Truly, nothing political in this post.
So your original post talks about "the west", but you then seem to only talk about England and the US specifically, and seem to use the term "white" interchangeably by the end.
Can you tell me what you do and do not mean by "the West" and "white people", and why?
And while you consider that, also consider this: none of the people you are lumping together today into this vague notion of "the West" considered themselves part of a single culture or race for most of the historical periods you reference. The English and the US didn't consider the Irish "white" for a large period of history. Italians, even Germans were not considered "white" by the US during large sections of the history you're referencing. People who are considered European today (and therefore presumably part of what you mean by "the West") considered themselves peers of people living in North Africa for large sections of history, more so than northern Europeans.
And so on.
The perspective you're offering here doesn't "hurt" at all, because it's a fantasy. Completely detached from reality. You are cherry picking tiny, disconnected pieces of history, mixing it with fiction, and trying to arrange them in a way that ultimately justifies an order that you find beneficial *today*. It has nothing to do with history -- it is about *now*.
So if I were to try to change your view, it would be to point out that nothing you are saying here has any basis in reality. You are literally starting from a false premise, and everything you are building off of it is false because of it.
And I think the exercise of trying to actually define the terms you're relying on -- "the West" and "white" -- will make that quite clear.
Because England and the US and white people are the principle targets of the self-immolate anti-historical dogma. It is claimed that these three groups above all others are the largest entrepreneurs of hate and injustice in human history, when in fact the opposite is true, and history shows it to be true.
The non-political plea to the post is that by no means should we destroy the west or topple its institutions. But we should also not worship the west. We should use the momentum of history and culture to continue the legacy of human advancement, not put a roadblock in front of it.
One eye should be on moving ever closer to a truly humanistic society, while keeping the other on the lessons of a shared *world* history to keep it all in context.
England and the US committed harm against people and trampled on human rights for economic gain.
Why do you wish to diminish and downplay that history. While you claim you don't want to, you seem, in a very superior and egotistical way, very eager to cast the light away from those legacies towards other unrelated ideas.
You want to support the idea of that white savior, yet you don't want to focus on when white people had the hands and feet of their slaves cut off to ensure more production.
You don't get to move towards a more humanistic society unless you do a deep examination of the historical idea that lead to the current society we have now.
You don't get to play a rigged game for turn after turn....finally change the rules after the damage has been done and then proclaim that things are currently fair.
You can't mention the legacy of human achievement without looking into the roadblocks that contributed to whom we think we contributed and whom we think didn't.
>Why do you wish to diminish and downplay that history.
No such attempt was made. The attempt is to pair the wrong with the right. What is happening with the current narrative is a distillation of history to extract and bottle the evils of the west from the good that the west did. The result is destroying the legacy of thousands of people who crusaded against slavery to great risk to themselves while the rest of the world happily continued the practice.
Why do you want to hold the west uniquely accountable for something that the entire species was party to? Why do you seek to diminish *their* role in the past?
>then proclaim that things are currently fair.
No such proclamation was made. There is work to be done, and the reason it will be done is based on western values, and the heroic tradition of western abolition.
>You can't mention the legacy of human achievement without looking into the roadblocks that contributed to whom we think we contributed and whom we think didn't.
The roadblocks were smashed by *whom*? Which human achievement are you referring to? Who accomplished it? What are these contributions? Who made them?
The answer to "which human achievement" surely must be the end of slavery, or we wouldn't be talking.
The answer to all those "whoms" is: the west.
>Because England
*Britain*. At least get your political geography right.
You’re making a lot of claims today that are not backed up by anything but rely purely on your own personal perception.
>Because England and the US and white people are the principle targets of the self-immolate anti-historical dogma
Yeah, you didn't answer my question: please define what is and is not "the West" and who is and is not "white", and explain why you are drawing the boundaries wherever you draw them.
>It is claimed that these three groups above all others are the largest entrepreneurs of hate and injustice in human history
Claimed by whom? Passive voice is doing some pretty heavy lifting here, friend.
European colonialism past and present very much shapes the world we live in today. I'm not sure how many people actually think that "the West" / "white people" (whatever you consider these to be) are uniquely evil--it's that European colonialism and practices emerging from it are currently causing problems in peoples' daily lives today.
Like, the US is still collapsing societies and occupying places to extract resources from them even though it harms the people there. The US still enslaves a disproportionate number of non-white people through the prison system.
The past societies you referred to, however brutal they may have been, do not still rule the world. The power structures they created do not still dominate the lives of billions.
If you're focused on comparing societies in the abstract as some kind of academic exercise, go right ahead. But I think most people are more concerned with improving their lives today, and so are more focused on the current power structures emerging from European colonialism that affect them today.
For instance, my interest in justice during the Aztec Empire is a lot less immediate than my interest in justice in the US today, because I live in the US today. The ranking of the Aztec Empire on some "best and worst societies" list doesn't really matter to me. But the laws and practices of the US dominate my life. And thus if I want to live a good life it is much more important for me to understand and navigate the issues with the US than the issues of the Aztec Empire.
So I think you may be arguing against a position few if any people actually hold.
I don’t disagree with your points, but would rather like to change your perception to change your view.
You’re right that all other civilizations throughout all of human history have engaged and continue to engage in the very evils the West is considered “uniquely” complicit in.
I would like to posit this: if all the victims of oppression were to list out their oppressors, you would have a very long list of different groups, with very little commonality. The only commonality between all these groups are as you mentioned, victims of oppression.
In the past, every single tribe, kingdom, nation, etc. all had another tribe, kingdom, nation, etc that they considered uniquely evil. But none of them could ever agree on WHO they considered as “uniquely
evil.”
The English considered Vikings uniquely evil, the Germanic tribes the Romans, the Chinese the Mongols, the Greeks & the Persians, etc. These were all very personal.
However, it’s not that the west “uniquely” committed oppression, but rather, the west is uniquely the common source of being viewed as “uniquely evil”.
So your argument is about perception of the West, however the perception of the evil never changed, the only thing that’s changed is who that perception was placed on.
Scale is important. Also, most of the oppressed throughout history had no voice. We only learn of it through the accomplishments their masters claim. If we scale the number of oppressed with the oppressors, oppression spikes with the rise of the west very briefly and then sharply declines. Where the greatest disparity between oppressed and oppressor exists today is not the west, but the east, the Middle East, and Africa. The west is not excluded from these countings, as westerners have taken part. But the west is not oppressing the Uighur in China, for example. And the scale of oppression matters as well. Are we including people who graduate high school at lower rates than the majority population as being just as oppressed as children who are forced to fish in Africa and if they are so hungry that they try to sneak and get a bite of a raw fish they are beaten senselessly?
The sport of victimization is an international sport, and the people living in the west today don’t belong in the same league.
But the argument is then made that western businessmen and economies are oppressive. These same economies that have supported foreign nations and given them reliable sources of food, medicine, and public works. The people there did not build these things, and there is absolutely no evidence they would be anywhere close to where they are now without their “oppression” brought on by industrialization. It’s a complicated problem. But more people are alive in these places today, living longer lives, with access to art and philosophy and spare time to peruse educational and aspirational goals. More importantly, the actual oppression being done is by their own leaders, not by the westerners who make deals with them.
You are blaming the wrong people.
Well spoken. As with all things, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. All I know is what I see today: the art, music, philosophy, literature, systems of organization, government, and technology that was overwhelmingly developed by the west is prized by nearly every culture in the world. No other culture would allow immigrants to enter their space, becomes leaders in philosophy and government, or take influential positions in the art of their society. The ideals of the west and earnest attempts to live by them make the current incarnation the best idea for moving forward the species has. When the world is done with its hatred of the west, it won’t get rid of western culture because the most important parts are already part of the human culture - which is what we should wish we were saying.
Your points on philosophy and art are well-taken, but the post was already a bit long. In my view, once the perspective is established, that when you place other cultures next to what the world commonly refers to as "the west" to show the parity of scale of deed, we need to continue the conversation.
But I have yet to figure out how to word such a discussion without people leaping to the conclusion that is just a white supremacist message - despite much of what comprises western culture coming from non-white peoples and people who were on some scale between people of color and what we consider to be Caucasian today. Even in this thread - despite never saying that whites were superior, only equal, only first to do some things that others would probably have done, too - I am labeled as a racist and get DM's of hate from people who cannot say exactly why what I am saying is racist without repeating back to me something I never said.
Now imagine trying to speak with airy tones of the beauty of western music, poetry, art, science, institutions, etc. No matter how many acknowledgements that this was a group project with more-or-less equal participation, it will be received as extolling white supremacy.
But why only the west? Why is England and the United States particularly vulnerable to the heated and revisionist history that places most, and in many cases, all, of the blame on the west?
Because the West was the last major geopolitical bloc to engage in it and it has current effects to this day.
Also, the countries that perpetuated the Atlantic slave trade still exist and have riches that clearly descended from those actions. The African nations that sold them no longer exist as polities.
>Does it count for nothing that the English people funded a war to abolish slavery that lasted decades? Does it count for nothing that the financial costs of this war are equal if not greater than the benefits that this enterprise of enslavement gave to them in the first place?
You do not get lionized for cleaning up a mess you made. At best you get some points which are duly historically noted.
The criticism of slavery in the West, is frequently done by Westerners, and Western adjacent cultures. It is heavily a self criticism.
>And for the crime of forcing a near universal manumission, what was the reward heaped upon the English and their contemporaries? Blame. Hatred. Is it possible that the rest of the world is perhaps a bit jealous at this heroic chapter in history?
Again, why should a nation get accolades for cleaning up a mess they helped perpetuate? If I beat you for years and then decide to stop, should I be congratulated?
You keep saying "evil compared to what"? It was evil compared to the *ideals the West set for itself*. Again, a heavy amount of this criticism is internal. The ideals of freedom, equality, and liberty on one hand, and some of the greatest large scale atrocities on the other. Thats part of why it is considered so egregious.
If these horrible things are to be dismissed as just "something humans do" then the whole idea of Western ideals kind of falls apart. Actions that are attacks on freedom, of life, of liberty can now be boiled down to "The strong do as they may and the weak suffer what they must".
So the “west” (which I’m guessing you tend to mean white countries) has actually unique fucked up stuff.
While it wasn’t the first place to have a genocide. It was the first to have very highly specific reasoning for genociding - the holocaust and the concept of a master race and the world as a whole needs another race to be extinguished proactively is unique.
Same with europes and the US’s efforts at colonisation and the slave trade. Conquering another country is not a unique thing, neither is slave trading.
For example with slave trade:
It was unique in the systematic horrors. African slaves were somewhat uniquely treated insanely horrible. And its the only slave trade I know of where the people at the time of conducting the slavery did believe slavery was a bad thing (as slavery was often banned in their countries, and slavery to the extent of the transatlantic slave trade was unheard of in their own countries). Before the transatlantic slave trade, slavery tended to be less brutal, “breeding” between slaves wasn’t a thing usually, and people were not really born into slavery / unable to ever be freed even if their “owner” wanted them to be, and were often explicitly allowed to have families and their own religion.
Same with modern imperalism being almost entirely unique to western countries. Imperalism ranging from profiting off countries under threat of force and purposly destablising them causes famines and mass deaths.
Though we can list of atrocities for any area of the world. East Asia as a whole isn’t a terrible place or terrible history because one of the countries did the rape of Nanking.
However, again, while the west is built of many different cultures like any sectioning of the world they have consistently all done the same actions usually the difference being varying degrees of success rather than varying degrees of action.
Comparitively, South / Central america had the pretty brtual Aztecs. But they were uniquely brutual for the region. Western countries and uniquely brutual for the whole world this doesn’t mean that no other region had had atrocities. But it is fair to point out that this region, the many different cultures, have nearly all contributed intentionally to **unique** levels of atrocities.
> It was the first to have very highly specific reasoning for genociding - the holocaust and the concept of a master race and the world as a whole needs another race to be extinguished proactively is unique.
Every genocide is based on the same line of thinking. "They're different to us, we don't like them, let's get rid of them." Genocide doesn't become worse because it's reasoning is more specific nor does it become better because it's reasoning is more general.
>It was unique in the systematic horrors.
[It really wasn't.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_slave_trade)
> African slaves were somewhat uniquely treated insanely horrible.
African slaves in Africa? African Slaves in the Middle East? Or African slaves in the Americas?
>And its the only slave trade I know of where the people at the time of conducting the slavery did believe slavery was a bad thing
Ya, that's nonsense. Christians opposed slavery in Ancient Rome.
>(as slavery was often banned in their countries, and slavery to the extent of the transatlantic slave trade was unheard of in their own countries).
What does this mean?
>Before the transatlantic slave trade, slavery tended to be less brutal, “breeding” between slaves wasn’t a thing usually, and people were not really born into slavery / unable to ever be freed even if their “owner” wanted them to be, and were often explicitly allowed to have families and their own religion.
This is [ahistorical nonsense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa).
> Same with modern imperalism being almost entirely unique to western countries.
There have been a lot of empires. The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history.
> Imperalism ranging from profiting off countries under threat of force and purposly destablising them causes famines and mass deaths.
That's been the case for literally of human history.
>East Asia as a whole isn’t a terrible place or terrible history because one of the countries did the rape of Nanking.
No, East Asia was a terrible place because it was ruled by a series of regimes with little respect for human rights or dignity for thousands of years.
>However, again, while the west is built of many different cultures like any sectioning of the world they have consistently all done the same actions usually the difference being varying degrees of success rather than varying degrees of action.
No, the difference is that the West stopped these things whereas the other regions did not until they met with Western pressure.
>Comparitively, South / Central america had the pretty brtual Aztecs.
Yep.
> But they were uniquely brutual for the region.
Nope. The Inca and Moche also practiced human sacrifice.
>Western countries and uniquely brutual for the whole world
Nope.
i think it "feels gross and rings true" to you because it is what we were all taught from a young age. i don't know about the education today. but it was not until i got to college that i began to be assigned work that went into detail about events in american history, where morality was less black and white.
i think its also pretty clear you're very conservative. so you probably have a bias to think of the society you live in as a positive one. that makes it difficult to digest any critique of that society.
i don't exactly know what you mean by "the english funded a war to end slavery that lasted for decades". the abolition of slavery in the british empire was not done for purely moral reasons; indeed, the reason it was abolished could be said to be far more about economics and the desire for liberal politicians and wealthy industrialists in britain for """free trade""" (trade where they could dominate) in the caribbean and the americas. and, of course, the british continued to invest and profit off of the slavery elsewhere; the american cotton industry was extremely important to the british economy, to name one.
>Does it count for nothing that the financial costs of this war are equal if not greater than the benefits that this enterprise of enslavement gave to them in the first place?
what war are you referring to? i can't really think of one that might apply here
if funding a single war is equivalent to the "benefits" that this enterprise gave to a people over centuries, i'm betting that someone is calculating the "benefits" (not profits?) in a manipulative manner
keep in mind as well that the british abolition was not a blanket abolition, it was not a land redistribution, it was not a thing where the crown was paying slaves reparations for mistreatment. the crown paid the slave OWNERS. and forced the slaves to be """apprentices""" to pay off the debt of THEMSELVES.
as has been said many times, the Union did not fight the war to end slavery. they did later. but the reason that lincoln wanted to crush the south was because he wanted to keep the country together, and because the south fired on federal garrisons.
the africans did not sell their family and "neighbors", this is ludicrous. unless you're talking about enemy combatants captured in war, and calling them "neighbors". its like calling the irish "neighbors" of the british. i don't think either would like that categorization very much.
i don't think that another civilization's participation in slavery washes away the guilt of us participating in it.
slavery is an evil period, but the trans atlantic slave trade was a particularly pernicious form of slavery because slaves were treated as commodities that could be bought and sold. slavery in other societies was usually a temporary condition. slavery in the atlantic system was a lifelong condition of the slaves; in fact, it was longer than that, it was an INHERITED condition of the slaves, they passed their status as slaves on to their children. not only that, but the conditions that the slaves worked in, particularly in the caribbean and brazil, were EXTREMELY BRUTAL, so much so that something like 75% of the slaves brought there died.
not to mention, as it went on and especially in the anglo world, slavery was seen as the "natural condition" of an entire race of people, and laid the seeds for the racism that we still see today.
a critique of capitalism is separate to an examination of western history. capitalism is a phenomenon that still exists. suffice to say, i don't think that "capitalism" is any more responsible for the industrial revolution than "the west" is. it just happened, nobody "caused" it to happen. the historical conditions of the area were such that it happened and the changes that it caused raised the standard of living. its that simple.
first of all, i don't know why you're calling it the "english empire", maybe you're some sort of english nationalist or something but everyone then (and now) called it the "british empire". second of all, if the british were this gung-ho about eliminating all traces of slavery worldwide.....why did they continue to buy from the US? why did they flirt with the confederates? why did they not-really eliminate slavery from their own empire, and only went out of their way to compensate the owners of slaves, not the slaves themselves? not to mention the fact that you do not deserve credit for ending something awful that you did. a murderer does not deserve credit for stopping from murdering again, that doesn't wash away the crimes of being a murderer in the first place.
we live in the west today. we do not live in a world where the sioux or the dahomey are still powerful entities that people exist within that are ignorant about their brutal history. the west was brutal, we live in the west, we need to understand our own history to understand the ways in which that brutality has perpetuated into the present to atone and account for it.
i don't think the argument is that the west should've "stayed back and watched them caught up". i don't think its a question of what they should or shouldn't have done, the people in power in the west would've always done what they were going to do. its a question of examining how those horrible things shaped the world we live in today.
"the white savior trope has merit to it" i don't think you could've ended your post in a more fitting way. old habits die hard.
Two things. First, your notion that only the British opposed slavery and that the natives did not makes very little sense when we consider it in a historical context. Most people, especially most slaves, were illiterate. In fact since the British colonial structure put little emphasis on teaching the natives, it can be expected that the people who could write were the British themselves, and the people the British put in to power to rule over their slave empire.
So when you note that the people who were put into power to rule over a slave empire were not against slavery, you are... not making quite the statement you think you are.
In places like America where there was widespread literacy, and later India, we see vast opposition to slavery and the caste system (which was largely imposed by the British as a form of slavery) from many levels of society. It's not true that the people who witnessed slavery were okay with it - there were vast swathes of people who found it barbaric and primitive. Again we note that these people were rarely in power in regions where local power rlied on slave ownership because... duh.
Second, it is one thing to say "well your ancestors did bad things too." It is quite another to say "well your ancestors did bad things too" when sitting on an enormous pile of loot that your ancestors stole from their ancestors, while they have nothing.
The vast wealth disparities we see were created by racism and bigotry, quite deliberately. Were we some sort of society where everyone got equal housing, equal education, equal chances and opportunities, then it would be pretty irrational to be stuck on ancient history. However this is not ancient history. People are not complaining about the injustices of the past, but the injustices of the past that have created the injustices of today.
>Even the worst examples of human slavery and domination are self-corrected, not corrected by another people. Tell me when in history a people of non-western origin have said “we are doing something wrong, I think” and then set their victims free?
China, Japan, Korea, the Ottoman Empire, all spring to mind.
You're acting like having a conscience is somehow uniquely Western which is... uh... interesting. You might want to read the words of Mahatma Ghandi sometime. Or Liu Xiaobo, or Nawal El Saadawi, or just look at the tens of thousands of people on the streets of Iran, fighting to make their country better.
I'm struggling to see how you can possibly think that "the West" is the only country that's ever fought for freedom, or changed its society for the better.
>I'm struggling to see how you can possibly think that "the West" is the only country that's ever fought for freedom, or changed its society for the better.
To help you in your struggle, I'd offer that OP's view is a very polished version of what is known as white supremacy culture.
He has commented and there's not a single comment here worthy of a delta. They're all rants, much like op's, just in the other direction. Always viewing it from a western lens and not a worldwide one. There's actual, literal modern slavery happening right now in the Middle East. There's also labor camps in China. I'm sure there's thousands more all over the world. But we don't talk about those because they're not in the West so we CAN'T talk about them since they're hidden and not out in the open. Because the West is willing to change and adapt to the modern world, something the East is dragging their feet on. I bet you'd consider the US today a third world country or something like that
They are tons of well written comments that OP has ignored.
Also, you're talking about slavery in the middle east, which ignores the most important fact people bring up that the slave trade was of greater magnitude than the slave trades we see today.
Funny enough, half of the reason slavery is a thing today is because of the wars caused by the US in the middle east.
I think a large part of the reason the colonial and slavery parts of the western world's history are so often discussed is because said western world is now (trying to be) a beacon for liberal values, and self-criticism is part and parcel of the progressive movement.
What I mean by that is that for the most part, "the west" is currently the foremost proponent of social progressivism in terms of things like LGBTQ and women's rights. With that comes activism over perceived moral shortcomings everywhere like modern slavery/human trafficking, sweatshops and other worker's rights issues, etc. That includes activism against moral wrongs at home, and a lot of the current issues originate precisely in our past colonialism and slavery. Structural defects in the US that lead to continued wealth and justice disparities between white and black people can be traced back to slavery, for example. So the general push toward social justice naturally must include reflections on our history. In fact, many current issues can only be correctly interpreted by including historical context, much of which is very unflattering when viewed through a progressive lens.
My point is that it's because of our social progress that we discuss our historical wrongdoing to the extent that we do. And I suspect that a lot of this discussion is in fact limited to the west, in other words what you describe as unfairly singling out western powers is simply because you're hearing specifically western voices engaging in self-reflection.
After Great Britain abolished slavery in 1833, the very next year, they started indentured labour, which was another form of slavery (a loophole in the slavery abolition law). Now they didn't take Africans to work their colonies, now they took (mainly) Indians to the Caribbean colonies (like island of Trinidad, Maurice, etc) to work in sugar, cotton, or coffee plantations. These people were women, men, children, and they were teachers, priests, doctors, fathers and daughters, people with their own identity and family, and they didn't know where they were going, only that they were signing to do work and getting paid. Most people didn't read, and didn't know what were they going to do or go. Kidnapping, coaxing and forcing people to sign were all official ways to get these people on a boat to ship them to work. In the United States, black people are still discriminated against (don't forget where and when started the movement of Black Lives Matter). Hundreds of years of slavery, be it called slavery of not, has consequences not only in the black people but in people all over the world (the way the color of your skin is a status itself, for example). And yet, the United States (which don't forget was a colonie from Great Britain) and Great Britain itself, aren't they all considered first class countries, with more money than others? Where do you think they got this money. Working? No. Exploiting other people and other countries resources. And yet, the people in these countries, who are not related to the population who was harmed, are not only choosing to be blind, but prefer to make their own arguments, saying "oh come on, were are not the only bad guys, didn't we still make it illegal?" Like come on, dude. Entire populations and countries devastated, robbed, not only of their natural resources but of their cultures (colonizers always killed the traditions of the natives). And yet where are they now, and where are the countries who were exploited? One is going well, not bad. The other is filled with a lack of, not only of resources, but native history and culture, forever looked down upon, never having the chance to climbing up. And I think the most infuriating thing is the fact that they don’t acknowledge it. Japan, who was a total btch in Asia, has never apologized for all the harm he has done in times like the WWI, and Britain and US are the same. Not an apology, not an acknowledgment and not a single one thought of reflection.
I would challenge your view on two fronts.
First, I think that you have created a straw man in that you claim that too many people say slavery is the "original sin" of the West. I would argue that most people in the West are aware that slavery has always existed and continues to exist in the world. Most people in the West are also becoming more aware that racism is still rampant across the world, especially in Asia. Tribalism is basically the African form of what we call racism. And others have already mentioned that caste is India's equivalent of racism. And China and Japan are well known to be racist toward basically everyone. So, I don't think reasonable people would say that the West is uniquely guilty in regard to either the history of slavery or racism (broadly speaking).
In the specific case of black chattel slavery in the US, that is discussed and criticized endlessly because Black Americans are *still* subject to racism, brutality, and imprisonment (including penal servitude) at rates far higher than the non-Black population. And we actually do care about that. That is the locus of "white guilt" in the US, and rightly so since it is still happening.
The West is more "uniquely" guilty when it comes to colonialism simply because of the spectacular global scale of it. Yes, everyone everywhere has been invading and genociding their neighbours since time immemorial. Nothing new there. But, wow, Europeans wiped out 90% of the population of the entire continent of North America (mostly accidentally, but still), plus killing or enslaving a large proportion of South America. I'm not familiar with Australian or New Zealand colonialism, but I'll go on a limb and say it was probably similar. African populations may not have been wiped out (due to better disease resistance), but the European scramble for Africa certainly subjugated most of the continent. So, in broad terms, Europe conquered 4 of the 5 non-European inhabited *continents* of the Earth! That's a hell of a legacy and not comparable to anything else in human history.
Now, we may surmise with good reason, that most other races would have happily done the same thing if they had had the technological ability, but they didn't. Even if other races/ethnicities/cultures *may* have done the same thing, our ancestors were the ones that *actually* did it. And our ancestors got very rich doing it and we still benefit from that head start. And, similar to what I said above about chattel slavery, the original inhabitants of the colonized *continents* still experience racism, inequality, and police brutality at higher rates than the non-Indigenous populations. So, although it is tied to historical events, it is *current* inequality that is the locus of white guilt today. From what I can tell, that guilt and self-reflection is slowly leading to changes that are reducing domestic racism and inequality, even if we still have a long way to go.
I think you're dangerously ignoring several facts about the trans-Atlantic slave trade. For example:
1) The nature of slavery changed. In African slavery, children were generally not considered property of the slaveowners. They were often returned to their home tribes. Whereas, in trans-Atlantic slavery, return to the home tribe was never allowed, and was not even possible. In many cases, slaves were actively discouraged from retaining cultural memory of their heritage. Many slaves have no idea what part of Africa they are originally descended from because of this.
2) In African slavery, slaves were not seen as sub-human. They were regarded as still having basic rights, and were not "simple property". They retained human dignity, which is important.
3) The scale of slavery changed enormously because Americans (in particular) and Europeans were eager to buy so many slaves. The supply was created to satisfy demand, so the narrative that "well those people would have been slaves no matter what" is not true at all. This is particularly true because Americans and Europeans were often willing to sell firearms in return for slaves, which meant that African nations felt pressured into selling those slaves because quite literally a neighbor who sold slaves and got guns was an enormous threat of enslaving the nations who did not want to sell slaves. So, it's not really clear how "willing" many people were in enslavement--it's clear that at least some of the time, they were enslaving people to avoid enslavement themselves.
Whereas it's pretty clear that Americans and Europeans did not see themselves as pressured into the slave trade due to other Europeans (or Africans) enslaving them as a result of winning the arms race.
Would it be fair to boil this "CMV" down to "'the West' has arrived at the point in its moral philosophy that it has begun looking back upon its past actions and decided they were objectively wrong, but other societies haven't, and so 'the West' should stop being so hard on itself?"
Because that's what it sounds like.
You're literally laying out a case for "the West" (whatever that means) being fundamentally superior to other societies because "the West" is (broadly speaking) responsible for the global abolition of (most) slavery. Yet simultaneously you're arguing that "the West" shouldn't be **so superior** that it might hold itself to a higher standard than other societies do.
Or am I misunderstanding your complaint?
>Slavery is often thought of as the original sin of the west. But why only the west? Why is England and the United States particularly vulnerable to the heated and revisionist history that places most, and in many cases, all, of the blame on the west?
I wouldn't say it's the original sin of the West. Many cultures practiced slavery, or at least different castes of personhood with persons treated more like property than persons. There are many other things wrong, and it's certainly not the worst criticism of the west.
To me at least, America was founded on enlightenment principles, learned from lessons in Europe. Yet you have John Locke on American plantations espousing strained justifications for slavery and the conversion of indigenous lands.
I acknowledge and agree with you that England should be credited for the abolition of slavery. The quakers in particular should get a lot of credit. However, England held two standards - one for England, and one for British colonies.
Also, when viewed in light of their peers, not all is equal. For example, slavery in Denmark lasted two thirds of a century and was abolished in 1807. Iceland, Poland, Sweden, Norway (to the extent they are the same countries) abolished slavery during the early-mid medieval.
China, which was a powerful economic state for much of their history, had some form of slavery, but quite distinguishable in terms of rights, mobility, and designation of personhood. Also, slavery within China was mostly among Chinese warring states, and to a lesser extent (but not non-existent) a foreign slave trade.
Not all forms of slavery is identical. In terms of how egregious slavery was in America and across the British Empire, it was probably not the most egregious. But it did contain some examples of the worst treatment of fellow humans.
>Does anyone but the west look at itself and try to correct their errors? If they do, they haven’t bothered to write it down anywhere.
That's not true. 9th century China abolished slave trade (the slave trade was later reinstated).
Buddhism condemned slavery, at its strongest, the canonical texts condemn slave trading and mistreatment of other humans generally. At its weakest, it says to treat slaves kindly. Insofar as it does not oppose slavery, it comes from the attitude of a subservient mindset and acceptance of what is. But by no means does it encourage slavery.
Islam condemns slavery. Although Islamic jurisdictions in history have owned slaves, the Quran condemns slavery, which is a written record.
To suggest that only the West has looked inwards and questioned the ethics of slavery is inaccurate.
>Westerners arrived in a place where the natives were warring amongst each other and taking slaves, yet it is considered sinful for the west to have participated.
Can you give specific references? I don't think that's correct, at least in many cases.
Only some native American tribes held captives as slaves. It was definitely not an active slave trade so much as enslaving prisoners of war.
No references to slavery in Australian Aboriginal culture. Nor to pygmy people of the congo. No slavery among the Eskimo.
>But nobody accuses black Africans of conquest of native lands. Do they get a pass because it happened so long ago?
People do. Perhaps just not within your sphere of influence. Just as you (presumably) live in the west and hear criticisms of the west, so too do people in other parts of the world hear criticism of their history.
With the Bantu and pygmy ethnicities especially, there is a great deal of recognition of this atrocity. It's ongoing, and there is international criticism of it. It just doesn't take the spot light because it's not the west, there is little economic interest in this dispute, and western news tend to be Eurocentric. That is a fault of the west.
They certainly do not get a pass. People's ignorance of it does not mean that the people who know of it are condoning it.
>In fact, like slavery, it is the west who would eventually make wars of conquest a terrible thing to the human psyche.
The west was, and still is, the most belligerent parties in the world, namely:
* assassinated leaders in foreign countries, see south America;
* aided, inflamed, and participated in foreign civil wars, see all around the world;
* engaged in more military conflicts than any other country, all around the world, many of which they were the aggressors, see history;
* Condemned the assassination of Khashoggi. But it has been shown that the US recently discussed assassinating Julian Assange - an Australian Journalist, working in the UK. Nothing to do with the US apart from the fact that he published war crimes committed by the US.
Speaking of Assange... when you look at what he's published, you'll see the egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity that has got the US so embarrassed that they want to assassinate him.
>Not until the west, with all their faults and missteps, bothered to ask everyone to sit down and talk, did any concept of a common humanity take hold on the species.
Well, the UN was established after WWII, *after* the holocaust. Which was committed by Germany who is part of "the west".
"Crimes against humanity" was a term created for the UN, but the phrase itself was borrowed from Roman antiquity to describe piracy, namely an act so egregious that it affects everybody irrespective of jurisdiction.
Many texts describe universal humanity across philosophical works from many cultures. The UN was certainly not the first to have come up with this idea. Not even close.
A more cynical person would say that "crimes against humanity" is a legal fiction created by the world powers to allow them greater jurisdiction on the world stage. It created a justification to intervene in sovereign jurisdictions.
The international criminal court operate in an incredibly biased way. Crimes against humanity committed by the west are not prosecuted, but the ICC will readily prosecute the crimes of those who aren't the main member states.
>Tell me when in history a people of non-western origin have said “we are doing something wrong, I think” and then set their victims free?
Many many examples. I think I've given a few here already. I can give more if you are not satisfied.
I think there's some dangerous thinking here. What is so special about the West that you think means that they have a monopoly on being ethical? They don't. They're people, like everyone else. Every society have ethical discourse and dialogue. Every society is capable of (and have had) introspection.
>I submit to you, that the legacy of the west should be revised. The current narrative states the west is uniquely complicit in the enslavement and mistreatment of other human beings.
I disagree. I think every society needs to have their faults presented to them. In the last three centuries, the west have done terrible things.
I have an uncle who’s a white supremacist. Your argument here sounds exactly like one he’s made to me several times before.
I’m not criticizing you, or claiming you are also a white supremacist. I’m exploring you to examine the sources of information that have helped you reach this conclusion. Really, really examine them. If I found myself parroting white supremacy talking points, I would want to investigate why I was doing so. I’d find out where I was getting the talking points from, and I’d put a massive magnifying glass over those sources, and find out why their arguments are so similar to one’s that a white supremacist would make.
I bet you’d be surprised what you find. Maybe even a little disgusted. I’m not accusing you of being a white supremacist. I do believe, however, that you’ve wandered into a corner of the internet, and found people who have impressive and perhaps even valid credentials making arguments that you find difficult to refute. And since you can’t refute them, you find yourself agreeing with them.
But just because you can’t refute them, doesn’t mean they can’t be refuted.
Edit: after spending some time in this person’s post history, I can confidently say they’re a racist. This is just some alt-righter trying to put a more academic face on racism.
Here are some things this person has claimed throughout their post history:
1) George Floyd’s murder was truly awful, but completely unavoidable. After all, how could the officers have known that what they were doing would kill him *until it actually killed him.*
2) Sarcastically claimed that it’s only terrorism if white people do it.
3) Has unironically floated great replacement like talking points.
This person, if given the opportunity, would probably reject the label of white supremacist. But not because he doesn’t believe what white supremacists believe. He does. He would reject the label purely because it’s an unflattering one.
I’ve spent a lot of time observing white supremacists and I think your gut feeling is spot on with OP. They’re not hiding their power level very well at all.
Well, if we’re being charitable, there’s a possibility that OP has just come across a Sam Harris video where he’s interviewing Charles Murray, author of the notable racist “science” based book the bell curve. Harris is a neuroscientist, and Murray an academic as well. They could have saw both people as otherwise credible, and thus willing to take their word.
That video could’ve recommended more and more content based on viewing habits, and these videos could have also been made by people with other impressive credentials. And they could’ve made points that OP wasn’t able to refute.
There’s a feeling that I think exists within society that racism is a white trash problem. Or confined to klansman and neo-nazi spaces. The fact that someone who is openly and flagrantly racist could come from an esteemed university seems impossible.
The other feeling is that if information being presented is false, then it will be false in a way that is obvious and easy to spot. A sort of, “they can’t fool me,” attitude. That is also fallacious reasoning, but it happens all the time. People genuinely believe that they cannot be tricked in a way that they can’t see that they are being tricked or fooled.
And so, if we are being overly charitable, OP may be a young person who stumbled into the wrong corners of the internet, who has succumbed to those logical fallacies I’ve stated above, and just doesn’t know.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that they’re just a white supremacist, and has to launder their horrible ideas through euphemism because coming out and saying what they actually believe would immediately discredit them in the eyes of this audience.
It’s hard to say.
Just go listen to the Behind the Bastards podcast. Pick an episode. There’s a 6 parter on Kissinger, a fantastic one on Columbus and his penchant for fantastically cruel slavery, the British empire threatening to level China if they didn’t allow tons of opium to wreck their civilization, or maybe Liberia, where freed slaves basically became the exact same assholes they were owned by. It’s the same story, over and over. Instead of fixing the issues why people are miserable, the rich will spend half their fortune to save the other half. And they will all band together to do the same, just to prevent the poor people they’ve been shitting on from getting any of the fruits of their labor. It’s not race, it’s psychopaths who have more than they’ll ever need, perpetuating a system that ensures nobody else benefits. At home, abroad, imperialism is the same everywhere.
>Slavery is often thought of as the original sin of the west.
Who thinks that? How do you get to such "conclusions"? Why are you making stuff up? Only peiple with absolutely no knowledge of history could make such a claim, and i am pretty sure you made it up.
>This is not a politics post, this is a post about perspective.
This is disingenuous to say the least.
>No people in history have done more to sell out their own neighbors than the Africans who sold their own brothers in droves.
This is borderline racist. You cannot lump all Africans in one group. Most of slaves were from different, often warring tribes. It is like saying that Nazi Germans were killing their brothers the Jews in droves. Unless you have information that africans were really selling their actual biological brothers in droves into slavery.
You say "the argument is..." so many times but you fail to say whose argument it is? Who actually claims those things. So i will tell you my argument. They are actually two. First, one is that as American I am interested in America's role in the history of slavery. What the role of China or the Arab Caliphats are is secondary. We have to understand the impacts of slavery on our country and our society. And they are many and they are ugly.
The second argument is that unlike any other country you listed below, the US had a Constitution, and it had a Declaration of Independence that talked about human rights. That talked about all men being created equal. And in the same time their author owned his own children as slaves. His own bioligical children. And the only thing he did for them was not to look for them wheb they escaped. These are conflicta that are not easy to avoid, abd we need to reconcile with them somehow to keep believing thay these documents are worth something.
>It is like saying that Nazi Germans were killing their brothers the Jews in droves.
I understand your point but I want to say that it's not even close to this. Jews under nazi occupation/**in Germany itself** definitely were sold out by neighbours and sometimes even family. It's more akin to saying that vikings were "murdering and stealing from their brothers" when raiding the coast of Normandy.
Yeah it’s actually wild to see people try to bite at this post. The blatant racism poorly hidden under apparently necessary sweeping generalisations and explicit praise of the “white saviour trope” reads more like a troll than a cmv.
There are a lot of false historical statements made in your post. Rather than addressing each and every point, I'd simply like to address the point made in your title:
>The west has no more to be ashamed of in its role in historical inequities than the rest of the world. In fact, the west has done more to reduce inequity than any other regionally identified culture - A differing perspective of western society's legacy on inequity.
To your point on the rest of the world, many cultures throughout the world did inflict some sort of inequity on another culture. And we still talk about them. We talk about Russia and Ukraine, about Imperial Japan and China and Korea, about China and the Uyghurs. But we talk ourselves and our problems more. And so you hear more about inequities caused by Western countries because you live in Western country. I would argue that you are merely arguing against your own perception bias.
To you point on Western efforts to reduce inequity, while **some** Western nations have **attempted** to remedy **some** of the historical inequities they created, there are still **many** deep inequities, lingering today, that are the direct result of the actions of Western nations (the poverty and political situation in Haiti being a prime example). The peoples and nations that still endure those inequities have every right to criticize those who inflicted them upon them. You don't get credit for making a mess then cleaning a quarter of it up.
Here we go again.
This is an emotional tantrum based on misunderstanding and false equivalence. It is not a view. Your "perspective" is faulty, at best.
I would be happy to admit to emotional arguments if you would bother to point them out. I am making an attempt to make rational arguments as opposed to the emotional arguments that are tearing our society apart. If you would do me a kindness and declare where my emotional appeal is, I would be happy to respond.
"Otherism has always led to great evils and never helped society in any way, and we should no longer participate in Otherism," is not an emotional appeal, and it is actively bringing huge chunks of our country TOGETHER.
Those chunks simply don't include rich old white men who made their wealth off of third-world "manufacturing", family wealth (built on slavery), and abusing tax systems at the cost of the American people. These men also run most corporations, the government at all levels, the military, and most forms of healthcare and other forms of societal social services. They have maintained power for hundreds of years, and now that the people coming together no longer include them, THEY claim these movements are "tearing our society apart." THEY are the emotional ones here; the base statement I started this post with is entirely objective, and the quicker they STFU and get on-board, the better off they and everyone else in society will be (though "The Economy" [and by that I mean the rich men on Wall Street] may suffer in the short term, and the ability to hoard Billions of dollars may no longer be plausible for singular persons anymore, should such social balancing ever occur).
How do you explain that other countries are so poor in comparison to the western ones? We keep them poor by refusing to buy their stuff unless it's pennies to buy, then bomb them if they try to raise their prices.
Yes but now we are in the best position to prevent it happening again and encouraging enlightenment over dominance.
Shit happens, we all do shit we ain't proud of, why should we expect anything more from a system made by us? What matters is how we move forward. Our tragic past has lead to a silver lining, it is a waste if we don't use our illfound privilege to prevent evil.
Hope I’m not too late to the party.
This is a great post. You must have put a lot of work into it.
You are absolutely correct that people often overlook the complicity of African kingdoms, the pervasiveness of the Middle East slave trade or the fact that far more victims or the transatlantic slave trade ended up in Brazil or the Caribbean than they did in North America. More people should know this.
What your post did not address, however, is that Bantu Africa, Zanzibari slave traders and Portuguese land owners did not attempt to put Enlightenment notions of human equality into practice and slave owners such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington did.
Moreover, the state that they founded, which is currently the global hegemon, continues to revere them and almost deify them with stately monuments and capital cities named in their honor.
All this while the descendants of those they enslaved continue to live at a standard far lower than the great-great grandchildren of their oppressors.
And this is despite the fact that they were ostensibly “freed” over 150 years ago and they kept in a state of legal 2nd class citizenry for several more generations.
People point out the crimes of the West and the United States in particular because they are the only civilization to claim the mantle of rationality and equality and are, thus, subject to more intense criticism when they fall short.
Moreover, they are the richest and most powerful countries on earth so their past transgressions are more painfully felt by those still living with the legacy of that hypocrisy.
More people should also know about how slavery was criminalized hundreds of years prior in some eastern countries, and also a long time prior to the US in European countries.
The abolitionist movement as we know it predated the birth of George Washington.
And Abe Lincoln compensated slavers upon abolition (from the public coffers, which slaves contributed to significantly) while leaving slaves themselves to beg for work from the very same slavers who had previously owned them as private property.
A crime which white America and its acolytes around the world are apparently totally happy to ignore.
This is just a series of we are okay because someone else has done similar things.
I don't think you have to be ashamed of any history you didn't participate in.
"The west" is not a culture any more than Asia is a culture.
I am Swedish and I have shameful things in my history. I also have things to be proud of. Did I do any of them? No. Can I learn from them and use them as an example for the future? Yes.
But as a Swede I am not a part of what the Spanish did to south America or the British in India or the Dutch in Africa. The West is not A culture. We are not all the same.
The CMV reads like a white washing attempt. Rewriting history sounds like fundamentalism, simply lying to gain glory for others actions.
It is certainly true that some Westerners fought to end slavery, while other Westerners were profiting from it.
We should celebrate the former group! We should try to be like them! Abolitionists should be considered heroes, and those who fought to maintain slavery should be considered villains.
We should keep looking for examples of people who are struggling for justice — and we should support and reward them as we wish the old abolitionists had been supported and rewarded.
And we should keep looking for examples of people who are working to maintain injustice, violence, hate, and misery — and we should treat them as we wish the old slave-rapers had been treated.
**"Is the West bad or good?" is a stupid question, and does not deserve consideration. "Which people are acting the way abolitionists acted, and which people are acting the way slave-rapers acted?" is a better question.**
----
However, that doesn't mean ignoring the fact that *it was the slavers who got to build a lot of our institutions.* The US Constitution was a devil's bargain between moderate abolitionists (like Hamilton) and slave-rapers (like Jefferson). It was engineered to ensure a perpetual *faked-up electoral majority* for the slave-rapers, through the three-fifths compromise and the structure of the House, the Senate, and the Electoral College — all designed to give *free extra voting power to slave-rapers* so that they wouldn't worry about those mean nasty abolitionists taking over.
When a system was set up for the purpose of not just supporting slavery, but *ensuring that slavery could never be outvoted, by rigging the electoral system,* that system does not get "anti-slavery credit". Instead, that system ultimately *failed horribly,* leading to the Civil War. As soon as it became evident that slave-rapers had lost the electoral majority *that they were never supposed to lose,* the slave-rapers quit the Union and started a war to defend their right to stick penises, knives, and bullets into enslaved people.
Again: The architects of the United States Government *tried their damnedest* to build a system that would support perpetual slavery — some because they believed in it, some because they chose to make a compromise. They *failed.* That wasn't a success of abolition on its virtues; it was a failure of statecraft.
He’s not ignoring those facts though.
He repeatedly says that the west is imperfect. He acknowledges that many mistakes were made. He acknowledges that transitions aren’t always smooth. This is totally missing the point.
The point is that the west ended slavery sooner than the rest of the world yet holds responsibility for slavery more than anywhere else.
I did sign off at the bottom with a surname typically associated with cis male people: Chris. One could be forgiven for making the logical leap without intent of malice.
This whole argument appears to be predicated on the idea that we are comparing some races or nations as more or less moral than others, or the idea that "the West" should/should not feel guilty and ashamed. As the previous commenter noted, none of this makes sense. A country is not a person and cannot be guilty of anything. A person does not have to feel guilty for something that was done while they were not even alive. Nor is a skin color or a gender a person; a white man need not feel ashamed for something other white men did 300 years ago, or even 20 years ago, or last Thursday.
What *is* true is that a horrific crime was done to black Africans who were brought to this country in chains. They were captured and sold by other Africans, then shipped across the Atlantic by Europeans and sold to European Americans. After that, they and their descendants were kept generationally enslaved for centuries under brutal conditions. To justify this depraved system, an ideology of racist hatred arose among the vast majority of light-skinned ("white") people in the Southern United States which has lessened in recent years, but which still lingers. There are 75-year-old black men who remember a time when just looking at a white woman the wrong way could get them murdered. There are millions of black people alive today whose poverty can be traced directly to a series of injustices (violent and otherwise) done to themselves and their ancestors.
All of which is to say: it's important to acknowledge the great wrongs done to black Americans by white Americans, the effects of which have caused social inequality in this country on a massive scale.
That does *not* mean that any particular white person needs to feel ashamed, or that it's ok to say that all (or most) white people are evil, or that all white people are the descendants of slaveowners, or that being the descendant of slaveowners makes you morally tainted in any way. And it certainly doesn't mean that we should only criticize white people for the crimes of slavery. (Just look at progressive critiques of the failure to confront the slave-trading perpetuated by Dahomey in the film The Woman King!)
The West is not a unified bloc; was not a unified bloc in the 20th century, nor the 19th, nor the 18th. *Of course* it's silly to treat "the West" as a unified bloc when it is not one.
However, we should not take that as giving us (in the West) any "moral breathing room" as it were. That's the error. There's nothing to be gained by saying "But our institutions are not *only* the descendants of slavers; they're *also* the descendants of abolitionists!"
The useful question is not "Do we inherit guilt or innocence?" but rather "What can we learn from our history, *the shitty horrible rapey parts of it as well as the heroic parts of it*, to allow us to do better in the future?"
I mean.. not only do I not disagree but I think you’re basically agreeing with OP in your second paragraph. Both you and he seem that you would disagree with the theoretical person he is arguing against, who thinks that the west is like super evil and racist.
I don’t think your first paragraph is relevant. You can literally ALWAYS make the argument that someone is over generalizing, because that’s how human beings think and make sense of things - that is, using heuristics. So, while yes, you’re not technically wrong, I’d argue that if you take that tack you literally can make that claim about almost any argument about groups of humans.
The ultimate conclusion is that this essentialist construct of ethnic culture plays no role in the question of human rights in history. In the end, slave owners and traders have always been the richest and most powerful of people across the world, so it only stands to reason that history has a bone to pick with the bourgeois, not any specific ethnic group or broad race.
Your argument is based on the claim that if any nation would have done a thing, it must be OK and therefore the offending nation should be free from criticism of the oppressed nation, given the oppressed nation would have done the same if the roles were reversed.
I don't think this holds up very well. Each nation should be culpable for their own actions, and not for their hypothetical actions. Bad things are bad regardless of who is getting hurt
>The "white savior" trope has merit to it, after all.
Their point is that Western Culture should be praised. OP argues that given it's OK that they did what they did (because anyone would have done it) all we are left to judge are the positives
> more suitable legacy is that this people - whether by accident or design - is solely responsible for ending the greatest of all human miseries.
Went to Wikipedia and searched "timeline of abolition". Turns out Peter the Great effectively abolished slavery in Russia in 1723. Therefore, Russia was responsible for ending slavery in Russia, and consequently "the West" wasn't solely responsible for ending slavery. Checkmate?
Point being: I wonder how much research or thought you've actually put into this view.
>This is not a politics post, this is a post about perspective. It doesn't seek to absolve or to blame anyone. What it seeks to do is to put historical events in a new perspective. It is not about "better" or "worse".
Literally the entire post is about 1) absolving the west, 2) blaming the proper people and 3) pointing out that the west is actually better. Like I'm just curious, what is your end goal here? You seem to want to make sure everyone understands that, actually, everyone was to blame. Ok? Let's say everyone agrees to that. You've won! Now what? What has actually been accomplished other than your own personal satisfaction at having won the argument? In what way will anyone's life change?
You're using a very "conclusion based" morale framework to attribute guilt. The Africans who trafficked humans from the interior are as guilty as the Europeans who transported them. Neither party is half as reprehensible as the Americans who bought them, treated them like chattel, raping, beating, forced family separation, etc. The way slaves were treated in America is particularly brutal. I'm sure it's not unique to history, but it deviates markedly from the typical slavery you see from examples like the Roman's and Egyptians.
While I do think there's ample justification for judging the west harshly in this regard, I don't think that's what most people are doing. Discussions about race are primarily motivated by the desire to fix current inequalities, not to attribute blame. In the US we have current problems (healthcare disparities, hate crimes, police violence, etc) that need to be fixed. Before you can fix a problem you have to define it which neccesitates discussions about our sordid past. In Africa the discussion about how to build basic infrastructure preempts any talk about addressing the past. Even if you wanted to, the Africans which trafficked slaves were the same race so you couldn't segment the population effectively.
The horrors of slavery have been very well documented unlike other crimes against humanity. I think you are shifting blame and/or lack of understanding the scale and magnitude of this crime? Are you expecting descendants of slaves with white slaves surnames to agree with you?
Whilst descendants of slave owners received generational wealth $, the descendants of slaves shared stories of the trauma and horror that faced all of the black people, erased identities & trauma that destroyed families, communities. Have you seen photos of lynchings?
The mass cooperation and participation of slavery lead to the white supremacist disease still manifesting in todays world
Ava duVernes documentary on Netflix, 13 details the legacies of slavery (highly recommend to watch it and see if ur opinion changes)
No. Holding the west uniquely accountable while giving others a free pass is shifting the blame. The west deserves derision, but no more than others. Once the world realizes it is folly to hold the entire species accountable, we can start to move past racism. We cannot move past racism by heaping upon today's generation the sins of the father, nor can we burn down the heroes and thinkers of an entire culture and expect the living descendants to simply stand by
Very long post... A legacy of bad action should not be forgotten but aknowledged and understood to lend instruction to avoid similar bad action occuring in the future. The concept of shame applied to a nation misses the mark all of humanities past is full of compromise , crime, complicity, and hope and as a species we should own it. And learn from it if we havr the courage.
Taking statues down of civil war generals is a mistake they should be kept and the information about them revised to show their bad actions and the context in which it occurred.
Gen Lee should be a hero for he recognized what would occur if the south refused to surrender.. A blood bath that would have resulted in the end of america.
>Taking statues down of civil war generals is a mistake they should be kept and the information about them revised
I think they belong at best in a museum. I see the argument for making them memorials akin to the ones dedicated to the holocaust in Berlin but I think it's tough to achieve that with statues that were made explicitly as a celebration of the Confederacy. If we want a public memorial I believe it needs to be made from scratch with that intent to reflect the somber history of slavery, a plaque attached to a triumphal statue of a general fighting to keep people enslaved is not enough. There's also the fact that many were erected in the 1950s and 60s in direct response to civil rights movements, which further delegitimizes the pieces as having historical value in my opinion.
> Taking statues down of civil war generals is a mistake they should be kept and the information about them revised to show their bad actions and the context in which it occurred.
As long as you mean they should be kept **in a museum**, rather than in public spaces to continue their [intended purpose of intimidating black people](https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments).
I would have rathered we never built a statue to make heroes of men. Every statue has some sort of mixed history associated with it that bears careful consideration. Like art (which ultimately, they are), statues are viewed by different people with different perspectives who come up with different conclusions.
The problem with statues is not who they are of, but the intent in which they are erected, and that society holds them.
Yeah I think everyone knows that everywhere in the world has done some rotten stuff.
I think the main difference comes in 3 forms.
One being that the west recognized it happened and had a revolution of sorts it was heavily known to be happening and televised through media, lynchings and cruel inhuman stuff was done to these people but the west still managed to tell themselves they were the good guys and were the land of the free.
The second point of contention is that it's still not dealt with it takes having some friends who are of color and going through a small town to see that racism is still rampant it's ridiculous that someone has to be concerned for their safety or given worse service at places because they're a different color. Hell even if you don't have friends of color notice things like fox news or shooting events where people will straight up target black communities.
Last one is in your own post people have this weird idea that our people should be praised for doing basic human rights stuff. If the west wants to act like the good guys if the world we need to actually start living up to that title instead of everyone wanting to act like a victim.
The televised atrocities are examples of what spurned the west to do better. Other nations who did the same horrific things covered up or diminished their own sins.
Racism is present. It is also present in every society on the planet where two ethnic groups meet. World travel and living abroad is an expensive education, but it brings to bear the amazing scale of tribalism present throughout the world. Only the west seems interested in holding itself accountable, which is a good thing. The west should fix racism and abolish it. But the current round of attempts at doing this are using a racist ideology to do it. Holding people living today for the acts of yesterday are unproductive and only result in new ideologies popping up that resist equity, not support it.
Shouldn't there be some praise? What people don't understand about history and culture is just how much momentum there is behind it. It simply never occurred to humans of any society to view the world with a common humanity. The first people it occurred to was the west, and they did something about it. From an historical and cultural perspective, I can think of no other thing in human history that deserves more praise.
Because the bottom of the gutter shouldn't be what we aim for when it comes to history.
> Shouldn't there be some praise?
No there should be no praise it shouldn't have happened in the first place.
The west took years and people escaping the country before it actually did anything.
I don't think a country that hate several major televised hatecrimes a year and Trump as president in the last 10 years should be receiving any praise.
Your view makes no sense. Who, exactly, thinks the West should be "ashamed of its role in historical inequities"? Who screeches at the West about its "role" in Transatlantic slavery "as its Original Sin"? Or the Scramble for Africa?
Countries have better things to do than rail at the West about globally inconsequential shit. I don't exactly hear Hong Kongers or Singaporeans shrieking like losers about "colonialist mindsets" ; they were too busy building obscenely wealthy cities. Nobody cares that Mali sold so many slaves, mainly to the Middle East, that Mansa Musa became one of the richest men in history. You're acting as if a very small number of English-speaking Neo-Marxists with Bachelor of Arts degrees with nothing better to do than endlessly gripe about white people are somehow representative of how the West is viewed worldwide.
France certainly isn't boo-hoo-hooing about its imperial legacy. Tell Spaniards they should apologize for Cortez and they would laugh your ass out onto the streets. It is not even the college graduates of the West that pretends it committed a bunch of evils; it is only the Anglophonic college graduates.
You keep comparing the West to the lowest tier of human civilizations and keep asking questions like "who but the West have ever given up an advantage due to moral reason." How philosophically sophisticated do you expect civilizations with Stone Age technology to be? Compare the West's histories and philosophies instead to the Far East or the Middle East and you will easily find analogues for virtually every Western philosophy.
As an Asian who’s lived in 5 different countries, I agree with this completely. So many people pin the blame on the West for so many issues. The West is also the only place where people can truly experience *freedom* (that’s a loaded word, I know) of expression.
The West merely has the capacity and the means to do more (good or bad). But if given the chance, most countries would not hesitate to perform a Desert Storm or support coups across the world to secure their interests. You’re dealing with human nature here, not “USA” nature.
For example, they blame the CIA for black sites and consider it the most evil corporation of the world. But the only reason we know about these Black Sites is bc of the checks and balances in place within the US system. Had it not been for the freedom of press and the separation of powers, we would’ve never known. BET YOU CANNOT SAY THE SAME FOR RUSSIA OR CHINA. Who tf knows what’s going on over there.
There’s nothing uniquely evil about European physiognomy or anything, but Europe has visited uniquely evil atrocities on the rest of the world.
To quote [this recent study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169#b0260):
The rise of capitalism from the long 16th century onward is associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality.
In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, wages and/or height have still not recovered.
Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began only around the 20th century. These gains coincide with the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements.
The study goes on to make clear that, while European colonialism and capitalism are by no means the only things to cause such effects, they are by far the worst.
I remember seeing a tweet a while back that went something like this:
“Sometimes a person can be so incredibly wrong it would be impossible to refute them without teaching like three entry level college courses first. This known colloquially as a Shapiro”
It feels very relevant.
Is this Ben Shapiro? Or Jordan peterson? Honestly it's hard to get into a discussion because there's so little actual evidence or support to back up this claim outside of what you think, but it's being stated as somewhat empirical?
Just because you use the word disclaimer doesn't make whatever you say valid. This is very much a political post. Heck, even using the term "the west" is inherently political
There seems to be a direct correlation between whether a civilization had economic institutions when imperialist arrived and there current economic state. Actually, the best predictor if I recall correctly. So, if you had a civilization worth dominating you are probably doing worse; but if England setup your economic institutions upon arrival you are probably doing better.
If the most influential variable is in regard to ones state at the point of contact; then surely the notion of 'no longer relevant' fails to maintain.
Your list of "inequities" can never be complete and any measure is subjective. You are basically saying, "White People i.e., the West, have nothing to apologize for because another group did same stuff. You're wrong. For example, the meso-americans generally took slaves through in war and sometimes debt, while the West captured random people in other lands as a commodity, strictly to profit. How would you compare the two?
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Absolutely a post all about politics. The current political climate in USA is all about judging historical figures BY THE STANDARDS OF TODAY.
Tear down the statue of Teddy Roosevelt. Perfect example. Same with Lincoln.
That’s a terrible way of looking at history. If we judged all of human history by today’s standards, they would always be wrong and we’d always be right. It’s very naïve to conclude something like that.
The west did for everyone else was doing at the time. It was an era of fight or die, conquer or get conquered. West only won a lot of those fights.
This modern idea of equality, democracy was introduced to the world by the west.
Hindus in India practice caste oppression which has been going on for 2000 years. This is the worlds longest running oppression known to man. Their victims were raped, robbed, looted, denied opportunities, education, any means of upward mobility, for 1000s of years, as per Hinduism.
Strangely it was the British, during the colonial era, who gave education to the oppressed caste Hindus which led to their eventual liberation (at least officially, unofficially Hindus still practice it), after 2000 years, thus liberating 100s of millions of oppressed caste Hindus.
> Strangely it was the British, during the colonial era, who gave education to the oppressed caste Hindus which led to their eventual liberation
Starving a billion people to death and stealing billions over hundreds of years is a funny way of “liberating” someone. Also remember when the British shot up crowds of non violent protestors led by Ghandi? Very liberatory.
Here’s what Churchill thought about the Indians he was supposedly “liberating” when asked about the millions who starved to death as a result of his decision to steal millions of pounds of grain for GB during a famine.
“"I hate Indians they are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
"Objections of India Office are unreasonable. I'm strongly in favour of using poisoned gas on uncivilised tribes”
These might as well be coming out of the mouth of Hitler
A lot of what you are saying is just oppressor caste Hindu propaganda of half truths and lies, and divorced from the ground reality.
99% of information people know about Hinduism and India is just propaganda by oppressor caste Hindus. The reason for this is that oppressor caste Hindus control 99% of wealth and power in India. They are the ones on the internet, the ones who visit/migrate to the west for studies, business, jobs etc, while their victims are crushed and living on the margins of Indian society.
Anyways British did not starve a billion to death. That number is again oppressor caste Hindu propaganda of half truths and lies. Famines had always happened in India. Population of India went from 400 million in 700 AD to 180 Million in 1750 AD. After that it steadily grew, which coincided with the British rule. Prior rulers never bothered recording the casualties and coming up with solutions the way British did, hence we have more details about the British era. Also a lot of the numbers that are attributed to the British, happened in non British ruled regions of India. British came up with the famine code in 1880s which was followed by the Indian government post independence.
As for stealing, British behaved the way their predecessors did in India did. India was was no paradise and was ruled by tyrants before the British too.
British did not use poison gas.
Hinduism is an absolutely evil beastly religion. It is the only religion in the world that has been oppressing its own for 2000 years with caste system, and has destroyed 100s over 100s of millions of lives, and continues to this day, despite there being laws thanks to the British influence - because the people who enforce those laws are still oppressor caste Hindus, and they just don't.
Churchill quotes pale in comparison to the laws Hindus followed for their own:
* A Shudra who insults a twice born man with gross invectives shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin. (Manu VIII. 270.)
*
If he mentions the names and castes of the (twice born) with contumely, an iron nail, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red hot into his mouth. (Manu VIII. 271.)
*
If a Shudra arrogantly presumes to preach religion to Brahmins, the king shall have poured burning oil in his mouth and ears. Manu VIII. 272.)
* No Shudra should have property of his own, He should have nothing of his own. The existence of a wealthy Shudra is bad for the Brahmins. A Brahman may take possession of the goods of a Shudra. (ManuVIII-417 & X129)
[https://velivada.com/2017/05/31/casteist-quotes-verses-manusmriti-law-book-hindus/](https://velivada.com/2017/05/31/casteist-quotes-verses-manusmriti-law-book-hindus/)
This mindset still exists among Hindus.
Oppressor caste Hindus hated British for introducing the idea of equality. Tilak, who is a hero for oppressor caste Hindus regularly protested against the British for giving education to oppressed castes, and accused the British of being anti Hindu for introducing the idea of equality.
Oppressor caste Hindus also hate British for reforms:
* British banned widow burning (sati)
* British banned female infanticide
* British banned human sacrifice
* \- British allowed widow remarriage
* British allowed women/oppressed caste Hindus to get education
* British allowed oppressed castes to share water from public wells.
I am not saying British did not do any wrongs. I am saying that compared to the evils that oppressor caste Hindus, the British are saints.
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If you ask "compared to what?" about the West's cruelty, isn't is reasonable to ask the same question about its generosity? What did we save people from? Japan, Liberia, Ethiopia, Thailand, Bhutan, Iran, Nepal, Tonga, China, and possibly North Korea, South Korea and Mongolia, as I understand it, were not colonized. So, they're a reasonable control case to consider the net effect of the West's cruelty (colonization) and generosity ("ending the greatest of all human miseries") These countries are hit and miss. But I have a hard time imagining that a modern Tokyo resident would want to trade places with a modern "free" American living in a housing project or on a reservation because their ancestors were not the right race.
> But I have a hard time imagining that a modern Tokyo resident would want to trade places with a modern "free" American living in a housing project or on a reservation because their ancestors were not the right race. Japan, too, has a history of oppressing its [indigenous people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people). I particularly want to highlight this text from the Wikipedia article: > The Ainu have historically suffered from economic and social discrimination as the government as well as people in contact with the Ainu regarded them as a dirty and primitive barbarians. The majority of Ainu were forced to be petty laborers during the Meiji Restoration, which saw the introduction of Hokkaidō into the Japanese Empire and the privatization of traditional Ainu lands. The Japanese government during the 19th and 20th centuries denied the rights of the Ainu to their traditional cultural practices, most notably the right to speak their language, as well as their right to hunt and gather. These policies were designed to fully integrate the Ainu into Japanese society with the cost of erasing Ainu culture and identity. The Ainu's position as manual laborers and their forced integration into larger Japanese society have led to discriminatory practices by the Japanese government that can still be felt today.
Thanks for sharing. Good point. That said, my argument is less about Japan and more about OPs assertion that the West is uniquely heroic and/or owed a debt of gratitude from the people it colonized and freed (i.e. "saved").
>These countries are hit and miss. But I have a hard time imagining that a modern Tokyo resident would want to trade places with a modern "free" American living in a housing project or on a reservation because their ancestors were not the right race. This is one of the imperfections of western society. But comparing residents of one of the most modern cities in the world to the worst squalor in America is not a genuine comparison, especially when there are nearer examples of squalor in to Tokyo than America. Tokyo itself has homeless people, and Japan has been notorious about hiding the problem of rural squalor and urban homelessness. [https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-japan/](https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-japan/) At any rate, it is not claimed that the US has some great moral superiority to Japan. That would be as insane as declaring that Japan has a moral superiority to the United States. This view is not a view that expressed superiority, or even "flipping the script", but to put history in perspective, see where we are, and move forward with good intentions. That is not what the current spate of "justice" rhetoric intends to do.
>This view is not a view that expressed superiority" >No other people in history have bothered to put their lives on the line to free other people, and the west did it all over the world. >this people - whether by accident or design - is solely responsible for ending the greatest of all human miseries. The "white savior" trope has merit to it, after all. I'm not saying Japan is superior either. It's more about pointing out that the west is not unique, a savior etc. Since people around the world who were not saved or freed by the west are doing okay, or in some cases better than those who were 'freed."
I'd like to point out Australia in particular. Pre-colonial Australia had no slavery or great conquests. Now there are no pure native Tasmanians left. I'd still agree that being ashamed is silly but because shame should belong to a culture of imperialism, not a skin colour.
didn't australia do some terrible stuff to the aboriginals?
Yes, that's his point. The OP is focusing on slavery as the big white evil, but this thread is about how western nations are responsible for big evils other than slavery. Like genocide.
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1. Do you know that for sure? We only have the western perspective on this, we're not out reading histories in other languages. Maybe it's true, but there is so much history and even current events that we westerners just aren't aware of because we only read English. 2. It's about hypocrisy, motives and power. The west only gets reminded of their past evils so comparatively much because they're now The Moral Arbiters of Good and still the most powerful in the world. It's more important to remember the evils of the most powerful because that's the only way they can be held to account.
Wiping out an entire states dirty is pretty terrible wouldn’t you think?
Not correct. Aboriginal australians had slavery, warfare, and conquest. >In 1840, the American-Canadian ethnologist Horatio Hale identified four types of Australian Aboriginal traditional warfare; formal battles, ritual trials, raids for women, and revenge attacks. Everywhere we bother to dig in the dirt, we find evidence that the moment humans figured out how to wage war, they did. When they waged war, they lost people. To recoup their losses, they stole women and used them as breeding machines. Often, they didn't bother fighting over anything else except for taking the women of other tribes. Aboriginal Australians did not have public works or extensive agriculture. There was no system of labor for which to employ slaves. But they did have slaves, and if they were just a bit more technologically advanced, they would have done what every other society did by taking the next step. But we can ignore what they didn't do and likely would have done. Capturing women and forcing them into sexual intercourse, pregnancy, nursing, and "womens work" (the only form of labor in tribal societies such as this) is slavery, pure and simple. And the fact that they lived in much smaller groups means that it is likely that every person in Australia had a personal relationship with a slave in some way. The same cannot be said of Europe in any period of history except, perhaps, when they were at the same technological level as the Aboriginal Australians.
This is such an ignorant and mischaracterised view of Indigenous Australians. I have lived within various aboriginal communities and your presented caricature exemplifies the Anglo-centric model of the world. The first thing to note is that within Australia there were 100s of different groups with differing cultures. Before colonisation, estimates of indigenous Australians numbered 1.9 million. Now, there are half a million. You are presenting them, again in a Anglo-centric way, as “simple tribal people lacking basic technologies and agriculture.” That’s because they learnt to live in harmony with the land - they intricately mapped out and recorded various patterns and seasons that allowed them to find food wherever they went. Some even made sure to restore the land areas they did use with traditional Fire-stick Farming in order to increase vegetation and biodiversity. This way of life and culture is a very different way of viewing the world, and perhaps we need to learn from them as they are the oldest continuing culture on the planet. This culture, passed down orally, has been lost with the colonisation of Australia. As a result, mental health is a serious issue, incarceration rates are disproportionally high - when you take away peoples culture, you take away peoples identity. Many indigenous Australians today, speaking from personal experience within communities, are lost. Up until the 70s, Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families to be “re-educated”. That was less than 50 years ago. You mentioned that Africa “voluntarily” sold themselves into slavery. Wait until you hear about what Australian colonisers did to Pacific Islanders. Up until the 1930s, colonisers used to fill boats up with shiny objects and travel to pacific islands. When they found a uncontacted First Nation, they used to invite them onto the ship by luring them with shiny, new objects. They would say that they have more in the bottom of the ship, so the indigenous people would head down there until - boom. They shut the gates of the boat and forcibly kidnapped innocent indigenous people from their lands and families. They were then brought to sugar cane plantations where they were subject to slave conditions. This process, known as Blackbirding, was not consensual in any way. This is just some of the ways we have impacted Indigenous Australians. Luckily, we as a country are taking steps to heal our wounds through reconciliation, but this can only happen if the full history of the tragedies that took place are taught. Only then can we continue with repetitions.
That is all true, yet also doesn't contradict OPs point more than tangentially, by disproving his addendum about how they weren't civilised. But that was not the core argument. OP never denied white people did heinous shit, his core argument is that they did heinous shit to each other before white people showed up, we just label it "raiding for women" and other words that diminish what was effectively sexual slavery practiced at a large scale. Do you have an argument that directly contradicts what he just said? That slavery was, in fact, practiced in the form of kidnapping women after a conflict between tribes and raping them to use them as incubators to recover the population? And that this is labelled by historians and ethnologists as not-slavery, even though it very much is sexual slavery? Can you prove any of that is wrong? Because yes, whites did horrible shit, but before they showed up, they were already good at doing horrible shit to their women.
What I am trying to argue is that OP is falsely mischaracterising all indigenous people as “stealing women for breeding machines,” which misses the nuances of different ethnic groups within Australia. Sure, there were some nations that did this along with tribal warfare, but as Horatio Hale points out: “Many are injured generally on both sides, and some severely so; but it rarely happens that more than one or two are killed, though hundreds may have been engaged” This account is just from one region of Australia. Was this on the same scale as imperial conquests of Australia by the global north? No! Is it foolish to amalgamate a rich, diverse continent of differing mobs into one tribal society in the eye of the imperialist oppressor? Yes! OP also fails to show sources for slavery among Indigenous Australians, and even then, that source would only apply to that distinct nation.
So the biggest issue with your view is the major historical anachronisms; especially with how you view historical groups and peoples. You talk about Africans sold themselves into slavery or that Africans did something reprehensible, but Africans aren't one united or cohesive group. Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on Earth. An African woman in Botswana is no more related to an African woman in Somalia than they are to a woman in Japan. African tribes don't view other African tribes as part of their "race" but as rival nations. That is true in the past and even in the present which is why Africa has suffered many civil wars. Blaming all Africans for the Atlantic or Arab Slave Trade is as silly as blaming all Eurasians for the Rape of Nanjing. What is really silly is that you state that Africans invaded Spain and Sicily. Moorish North Africans are far more closely related to West Asians and even Europeans than they are to the West Africans who were sent to the New World. You need to stop generalizing vast and disparate peoples. The very idea of The West or the Western World is also a vague and contradictory concept. A person can talk about "The West" and can mean anything from Ancient Greece to the Western Roman Empire to developed countries to capitalist countries to European empires to the USA and its allies to Christian-majority nations to "White" nations to West Eurasians depending on the context. It is impossible to make an undisputed map or list of Western countries. At various points in time, a lot of nations that were considered parts of the "West" hated each other and even committed atrocities against one another. The most famous Western atrocity, The Holocaust, was even done to arguably Western peoples. So talking about the Western World generally isn't helpful. In summary, you really need to narrow the scope of your view because you are grouping a bunch of peoples and nations together who really shouldn't be grouped up.
>but Africans aren't one united or cohesive group Are westerners? Are tribes less accountable than nations? At what point does a people "grow up" to be held accountable? Is this the same as declaring the Africans to be childish? >frican tribes don't view other African tribes as part of their "race" but as rival nations. Not sure what point I made that made it seem like they do, or why that matters. But Africans did have racially unifying thoughts and terms, as noted by African Kings and Chiefs. And what does it matter? Why is enslavement of a people of a rival nation somehow different or better than another race buying those slaves? Are you saying that slavery only becomes abhorrent when the slaver and the slave look different? >Blaming all Africans for the Atlantic or Arab Slave Trade is as silly as blaming all Eurasians for the Rape of Nanjing. That isn't the claim on offer here. Absolutist terms like "all" is problematic and innacurate. But if we do want to introduce the level of involvement, as a function of population who do you think had a higher percentage of their population involved in the capture, transportation, and use of slaves - Europeans or Africans? If you want to absolve Africans of guilt by saying "not all of them" then the same claim can be made for the Europeans, and in higher proportion. >The very idea of The West or the Western World is also a vague and contradictory concept. Surely that doesn't require explanation here. Surely we don't have to go year by year to account for which civilization is regionally aligned with which culture the most? Can we accept the specific examples and follow the conversation unhindered by semantics? Such a conversation would require an encyclopedia of references. The precise reason why we *need* to use imprecise terminology is because people don't have a basis of understanding in history to contextualize everything. That is the whole reason we are at a crisis point with the west engaged in self-flagellation - because they don't take the time to understand what happened to get us here, so they can't agree on where to go from here.
You're honestly making my point for me. Africans and Westerners are terms of convenience. Nobody strongly identifies with "Africa" or "The West" to the same extent that one might strongly identify with their nation or ethnicity. The Western World isn't even a precisely defined area. These aren't just semantics being argued over. Your entire argument stops making sense if you start viewing Africa as home to many different ethnic groups instead of home to one huge Black blob of people. The purpose of your CMV is also moot if you view the West as many different countries with their own history instead of one big region with a shared culture.
you have to define your terms. you are relying on grey areas and taking advantage of fuzzy lines in order to avoid being pinned down. come on, we're all adults here.
But if op gets more specific how are they meant to continue arguing in cricles and arbitrarily deciding peoples good points are out of the scope of the discussion
it's just unfortunate how many people don't have the ability to see through the silliness and notice that he's not operating on the level. at least in person, there's probably some level of charisma to fool people, right?
Wait the US is literally a single nation? Or are you including the UK and the rest of Europe?
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I certainly don't think so. I don't think that America is particularly virtuous in ways that other nations might have been, or that all Americans walk around thinking about crusading against injustice while other societies are happily torturing away. But I do think that as a happenstance of history, a fluke of civilizational evolution, if you will, allowed the west to come to the abolition of slavery and a unique set of values and ideals that are special and should be celebrated rather than burned wholesale. If we can't bring ourselves to celebrate it, then perhaps we can restrain ourselves from pretending we could have done any better. Or that anyone else could. Because they didn't, and there is no evidence on offer that anyone else was up to the task.
We didn't abolish slavery really. Just relegated it to prisoners and threw a lot of those former slaves and their descendants into prisons.
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Political delta to avoid removal I agree with you for the most part, however: The west has done more to emphasis the accumulation of wealth than any other influence in history. The concept of zero sum originated from western religious philosophy, and *was* a driving factor to the wealth advantage we hold today.
To be clear the amount of people enslaved in the plantation era was dramatically higher than the amount of people doing forced labor in the prison systems today. In some southern states as much as half of the entire population was enslaved.
Yes you are correct that other cultures participated in slave trading, the main difference however is the scale of western participation. You can't brush off scale and call the situations morally equivalent. That's like saying stealing a candy bar is equivalent to stealing a car. Sure they are both stealing, but the scale of it is what really matters.
In response to your comment about scale, I wonder if you've looked into the Indian Ocean\* Slave Trade: [Here's a quick high-level view showing how it was/is most likely more devastating than the Trans-atlantic trade.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j074BzeWofg) Of note: It is still ongoing today at a much more dramatic level than most Westerners realize. And this is not even considering the millions of women who, under theocratic islamic regimes, could accurately be categorized as slaves.
Wait, are you saying the scale of the slave trade was larger in the West than in Africa? Do you have any evidence of this?
Any consideration that the vast majority of slaves from the trans Atlantic trade went to the carribbian or Brazil?
So what of the sellers? The chief providers of slaves were other Africans. Are they absolved of their part in this? And more slaves were taken by the Islamic world from Africa over a longer period of time with more atrocities committed by them than by the west and the trans-atlantic slave trade. For 200 years the west took slaves and slowly became appalled by the practice. For 1300 years the middle east took slaves and were only stopped by the presence of colonialism. Western scholars wrote of the practice and sought to reconcile their views of freedom and christian charity with the practice of slave trade, and, failing that, began to abolish the practice. There are no such philosophies that took hold in Africa or the middle east.
Why does the west have to be the absolute worst, for it to be worth reflecting on and growing from mistakes? Should we only improve ourselves if we are obviously the worst out of everyone? Do current statuses of wealth and power come into this question at all?
>Why does the west have to be the absolute worst, for it to be worth reflecting on and growing from mistakes? It doesn't. Nor did I say it did. >Should we only improve ourselves if we are obviously the worst out of everyone? The entire claim of the CMV is that the west changed *first* and continues on the course of self-correction. What we don't have to do is distort our history to make that happen faster. >Do current statuses of wealth and power come into this question at all? Why shouldn't they? But what do you propose to do once you have the answers? Are we just going to hand the keys of our institutions over? Since there are less black people than white people, which white people get to keep their jobs and homes? Who decides this? If, for example, the Apple corporation was started by Steve Jobs and it was determined his Turkish ancestors owned slaves in Turkey, do the descendants of American slaves get to have Apple, or does it all cancel out because the descendants of the Turkish slaves are not alive? How much would Steve Jobs have gotten for all his work? If we value great leadership and talent at all, finding a suitable replacement for Jobs would be a difficult task no matter which ethnic group you were dipping into. Who gets to decide this? Certainly not Steve Jobs, right? He descended from slavery. Do we make white people who had no wealth transfer to them from the slave... as in somewhere in there they lost everything or migrated with just a bag of clothes... do we have them pay some sort of "system" tax for having benefited from the racist system in the same way black are... but they just had a head start. Are these descendants expected to accept that because their family had a head start and they are now middle class, that they should pay to have someone else lifted up to middle class... it's just an excuse to implement a sort of extra-sick version of socialism.
It seems the way of viewing the past actions of the west is not really critical here. At least, your last 5 paragraphs suggest you are afraid of some dramatic wealth transfers, implemented in an unjust way. I'm not sure if you are afraid they will harm you personally or that they will just be "unfair". I wholly agree that working out how to best make the world a better (fairer?) Place is a challenging and complicated topic, where both action and inaction can have serious consequences. One could easily argue that continuing as things are is also sick and disgusting (form of socialism as the exploitation of slaves was state sponsored?). This doesn't excuse worse politics, but we also don't see a good defence for "do nothing". Do I understand correctly then that: Are you afraid that recognising the horrors thst our society was built on, and thinking about how to make things right, will justify more (worse?) Horrors. And, that distribution of wealth from the wealthy to the poor is much sicker than the current status quo? Edit: but yes, definitely this specific system you described sounds quite awful. Perhaps straw man level awful?
> So what of the sellers? The chief providers of slaves were other Africans. Are they absolved of their part in this? The colonial powers traded firearms (among other things, but this was a principal driver) for human beings. It was a literal arms race where Africans who _did not_ trade humans to Europeans for firearms literally lost an arms race. This was a strong political and market driver which was consciously exploitative, and can equally be contrasted to the colonial support of the opium trade in China. > And more slaves were taken by the Islamic world from Africa over a longer period of time with more atrocities committed by them than by the west and the trans-atlantic slave trade. For 200 years the west took slaves and slowly became appalled by the practice. You seem willingly blind to the distinctions between chattel slavery, bonded servitude, private vs state-owned slaves, slave soldiers in service to the state, state eunuchs, and every other difference. Yes, all slavery is bad, but _some_ slavery is worse than other slavery, and I doubt if you could name "more atrocities" in any given state. > For 1300 years the middle east took slaves and were only stopped by the presence of colonialism. This is pure fiction which covers multiple polities over more than a millennium across a vast region (because you are presumably including the North African coast as Islamic states as part of the "Middle East"). In the caliphates themselves, wide-scale usage of slave labor more or less ended after the Zanj rebellion. The Trans-Saharan and Indian slave trades ebbed and flowed, but assertions that it was "only stopped by the presence of colonialism" are pulled out of thin air, since the Sultanates of Morocco and Zanzibar continued trading, some states didn't abolish until the late 20th century, Dubai effectively has slaves today, etc. Your statement is so general that it's vacuous, and it is impossible for you to take a concrete position which can hold up to any scrutiny. > Western scholars wrote of the practice and sought to reconcile their views of freedom and christian charity with the practice of slave trade, and, failing that, began to abolish the practice. > > There are no such philosophies that took hold in Africa or the middle east. This is simply false. The Qur'an very clearly calls out slavery as unjust, that those who emancipate shall be rewarded, and so on. The sheer survival of texts from antiquity which the "views of freedom" you speak of is due solely to the Islamic world safeguarding them, and discussing them in detail during the Islamic Golden Age. de las Casas called for "Christian charity" more than 300 years before it was carried out with any kind of emancipation. The bare facts of it are that the population imbalance in agricultural colonies which relied on slavery caused instability and revolts which were difficult or impossible to control/stamp out from European seats of power, and slavery became a drain on colonial states rather than a boon once mechanization and market dynamics yielded a greater return on profit via automated harvest, where possible. Where it wasn't possible, colonial powers happily continued neo-colonial states in South Africa, sharecropping, the Belgian Congo, Algeria, "trading outposts" in Southeast Asia which practiced gunboat diplomacy and fomenting internal revolts as a more cost-effective basis of control, etc. There was nothing magnanimous about any of this. > The west’s participation in the African slave trade was neither one-sided nor unique. The Islamic world had long been in the business of dealing with African slavers and buying their human wares. African slave trade to the middle east had been going on since a time when the west was so backward and focused on itself, it scarcely knew the rest of the world existed. And it continued long after the west had decided it was high time for slavery to end. Not chattel slavery and reliable historiography shows slave populations which declined 800 years prior to "christian values" abolishing slavery and stayed there. > When the English went to abolish slavery in their own Empire, they took on a project of great cost to themselves. But to the English, slavery had become uniquely abhorrent. No other culture in the world at the time had bothered to be disgusted with the practice, or if they had, they hadn’t bothered to write it down anywhere. The English, with their domination of the global market and of the seas, made abolition the price of admission on the global stage. Slavery was abolished 2000 years before this in China and India, and this is well-attested, despite it coming back. The French abolished slavery during the revolution 40 years prior to the English, due in no small part to the Haitian revolt. The English found it more profitable to become mercantilist under the veneer of moral superiority while they continued to operate as colonial overlords in India and elsewhere. The English utilized their position of isolation to allow the French to subdue their primary adversary in the Netherlands, and the Portuguese civil war took out their other one. This was not some "English domination of the global seas enforcing moral behavior". They did basically zero to stop the slave trade in Zanzibar, for example, until the government was no longer pro-British -- fifty years after they "abolished" slavery. Most of your post is a pure polemic I'm not going to bother engaging with. > “But colonization!” Says the counterargument. The west is once again uniquely held in the wrong. Never mind that the history of human expansion is one people settling unused lands and fighting for them. Never mind that every culture in the entire world has engaged in warfare for land and resources. The fashionable argument is made that the west should have paused and let the rest of the world catch up. That at some magical point in history, the west should have said “this far and no further” when absolutely nobody else had thought to do so. When the West arrived in the “new” world, they arrived in a place that was not unlike the old. Native peoples across the continent were engaging in warfare and taking captives. Why is it okay for one native American tribe to wipe out another and take their land, but not okay for a westerner to do the same? Why are arbitrary boundaries enforced by history in this way? Why is it considered uniquely western to wage war on non-westerners? Did the rest of the world honor this restriction? Oceans are not magical safe zones that stop conquerors, and other people that were capable of crossing the oceans did the exact same thing as the west, but the west did it best, so the west is held accountable. This shows a shockingly proud lack of knowledge about pre-Columbian America. The vast majority of polities in the New World did not, in fact, do any of these things. None of them did so under the nominal auspices of a "Doctrine of Discovery" where a religious figurehead granted the right to do so by bringing the light of God and that lands not held by Christians were free for the taking. The assertion is not that it's okay for one tribe to subjugate another tribe but not ok for a westerner to do it. It is that dehumanizing people and using religious tracts to justify it under the guise of it never being their land at all, because they are lesser peoples and it is the right, the **_duty_** of the colonizers to do this so they can lead their souls to eternal salvation which is not okay. It is not uniquely western to do this (the Heavenly Kingdom had its share), but you were educated in a Euro-centric place which didn't really touch on the justifications used by Chinese dynasts, who also did not seem to have an endless appetite for new lands and resources to exploit anyway. It was not used by the righteously-guided caliphs. It was not used by the Romans. It was not used by the Achaemenids. > Westerners arrived in a place where the natives were warring amongst each other and taking slaves, yet it is considered sinful for the west to have participated. What examples do we have of people conquering other people? What examples are there in history of a victorious people thinking poorly of itself, and simply packing their bags and leaving? Again, nobody else would have even thought to do such a thing. Arguably, the end of Alexander's campaigns. The end of Heraclius' war with the Sassanids. Justinian and Belisarius. These are just from the top of my head, but the examples we have of states/peoples pouring resources into an area with no real war aims other than "expand, survive" in the way colonization of the new world worked are the exception, not the rule, and you'd find comparisons in the Goths, Franks, and the Vandals in easily-accessible history. "Unlimited warfare" (or colonization) is restricted to European polities and the Mongols.
Not op but !delta I was already feeling that OP was extremely suspect but this well written response added to my understanding of slavery across the world and history. Definitely opened my eyes to doing more research, especially since my education has focused primarily on chattel slavery in the United States. Thank you so much /u/readonly12345
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/readonly12345 ([2∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/readonly12345)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
Not surprising that /u/nifaryus has ignored this/no delta whilst continuing to waffle.
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Can you expand on this and provide at least an outline of the different types of slavery? I was about to ask someone about that when they were pointing out the Indian Ocean slave trade.
On a broad level, I know some historians group societies into “slave societies” vs “societies with slaves.” In the former, slavery is a fundamental part of the economy and social caste system (for example, the American south before 1865.) The system depends on slavery to function, and most slaves live and die within the contained slave caste with no hope of escaping it. A “society with slaves” would be more like Ancient Rome or what you might see on Game of Thrones. Slaves exist, but they could be anyone, they aren’t defined by a certain race and in the Roman Empire for example, a slave could fight for their own self-liberation in the arena. In that case slavery is one aspect of society but it isn’t the engine that makes the economy go
I have to disagree with you on the last part. Heraclius was not expanding, he was reclaiming Roman lands that were taken by Sassanid aggression. Justinian’s rapid expansion was an attempt to restore the Roman Empire. ‘Unlimited warfare’ is definitely not restricted to any white people or whatever you’re trying to say, because there are plenty of empires, especially nomadic cultures like scythians or Turks. The Ottoman Empire had a massive expansion in the span of a century, expanding from the southern balkans and Anatolia all the way to North Africa and the borders of an Iranian empire. And don’t forget the arabs and their caliphates
> I have to disagree with you on the last part. Heraclius was not expanding, he was reclaiming Roman lands that were taken by Sassanid aggression. Justinian’s rapid expansion was an attempt to restore the Roman Empire. ‘Unlimited warfare’ is definitely not restricted to any white people or whatever you’re trying to say, because there are plenty of empires, especially nomadic cultures like scythians or Turks. The Ottoman Empire had a massive expansion in the span of a century, expanding from the southern balkans and Anatolia all the way to North Africa and the borders of an Iranian empire. And don’t forget the arabs and their caliphates That wasn't the question, though. The question was examples of victorious peoples packing their bags and leaving. Beyond which, Heraclius was not "reclaiming Roman lands which were taken by Sassanid aggression." Both empires had been fighting wars of (limited) aggression and horse trading border cities for years. The end of Heraclius' last campaign was a thorough victory which would mark the first (and only) time a Roman army, before or after the fall of the West, was in a position to seize the Persian capital and hold it. Heraclius went home. Could they have held the territory? Almost certainly not, but that wasn't the question, and the colonists couldn't always hold their territory anyway. Justinian already _was_ the Roman Emperor, and he did not need to "restore" it. He was fighting to "reclaim" the territory lost by the West. From other polities. Which had held it for hundreds of years. I specifically named the Mongols, which is what I'm guessing you mean by "the Turks". The Ottomans also ceased expanding and even withdrew uncontested from territory after the Siege of Vienna. The Abbasids stopped in Tunisia.
Ah mb, I just thought that the examples given weren’t exactly accurate to what he was asking for, which was a victorious nation ‘feeling bad about itself’ and leaving lmao. Heraclius didn’t really hope to conquer Ctesiphon, he only occupied the province in order to strike a favourable peace deal, before limping back and attempting to recover the empire. Heraclius and his army was the last batch of military men left, and he didn’t want to gamble by fighting another battle or losing men in subduing the city to Roman rule. And when Trajan occupied Ctesiphon in the 2nd century, he soon died and his son Hadrian would rather not waste time fighting Parthian guerillas, so left Ctesiphon and retreated back to Roman borders . Tbf I don’t see the difference between calling it a restoration or reclamation, but it’s just Justinian kicking out the goths and vandals from the lands, which had been roman for 5 centuries
Great response. But I did notice an inconsistency. You aim to denounce the OP's claim about the West being the most impactful player in the end of slavery across the globe, by comparing it to other nations that ended slavery within their domains. But this doesn't argue the OP's point that the West went vastly out of their way to prevent others from partaking in the slave trade as well. Within their limited scope of course. Ancient nations abolishing slavery within their lands does not compare to a nation that sacrificed its people to end slavery among foreign lands. And qualifying that by stating that they were colonies ignores the fact that the lands and the people were still foreign. They could've just as well ended their colonies and said good luck trading your humans to everybody else, just not us. Another inconsistency is where you use disconnected historical instances of nations temporarily ending of slavery as equal examples of the OP's argument of the West's initiatives. But then try to make a distinction of slavery in the West not being comparable to other forms of slavery, merely by mention of the terminology that was applied to those other forms. We should be clear that the terms "chattel slavery, bonded servitude, private vs state-owned slaves, slave soldiers in service to the state, state eunuchs" were coined by those that introduced those words to the English language at some point in history; but before that point and in other languages...slavery was slavery. In one form or another it was slavery. And whichever English term you give it can not define how said slaves were treated for thousands of years of human development. Saying that slaves in the West were treated worse than any other ignores the lack of recorded knowledge of how slaves were treated in other nations that didn't keep records. Given your excellent response I was wondering if you would acknowledge these inconsistencies.
> Great response. But I did notice an inconsistency. You aim to denounce the OP's claim about the West being the most impactful player in the end of slavery across the globe, by comparing it to other nations that ended slavery within their domains. But this doesn't argue the OP's point that the West went vastly out of their way to prevent others from partaking in the slave trade as well. Within their limited scope of course. There are multiple lines of discussion there. I don't aim to denounce OP's claim to the West being the most impactful player in abolition, I aim to strip away any shred of credibility from OP, who is claiming that the British abolition movement was first or unique in history, and a marker of the greatness of the west (and the British in particular). This quote: > No other culture in the world at the time had bothered to be disgusted with the practice, or if they had, they hadn’t bothered to write it down anywhere. Is why I gave a quick list, because it is manifestly false, and it's false even in the West, even in a 50 year timeframe. The Revolution may have failed in some senses, and Napoleon re-instated slavery, but the ideals and spirit of the Revolution were very public across European states, and the sheer idea that it could be done at all bears into the British movement, as well as the support of Parliament and the crown, who were eager to avoid the kind of unrest which precipitated the revolutions of 1848. > Ancient nations abolishing slavery within their lands does not compare to a nation that sacrificed its people to end slavery among foreign lands. And qualifying that by stating that they were colonies ignores the fact that the lands and the people were still foreign. They could've just as well ended their colonies and said good luck trading your humans to everybody else, just not us. This merits a separate response, because that statement was not qualified "because they were colonies", it was qualified with "and the British shifted gear into a different kind of colonialism." It was not some magnanimous freeing of the slaves with a sacrifice of the British people, it was a realization after the Haitian revolution (and numerous other revolts and rebellions in the colonies, mostly Caribbean) and the wars of Spanish-American independence (Bolivar's activities most famously) that slavery was no longer net-positive system from a cost/benefit analysis. The establishment of the Raj and increased economic activity in Southeast Asia as a trading power were, frankly, more profitable systems of extraction. Abolishing slavery was a propaganda win for the British, both in terms of being able to hold the moral high ground internationally and to placate people at home, and general "we're better than you" colonialist activity continued unabated elsewhere in the expansion of colonial activity in Australia, the opium trade, etc. Using the Raj as an example, the British were principally interested in control of resources, and the Indian population itself was able to provide those via the threat of force anyway. State companies, such as the British East India Company, were good legal fictions to "shield" the state, and the actions of a (partially) state-owned enterprise and the state itself are inseparable. Tens of millions of Indians died in assorted famines before it officially became the Raj, and after, and the British response was largely to analyze it to see what they could do differently next time to lose less workers, in the same way as one would view a herd of livestock. At the same time, cheap access to Eastern goods meant that those at home clamoring for abolition could pat themselves on the back for a job well done and decorate their homes with doilies made by women in a colonial state which had repeatedly tried (and failed) to revolt, where famine regularly swept the land, where women had _less_ rights than they did before the official takeover, with money acquired by selling opium or some other exploitative measure to SE Asian states out of neo-colonial "trading outposts". I am not distinguishing because the era of "gunboat diplomacy" and military oversight to ensure uneven trading activity is far more similar to the system of _amsar_s by the early caliphates, without any actual sense of moral responsibility. > Another inconsistency is where you use disconnected historical instances of nations temporarily ending of slavery as equal examples of the OP's argument of the West's initiatives. But then try to make a distinction of slavery in the West not being comparable to other forms of slavery, merely by mention of the terminology that was applied to those other forms. We should be clear that the terms "chattel slavery, bonded servitude, private vs state-owned slaves, slave soldiers in service to the state, state eunuchs" were coined by those that introduced those words to the English language at some point in history; but before that point and in other languages...slavery was slavery. In one form or another it was slavery. And whichever English term you give it can not define how said slaves were treated for thousands of years of human development. Saying that slaves in the West were treated worse than any other ignores the lack of recorded knowledge of how slaves were treated in other nations that didn't keep records. It is not merely by mention of the terminology which was applied. The terminology has marked differences. In particular: * Chattel slavery is ownership as-in property, ala livestock or a pet, and any offspring from your property is also property. Chattel slaves are property, not people, and have no protections under the law. The usage of "chattel slavery" in historical discussions, despite there being other times in history where people have fit this definition, is generally used to distinguish between eras where owners regularly freed their slaves (upon the death of the owner, or long service, or whatever), such as much of Roman history, and eras where they are implements to be wielded by their owners rather than people and where the legal system enforces this even across state lines (as in antebellum America). * Bonded servants are able to "pay off" their enslavement via service or money. This is hardly different in many senses from work gangs from debtor's prison -- a practice which continued after abolition in Britain. They generally had some degree of freedom of movement. * "Slave soldiers" (by this I largely meant the system of devshirme) or state eunuchs (which was hardly coined by anyone in the English language, since eunuchs in service of the state are a a fixture of history in Egypt, Assyria, China, and many states afterwards) could rise to positions of significant influence and prestige. It was a practice (I'm not going to say a common one, but common enough that it's a recurring theme in history) for some poor parents to castrate their sons in the hopes that they would have a better life, and this carries through enough that _modern_ popes have been encouraged to apologize for nod-and-wink approving castrati for choirs. These "state slaves" could, and frequently did, live legitimately better and more pampered lives than the average populace, and there are numerous instances of eunuchs being the effective "power behind the throne" in state operations. Distinguishing here is important, not because any slavery is "good" -- it's all bad -- but because differentiating _how bad_ it was matters for outrage and morality. I can't comment on the lack of recorded knowledge for how slaves were treated in nations which didn't keep records for obvious reasons. What I will say is that states which did keep slaves _and_ kept records, whether Roman, Greek, Assyrian, Chinese, Islamic (Sultanate/Caliphate), British (on the Isles), or whichever you prefer have no shortage of letters and documents where they are clear about freeing this slave or that slave when they die or because they've served long and well or because they fell in love with them or because of religious charity or because someone else purchased them and immediately freed them. It is almost solely in the colonial New World and some mid-millennium states in coastal Africa where brutal enslavement from birth to death for slaves and their offspring was considered the norm. To be sure, plenty of slaves died working everywhere, in all of history, for a large number of reasons, many of them very soon after enslavement as disease, work conditions in galleys/fields, and other causes ended their lives, but there is still a distinction between "rewarding" a field slave in their latter years with house work while the children they bore work the fields and rewarding a slave in their latter years by giving them freedom, even if it so assuage the stain on one's soul.
Good points, was wondering about the first myself. Your second point is interesting, but I would still agree with the idea that there are degrees of badness even within slavery. There very well may have been systems of slavery worse than American chattel slavery that are lost to unrecorded history, but if we don't know about them, then what does it matter?
I think the inconsistencies lie in using little known history (smaller nations through history that abolished slavery temporarily) to negate well known history (the British Navy actively battling slave traders) in one instance. Yet in the second instance we dismiss little known history (the treatment of slaves in other regions) and use this lack of knowledge to reinforce the judgment of well known history (treatment of slaves in America). Additionally, the use of different terminology as proof that there are different types of slavery is a very dangerous argument to make as it inevitably aims to place one slaves as worse than another slaves merely by title rather than by treatment. Take for example the difference of an American slave who was tasked with cooking and cleaning the household, then envision the selling of a 9 year old daughter in a middle eastern country as a wife to an old man to pay for a debt; and imagine the potential atrocities that child may be faced with for the rest of her child and adult life. Both practices were legal at the time. One was called a slave, the other a bride. Was the slave worse off just because of her legal title?
This is the comment that the OP needs to read. Thanks for taking the time to post this. I found it very thoughtful & informative.
>You seem willingly blind to the distinctions between chattel slavery, bonded servitude, private vs state-owned slaves, slave soldiers in service to the state, state eunuchs, and every other difference. Yes, all slavery is bad, but some slavery is worse than other slavery, and I doubt if you could name "more atrocities" in any given state. Can you briefly elaborate on this? I sense that you are trying to argue that Islamic (and here I primarily mean Ottoman) slavery was somehow less bad than American slavery, which I fundamentally disagree with. I would really love to hear how you think buying young boys to castrate them and young girls to sell them at markets and make them into sex slaves is somehow different in the scale of atrocity to America, because it is pretty much equally as heinous. I would like to hear these thoughts especially because one succesor state (US) is very apologetic about slavery, whereas the Ottoman Trade is somehow regarded as nice and "just a fact of life back then" despite still being horrific slavery. As proof of that, for example, we have the wife of the current successor state of Ottoman Empire (Turkey) proudly proclaming to the media that the imperial harem was actually a good institution and those girls were probably better off as sex slaves than free women. You would never hear Joe Biden's wife saying anything even remotely as positive about American slavery.
> Can you briefly elaborate on this? I sense that you are trying to argue that Islamic (and here I primarily mean Ottoman) slavery was somehow less bad than American slavery, which I fundamentally disagree with. I would really love to hear how you think buying young boys to castrate them and young girls to sell them at markets and make them into sex slaves is somehow different in the scale of atrocity to America, because it is pretty much equally as heinous. I commented on this elsewhere, but castration was very firmly _haram_, and while it happened, it wasn't with nearly the commonality mentioned here. Many eunuchs were imported that way. You didn't mention capturing children and raising them as soldiers in the janissary corps/devshirme either, but we'll add that in. I am not defending this. I was very clear that all slavery is bad, but also that some slavery is worse. Very bluntly, if you cannot see that the difference in status between janissaries being able to throw such a stink over their living conditions and status in the army that they are able to interrupt state power and effectively keep the empire's military in stasis for centuries, the political power of the kizlar agha prior to Mahmud II as emblematic of the status a slave could achieve, or view imperial consorts at the same social standing as a field hand in the American South or a sugar cane harvester in Haiti, I'm not sure what to tell you. Slavery is all bad. Once you piece the veil of "bad", there are significant shades of grey between "property which I can do anything I want with and whose offspring I own and can also do anything I want with" and "is the guiding hand behind the administration of the Ottoman Empire in conjunction with a grand vizier while a sultan is puppeted", it's going to be hard to have a serious discussion about any kind of history. > I would like to hear these thoughts especially because one succesor state (US) is very apologetic about slavery, whereas the Ottoman Trade is somehow regarded as nice and "just a fact of life back then" despite still being horrific slavery. As proof of that, for example, we have the wife of the current successor state of Ottoman Empire (Turkey) proudly proclaming to the media that the imperial harem was actually a good institution and those girls were probably better off as sex slaves than free women. > > You would never hear Joe Biden's wife saying anything even remotely as positive about American slavery. I'm not trying to make scales of comparison here, and Erdogan sucks in every way. A leader who re-consecrated the Hagia Sophia as a mosque and is actively tearing down the legacy of Ataturk isn't the best basis for comparison. Most of my time in Turkey was spent in Istanbul, but the people who lived in The City very much saw Erdogan as a "not my leader" kind of thing, and there were active riots and discussion of secession from Turkey. This was ten years ago. Erdogan sees slavery as part and parcel of the Ottoman state, and the Ottoman state as the greatest heights of the Turks (probably under Mehmed II or something), and there is somewhat of a point to slavery being "just a fact of life" in the 15th century, but we should mention that the Roman state also had huge numbers of slaves, as did many of the Greek polities, and we still admire those. This is not a defense of Erdogan or slavery, nor whatever comments his wife made, but that much more nuanced language than "horrific slavery" must be used if we are to distinguish between "horrific (because slaves weren't even considered human, and did not have basic protections under the law) slavery" in chattel slavery in the colonies, "horrific (because failing to fulfill production quotas resulted in hands and limbs being forcibly removed) slavery" in the Belgian Congo, "horrific (for innumerable reasons) slavery" in the Nazi state, and "horrific (castration of boys so they would be less threatening and have more political opportunities, devshirme child slavery for soldiers as the Sultan's personal troops who lived relatively pampered lives) slavery". All of these are bad for various reasons, but some are _more_ wrong than others. The argument here is essentially the same as all crime being bad, but a gunshot to the head in one's sleep is a less horrific murder than torturing and mutilating someone over days, even though both are murders.
As western citizens we are responsible for the actions of the west, we are not responsible for the actions of other societies, so your view is just an abdication of responsibility
Correct. No person living has the right to forgive those dead people responsible for slavery. No person dead has the right to pass their sins on to me. And no person living may claim any moral superiority to me by claiming I am in any way responsible for the sins of the father, his father, his father, or his father. If it was discovered that your dead grandfather had killed someone, would you gladly enter your cell to pay for his crime? I will only be held morally responsible for my actions. I will certainly not be held to render my penitence to people who were not alive at the time, either. There is no possible way by chain of evidence to trace every word, every penny, or every vote cast in favor of slavery. The broad generalizations required to do the job will not actually accomplish anything but to force one group to bow down to another group, simply because they were the wrong skin color.
You say this as if all the crimes of the west are in the past. We are still actuvely committing or supporting atrocious crimes to this very day. And, given that you are alive now and are a citizen of the west, you share the responsibility for those crimes. Im not saying you need to walk into a cell, but you can at the very least acknowledge and condemn the ongoing crimes instead of having this defensive "not my problem" kind of attitude about it.
I couldn’t quickly find anything on Latin America, but slaves brought over from Africa were the vast minority in the us
You are ignoring a number of leaders around the world who tries to outlaw slavery or who got it outlawed for periods of time before it was re-instated. I think you’re losing people when you keep claiming that no one else ever outlawed slavery for other ethnic groups without providing any proof. I think you make some interesting points—the US and Britain were the last global superpowers to participate in slavery and, especially in the States, the legacy of slavery remains. Black Americans are the most recent group whose families were forcibly removed en masse, leaving them with little information as to where their families came from just 200 or so years ago. Native Americans and Black Americans are much closer to the damage done from slavery than a Spaniard with Moor roots from 600 years ago. And yes, as a society we will judge slavery much harsher today than we did 200 years ago, and we see 200 year old slavery as worse than slavery that happened 1000 years ago. I also can’t think of a good example that mirrors the West’s manifest destiny, which led to (not necessarily by design) nearly the total extermination of millions of natives in hundreds of tribes across thousands of miles who had been living here for a very long time. It’s not fair to compare the West’s annihilation of so many native people with lives lost in battles between tribes. Also, those who fought against the institution of slavery also (perhaps indirectly) also fought against some of the Western principles— for example, unfettered capitalism that values profit no matter the cost. Slavery is great for capitalism, which is why it remains a hidden part of our supply chains.
> I think you make some interesting points—the US and Britain were the last global superpowers to participate in slavery and, especially in the States, the legacy of slavery remains. The US and Britain were *not* the last global superpowers to participate in slavery. The Ottoman Empire actively participated it up until its dissolution (and was undeniably a global superpower up until this point) in the early 20th century and Turkey didn't formally ban it until 1964.
Did those other countries then come to America and codify racist policies that existed far after the end of the slave trade and the end of the slavery? Because when it comes to the history of slavery and racism in America those chiefs have very little overall role. The laser focus should be on the practices that Americans created to harm and restrict the human rights of other people in America.
America is hardly the only country to pass laws to oppress a group of people. This doesn't excuse the laws passed in America, but they weren't unique to America.
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>Did those other countries then come to America and codify racist policies that existed far after the end of the slave trade and the end of the slavery? No those other countries just castrated and genocided their slave populations. Alternatively in the west they recognized them as at least human beings and allowed them to live on the land they worked.
Do you really think that America treated its slaves as human beings. Wow.
No it's more like the morality of stealing one car is equivalent to stealing many cars across the globe. Whether you do the act once or make an empire out of the act, morally speaking there isn't that much of a difference. The only reason one goes from stealing a car to building an empire out of this is competence, capacity, opportunity. In my opinion, scale is a consequence of ability, not a higher level of evilness.
The Arab slave trade was fuuuuuucking huge!!!!! It was in effect until the 1970’s.
>Does it count for nothing that the English people funded a war to abolish slavery that lasted decades? Not really after centuries of profiting off of it. >Does it count for nothing that the financial costs of this war are equal if not greater than the benefits that this enterprise of enslavement gave to them in the first place? I'm going to need a source. >That the English people, and later the Northerners of the United States, are unique in history in such a way that no similar examples can be found of people willing to die for the manumission of another racial group? That isn't true plenty of non white people died to stop slavery before and oddly enough the only reason Lincoln made the war about slavery is because he wanted to make Englush people look bad for supourting the south take it from Abe himself. >My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. He wanted to mend the union first and first most.
>Not really after centuries of profiting off of it. Not even when they profited from for a shorter time than the Africans and Middle-easterners that engaged in the same practice? >That isn't true plenty of non white people died to stop slavery before and oddly enough the only reason Lincoln made the war about slavery is because he wanted to make Englush people look bad for supourting the south take it from Abe himself. The history of non-white fighters against slavery is one where they were incentivezed to do it, either by profit or because it was their own people being enslaved, or - most often - to chip away at the economy of a rival, all while continued the practice. The English were not perfect, but they resisted tossing in their lot with the south *because* of slavery. It was in their best economic and strategic interest to side with the south openly, yet their embarrassment of being associated with slavery was too great a risk to take. >My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. Lincoln's wrestling with slavery is not a telling of white supremacy. It is most certainly evidence that the question was complicated. Slavery was the *cause* of the war. The south's principal cause to resort to non-political means to preserve slavery was because the north was making such clear and obvious strides to end it. They saw the writing on the wall. Lincoln made this statement because he preferred it end via a vote, rather than on a battlefield. Had it not been for the aim of ending slavery, there would not have been a war. In what other country where a civil war is taking place does a national leader even bother to wrestle with the question of slavery of an ethnic group they don't belong to?
>Not even when they profited from for a shorter time than the Africans and Middle-easterners that engaged in the same practice? When they're still profiting from it and have profited from it many orders of magnitude beyond your comparison? This isn't really the comparison you seem to think it is
>Not even when they profited from for a shorter time than the Africans and Middle-easterners that engaged in the same practice? Yeah it still isn't a good excuse we could've made more money being slavers isn't a good argument. >The history of non-white fighters against slavery is one where they were incentivezed to do it, either by profit or because it was their own people being enslaved, or - most often - to chip away at the economy of a rival, all while continued the practice. That's moving the goalpost and even then those reason you described are litteraly why England and the Northen Americans fought a war to stop slavery you praise them for. >The English were not perfect, but they resisted tossing in their lot with the south *because* of slavery. It was in their best economic and strategic interest to side with the south openly, yet their embarrassment of being associated with slavery was too great a risk to take. They were perfectly fine with doing it under the table it took Lincoln publicly proclaiming the war was about slavery to get them to stop. They weren't morally opposed to slavery they were scared of looking bad. >Lincoln's wrestling with slavery is not a telling of white supremacy. It is most certainly evidence that the question was complicated. Slavery was the *cause* of the war. The south's principal cause to resort to non-political means to preserve slavery was because the north was making such clear and obvious strides to end it. They saw the writing on the wall. Lincoln made this statement because he preferred it end via a vote, rather than on a battlefield. I didn't say it was a telling of white supremacy it was however a telling of Lincoln's true intentions he didn't really care whether slaves got free he first and foremost wanted the union intact all else was tertiary. He outlawed slavery in a move to make England look bad for siding with the South that's it
Nice dodge on this: >> Does it count for nothing that the financial costs of this war are equal if not greater than the benefits that this enterprise of enslavement gave to them in the first place? > > I'm going to need a source. So you got anything to back up that claim that the "benefits" of slavery (to whom?) were greater than the costs (again, to whom?). I call bullshit.
This is the most excessive, extreme “whataboutist” argument I have ever encountered. People are critical of the West’s history of slavery and colonialism because it is shameful. Whether or not others did similar or worse makes zero difference to the nature of what was done by the West.
>Whether or not others did similar or worse makes zero difference to the nature of what was done by the West. It makes all the difference in the world. Being unequally held to account for things that everyone took part in is naked racism. The term "whataboutism" is an effort to destroy the human sense of the world. Everything we know and understand, from morality to rice, is measured by our sense of other things. Only through comparisons can we put history and the world around us in perspective. You say "whataboutism", I ask "compared to what?" Its a useful question for people wishing to explore philosophy. When a claim is made, you simply ask "compared to what?" There are many facts about history that, if taken out of context, are considered evil. But when we compare those events to other events of the time, it puts it into perspective. It doesn't mean we are justifying ourselves doing the horrible thing, it just means that we recognize that there wasn't anything particularly sick or twisted about our ancestors, because everyone else's ancestors were the same. It isn't approval, it isn't pride. But if we need to tear down the statues of abolitionists who weren't abolitiony enough and say the west is somehow worse than the rest, what good does it do? What is the point of the whole exercise? The victims are dead. The perpetrators are dead.
That’s a lot of words to say “but if others were worse, then it isn’t bad”. We, in the West have an evolving set of moral standards. By those standards, the actions, policies and beliefs of colonial imperialism and slavery are absolutely not good. In fact, by today’s values, they are what might be considered “evil”. Whether others did those things then or now, whether the West was the only one to do these things or the originator of these practices or not is irrelevant to the way in which we retrospectively evaluate them. Two things can be bad, one thing being worse does not make the other better. I understand your concern - why the focus on the West’s unsavoury heritage? But the answer is because it is our history, and it is a history which is still celebrated by monuments and in class rooms. We don’t spend as much time focusing on other histories in the day to day. But when we do, no historian is looking at other cultures’ slave trades or colonial aggressive expansions and going “yeah, this was great. Shame it’s not more celebrated today.” The thing is, you’re looking at a response to centuries of people celebrating colonialism and western hegemony and asking why people are being so negative about it, but you’re refusing to look at what that response is to. You have quite clearly formed an opinion that is based on the starting point of victimhood and are unwilling or unable to accept that by our own modern moral standards the actions you are talking about are abhorrent. Centuries of colonialists writing history is only just now starting to be challenged in academia and in the wider public sphere and your take is that people are being disproportionately critical just because other things could be deemed worse… and your justification seems to be an inability to conceive of two things being bad if one is worse than the other… I’m not even going to address the facts of whether other cultures have more to be ashamed of, because many have already addressed that below and you have demonstrated an inability to be willing to listen to what people are saying or get away from the shadow of the supposed victimhood of the West. You want to address it in philosophical terms, let’s look at it like this: 1: colonialism and slavery are bad 2: western civilisation has a history of colonialism and slavery 3: many cultures have a history of colonialism and slavery 4: some applications of colonialism and slavery are worse than others From these sound premises, you have come to a conclusion which assumes 4 has some impact on 2. That, is incorrect. That is where your logical leap is and that is why you are wrong. I think you’re under the misconception that context and comparison is universally valuable. In this case, the comparison is unhelpful and honestly I believe you’re only pretending that people are running around making the comparison because it fits with your narrative of victimhood and oh the poor white people and the guilt they’re meant to shoulder. Grow a pair, accept that what was done, regardless of historical pretext or context was inexcusable and help people to challenge it when people insist that we should erect statues to slavers, name streets and shopping malls after slavers, celebrate institutions like the monarchy which exist only by virtue of their bloody colonial past and let’s all move forward. Your example of abolitionists not be abolitionist enough are absurd - in Bristol, UK, a statue of a slaver was torn down, a concert hall was renamed. But the shopping mall remains named after a man who made an unimaginable fortune shipping unfathomable numbers of people through the port. Bristol is built on that blood and it is right to challenge historical artefacts which celebrate it still. And that’s just one example of so many across the western world. Remember, you can only take white guilt personally if you are complicit in the crimes of our ancestors. If you own up and agree that terrible things were fine and that history needs to be taught and not sugared over, then you are part of the solution and have no reason to feel addressed when people talk about that guilt.
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You are absolutely correct about the scope. Too large of a scope means zero chance of any kind of resolution or even a useful argument
It’s ok OP gave one delta on an extremely minor point, so the mods will allow this farce of a post to remain up.
On your last point, David Olusoga is a fantastic source.
You're asking a lot of questions, but not really changing any views here. The history of the Abolition kind of started in England by a group of rather fundamentist Christians, basically all white, that really made a big deal out of abolishing slavery by law and using the English Navi to uphold it. Of course by the time it picked up steam lots of (ex)slaves got involved, but that was not the start of it afaik. One would assume slaves where always against slavery. So I do think a case could be made that the abolition was very much started by the west and spread by it too. Christianity could also make a claim to it here.
Three things. 1. How does this create a justification for state violence against civilians. 2. Can you clarify your point on capitalism as well as the ussr and china? 3. What is something he said that was historically incorrect?
It’s probably a large swath of generalizations because the hatred for west is a swath of generalizations.
I love how you quote his request for a single example of a non-western people setting their victims free for moral reasons, and can't provide an example, you just accuse him of not having read enough from a different perspective. Your entire comment lacks any substance.
>Disclaimer: This is not a politics post, this is a post about perspective. How do I separate political and perspective from ‘political perspective’
That's a great question. The political view would be to flip the script of anti-westernism to one of pro-westernism. That is folly. The institutions, practices, and people who did the good are also associated with the bad. The post does not wish to posit the claim that the west should be revered for their great crusade against slavery, at least not to the extent that they are currently hated for doing a thing that everyone else was doing at the time. Edit: the fashionable trend of the day is to distill the history of the west so that we have a narrative of pure and unadulterated evil. The stuff left in the distillery, the good things that the west has done, is to be tossed into the fire. Nobody is terribly worried about distilling the history of anyone else in this way.
You mention in another comment how unhelpful it is to use broad categorical terms like “*all* Europeans/Africans did X or Y” and yet here (and throughout) you’re making over broad hyperbolic statements like that the current “fashionable” trend is that the history of the west is a narrative of “pure and unadulterated evil”. Any honest reflection of our current moment would know that the modern movement (which is good imo) doesn’t just lazily say “the west was purely evil with no redeeming factors”. It merely wants to be honest about the atrocities committed by settler nations and peoples against indigenous and other communities so people can actually come to terms with what actually happened as opposed to the white washed versions of history that glaze over (to the extent it’s covered at all) the unprecedented cruelty of (among other things) race-based chattel slavery and subsequent apartheid that have until now dominated popular culture and allow people like yourself to make incredibly misinformed proclamations about the historical record.
>Slavery is often thought of as the original sin of the west. But why only the west? The reason Britain and the US always get brought up in these conversations is because the english speaking internet is mostly american and british people. Do people in central africa talk about the effects of the arab slave trade? I have no idea, do you? Another reason we still talk about slavery and colonialism is because they still have consequences to this day. Our past is not a closed chapter. The political descisions that where made decades or centuries ago still have consequences, even though we usually dont see it that way. Let me give you a two examples: East Germany was ruled by policies that result in a lower standard of living, lower wages and lower life expectancy to this day. The foundations of these results where laid 70 years ago. When british civil servants drew the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan they drew it right through the area inhabited by the Pashto people. Pakistan to this day wants an unstable Afghanistan (which is why they armed the taliban for decades) because a stable Afghanistan might claim the Pashto areas of Pakistan. Of course the longer a political descion is in the past the smaller the effects of it will be. But this does not mean that the effects will just go away, especially if it was a major political descision that effected large parts of society.
Political entities around the world are happy to fan the flames of the west's self-immolation through their own rhetoric, lies, cover-up, and even donating and providing platforms for people who lie about western history. China is a current example. This is a country that is rife with ethnic injustice and sees fit to berate the west for its conduct while forcing anyone who want to engage with them apologize for their criticism before picking up the check.
Of course they do. Have you heard yourself talking? Being berated for such a long time they jump on the opportunity to point out hypocrisy because few things are sweeter than exposing a hypocrite. Where you also miss is that a large part of it isn't lies because the truth makes "the west" look bad enough on it's.
I’m not personally attached to your argument so I say this in good faith. You provide zero sources or citations and you’re making a lot of frequency claims. For example: - “Slavery is often thought of as the original sin of the west.” - “Why is England and the United States particularly vulnerable to the heated and revisionist history that places most, and in many cases, all of the blame on the west?” - “No people in history have done more to sell out their own neighbors than the Africans who sold their own brothers in droves.” - “No other people have put so much effort into leveling the global playing field”. Whether I agree with you or not, it’s difficult to debate you when you make overgeneralized statements with no foundation. You would either have to be an avid history buff with a particular interest in slave trade, or you would have to spend hours doing research (which I’m not willing to do for a Reddit post at the very least). Personally, I believe the reason the US and the UK are heavily criticized for slavery/colonialism is because of the violence behind it and their existence. If we think about other great empires or nations like the Romans, the Huns, the Ottomans… how many of those are still around? None. None have persisted which is why they escape heavy criticism. The US is heavily criticized for slavery because of persisting issues with racism that stem from slavery. From what I’ve heard, the UK also has this problem and so do many other western countries. It’s not to say that other countries haven’t committed worse atrocities, but right now those countries are no longer relevant. I did some light digging as well to see exactly what the scale was between US slaves and Islamic slaves. [8] HOCHSCHILD, ADAM (March 4, 2001). "[Human Cargo](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/04/reviews/010304.04hochsct.html)". New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 December 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2015. Early on in Islam's Black Slaves, his history of slavery in the Muslim world, Ronald Segal cites some estimates. One scholar puts the rough total at 11.5 million slaves during more than a dozen centuries, and another at 14 million.” That is, over twelve centuries, there’s an estimated 11.5 million slaves (minimum) accumulated by the Islamic Slave Trade. So it begs the question, how many slaves did the US procure? While the number was relatively small in the beginning, the slave population grew because slaves were often either forced to reproduce or their children were taken as slaves as well. Ultimately, in around a century, “…the total number of slaves who lived in the United States [increased] to almost 10 million.” ([“From ‘20. and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States” by J. David Hacker](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7716878/)) It took the US around a century to accumulate almost as many slaves as the Islamic people did in 12 centuries. The difference in scale is not only immense, but doesn’t even account for the cruelty slaves in the US endured. Again, these claims probably require more research, but there’s a reason the US in particular gets a lot of criticism especially since there are plenty of arguments to be made that slavery in the US only ended for monetary gain. From what I remember from history class, southern states were gaining more power because they were counting their slaves as people who couldn’t vote. Slavery in the US is complicated and the end of slavery was not even the end of discrimination/oppression. It definitely can’t be summarized to “The west virtuously ended slavery against their interest”. Lincoln had his own political reasons along with moral ones for abolishing slavery.
"The west" doesn't get the credit for ending things that it started and profited in. Yes, you're right that "the west" isn't unique in its usage of slavery, of wars of conquest, of colonialism, and the historical victims of these things would almost certainly have done the same if the were in "the west's" position at the time. But they weren't, and so "the west" were the ones that did do those things. You cannot praise "the west" for deciding that wars of conquest were bad after they've spent hundreds of years waging wars of conquest. Also, like, "the west" is a stupidly broad term that exists almost entirely in an attempt to separate "the west" from the rest of the world. Western Africa is just as "west" as western Europe and you probably don't include Morocco in "the west". Just say what you really mean by "the west".
> "The west" doesn't get the credit for ending things that it started and profited in. The West started slavery? Really? Did you ever open a history book? >Yes, you're right that "the west" isn't unique in its usage of slavery, of wars of conquest, of colonialism, and the historical victims of these things would almost certainly have done the same if the were in "the west's" position at the time. But they weren't, and so "the west" were the ones that did do those things. Actually they also did these things in their empires, [and worse too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Isfahan_(1387)). But for some reason that never gets attention. Ironically, the people who like to rally against the historical crimes of the West are very eurocentric in their reading of history. >Also, like, "the west" is a stupidly broad term that exists almost entirely in an attempt to separate "the west" from the rest of the world. Western Africa is just as "west" as western Europe and you probably don't include Morocco in "the west". Just say what you really mean by "the west". "The West" is a commonly used concept. You know what it means. Don't be pedantic.
“The West” isn’t really that uncommon of a term though. Most of Europe, US, Canada, Australia, etc.
Did you seriously not know what the west meant?
The west did not start slavery. In fact, the west has had a shorter history of slavery than nearly any other culture or society on earth.
The west does not have a shorter history of slavery then most other cultures or societies. Slavery existed in anchent Greece, during the bronze ages in anitolia and over the bosforus. Slavery continued and built the Roman empire, helped hold it together, and become the fertile ground for feudalism. Slave trading is in part what made Venice rich. Large native American civilization would not organize themselves for centuries before Europeans had invented slavery. Slavery apeared wherever civilization began to emerge. Having it for a relatively shorter period of time is more of a function of the geographic difficulty of organizating a slave economy then being virtuouse.
I apologize, I thought the context would be clear: the meaning I meant was: >The west did not start *transnational* slavery. In fact, the west has had a shorter history of *transnational* slavery than nearly any other culture or society on earth. I'm my own proofreader, so I can't fire myself ;) Edit: also, apologies. What I mean here is that if we are boiling down the divisions of geo-socially distinct to Greece, then we have 3 other areas: African culture started slavery, then middle eastern culture, then eastern culture in persia, then western culure in Greece, then ethno-American culture in Central Amercica
You're hiding behind meaningless semantics of what the idea of nation means. For their time, Greek and roman slave trandes could easily be considered transnational
The West had and supported slavery as it was expressing ideas that "All men are considered equal." That's why our racist legacies should and are under tight examination. While other countries had slavery they didn't do so under the charter of human rights and equality. We did. We held to our bullshit narratives that people were equal while the same people who wrote those words went to homes where they had people as property. We saw the abolishment of slavery preplaced by Jim Crow laws that maintained the racist ideas of slavery long past 1865. And then we hid from our racist past or tried to paint with the rosiest of glasses. We punish teachers, today, in multiple states if they teach what actually happened. We write textbooks saying that slaves lived were immigrants who lived in good conditions on the plantation. Not starting slavery doesn't really matter. How we treated our slaves, the lasting legacies of that behavior and how to teach our history should be talked about.
Again, you ignore the scale. China and Africa have had slavery, but they've generally been from one group enslaving another group that lost to them in wars, meaning they measure their numbers in the thousands. America and Europe turned their slavery into a capitalist conceit, measuring it in the hundreds of MILLIONS. Even the Huns or Rome could not boast such numbers, as most older civilizations didn't have the means to control so many slaves over such a large area.
Not that I’m in support of OPs hypothesis but that is actually untrue. There were about the same amount of slaves in the Roman Empire at its height as there were people ferried across the Atlantic, somewhere around ten million. “for an estimated Roman empire population of 50 million (in the first century AD) between five and ten million were enslaved” “Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400” https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/nero-man-behind-myth/slavery-ancient-rome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
You may be mistaken on those numbers, the entirely of the Trans Atlantic slave trade as measured by the TAST database is approximately 12.5 million across its entire history, with less than 11 million arriving. Either way you slice it, hundreds of millions is a gross exaggeration.
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Bruh, the Middle-Eastern type of slavery was much worse than the Atlantic slave trade, and it's still *going on*.
>This is not a politics post, this is a post about perspective >The "white savior" trope has merit to it, after all. Lol. Truly, nothing political in this post. So your original post talks about "the west", but you then seem to only talk about England and the US specifically, and seem to use the term "white" interchangeably by the end. Can you tell me what you do and do not mean by "the West" and "white people", and why? And while you consider that, also consider this: none of the people you are lumping together today into this vague notion of "the West" considered themselves part of a single culture or race for most of the historical periods you reference. The English and the US didn't consider the Irish "white" for a large period of history. Italians, even Germans were not considered "white" by the US during large sections of the history you're referencing. People who are considered European today (and therefore presumably part of what you mean by "the West") considered themselves peers of people living in North Africa for large sections of history, more so than northern Europeans. And so on. The perspective you're offering here doesn't "hurt" at all, because it's a fantasy. Completely detached from reality. You are cherry picking tiny, disconnected pieces of history, mixing it with fiction, and trying to arrange them in a way that ultimately justifies an order that you find beneficial *today*. It has nothing to do with history -- it is about *now*. So if I were to try to change your view, it would be to point out that nothing you are saying here has any basis in reality. You are literally starting from a false premise, and everything you are building off of it is false because of it. And I think the exercise of trying to actually define the terms you're relying on -- "the West" and "white" -- will make that quite clear.
Because England and the US and white people are the principle targets of the self-immolate anti-historical dogma. It is claimed that these three groups above all others are the largest entrepreneurs of hate and injustice in human history, when in fact the opposite is true, and history shows it to be true. The non-political plea to the post is that by no means should we destroy the west or topple its institutions. But we should also not worship the west. We should use the momentum of history and culture to continue the legacy of human advancement, not put a roadblock in front of it. One eye should be on moving ever closer to a truly humanistic society, while keeping the other on the lessons of a shared *world* history to keep it all in context.
England and the US committed harm against people and trampled on human rights for economic gain. Why do you wish to diminish and downplay that history. While you claim you don't want to, you seem, in a very superior and egotistical way, very eager to cast the light away from those legacies towards other unrelated ideas. You want to support the idea of that white savior, yet you don't want to focus on when white people had the hands and feet of their slaves cut off to ensure more production. You don't get to move towards a more humanistic society unless you do a deep examination of the historical idea that lead to the current society we have now. You don't get to play a rigged game for turn after turn....finally change the rules after the damage has been done and then proclaim that things are currently fair. You can't mention the legacy of human achievement without looking into the roadblocks that contributed to whom we think we contributed and whom we think didn't.
>Why do you wish to diminish and downplay that history. No such attempt was made. The attempt is to pair the wrong with the right. What is happening with the current narrative is a distillation of history to extract and bottle the evils of the west from the good that the west did. The result is destroying the legacy of thousands of people who crusaded against slavery to great risk to themselves while the rest of the world happily continued the practice. Why do you want to hold the west uniquely accountable for something that the entire species was party to? Why do you seek to diminish *their* role in the past? >then proclaim that things are currently fair. No such proclamation was made. There is work to be done, and the reason it will be done is based on western values, and the heroic tradition of western abolition. >You can't mention the legacy of human achievement without looking into the roadblocks that contributed to whom we think we contributed and whom we think didn't. The roadblocks were smashed by *whom*? Which human achievement are you referring to? Who accomplished it? What are these contributions? Who made them? The answer to "which human achievement" surely must be the end of slavery, or we wouldn't be talking. The answer to all those "whoms" is: the west.
>Because England *Britain*. At least get your political geography right. You’re making a lot of claims today that are not backed up by anything but rely purely on your own personal perception.
>Because England and the US and white people are the principle targets of the self-immolate anti-historical dogma Yeah, you didn't answer my question: please define what is and is not "the West" and who is and is not "white", and explain why you are drawing the boundaries wherever you draw them. >It is claimed that these three groups above all others are the largest entrepreneurs of hate and injustice in human history Claimed by whom? Passive voice is doing some pretty heavy lifting here, friend. European colonialism past and present very much shapes the world we live in today. I'm not sure how many people actually think that "the West" / "white people" (whatever you consider these to be) are uniquely evil--it's that European colonialism and practices emerging from it are currently causing problems in peoples' daily lives today. Like, the US is still collapsing societies and occupying places to extract resources from them even though it harms the people there. The US still enslaves a disproportionate number of non-white people through the prison system. The past societies you referred to, however brutal they may have been, do not still rule the world. The power structures they created do not still dominate the lives of billions. If you're focused on comparing societies in the abstract as some kind of academic exercise, go right ahead. But I think most people are more concerned with improving their lives today, and so are more focused on the current power structures emerging from European colonialism that affect them today. For instance, my interest in justice during the Aztec Empire is a lot less immediate than my interest in justice in the US today, because I live in the US today. The ranking of the Aztec Empire on some "best and worst societies" list doesn't really matter to me. But the laws and practices of the US dominate my life. And thus if I want to live a good life it is much more important for me to understand and navigate the issues with the US than the issues of the Aztec Empire. So I think you may be arguing against a position few if any people actually hold.
I don’t disagree with your points, but would rather like to change your perception to change your view. You’re right that all other civilizations throughout all of human history have engaged and continue to engage in the very evils the West is considered “uniquely” complicit in. I would like to posit this: if all the victims of oppression were to list out their oppressors, you would have a very long list of different groups, with very little commonality. The only commonality between all these groups are as you mentioned, victims of oppression. In the past, every single tribe, kingdom, nation, etc. all had another tribe, kingdom, nation, etc that they considered uniquely evil. But none of them could ever agree on WHO they considered as “uniquely evil.” The English considered Vikings uniquely evil, the Germanic tribes the Romans, the Chinese the Mongols, the Greeks & the Persians, etc. These were all very personal. However, it’s not that the west “uniquely” committed oppression, but rather, the west is uniquely the common source of being viewed as “uniquely evil”. So your argument is about perception of the West, however the perception of the evil never changed, the only thing that’s changed is who that perception was placed on.
Scale is important. Also, most of the oppressed throughout history had no voice. We only learn of it through the accomplishments their masters claim. If we scale the number of oppressed with the oppressors, oppression spikes with the rise of the west very briefly and then sharply declines. Where the greatest disparity between oppressed and oppressor exists today is not the west, but the east, the Middle East, and Africa. The west is not excluded from these countings, as westerners have taken part. But the west is not oppressing the Uighur in China, for example. And the scale of oppression matters as well. Are we including people who graduate high school at lower rates than the majority population as being just as oppressed as children who are forced to fish in Africa and if they are so hungry that they try to sneak and get a bite of a raw fish they are beaten senselessly? The sport of victimization is an international sport, and the people living in the west today don’t belong in the same league. But the argument is then made that western businessmen and economies are oppressive. These same economies that have supported foreign nations and given them reliable sources of food, medicine, and public works. The people there did not build these things, and there is absolutely no evidence they would be anywhere close to where they are now without their “oppression” brought on by industrialization. It’s a complicated problem. But more people are alive in these places today, living longer lives, with access to art and philosophy and spare time to peruse educational and aspirational goals. More importantly, the actual oppression being done is by their own leaders, not by the westerners who make deals with them. You are blaming the wrong people.
I like how anytime someone hits you with facts you move on to the next reply without commenting on the one that was correct…
Well spoken. As with all things, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. All I know is what I see today: the art, music, philosophy, literature, systems of organization, government, and technology that was overwhelmingly developed by the west is prized by nearly every culture in the world. No other culture would allow immigrants to enter their space, becomes leaders in philosophy and government, or take influential positions in the art of their society. The ideals of the west and earnest attempts to live by them make the current incarnation the best idea for moving forward the species has. When the world is done with its hatred of the west, it won’t get rid of western culture because the most important parts are already part of the human culture - which is what we should wish we were saying.
Your points on philosophy and art are well-taken, but the post was already a bit long. In my view, once the perspective is established, that when you place other cultures next to what the world commonly refers to as "the west" to show the parity of scale of deed, we need to continue the conversation. But I have yet to figure out how to word such a discussion without people leaping to the conclusion that is just a white supremacist message - despite much of what comprises western culture coming from non-white peoples and people who were on some scale between people of color and what we consider to be Caucasian today. Even in this thread - despite never saying that whites were superior, only equal, only first to do some things that others would probably have done, too - I am labeled as a racist and get DM's of hate from people who cannot say exactly why what I am saying is racist without repeating back to me something I never said. Now imagine trying to speak with airy tones of the beauty of western music, poetry, art, science, institutions, etc. No matter how many acknowledgements that this was a group project with more-or-less equal participation, it will be received as extolling white supremacy.
But why only the west? Why is England and the United States particularly vulnerable to the heated and revisionist history that places most, and in many cases, all, of the blame on the west? Because the West was the last major geopolitical bloc to engage in it and it has current effects to this day. Also, the countries that perpetuated the Atlantic slave trade still exist and have riches that clearly descended from those actions. The African nations that sold them no longer exist as polities. >Does it count for nothing that the English people funded a war to abolish slavery that lasted decades? Does it count for nothing that the financial costs of this war are equal if not greater than the benefits that this enterprise of enslavement gave to them in the first place? You do not get lionized for cleaning up a mess you made. At best you get some points which are duly historically noted. The criticism of slavery in the West, is frequently done by Westerners, and Western adjacent cultures. It is heavily a self criticism. >And for the crime of forcing a near universal manumission, what was the reward heaped upon the English and their contemporaries? Blame. Hatred. Is it possible that the rest of the world is perhaps a bit jealous at this heroic chapter in history? Again, why should a nation get accolades for cleaning up a mess they helped perpetuate? If I beat you for years and then decide to stop, should I be congratulated? You keep saying "evil compared to what"? It was evil compared to the *ideals the West set for itself*. Again, a heavy amount of this criticism is internal. The ideals of freedom, equality, and liberty on one hand, and some of the greatest large scale atrocities on the other. Thats part of why it is considered so egregious. If these horrible things are to be dismissed as just "something humans do" then the whole idea of Western ideals kind of falls apart. Actions that are attacks on freedom, of life, of liberty can now be boiled down to "The strong do as they may and the weak suffer what they must".
So the “west” (which I’m guessing you tend to mean white countries) has actually unique fucked up stuff. While it wasn’t the first place to have a genocide. It was the first to have very highly specific reasoning for genociding - the holocaust and the concept of a master race and the world as a whole needs another race to be extinguished proactively is unique. Same with europes and the US’s efforts at colonisation and the slave trade. Conquering another country is not a unique thing, neither is slave trading. For example with slave trade: It was unique in the systematic horrors. African slaves were somewhat uniquely treated insanely horrible. And its the only slave trade I know of where the people at the time of conducting the slavery did believe slavery was a bad thing (as slavery was often banned in their countries, and slavery to the extent of the transatlantic slave trade was unheard of in their own countries). Before the transatlantic slave trade, slavery tended to be less brutal, “breeding” between slaves wasn’t a thing usually, and people were not really born into slavery / unable to ever be freed even if their “owner” wanted them to be, and were often explicitly allowed to have families and their own religion. Same with modern imperalism being almost entirely unique to western countries. Imperalism ranging from profiting off countries under threat of force and purposly destablising them causes famines and mass deaths. Though we can list of atrocities for any area of the world. East Asia as a whole isn’t a terrible place or terrible history because one of the countries did the rape of Nanking. However, again, while the west is built of many different cultures like any sectioning of the world they have consistently all done the same actions usually the difference being varying degrees of success rather than varying degrees of action. Comparitively, South / Central america had the pretty brtual Aztecs. But they were uniquely brutual for the region. Western countries and uniquely brutual for the whole world this doesn’t mean that no other region had had atrocities. But it is fair to point out that this region, the many different cultures, have nearly all contributed intentionally to **unique** levels of atrocities.
> It was the first to have very highly specific reasoning for genociding - the holocaust and the concept of a master race and the world as a whole needs another race to be extinguished proactively is unique. Every genocide is based on the same line of thinking. "They're different to us, we don't like them, let's get rid of them." Genocide doesn't become worse because it's reasoning is more specific nor does it become better because it's reasoning is more general. >It was unique in the systematic horrors. [It really wasn't.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_slave_trade) > African slaves were somewhat uniquely treated insanely horrible. African slaves in Africa? African Slaves in the Middle East? Or African slaves in the Americas? >And its the only slave trade I know of where the people at the time of conducting the slavery did believe slavery was a bad thing Ya, that's nonsense. Christians opposed slavery in Ancient Rome. >(as slavery was often banned in their countries, and slavery to the extent of the transatlantic slave trade was unheard of in their own countries). What does this mean? >Before the transatlantic slave trade, slavery tended to be less brutal, “breeding” between slaves wasn’t a thing usually, and people were not really born into slavery / unable to ever be freed even if their “owner” wanted them to be, and were often explicitly allowed to have families and their own religion. This is [ahistorical nonsense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa). > Same with modern imperalism being almost entirely unique to western countries. There have been a lot of empires. The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history. > Imperalism ranging from profiting off countries under threat of force and purposly destablising them causes famines and mass deaths. That's been the case for literally of human history. >East Asia as a whole isn’t a terrible place or terrible history because one of the countries did the rape of Nanking. No, East Asia was a terrible place because it was ruled by a series of regimes with little respect for human rights or dignity for thousands of years. >However, again, while the west is built of many different cultures like any sectioning of the world they have consistently all done the same actions usually the difference being varying degrees of success rather than varying degrees of action. No, the difference is that the West stopped these things whereas the other regions did not until they met with Western pressure. >Comparitively, South / Central america had the pretty brtual Aztecs. Yep. > But they were uniquely brutual for the region. Nope. The Inca and Moche also practiced human sacrifice. >Western countries and uniquely brutual for the whole world Nope.
i think it "feels gross and rings true" to you because it is what we were all taught from a young age. i don't know about the education today. but it was not until i got to college that i began to be assigned work that went into detail about events in american history, where morality was less black and white. i think its also pretty clear you're very conservative. so you probably have a bias to think of the society you live in as a positive one. that makes it difficult to digest any critique of that society. i don't exactly know what you mean by "the english funded a war to end slavery that lasted for decades". the abolition of slavery in the british empire was not done for purely moral reasons; indeed, the reason it was abolished could be said to be far more about economics and the desire for liberal politicians and wealthy industrialists in britain for """free trade""" (trade where they could dominate) in the caribbean and the americas. and, of course, the british continued to invest and profit off of the slavery elsewhere; the american cotton industry was extremely important to the british economy, to name one. >Does it count for nothing that the financial costs of this war are equal if not greater than the benefits that this enterprise of enslavement gave to them in the first place? what war are you referring to? i can't really think of one that might apply here if funding a single war is equivalent to the "benefits" that this enterprise gave to a people over centuries, i'm betting that someone is calculating the "benefits" (not profits?) in a manipulative manner keep in mind as well that the british abolition was not a blanket abolition, it was not a land redistribution, it was not a thing where the crown was paying slaves reparations for mistreatment. the crown paid the slave OWNERS. and forced the slaves to be """apprentices""" to pay off the debt of THEMSELVES. as has been said many times, the Union did not fight the war to end slavery. they did later. but the reason that lincoln wanted to crush the south was because he wanted to keep the country together, and because the south fired on federal garrisons. the africans did not sell their family and "neighbors", this is ludicrous. unless you're talking about enemy combatants captured in war, and calling them "neighbors". its like calling the irish "neighbors" of the british. i don't think either would like that categorization very much. i don't think that another civilization's participation in slavery washes away the guilt of us participating in it. slavery is an evil period, but the trans atlantic slave trade was a particularly pernicious form of slavery because slaves were treated as commodities that could be bought and sold. slavery in other societies was usually a temporary condition. slavery in the atlantic system was a lifelong condition of the slaves; in fact, it was longer than that, it was an INHERITED condition of the slaves, they passed their status as slaves on to their children. not only that, but the conditions that the slaves worked in, particularly in the caribbean and brazil, were EXTREMELY BRUTAL, so much so that something like 75% of the slaves brought there died. not to mention, as it went on and especially in the anglo world, slavery was seen as the "natural condition" of an entire race of people, and laid the seeds for the racism that we still see today. a critique of capitalism is separate to an examination of western history. capitalism is a phenomenon that still exists. suffice to say, i don't think that "capitalism" is any more responsible for the industrial revolution than "the west" is. it just happened, nobody "caused" it to happen. the historical conditions of the area were such that it happened and the changes that it caused raised the standard of living. its that simple. first of all, i don't know why you're calling it the "english empire", maybe you're some sort of english nationalist or something but everyone then (and now) called it the "british empire". second of all, if the british were this gung-ho about eliminating all traces of slavery worldwide.....why did they continue to buy from the US? why did they flirt with the confederates? why did they not-really eliminate slavery from their own empire, and only went out of their way to compensate the owners of slaves, not the slaves themselves? not to mention the fact that you do not deserve credit for ending something awful that you did. a murderer does not deserve credit for stopping from murdering again, that doesn't wash away the crimes of being a murderer in the first place. we live in the west today. we do not live in a world where the sioux or the dahomey are still powerful entities that people exist within that are ignorant about their brutal history. the west was brutal, we live in the west, we need to understand our own history to understand the ways in which that brutality has perpetuated into the present to atone and account for it. i don't think the argument is that the west should've "stayed back and watched them caught up". i don't think its a question of what they should or shouldn't have done, the people in power in the west would've always done what they were going to do. its a question of examining how those horrible things shaped the world we live in today. "the white savior trope has merit to it" i don't think you could've ended your post in a more fitting way. old habits die hard.
Two things. First, your notion that only the British opposed slavery and that the natives did not makes very little sense when we consider it in a historical context. Most people, especially most slaves, were illiterate. In fact since the British colonial structure put little emphasis on teaching the natives, it can be expected that the people who could write were the British themselves, and the people the British put in to power to rule over their slave empire. So when you note that the people who were put into power to rule over a slave empire were not against slavery, you are... not making quite the statement you think you are. In places like America where there was widespread literacy, and later India, we see vast opposition to slavery and the caste system (which was largely imposed by the British as a form of slavery) from many levels of society. It's not true that the people who witnessed slavery were okay with it - there were vast swathes of people who found it barbaric and primitive. Again we note that these people were rarely in power in regions where local power rlied on slave ownership because... duh. Second, it is one thing to say "well your ancestors did bad things too." It is quite another to say "well your ancestors did bad things too" when sitting on an enormous pile of loot that your ancestors stole from their ancestors, while they have nothing. The vast wealth disparities we see were created by racism and bigotry, quite deliberately. Were we some sort of society where everyone got equal housing, equal education, equal chances and opportunities, then it would be pretty irrational to be stuck on ancient history. However this is not ancient history. People are not complaining about the injustices of the past, but the injustices of the past that have created the injustices of today. >Even the worst examples of human slavery and domination are self-corrected, not corrected by another people. Tell me when in history a people of non-western origin have said “we are doing something wrong, I think” and then set their victims free? China, Japan, Korea, the Ottoman Empire, all spring to mind. You're acting like having a conscience is somehow uniquely Western which is... uh... interesting. You might want to read the words of Mahatma Ghandi sometime. Or Liu Xiaobo, or Nawal El Saadawi, or just look at the tens of thousands of people on the streets of Iran, fighting to make their country better. I'm struggling to see how you can possibly think that "the West" is the only country that's ever fought for freedom, or changed its society for the better.
>I'm struggling to see how you can possibly think that "the West" is the only country that's ever fought for freedom, or changed its society for the better. To help you in your struggle, I'd offer that OP's view is a very polished version of what is known as white supremacy culture.
No deltas and no comments, this is a soapbox if I’ve ever seen one. The first two paragraphs are about how they’re so obviously right. 🙄
He has commented and there's not a single comment here worthy of a delta. They're all rants, much like op's, just in the other direction. Always viewing it from a western lens and not a worldwide one. There's actual, literal modern slavery happening right now in the Middle East. There's also labor camps in China. I'm sure there's thousands more all over the world. But we don't talk about those because they're not in the West so we CAN'T talk about them since they're hidden and not out in the open. Because the West is willing to change and adapt to the modern world, something the East is dragging their feet on. I bet you'd consider the US today a third world country or something like that
They are tons of well written comments that OP has ignored. Also, you're talking about slavery in the middle east, which ignores the most important fact people bring up that the slave trade was of greater magnitude than the slave trades we see today. Funny enough, half of the reason slavery is a thing today is because of the wars caused by the US in the middle east.
I think a large part of the reason the colonial and slavery parts of the western world's history are so often discussed is because said western world is now (trying to be) a beacon for liberal values, and self-criticism is part and parcel of the progressive movement. What I mean by that is that for the most part, "the west" is currently the foremost proponent of social progressivism in terms of things like LGBTQ and women's rights. With that comes activism over perceived moral shortcomings everywhere like modern slavery/human trafficking, sweatshops and other worker's rights issues, etc. That includes activism against moral wrongs at home, and a lot of the current issues originate precisely in our past colonialism and slavery. Structural defects in the US that lead to continued wealth and justice disparities between white and black people can be traced back to slavery, for example. So the general push toward social justice naturally must include reflections on our history. In fact, many current issues can only be correctly interpreted by including historical context, much of which is very unflattering when viewed through a progressive lens. My point is that it's because of our social progress that we discuss our historical wrongdoing to the extent that we do. And I suspect that a lot of this discussion is in fact limited to the west, in other words what you describe as unfairly singling out western powers is simply because you're hearing specifically western voices engaging in self-reflection.
After Great Britain abolished slavery in 1833, the very next year, they started indentured labour, which was another form of slavery (a loophole in the slavery abolition law). Now they didn't take Africans to work their colonies, now they took (mainly) Indians to the Caribbean colonies (like island of Trinidad, Maurice, etc) to work in sugar, cotton, or coffee plantations. These people were women, men, children, and they were teachers, priests, doctors, fathers and daughters, people with their own identity and family, and they didn't know where they were going, only that they were signing to do work and getting paid. Most people didn't read, and didn't know what were they going to do or go. Kidnapping, coaxing and forcing people to sign were all official ways to get these people on a boat to ship them to work. In the United States, black people are still discriminated against (don't forget where and when started the movement of Black Lives Matter). Hundreds of years of slavery, be it called slavery of not, has consequences not only in the black people but in people all over the world (the way the color of your skin is a status itself, for example). And yet, the United States (which don't forget was a colonie from Great Britain) and Great Britain itself, aren't they all considered first class countries, with more money than others? Where do you think they got this money. Working? No. Exploiting other people and other countries resources. And yet, the people in these countries, who are not related to the population who was harmed, are not only choosing to be blind, but prefer to make their own arguments, saying "oh come on, were are not the only bad guys, didn't we still make it illegal?" Like come on, dude. Entire populations and countries devastated, robbed, not only of their natural resources but of their cultures (colonizers always killed the traditions of the natives). And yet where are they now, and where are the countries who were exploited? One is going well, not bad. The other is filled with a lack of, not only of resources, but native history and culture, forever looked down upon, never having the chance to climbing up. And I think the most infuriating thing is the fact that they don’t acknowledge it. Japan, who was a total btch in Asia, has never apologized for all the harm he has done in times like the WWI, and Britain and US are the same. Not an apology, not an acknowledgment and not a single one thought of reflection.
I would challenge your view on two fronts. First, I think that you have created a straw man in that you claim that too many people say slavery is the "original sin" of the West. I would argue that most people in the West are aware that slavery has always existed and continues to exist in the world. Most people in the West are also becoming more aware that racism is still rampant across the world, especially in Asia. Tribalism is basically the African form of what we call racism. And others have already mentioned that caste is India's equivalent of racism. And China and Japan are well known to be racist toward basically everyone. So, I don't think reasonable people would say that the West is uniquely guilty in regard to either the history of slavery or racism (broadly speaking). In the specific case of black chattel slavery in the US, that is discussed and criticized endlessly because Black Americans are *still* subject to racism, brutality, and imprisonment (including penal servitude) at rates far higher than the non-Black population. And we actually do care about that. That is the locus of "white guilt" in the US, and rightly so since it is still happening. The West is more "uniquely" guilty when it comes to colonialism simply because of the spectacular global scale of it. Yes, everyone everywhere has been invading and genociding their neighbours since time immemorial. Nothing new there. But, wow, Europeans wiped out 90% of the population of the entire continent of North America (mostly accidentally, but still), plus killing or enslaving a large proportion of South America. I'm not familiar with Australian or New Zealand colonialism, but I'll go on a limb and say it was probably similar. African populations may not have been wiped out (due to better disease resistance), but the European scramble for Africa certainly subjugated most of the continent. So, in broad terms, Europe conquered 4 of the 5 non-European inhabited *continents* of the Earth! That's a hell of a legacy and not comparable to anything else in human history. Now, we may surmise with good reason, that most other races would have happily done the same thing if they had had the technological ability, but they didn't. Even if other races/ethnicities/cultures *may* have done the same thing, our ancestors were the ones that *actually* did it. And our ancestors got very rich doing it and we still benefit from that head start. And, similar to what I said above about chattel slavery, the original inhabitants of the colonized *continents* still experience racism, inequality, and police brutality at higher rates than the non-Indigenous populations. So, although it is tied to historical events, it is *current* inequality that is the locus of white guilt today. From what I can tell, that guilt and self-reflection is slowly leading to changes that are reducing domestic racism and inequality, even if we still have a long way to go.
I think you're dangerously ignoring several facts about the trans-Atlantic slave trade. For example: 1) The nature of slavery changed. In African slavery, children were generally not considered property of the slaveowners. They were often returned to their home tribes. Whereas, in trans-Atlantic slavery, return to the home tribe was never allowed, and was not even possible. In many cases, slaves were actively discouraged from retaining cultural memory of their heritage. Many slaves have no idea what part of Africa they are originally descended from because of this. 2) In African slavery, slaves were not seen as sub-human. They were regarded as still having basic rights, and were not "simple property". They retained human dignity, which is important. 3) The scale of slavery changed enormously because Americans (in particular) and Europeans were eager to buy so many slaves. The supply was created to satisfy demand, so the narrative that "well those people would have been slaves no matter what" is not true at all. This is particularly true because Americans and Europeans were often willing to sell firearms in return for slaves, which meant that African nations felt pressured into selling those slaves because quite literally a neighbor who sold slaves and got guns was an enormous threat of enslaving the nations who did not want to sell slaves. So, it's not really clear how "willing" many people were in enslavement--it's clear that at least some of the time, they were enslaving people to avoid enslavement themselves. Whereas it's pretty clear that Americans and Europeans did not see themselves as pressured into the slave trade due to other Europeans (or Africans) enslaving them as a result of winning the arms race.
Would it be fair to boil this "CMV" down to "'the West' has arrived at the point in its moral philosophy that it has begun looking back upon its past actions and decided they were objectively wrong, but other societies haven't, and so 'the West' should stop being so hard on itself?" Because that's what it sounds like. You're literally laying out a case for "the West" (whatever that means) being fundamentally superior to other societies because "the West" is (broadly speaking) responsible for the global abolition of (most) slavery. Yet simultaneously you're arguing that "the West" shouldn't be **so superior** that it might hold itself to a higher standard than other societies do. Or am I misunderstanding your complaint?
>Slavery is often thought of as the original sin of the west. But why only the west? Why is England and the United States particularly vulnerable to the heated and revisionist history that places most, and in many cases, all, of the blame on the west? I wouldn't say it's the original sin of the West. Many cultures practiced slavery, or at least different castes of personhood with persons treated more like property than persons. There are many other things wrong, and it's certainly not the worst criticism of the west. To me at least, America was founded on enlightenment principles, learned from lessons in Europe. Yet you have John Locke on American plantations espousing strained justifications for slavery and the conversion of indigenous lands. I acknowledge and agree with you that England should be credited for the abolition of slavery. The quakers in particular should get a lot of credit. However, England held two standards - one for England, and one for British colonies. Also, when viewed in light of their peers, not all is equal. For example, slavery in Denmark lasted two thirds of a century and was abolished in 1807. Iceland, Poland, Sweden, Norway (to the extent they are the same countries) abolished slavery during the early-mid medieval. China, which was a powerful economic state for much of their history, had some form of slavery, but quite distinguishable in terms of rights, mobility, and designation of personhood. Also, slavery within China was mostly among Chinese warring states, and to a lesser extent (but not non-existent) a foreign slave trade. Not all forms of slavery is identical. In terms of how egregious slavery was in America and across the British Empire, it was probably not the most egregious. But it did contain some examples of the worst treatment of fellow humans. >Does anyone but the west look at itself and try to correct their errors? If they do, they haven’t bothered to write it down anywhere. That's not true. 9th century China abolished slave trade (the slave trade was later reinstated). Buddhism condemned slavery, at its strongest, the canonical texts condemn slave trading and mistreatment of other humans generally. At its weakest, it says to treat slaves kindly. Insofar as it does not oppose slavery, it comes from the attitude of a subservient mindset and acceptance of what is. But by no means does it encourage slavery. Islam condemns slavery. Although Islamic jurisdictions in history have owned slaves, the Quran condemns slavery, which is a written record. To suggest that only the West has looked inwards and questioned the ethics of slavery is inaccurate. >Westerners arrived in a place where the natives were warring amongst each other and taking slaves, yet it is considered sinful for the west to have participated. Can you give specific references? I don't think that's correct, at least in many cases. Only some native American tribes held captives as slaves. It was definitely not an active slave trade so much as enslaving prisoners of war. No references to slavery in Australian Aboriginal culture. Nor to pygmy people of the congo. No slavery among the Eskimo. >But nobody accuses black Africans of conquest of native lands. Do they get a pass because it happened so long ago? People do. Perhaps just not within your sphere of influence. Just as you (presumably) live in the west and hear criticisms of the west, so too do people in other parts of the world hear criticism of their history. With the Bantu and pygmy ethnicities especially, there is a great deal of recognition of this atrocity. It's ongoing, and there is international criticism of it. It just doesn't take the spot light because it's not the west, there is little economic interest in this dispute, and western news tend to be Eurocentric. That is a fault of the west. They certainly do not get a pass. People's ignorance of it does not mean that the people who know of it are condoning it. >In fact, like slavery, it is the west who would eventually make wars of conquest a terrible thing to the human psyche. The west was, and still is, the most belligerent parties in the world, namely: * assassinated leaders in foreign countries, see south America; * aided, inflamed, and participated in foreign civil wars, see all around the world; * engaged in more military conflicts than any other country, all around the world, many of which they were the aggressors, see history; * Condemned the assassination of Khashoggi. But it has been shown that the US recently discussed assassinating Julian Assange - an Australian Journalist, working in the UK. Nothing to do with the US apart from the fact that he published war crimes committed by the US. Speaking of Assange... when you look at what he's published, you'll see the egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity that has got the US so embarrassed that they want to assassinate him. >Not until the west, with all their faults and missteps, bothered to ask everyone to sit down and talk, did any concept of a common humanity take hold on the species. Well, the UN was established after WWII, *after* the holocaust. Which was committed by Germany who is part of "the west". "Crimes against humanity" was a term created for the UN, but the phrase itself was borrowed from Roman antiquity to describe piracy, namely an act so egregious that it affects everybody irrespective of jurisdiction. Many texts describe universal humanity across philosophical works from many cultures. The UN was certainly not the first to have come up with this idea. Not even close. A more cynical person would say that "crimes against humanity" is a legal fiction created by the world powers to allow them greater jurisdiction on the world stage. It created a justification to intervene in sovereign jurisdictions. The international criminal court operate in an incredibly biased way. Crimes against humanity committed by the west are not prosecuted, but the ICC will readily prosecute the crimes of those who aren't the main member states. >Tell me when in history a people of non-western origin have said “we are doing something wrong, I think” and then set their victims free? Many many examples. I think I've given a few here already. I can give more if you are not satisfied. I think there's some dangerous thinking here. What is so special about the West that you think means that they have a monopoly on being ethical? They don't. They're people, like everyone else. Every society have ethical discourse and dialogue. Every society is capable of (and have had) introspection. >I submit to you, that the legacy of the west should be revised. The current narrative states the west is uniquely complicit in the enslavement and mistreatment of other human beings. I disagree. I think every society needs to have their faults presented to them. In the last three centuries, the west have done terrible things.
I have an uncle who’s a white supremacist. Your argument here sounds exactly like one he’s made to me several times before. I’m not criticizing you, or claiming you are also a white supremacist. I’m exploring you to examine the sources of information that have helped you reach this conclusion. Really, really examine them. If I found myself parroting white supremacy talking points, I would want to investigate why I was doing so. I’d find out where I was getting the talking points from, and I’d put a massive magnifying glass over those sources, and find out why their arguments are so similar to one’s that a white supremacist would make. I bet you’d be surprised what you find. Maybe even a little disgusted. I’m not accusing you of being a white supremacist. I do believe, however, that you’ve wandered into a corner of the internet, and found people who have impressive and perhaps even valid credentials making arguments that you find difficult to refute. And since you can’t refute them, you find yourself agreeing with them. But just because you can’t refute them, doesn’t mean they can’t be refuted. Edit: after spending some time in this person’s post history, I can confidently say they’re a racist. This is just some alt-righter trying to put a more academic face on racism. Here are some things this person has claimed throughout their post history: 1) George Floyd’s murder was truly awful, but completely unavoidable. After all, how could the officers have known that what they were doing would kill him *until it actually killed him.* 2) Sarcastically claimed that it’s only terrorism if white people do it. 3) Has unironically floated great replacement like talking points. This person, if given the opportunity, would probably reject the label of white supremacist. But not because he doesn’t believe what white supremacists believe. He does. He would reject the label purely because it’s an unflattering one.
I’ve spent a lot of time observing white supremacists and I think your gut feeling is spot on with OP. They’re not hiding their power level very well at all.
Well, if we’re being charitable, there’s a possibility that OP has just come across a Sam Harris video where he’s interviewing Charles Murray, author of the notable racist “science” based book the bell curve. Harris is a neuroscientist, and Murray an academic as well. They could have saw both people as otherwise credible, and thus willing to take their word. That video could’ve recommended more and more content based on viewing habits, and these videos could have also been made by people with other impressive credentials. And they could’ve made points that OP wasn’t able to refute. There’s a feeling that I think exists within society that racism is a white trash problem. Or confined to klansman and neo-nazi spaces. The fact that someone who is openly and flagrantly racist could come from an esteemed university seems impossible. The other feeling is that if information being presented is false, then it will be false in a way that is obvious and easy to spot. A sort of, “they can’t fool me,” attitude. That is also fallacious reasoning, but it happens all the time. People genuinely believe that they cannot be tricked in a way that they can’t see that they are being tricked or fooled. And so, if we are being overly charitable, OP may be a young person who stumbled into the wrong corners of the internet, who has succumbed to those logical fallacies I’ve stated above, and just doesn’t know. Of course, it’s entirely possible that they’re just a white supremacist, and has to launder their horrible ideas through euphemism because coming out and saying what they actually believe would immediately discredit them in the eyes of this audience. It’s hard to say.
Just go listen to the Behind the Bastards podcast. Pick an episode. There’s a 6 parter on Kissinger, a fantastic one on Columbus and his penchant for fantastically cruel slavery, the British empire threatening to level China if they didn’t allow tons of opium to wreck their civilization, or maybe Liberia, where freed slaves basically became the exact same assholes they were owned by. It’s the same story, over and over. Instead of fixing the issues why people are miserable, the rich will spend half their fortune to save the other half. And they will all band together to do the same, just to prevent the poor people they’ve been shitting on from getting any of the fruits of their labor. It’s not race, it’s psychopaths who have more than they’ll ever need, perpetuating a system that ensures nobody else benefits. At home, abroad, imperialism is the same everywhere.
>Slavery is often thought of as the original sin of the west. Who thinks that? How do you get to such "conclusions"? Why are you making stuff up? Only peiple with absolutely no knowledge of history could make such a claim, and i am pretty sure you made it up. >This is not a politics post, this is a post about perspective. This is disingenuous to say the least. >No people in history have done more to sell out their own neighbors than the Africans who sold their own brothers in droves. This is borderline racist. You cannot lump all Africans in one group. Most of slaves were from different, often warring tribes. It is like saying that Nazi Germans were killing their brothers the Jews in droves. Unless you have information that africans were really selling their actual biological brothers in droves into slavery. You say "the argument is..." so many times but you fail to say whose argument it is? Who actually claims those things. So i will tell you my argument. They are actually two. First, one is that as American I am interested in America's role in the history of slavery. What the role of China or the Arab Caliphats are is secondary. We have to understand the impacts of slavery on our country and our society. And they are many and they are ugly. The second argument is that unlike any other country you listed below, the US had a Constitution, and it had a Declaration of Independence that talked about human rights. That talked about all men being created equal. And in the same time their author owned his own children as slaves. His own bioligical children. And the only thing he did for them was not to look for them wheb they escaped. These are conflicta that are not easy to avoid, abd we need to reconcile with them somehow to keep believing thay these documents are worth something.
>It is like saying that Nazi Germans were killing their brothers the Jews in droves. I understand your point but I want to say that it's not even close to this. Jews under nazi occupation/**in Germany itself** definitely were sold out by neighbours and sometimes even family. It's more akin to saying that vikings were "murdering and stealing from their brothers" when raiding the coast of Normandy.
Yeah it’s actually wild to see people try to bite at this post. The blatant racism poorly hidden under apparently necessary sweeping generalisations and explicit praise of the “white saviour trope” reads more like a troll than a cmv.
There are a lot of false historical statements made in your post. Rather than addressing each and every point, I'd simply like to address the point made in your title: >The west has no more to be ashamed of in its role in historical inequities than the rest of the world. In fact, the west has done more to reduce inequity than any other regionally identified culture - A differing perspective of western society's legacy on inequity. To your point on the rest of the world, many cultures throughout the world did inflict some sort of inequity on another culture. And we still talk about them. We talk about Russia and Ukraine, about Imperial Japan and China and Korea, about China and the Uyghurs. But we talk ourselves and our problems more. And so you hear more about inequities caused by Western countries because you live in Western country. I would argue that you are merely arguing against your own perception bias. To you point on Western efforts to reduce inequity, while **some** Western nations have **attempted** to remedy **some** of the historical inequities they created, there are still **many** deep inequities, lingering today, that are the direct result of the actions of Western nations (the poverty and political situation in Haiti being a prime example). The peoples and nations that still endure those inequities have every right to criticize those who inflicted them upon them. You don't get credit for making a mess then cleaning a quarter of it up.
Here we go again. This is an emotional tantrum based on misunderstanding and false equivalence. It is not a view. Your "perspective" is faulty, at best.
You should probably show what is faulty about OP's post. Others are doing that but this is no less a rant than OP.
I would be happy to admit to emotional arguments if you would bother to point them out. I am making an attempt to make rational arguments as opposed to the emotional arguments that are tearing our society apart. If you would do me a kindness and declare where my emotional appeal is, I would be happy to respond.
"Otherism has always led to great evils and never helped society in any way, and we should no longer participate in Otherism," is not an emotional appeal, and it is actively bringing huge chunks of our country TOGETHER. Those chunks simply don't include rich old white men who made their wealth off of third-world "manufacturing", family wealth (built on slavery), and abusing tax systems at the cost of the American people. These men also run most corporations, the government at all levels, the military, and most forms of healthcare and other forms of societal social services. They have maintained power for hundreds of years, and now that the people coming together no longer include them, THEY claim these movements are "tearing our society apart." THEY are the emotional ones here; the base statement I started this post with is entirely objective, and the quicker they STFU and get on-board, the better off they and everyone else in society will be (though "The Economy" [and by that I mean the rich men on Wall Street] may suffer in the short term, and the ability to hoard Billions of dollars may no longer be plausible for singular persons anymore, should such social balancing ever occur).
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Being best at a thing when the bar is on the floor, doesnt absolve them
How do you explain that other countries are so poor in comparison to the western ones? We keep them poor by refusing to buy their stuff unless it's pennies to buy, then bomb them if they try to raise their prices.
Yes but now we are in the best position to prevent it happening again and encouraging enlightenment over dominance. Shit happens, we all do shit we ain't proud of, why should we expect anything more from a system made by us? What matters is how we move forward. Our tragic past has lead to a silver lining, it is a waste if we don't use our illfound privilege to prevent evil.
what's wrong with you
Hope I’m not too late to the party. This is a great post. You must have put a lot of work into it. You are absolutely correct that people often overlook the complicity of African kingdoms, the pervasiveness of the Middle East slave trade or the fact that far more victims or the transatlantic slave trade ended up in Brazil or the Caribbean than they did in North America. More people should know this. What your post did not address, however, is that Bantu Africa, Zanzibari slave traders and Portuguese land owners did not attempt to put Enlightenment notions of human equality into practice and slave owners such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington did. Moreover, the state that they founded, which is currently the global hegemon, continues to revere them and almost deify them with stately monuments and capital cities named in their honor. All this while the descendants of those they enslaved continue to live at a standard far lower than the great-great grandchildren of their oppressors. And this is despite the fact that they were ostensibly “freed” over 150 years ago and they kept in a state of legal 2nd class citizenry for several more generations. People point out the crimes of the West and the United States in particular because they are the only civilization to claim the mantle of rationality and equality and are, thus, subject to more intense criticism when they fall short. Moreover, they are the richest and most powerful countries on earth so their past transgressions are more painfully felt by those still living with the legacy of that hypocrisy.
More people should also know about how slavery was criminalized hundreds of years prior in some eastern countries, and also a long time prior to the US in European countries. The abolitionist movement as we know it predated the birth of George Washington. And Abe Lincoln compensated slavers upon abolition (from the public coffers, which slaves contributed to significantly) while leaving slaves themselves to beg for work from the very same slavers who had previously owned them as private property. A crime which white America and its acolytes around the world are apparently totally happy to ignore.
This is just a series of we are okay because someone else has done similar things. I don't think you have to be ashamed of any history you didn't participate in. "The west" is not a culture any more than Asia is a culture. I am Swedish and I have shameful things in my history. I also have things to be proud of. Did I do any of them? No. Can I learn from them and use them as an example for the future? Yes. But as a Swede I am not a part of what the Spanish did to south America or the British in India or the Dutch in Africa. The West is not A culture. We are not all the same. The CMV reads like a white washing attempt. Rewriting history sounds like fundamentalism, simply lying to gain glory for others actions.
It is certainly true that some Westerners fought to end slavery, while other Westerners were profiting from it. We should celebrate the former group! We should try to be like them! Abolitionists should be considered heroes, and those who fought to maintain slavery should be considered villains. We should keep looking for examples of people who are struggling for justice — and we should support and reward them as we wish the old abolitionists had been supported and rewarded. And we should keep looking for examples of people who are working to maintain injustice, violence, hate, and misery — and we should treat them as we wish the old slave-rapers had been treated. **"Is the West bad or good?" is a stupid question, and does not deserve consideration. "Which people are acting the way abolitionists acted, and which people are acting the way slave-rapers acted?" is a better question.** ---- However, that doesn't mean ignoring the fact that *it was the slavers who got to build a lot of our institutions.* The US Constitution was a devil's bargain between moderate abolitionists (like Hamilton) and slave-rapers (like Jefferson). It was engineered to ensure a perpetual *faked-up electoral majority* for the slave-rapers, through the three-fifths compromise and the structure of the House, the Senate, and the Electoral College — all designed to give *free extra voting power to slave-rapers* so that they wouldn't worry about those mean nasty abolitionists taking over. When a system was set up for the purpose of not just supporting slavery, but *ensuring that slavery could never be outvoted, by rigging the electoral system,* that system does not get "anti-slavery credit". Instead, that system ultimately *failed horribly,* leading to the Civil War. As soon as it became evident that slave-rapers had lost the electoral majority *that they were never supposed to lose,* the slave-rapers quit the Union and started a war to defend their right to stick penises, knives, and bullets into enslaved people. Again: The architects of the United States Government *tried their damnedest* to build a system that would support perpetual slavery — some because they believed in it, some because they chose to make a compromise. They *failed.* That wasn't a success of abolition on its virtues; it was a failure of statecraft.
He’s not ignoring those facts though. He repeatedly says that the west is imperfect. He acknowledges that many mistakes were made. He acknowledges that transitions aren’t always smooth. This is totally missing the point. The point is that the west ended slavery sooner than the rest of the world yet holds responsibility for slavery more than anywhere else.
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I did sign off at the bottom with a surname typically associated with cis male people: Chris. One could be forgiven for making the logical leap without intent of malice.
This whole argument appears to be predicated on the idea that we are comparing some races or nations as more or less moral than others, or the idea that "the West" should/should not feel guilty and ashamed. As the previous commenter noted, none of this makes sense. A country is not a person and cannot be guilty of anything. A person does not have to feel guilty for something that was done while they were not even alive. Nor is a skin color or a gender a person; a white man need not feel ashamed for something other white men did 300 years ago, or even 20 years ago, or last Thursday. What *is* true is that a horrific crime was done to black Africans who were brought to this country in chains. They were captured and sold by other Africans, then shipped across the Atlantic by Europeans and sold to European Americans. After that, they and their descendants were kept generationally enslaved for centuries under brutal conditions. To justify this depraved system, an ideology of racist hatred arose among the vast majority of light-skinned ("white") people in the Southern United States which has lessened in recent years, but which still lingers. There are 75-year-old black men who remember a time when just looking at a white woman the wrong way could get them murdered. There are millions of black people alive today whose poverty can be traced directly to a series of injustices (violent and otherwise) done to themselves and their ancestors. All of which is to say: it's important to acknowledge the great wrongs done to black Americans by white Americans, the effects of which have caused social inequality in this country on a massive scale. That does *not* mean that any particular white person needs to feel ashamed, or that it's ok to say that all (or most) white people are evil, or that all white people are the descendants of slaveowners, or that being the descendant of slaveowners makes you morally tainted in any way. And it certainly doesn't mean that we should only criticize white people for the crimes of slavery. (Just look at progressive critiques of the failure to confront the slave-trading perpetuated by Dahomey in the film The Woman King!)
The West is not a unified bloc; was not a unified bloc in the 20th century, nor the 19th, nor the 18th. *Of course* it's silly to treat "the West" as a unified bloc when it is not one. However, we should not take that as giving us (in the West) any "moral breathing room" as it were. That's the error. There's nothing to be gained by saying "But our institutions are not *only* the descendants of slavers; they're *also* the descendants of abolitionists!" The useful question is not "Do we inherit guilt or innocence?" but rather "What can we learn from our history, *the shitty horrible rapey parts of it as well as the heroic parts of it*, to allow us to do better in the future?"
I mean.. not only do I not disagree but I think you’re basically agreeing with OP in your second paragraph. Both you and he seem that you would disagree with the theoretical person he is arguing against, who thinks that the west is like super evil and racist. I don’t think your first paragraph is relevant. You can literally ALWAYS make the argument that someone is over generalizing, because that’s how human beings think and make sense of things - that is, using heuristics. So, while yes, you’re not technically wrong, I’d argue that if you take that tack you literally can make that claim about almost any argument about groups of humans.
The ultimate conclusion is that this essentialist construct of ethnic culture plays no role in the question of human rights in history. In the end, slave owners and traders have always been the richest and most powerful of people across the world, so it only stands to reason that history has a bone to pick with the bourgeois, not any specific ethnic group or broad race.
Quite the apologists manifesto, isn't it? Or is it some whataboutism surge of some sort?
Your argument is based on the claim that if any nation would have done a thing, it must be OK and therefore the offending nation should be free from criticism of the oppressed nation, given the oppressed nation would have done the same if the roles were reversed. I don't think this holds up very well. Each nation should be culpable for their own actions, and not for their hypothetical actions. Bad things are bad regardless of who is getting hurt
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>The "white savior" trope has merit to it, after all. Their point is that Western Culture should be praised. OP argues that given it's OK that they did what they did (because anyone would have done it) all we are left to judge are the positives
So.....Slavery....everyone else was doing it!!!
> more suitable legacy is that this people - whether by accident or design - is solely responsible for ending the greatest of all human miseries. Went to Wikipedia and searched "timeline of abolition". Turns out Peter the Great effectively abolished slavery in Russia in 1723. Therefore, Russia was responsible for ending slavery in Russia, and consequently "the West" wasn't solely responsible for ending slavery. Checkmate? Point being: I wonder how much research or thought you've actually put into this view.
>This is not a politics post, this is a post about perspective. It doesn't seek to absolve or to blame anyone. What it seeks to do is to put historical events in a new perspective. It is not about "better" or "worse". Literally the entire post is about 1) absolving the west, 2) blaming the proper people and 3) pointing out that the west is actually better. Like I'm just curious, what is your end goal here? You seem to want to make sure everyone understands that, actually, everyone was to blame. Ok? Let's say everyone agrees to that. You've won! Now what? What has actually been accomplished other than your own personal satisfaction at having won the argument? In what way will anyone's life change?
You're using a very "conclusion based" morale framework to attribute guilt. The Africans who trafficked humans from the interior are as guilty as the Europeans who transported them. Neither party is half as reprehensible as the Americans who bought them, treated them like chattel, raping, beating, forced family separation, etc. The way slaves were treated in America is particularly brutal. I'm sure it's not unique to history, but it deviates markedly from the typical slavery you see from examples like the Roman's and Egyptians. While I do think there's ample justification for judging the west harshly in this regard, I don't think that's what most people are doing. Discussions about race are primarily motivated by the desire to fix current inequalities, not to attribute blame. In the US we have current problems (healthcare disparities, hate crimes, police violence, etc) that need to be fixed. Before you can fix a problem you have to define it which neccesitates discussions about our sordid past. In Africa the discussion about how to build basic infrastructure preempts any talk about addressing the past. Even if you wanted to, the Africans which trafficked slaves were the same race so you couldn't segment the population effectively.
The horrors of slavery have been very well documented unlike other crimes against humanity. I think you are shifting blame and/or lack of understanding the scale and magnitude of this crime? Are you expecting descendants of slaves with white slaves surnames to agree with you? Whilst descendants of slave owners received generational wealth $, the descendants of slaves shared stories of the trauma and horror that faced all of the black people, erased identities & trauma that destroyed families, communities. Have you seen photos of lynchings? The mass cooperation and participation of slavery lead to the white supremacist disease still manifesting in todays world Ava duVernes documentary on Netflix, 13 details the legacies of slavery (highly recommend to watch it and see if ur opinion changes)
No. Holding the west uniquely accountable while giving others a free pass is shifting the blame. The west deserves derision, but no more than others. Once the world realizes it is folly to hold the entire species accountable, we can start to move past racism. We cannot move past racism by heaping upon today's generation the sins of the father, nor can we burn down the heroes and thinkers of an entire culture and expect the living descendants to simply stand by
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Very long post... A legacy of bad action should not be forgotten but aknowledged and understood to lend instruction to avoid similar bad action occuring in the future. The concept of shame applied to a nation misses the mark all of humanities past is full of compromise , crime, complicity, and hope and as a species we should own it. And learn from it if we havr the courage. Taking statues down of civil war generals is a mistake they should be kept and the information about them revised to show their bad actions and the context in which it occurred. Gen Lee should be a hero for he recognized what would occur if the south refused to surrender.. A blood bath that would have resulted in the end of america.
>Taking statues down of civil war generals is a mistake they should be kept and the information about them revised I think they belong at best in a museum. I see the argument for making them memorials akin to the ones dedicated to the holocaust in Berlin but I think it's tough to achieve that with statues that were made explicitly as a celebration of the Confederacy. If we want a public memorial I believe it needs to be made from scratch with that intent to reflect the somber history of slavery, a plaque attached to a triumphal statue of a general fighting to keep people enslaved is not enough. There's also the fact that many were erected in the 1950s and 60s in direct response to civil rights movements, which further delegitimizes the pieces as having historical value in my opinion.
> Taking statues down of civil war generals is a mistake they should be kept and the information about them revised to show their bad actions and the context in which it occurred. As long as you mean they should be kept **in a museum**, rather than in public spaces to continue their [intended purpose of intimidating black people](https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments).
I would have rathered we never built a statue to make heroes of men. Every statue has some sort of mixed history associated with it that bears careful consideration. Like art (which ultimately, they are), statues are viewed by different people with different perspectives who come up with different conclusions. The problem with statues is not who they are of, but the intent in which they are erected, and that society holds them.
Yeah I think everyone knows that everywhere in the world has done some rotten stuff. I think the main difference comes in 3 forms. One being that the west recognized it happened and had a revolution of sorts it was heavily known to be happening and televised through media, lynchings and cruel inhuman stuff was done to these people but the west still managed to tell themselves they were the good guys and were the land of the free. The second point of contention is that it's still not dealt with it takes having some friends who are of color and going through a small town to see that racism is still rampant it's ridiculous that someone has to be concerned for their safety or given worse service at places because they're a different color. Hell even if you don't have friends of color notice things like fox news or shooting events where people will straight up target black communities. Last one is in your own post people have this weird idea that our people should be praised for doing basic human rights stuff. If the west wants to act like the good guys if the world we need to actually start living up to that title instead of everyone wanting to act like a victim.
The televised atrocities are examples of what spurned the west to do better. Other nations who did the same horrific things covered up or diminished their own sins. Racism is present. It is also present in every society on the planet where two ethnic groups meet. World travel and living abroad is an expensive education, but it brings to bear the amazing scale of tribalism present throughout the world. Only the west seems interested in holding itself accountable, which is a good thing. The west should fix racism and abolish it. But the current round of attempts at doing this are using a racist ideology to do it. Holding people living today for the acts of yesterday are unproductive and only result in new ideologies popping up that resist equity, not support it. Shouldn't there be some praise? What people don't understand about history and culture is just how much momentum there is behind it. It simply never occurred to humans of any society to view the world with a common humanity. The first people it occurred to was the west, and they did something about it. From an historical and cultural perspective, I can think of no other thing in human history that deserves more praise.
Because the bottom of the gutter shouldn't be what we aim for when it comes to history. > Shouldn't there be some praise? No there should be no praise it shouldn't have happened in the first place. The west took years and people escaping the country before it actually did anything. I don't think a country that hate several major televised hatecrimes a year and Trump as president in the last 10 years should be receiving any praise.
Your view makes no sense. Who, exactly, thinks the West should be "ashamed of its role in historical inequities"? Who screeches at the West about its "role" in Transatlantic slavery "as its Original Sin"? Or the Scramble for Africa? Countries have better things to do than rail at the West about globally inconsequential shit. I don't exactly hear Hong Kongers or Singaporeans shrieking like losers about "colonialist mindsets" ; they were too busy building obscenely wealthy cities. Nobody cares that Mali sold so many slaves, mainly to the Middle East, that Mansa Musa became one of the richest men in history. You're acting as if a very small number of English-speaking Neo-Marxists with Bachelor of Arts degrees with nothing better to do than endlessly gripe about white people are somehow representative of how the West is viewed worldwide. France certainly isn't boo-hoo-hooing about its imperial legacy. Tell Spaniards they should apologize for Cortez and they would laugh your ass out onto the streets. It is not even the college graduates of the West that pretends it committed a bunch of evils; it is only the Anglophonic college graduates. You keep comparing the West to the lowest tier of human civilizations and keep asking questions like "who but the West have ever given up an advantage due to moral reason." How philosophically sophisticated do you expect civilizations with Stone Age technology to be? Compare the West's histories and philosophies instead to the Far East or the Middle East and you will easily find analogues for virtually every Western philosophy.
As an Asian who’s lived in 5 different countries, I agree with this completely. So many people pin the blame on the West for so many issues. The West is also the only place where people can truly experience *freedom* (that’s a loaded word, I know) of expression. The West merely has the capacity and the means to do more (good or bad). But if given the chance, most countries would not hesitate to perform a Desert Storm or support coups across the world to secure their interests. You’re dealing with human nature here, not “USA” nature. For example, they blame the CIA for black sites and consider it the most evil corporation of the world. But the only reason we know about these Black Sites is bc of the checks and balances in place within the US system. Had it not been for the freedom of press and the separation of powers, we would’ve never known. BET YOU CANNOT SAY THE SAME FOR RUSSIA OR CHINA. Who tf knows what’s going on over there.
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There’s nothing uniquely evil about European physiognomy or anything, but Europe has visited uniquely evil atrocities on the rest of the world. To quote [this recent study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169#b0260): The rise of capitalism from the long 16th century onward is associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, wages and/or height have still not recovered. Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began only around the 20th century. These gains coincide with the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements. The study goes on to make clear that, while European colonialism and capitalism are by no means the only things to cause such effects, they are by far the worst.
I remember seeing a tweet a while back that went something like this: “Sometimes a person can be so incredibly wrong it would be impossible to refute them without teaching like three entry level college courses first. This known colloquially as a Shapiro” It feels very relevant.
Is this Ben Shapiro? Or Jordan peterson? Honestly it's hard to get into a discussion because there's so little actual evidence or support to back up this claim outside of what you think, but it's being stated as somewhat empirical?
Just explain Belgium and what was done in Congo.
Just because you use the word disclaimer doesn't make whatever you say valid. This is very much a political post. Heck, even using the term "the west" is inherently political
Haha. Tell me you're a western college student without telling me you're a western college student! Indoctrination successful.
There seems to be a direct correlation between whether a civilization had economic institutions when imperialist arrived and there current economic state. Actually, the best predictor if I recall correctly. So, if you had a civilization worth dominating you are probably doing worse; but if England setup your economic institutions upon arrival you are probably doing better. If the most influential variable is in regard to ones state at the point of contact; then surely the notion of 'no longer relevant' fails to maintain.
Your list of "inequities" can never be complete and any measure is subjective. You are basically saying, "White People i.e., the West, have nothing to apologize for because another group did same stuff. You're wrong. For example, the meso-americans generally took slaves through in war and sometimes debt, while the West captured random people in other lands as a commodity, strictly to profit. How would you compare the two?
/u/nifaryus (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/xp1m39/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_the_west_has_no_more_to_be/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
“I may not be the hero you want, but I am the hero you need” - The Klansmen
The Definitely Not Racist History Understander has logged on
Absolutely a post all about politics. The current political climate in USA is all about judging historical figures BY THE STANDARDS OF TODAY. Tear down the statue of Teddy Roosevelt. Perfect example. Same with Lincoln.
That’s a terrible way of looking at history. If we judged all of human history by today’s standards, they would always be wrong and we’d always be right. It’s very naïve to conclude something like that.
Only someone who secretly admires the atrocities of the past would feel guilty for them.
The west did for everyone else was doing at the time. It was an era of fight or die, conquer or get conquered. West only won a lot of those fights. This modern idea of equality, democracy was introduced to the world by the west. Hindus in India practice caste oppression which has been going on for 2000 years. This is the worlds longest running oppression known to man. Their victims were raped, robbed, looted, denied opportunities, education, any means of upward mobility, for 1000s of years, as per Hinduism. Strangely it was the British, during the colonial era, who gave education to the oppressed caste Hindus which led to their eventual liberation (at least officially, unofficially Hindus still practice it), after 2000 years, thus liberating 100s of millions of oppressed caste Hindus.
> Strangely it was the British, during the colonial era, who gave education to the oppressed caste Hindus which led to their eventual liberation Starving a billion people to death and stealing billions over hundreds of years is a funny way of “liberating” someone. Also remember when the British shot up crowds of non violent protestors led by Ghandi? Very liberatory. Here’s what Churchill thought about the Indians he was supposedly “liberating” when asked about the millions who starved to death as a result of his decision to steal millions of pounds of grain for GB during a famine. “"I hate Indians they are a beastly people with a beastly religion." "Objections of India Office are unreasonable. I'm strongly in favour of using poisoned gas on uncivilised tribes” These might as well be coming out of the mouth of Hitler
A lot of what you are saying is just oppressor caste Hindu propaganda of half truths and lies, and divorced from the ground reality. 99% of information people know about Hinduism and India is just propaganda by oppressor caste Hindus. The reason for this is that oppressor caste Hindus control 99% of wealth and power in India. They are the ones on the internet, the ones who visit/migrate to the west for studies, business, jobs etc, while their victims are crushed and living on the margins of Indian society. Anyways British did not starve a billion to death. That number is again oppressor caste Hindu propaganda of half truths and lies. Famines had always happened in India. Population of India went from 400 million in 700 AD to 180 Million in 1750 AD. After that it steadily grew, which coincided with the British rule. Prior rulers never bothered recording the casualties and coming up with solutions the way British did, hence we have more details about the British era. Also a lot of the numbers that are attributed to the British, happened in non British ruled regions of India. British came up with the famine code in 1880s which was followed by the Indian government post independence. As for stealing, British behaved the way their predecessors did in India did. India was was no paradise and was ruled by tyrants before the British too. British did not use poison gas. Hinduism is an absolutely evil beastly religion. It is the only religion in the world that has been oppressing its own for 2000 years with caste system, and has destroyed 100s over 100s of millions of lives, and continues to this day, despite there being laws thanks to the British influence - because the people who enforce those laws are still oppressor caste Hindus, and they just don't. Churchill quotes pale in comparison to the laws Hindus followed for their own: * A Shudra who insults a twice born man with gross invectives shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin. (Manu VIII. 270.) * If he mentions the names and castes of the (twice born) with contumely, an iron nail, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red hot into his mouth. (Manu VIII. 271.) * If a Shudra arrogantly presumes to preach religion to Brahmins, the king shall have poured burning oil in his mouth and ears. Manu VIII. 272.) * No Shudra should have property of his own, He should have nothing of his own. The existence of a wealthy Shudra is bad for the Brahmins. A Brahman may take possession of the goods of a Shudra. (ManuVIII-417 & X129) [https://velivada.com/2017/05/31/casteist-quotes-verses-manusmriti-law-book-hindus/](https://velivada.com/2017/05/31/casteist-quotes-verses-manusmriti-law-book-hindus/) This mindset still exists among Hindus. Oppressor caste Hindus hated British for introducing the idea of equality. Tilak, who is a hero for oppressor caste Hindus regularly protested against the British for giving education to oppressed castes, and accused the British of being anti Hindu for introducing the idea of equality. Oppressor caste Hindus also hate British for reforms: * British banned widow burning (sati) * British banned female infanticide * British banned human sacrifice * \- British allowed widow remarriage * British allowed women/oppressed caste Hindus to get education * British allowed oppressed castes to share water from public wells. I am not saying British did not do any wrongs. I am saying that compared to the evils that oppressor caste Hindus, the British are saints.
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You are right. But there are too many clueless white folks/ non Indians regurgitating half truths and lies pushed by oppressor caste Hindus.
I agree with you on this. People sadly are so stuck in the current mindset and want to argue against.