From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Tue Jul 31 2001 - 23:10:31 MDT
On 7/31/01 9:22 PM, "Zero Powers" <zero_powers@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I sense either legitimate ignorance, or intentional trolling. I'll give you
> the benefit of the doubt and assume the former. "Lots of ethnic groups
> suffered from slavery?" Not quite. There were, of course, indentured
> servitude and unfair exploitation of labor by business which were not
> race-based. But non-black "slavery?" Simply, no.
There *was* non-black slavery. Just because you (and many others) aren't
aware of it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Now, this *can* be
attributed to the myopia of a rather English view of New World history that
conveniently forgets what the French, Portugese, a few others, and
especially the Spanish were here for a very long time, right up to the end
of the 19th century.
For example, there was a long period of time where the Spanish sold slaves
in New Orleans and other places along the Gulf Coast that were being brought
in from Spanish controlled territories. The slaves traded by the Spanish
were not of African descent in many cases, but local to the territories they
controlled. While the documentation for Spanish slave trading activities is
poor in this regard, it *is* documented (in ships manifests and similar),
for example, that many thousands of Filipino men and other Polynesians were
sold into slavery in the deep south through those ports.
I took a a couple semesters of classes to meet some undergrad history
requirements at the university that focused on the Asian history in the
early Americas, and I have to say, it was pretty eye opening. I learned
many things that I probably wouldnąt have learned in "standard" pre-20th
century history classes on the USA. There was most certainly an Asian slave
trade into the Americas. The reason you don't hear about it is two-fold.
First, it was much smaller than the African slave trade. Second, it was
done by parties other than the British or the French, so it isn't likely to
be included in a standard perspective of American history. And to top it
off, most of the non-African slave trade did not come through ports that
were owned by the then fledgling British colonies or the early United
States, so it usually exists outside the purview of "early American
history".
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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