From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@gondwanaland.com)
Date: Sun Aug 26 2001 - 01:09:20 MDT
On Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 02:11:39PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> And slavery didn't exist in the western European countries themselves to be
> abolished, as far as _I_ recall.
I recall http://www.hfac.uh.edu/gl/us3.htm from an earlier thread.
(I skimmed that entire thread, hundreds of posts I believe, in one
sleepless night a few weeks ago. Jeez. And I'm still behind by
thousands of posts.)
It says 297,000 slaves were imported into the "Old World" (the
chart primarily concerns the Americas from 1500-1870). A bit of
searching on google also turned up
http://mogul.ahs.aspen.k12.co.us/gburson/WC/renaissance.htm, which
says "Portugese shipped about 140,000 black slaves into Europe from
Africa between 1444 and 1505."
http://www.kwabs.com/body_african_roots.html has some of the story
of the introduction of African slaves to Portugal.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/144.html claims that as of
1780 there were 20,000 African slaves in Switzerland of all places.
So when were those ~300,000 or more African slaves in Europe
emancipated? http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~albion/threads/misc-slavery.html
indicates perhaps 1772 in England and 1778 in Scotland. Portugal
_may_ have been the only western European nation to abolish slavery
after the US -- 1869 according to
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/9generic3.shtml
I wasn't able to find much information on emancipation within
Europe, most of what's available concerns European nations abolishing
the slave trade and freeing colonial slaves.
> Slavery was in fact the peculiar institution
> of the United States, at least among Enlightenment societies;
Were Italian, Portugese, Dutch, English, Spanish, French, Danish
and Swedish (probably among others) slave traders _not_ members of
Enlightenment societies? Three things do seem different about US
slavery: scale (and then only if you consider the French, Spanish,
Portugese colony-derived nations not children of the Enlightenment),
it went out with a bang rather than a whimper, and the blatant
disconnect between the first nation supposedly founded on equal
rights for all (men) that also condoned holding millions in the
most unequal position imaginable.
> Christianity had
> put a severe dent in slavery in Europe a long time before, with serfdom
> filling some of the void.
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/jmslaver.htm (admittedly part
of an anti-Catholic site) argues against the notion that Christianity
was responsible for the decline of slavery in Europe. My summary:
economic and military conditions such as the decline of Rome and
the Turks closing off slave markets to Italian traders caused the
decline of slavery in Europe; Christian officials were silent on
the matter or apologists for slavery until well after its decline;
the African slave trade was operated by and praised by Christians;
deists and rationalists initiated anti-slavery sentiments in western
Europe and America.
-- Mike Linksvayer http://gondwanaland.com/ml/
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