Slavery. Who gives a shit?

Discussion Open Forum
61

Looks like a great read. I saw it in an airport bookstore last time I passed by Hong Kong but I had, unfortunately, blown all my coin on booze. It’s still on my long list of books to buy.

[quote]And a small history lesson to those blacks who want an apology for the slave trade:

The Islamic terror began in ‘the terrible summer of 1625’ when North African corsair slave raiders invaded and devastated the southern coasts of England, and for a short while even raised the green battle standard of Islam over English territory that had engraved upon it the terrible promise “The gates of Paradise are under the shade of swords ." From the coast of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Southern Ireland, the Islamic slave raiders murdered and stole away entire villages to be sold into slavery in the Islamic Empire of the East.

The slavers in 1625 from that one raid alone then returned to Algiers with a thousand British men, women and children to be sold into slavery. In total the North African Islamic pirates abducted and enslaved more than 1 million – 1.3 million White Europeans between 1530 and 1780 in a series of raids that depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall.

To keep the slave population stable, around one-quarter had to be replaced each year, which for the period 1580 to 1680 meant around 8,500 new slaves a year, totalling 850,000 slaves taken. The same methodology would suggest 475,000 were abducted in the previous and following centuries. From 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas.

According to one estimate, 7,000 English people were abducted between 1622-1644, many of them ships’ crews and passengers who were stopped and seized by slave traders mid voyage. [/quote]

Dangermouse,
You didn’t give a link for this second one. It’s from the BNP (British National Party) website. Are you, or have you, been a member of the BNP?

62

Good catch Almas John. Is there an independent source that can be used to verify this?

I found the information to be enlightening, but if the source is questionable then I’d hate to be the victim of misinformation.

That was the first I had ever heard of that sort of practice.

But still, even if it were true, the UK and the rest of Europe recovered and are not repressed because of this practice. That is not true of African Americans, who are still faced with issues of social inequality because of what happened in the past.

63

[quote]Dangermouse,
You didn’t give a link for this second one. It’s from the BNP (British National Party) website. Are you, or have you, been a member of the BNP?[/quote]

Indeed it is, but I couldn’t find any other cut and paste topics on the net about this.

I know of this as I have lived and travelled to Cornwall on many an occasion and it is written about historically in that area, especially in church records.
Southern Ireland I believe was another area of the British Isles which was attacked by slave traders during this period.
The text quoted on that website is based on the book: “Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters” with little alteration, I believe. The BNP are merely quoting from another source and are not the original source.

No, I am not a member of the BNP - never have been and never will be. I do have conservative leanings, however, and will always vote conservative.

I am pro- (sensible) immigration and against racial discrimination - but I am also against positive or reverse discrimination which gives quotas for ethnic minorities in the workplace.

Just to clear that up for you.

Muslim slavery of whites is very well documented, but ignored in western societies today for one reason or another

64

[quote=“Lord Lucan”]

Interesting eh? I often wonder what would happen to those people in the States, for example, who read in a book that they were descended from Irish peasants forced out of Ireland by the cruel British, if they suddenly discovered to their horror that they were actually descended from Scottish plantation stock and the oppressors rather than the oppressed!!! What exact difference would it make to their lives? One minute their ancestors are victims of a great wrong, and the next they are perpetrators of a great evil. You could hear the champagne cocks popping in the psychiatrists’ offices from miles around![\quote]

Do you actually think they would care one way or the other?

Have you ever actually met an American? What a load of shit!
I know where my grandparents came from and can guess by their names where their parents came from, but why should I care where people that I never met, 3 or 4 generations older than me came from?

65

Laddie, I’ve met Americans who don’t know who their father was.

66

I missed my great-great grandmother’s 100th birthday party because I was studying abroad in France. I was 20 when she passed away. She lived to see her first great-great-great grandchild who was two years old at the time of her funeral. (That’s four generations from me for the record.)

I know my family was free at least ten generations before me because they owned land in Virginia according to some genealogy done by my aunt…of course, in our family, ten generations isn’t that long of a time. Although we start our families young, we do tend to die old so it was easier to gather my family history.

:smiley:

67

[quote=“Loretta”]Today marks 200 years since the UK outlawed slavery, and there has been the usual chorus of people saying that now is the time to apologise.

What do the events of more than 200 years ago have to do with anyone alive today?[/quote]

I haven’t had the time to read all the posts in detail, so I apologize (!) if I have overlooked more informed opinions than my own.

In my opinion, most nations (if not all, historically speaking) have been involved with atrocious crimes against humanity over the years. However, generally we come to this conclusion by applying ever changing modern day standards and belief systems. By contrast, some things way back then were considered heinous in the day, yet are now considered quite acceptable (e.g. speaking out against the government/monarchy, being an atheist, making potions, etc).

I don’t feel that anyone (a person, race or government) can sincerely apologize or be held responsible in any way for the actions of their forefathers. But, we or our government can make a concessionary apologia that helps explain the past, defuse the tension, ease the throwbacks, soothe the hurt and help reassure people about the future.

I have never been able to grasp how slavery was considered acceptable of fair business in its day, but that is perhaps more a reflection on the society in which I live. I wonder, there are probably actions in my daily life today that future generations will one day be conveniently sweep under the carpet. Just like we are trying do today?

68

I missed my great-great grandmother’s 100th birthday party because I was studying abroad in France. I was 20 when she passed away. She lived to see her first great-great-great grandchild who was two years old at the time of her funeral. (That’s four generations from me for the record.)

I know my family was free at least ten generations before me because they owned land in Virginia according to some genealogy done by my aunt…of course, in our family, ten generations isn’t that long of a time. Although we start our families young, we do tend to die old so it was easier to gather my family history.

:smiley:[/quote]

Again I ask, Why should I care where ancestors that I never met, 3 or 4 generations older than me came from? Why would this have any effect on my life?

69

What happened to the descendants of those millions of Europeans enslaved by Muslims? They don’t seem to have a problem with a large, visible minority of white descendants of ex-slaves in the Middle East…as far as I’m aware, there aren’t any ghettoes full of them anywhere in the Middle East. Contrasted with America, where our legacy of slavery is clearly visible in the huge amounts of black people we have over there. So where did all those captured Europeans disappear? Surely they must have left some descendants. Does Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters delve into that topic?

70

I think many of us have a natural curiosity about our origins. It interests me to know where my roots are. Personally, I don’t care to inherit any of the old grudges, prejudices or pride that come with those roots, but the knowledge is of interest to me.

71

Well, that’s a good point. It does point out that nearly 80% of the slaves died - many of them before reaching their target destination. Every year, half of those who made it to landfall died within a year, requiring constant replacement of slaves.
Now lets not forget that these slaves apparently endured far worse conditions than our black counterparts did in the US.
After the slave trade ended, blacks were freed into a free, democratic government. In Africa, most slaves died in captivity, and if released, probably made all attempts to get back to their own civilizations. Africa was not exactly the land of opportunity.

Quoted from another source:

[i]While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans Sahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!

While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.

While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive. [/i]

I suppose my point in airing all of this is that every nation is guilty of oppression, and many of the nations and religions crying foul at present still practice slavery in some respects.
While I make absolutely no excuses for the oppression of blacks by both Britain, America and other European countries, I think some balance is justified.
Also, I fee much of Western history has been erased to compensate for those who feel victimised today for the actions of those in the past.
Well sod it. At the risk of sounding or seeming racist in a world where you have to walk on egg-shells for fear of offending somebody for mentioning certain colours, individually I don’t care who you are.
But when they make ill-informed, blanket statements about middle-class whites being mostly racist and then tarring everybody with the same racist brush - especially while ignoring parts of your own history where others were oppressed, then I’ll certainly have something to say.

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[quote=“BlackAdder”][

I have never been able to grasp how slavery was considered acceptable of fair business in its day, [/quote]

The same way that it’s acceptable today, thru explotation of the fact that the people being used do not have a form of representation that protects them.

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I think many of us have a natural curiosity about our origins. It interests me to know where my roots are. Personally, I don’t care to inherit any of the old grudges, prejudices or pride that come with those roots, but the knowledge is of interest to me.[/quote]

I think that’s more common in some countries, especially those with a history of mass immigration, than others. Most people I met during the years I lived in the USA seemed to care a great deal more about these things than most Brits do. I know Americans in Taiwan who describe themselves as Irish, Italian, or black, rather than simply American. You might hear people in the UK say “my dad’s from Jamaica/the Lebanon” or similar, but we tend to identify ourselves in terms of the here and now. Very few Brits know or care about the lives of ancestors they never met.

I have a friend who has cousins who are Londoners. Their mother happens to be from Singapore, but they don’t go around telling people they’re anything other than British. Although they may be described as ‘Chinese’ due to their appearance, just as many of us in Taiwan are described as ‘white’, they are culturally part of the prevalent society and don’t bitch about historical wrongs. I know a British guy here who has fairly dark skin, and I guess his parents may be from somewhere in the region of India/Pak, but it never occurred to me to ask and he’s never mentioned it. In some circles, it’s just not the done thing.

Of course, many immigrant communities in the UK maintain links with their countries of origin, and these are maintained through several generations, but the prevailing culture is not one of a nation built on immigration. Most people are ‘from here’, and get a bit pissed off with the few who insist on being not part of the country after several generations.

In other words, you take your roots for granted because your grandparents never met a stranger in a strange country and asked “where are you from?” Nobody in your ancestry grew up with a sense of being different from anyone else, nor were they part of a particular group that was different from anyone else. One of my American friends explained the European perception of Americans as brash and loud in terms of the historical need to assert yourself in a new, dynamic, and hugely competitive environment. In the early days of America, immigrants were struggling to build their new lives and tended to form communities with common origins which led to competition between Irish, Italian, etc which didn’t exist in the UK.

Nowadays we seem to be seeing the emergence of the concept of ‘black’ as an identity that crosses the Atlantic, despite the fact that the experiences of black people in the two countries have historically been very different. It’s racial rather than cultural, and it’s a dangerous thing.

Me, I prefer to listen to people like Morgan Freeman: Freeman has come out publicly against the celebration of Black History Month and does not participate in any related events, saying that “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.” He says the only way to end racism is to stop talking about it, and he notes that there is no “white history month.” Freeman once said on an interview with 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace: “I am going to stop calling you a white man and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.” :bravo: :bravo: :bravo:

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That’s it. Discussion over. Morgan Freeman has spoken.

Seriously, he’s a voice I really respect.

75

Me too. Morgan’s da man. Respect. :notworthy: :bravo:

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I come from Romania by way of Monrovia as a matter of fact. 10th Century or something like that. My Romanian ancestor provided men for the first crusade for which he was rewarded with land in Monrovia (something-ovia at least) and land in the northeast of Scotland which became known as the lands of Moray.
So there.

77

I come from Romania by way of Monrovia as a matter of fact. 10th Century or something like that. My Romanian ancestor provided men for the first crusade for which he was rewarded with land in Monrovia (something-ovia at least) and land in the northeast of Scotland which became known as the lands of Moray.
So there.[/quote]

My relatives that survived that awful sea journey where whipped onto their new land in chains. Beaten, whipped and doled out food and shitty lodging but no pay, they built the backbone of a country. Although they promply forgot the land they’d left, they still suffered generations of discrimination in employment and schooling because of where they’d come from, or the beliefs they held. In fact, it wasn’t really until the nineteen fifties and sixties that all that started to ease.

John - fetid turd - Howard is a living reminder of those divisive pre-fifties days.

HG

78

You should sue the UK and the Australian govt, when the former US slaves can do it, so can you.

You are ENTITLED!

79

Yes, and I’m also farking entitled to have my John - fetid turd (Winston in fact - you can see that aint an accident) - Howard bit incorporated in your quote, if you wouldn’t mind! :laughing:

HG

80

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Yes, and I’m also farking entitled to have my John - fetid turd (Winston in fact - you can see that aint an accident) - Howard bit incorporated in your quote, if you wouldn’t mind! :laughing:

HG[/quote]

John Howard is a fetid turd. I’m sorry about that, and as a citizen of the country that is responsible for the whole mess it’s all presumably my fault too, assuming the same standards apply to Australians as to other descendants of victims of my ancestors’ countrymen.*

There, do you feel better now?

*However, John Howard was voted in by the Australian people, so surely he’s their collective fault? In fact, I would say that HGC owes the rest of the world an apology for inflicting this man upon us.