TEST ON THE SUBJECT OF SLAVERY

Go . I give you ten days . The best piece on the subject of slavery wins a bottle of top class rum from Martinique .

[Ibby]

Slavery fuckin' sucks.


There, where's my rum?

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Buddug

Go . I give you ten days . The best piece on the subject of slavery wins a bottle of top class rum from Martinique .

Are you writing a paper?

My take: it is much better to be the slave OWNER than be the slave.

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Flint

Can somebody tell me one reason why African hand-drum traditions flourished more outside of the US (during the slavery era)?

Originally Posted by Flint

Right... no-hand-drumming laws were standard wherever there were African slaves, but were more heavily enforced in the US. That's why we see rich hand-drumming traditions in other former slave states, but in the US the African rhythmic tradition was expressed through other means, such as tap-dancing (yes...tap-dancing), snare drum playing, and later drumset playing...

[fargon]

I like being The Lady Keryxe's slave.

[BrianR]

define "slave". Some type are more fun than others...

[JayMcGee]

Originally Posted by Buddug

...The best piece on the subject of slavery wins a bottle of top class rum from Martinique .

hand-rolled on the thighs of virginal slaves from Martinique, no doubt....


But, actually, slavery existed at least as far back as the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Back in those days, you made slaves of your defeated enemies and possibly even those of your own nation who couldn't afford the price of bread. It took modern western civilisation to come up with the idea of a 'slave race' who weren't quite human. This belief system, though palpably ridiculous and legistlatavely banned in the 19th Century, actually persisted well into the 21st Century, and is still quite common in many areas of the USA. The irony, of course, is that that particular nation has now succumbed to the yoke of the corporates and its citizens are now slave to the dollar.

[Hippikos]

"It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude." ~ Winston Churchill

[tw]

What I am when Chastity is my dominatrix mistress.

[Ibby]

Wow, tw.

Just plain wow.

[capnhowdy]

Slavery was/is stoopid. Not on the owner's part but the dumbass slaves'. I know people now who are slaves to a history of slavery. They just keep dragging it around with the other chips on their pitiful shoulders. BOOHOO. It was bad. The key word being was. Fuggetabattit.

[Aliantha]

I don't think slavery is a term that should be used in the past tense. In many areas of the world there are slaves still. If you don't see that you're blind.

[wolf]

I could use a couple. Do you have a good price on any? I'd prefer old enough to work, but still young enough to train, with good teeth and strong backs.

[footfootfoot]

The yes men made a good case for "remote slavery" much more cost effective than keeping them locally.

[BobT]

I took a course in collge from a world renound economist, Stanley Engerman. the results of the research he conducted with his associate Robert Fogel eaned Fogel the nobel prize in economics. their work concluded:

1. Slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing.

2. The slave system was not economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War. There is no evidence that economic forces alone would have soon brought slavery to an end without the necessity of a war or other form of political intervention. Quite the contrary; as the Civil War approached, slavery as an economic system was never stronger and the trend was toward even further entrenchment.

3. Slaveowners were not becoming pessimistic about the future of their system during the decade that preceded the Civil War. The rise of the secessionist movement coincided with a wave of optimism. On the eve of the Civil War, slaveholders anticipated an era of unprecedented prosperity.

4. Slave agriculture was not inefficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of large-scale operation, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture 35 percent more efficient than the northern system of family farming.

5. The typical slave field hand was not lazy, inept, and unproductive. On average he was harder-working and more efficient than his white counterpart.

6. The course of slavery in the cities does not prove that slavery was incompatible with an industrial system or that slaves were unable to cope with an industrial regimen. Slaves employed in industry compared favorably with free workers in diligence and efficiency. Far from declining, the demand for slaves was actually increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in the countryside.

7. The belief that slave-breeding, sexual exploitation, and promiscuity destroyed the black family is a myth. The family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery. It was to the economic interest of planters to encourage the stability of slave families and most of them did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals who were at an age when it would have been normal for them to have left the family.

8. The material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. This is not to say that they were good by modern standards. It merely emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the nineteenth century.

9. Slaves were exploited in the sense that part of the income which they produced was expropriated by their owners. However, the rate of expropriation was much lower than has generally been presumed. Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90 percent of the income he produced.

10. Far from stagnating, the economy of the antebellum South grew quite rapidly. Between 1840 and 1860, per capita income increased more rapidly in the south than in the rest of the nation. By 1860 the south attained a level of per capita income which was high by the standards of the time. Indeed, a country as advanced as Italy did not achieve the same level of per capita income until the eve of World War II.