"Atlantic triangular trade" - texan translation of slave trading

[Al B. Sure!]

I think the BBC is hype about the wrong thing... I'd be more concerned with the diminishing role of Thomas Jefferson, the biased attitude towards the UN, etc.

To be fair, I remember reading an article by Robert Bork in which he talked about high school history textbooks which were slanted to the liberal side, with the Constitutional Convention getting half a paragraph or something like that whereas the Seneca Falls convention got whole pages. While Judge Bork is obviously biased, his facts I'm sure were legitimate. There's likely been much similar white-washing of history but from a liberal perspective in many communities (especially when teachers do tend to be disproportionately liberal).

I suspect Philly public school textbooks were like this. We learned a lot about Mali, for example, and very little about Europe before 1600 or so.

[Asher]

In what way is it not?

Women's rights, black's rights, gay rights, health care...

Forgot the most important thing:

Better drinking age and no prohibition.

[Hauldren Collider]

I think the BBC is hype about the wrong thing... I'd be more concerned with the diminishing role of Thomas Jefferson, the biased attitude towards the UN, etc.

United Nations

[Al B. Sure!]

HC:

It was our idea... and it's in America.

[DRoseDARs]

Thanks for posting the picture AS, for the life of me I couldn't remember what went down the Europe>Africa leg.

[Asher]

Didn't rum originate in the Caribbean? Why is Europe sending it to Africa?

[Al B. Sure!]

Asher:

A classic example would be the trade of sugar (often in its liquid form, molasses) from the Caribbean to Europe or New England, where it was distilled into rum, some of which was then used to purchase new slaves in West Africa.

[Al B. Sure!]

At the peak of the slave trade, it is said that hundreds of thousands of muskets, vast quantities of cloth, gunpowder, and metals were being shipped to Guinea. Most of this money was spent on British-made firearms (of very poor quality) and industrial-grade alcohol.

It's so messed up... here, give us some people and we'll give you guns and liquor!

Hey, isn't that what Europeans did with the American Indians? Firesticks and firewater?

Or urban areas in the 1980's? Guns and crack?

[Theben]

Another one figured it out. Silence him.

[OzzyKP]

Didn't rum originate in the Caribbean? Why is Europe sending it to Africa?

Origins

The precursors to rum date back to antiquity. Development of fermented drinks produced from sugarcane juice is believed to have first occurred either in ancient India or China,[3] and spread from there. An example of such an early drink is brum. Produced by the Malay people, brum dates back thousands of years.[8] Marco Polo also recorded a 14th-century account of a "very good wine of sugar" that was offered to him in what is modern-day Iran.[3]

The first distillation of rum took place on the sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean in the 17th century. Plantation slaves first discovered that molasses, a by-product of the sugar refining process, can be fermented into alcohol.[9] Later, distillation of these alcoholic by-products concentrated the alcohol and removed impurities, producing the first true rums. Tradition suggests that rum first originated on the island of Barbados.

A 1651 document from Barbados stated, "The chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor".[9]

Colonial America

After rum's development in the Caribbean, the drink's popularity spread to Colonial North America. To support the demand for the drink, the first rum distillery in the British colonies of North America was set up in 1664 on present-day Staten Island. Boston, Massachusetts had a distillery three years later.[10] The manufacture of rum became early Colonial New England's largest and most prosperous industry.[11] New England became a distilling center due to the superior technical, metalworking and cooperage skills and abundant lumber; the rum produced there was lighter, more like whiskey, and was superior to the character and aroma of the West Indies product.[citation needed] Rhode Island rum even joined gold as an accepted currency in Europe for a period of time.[12] Estimates of rum consumption in the American colonies before the American Revolutionary War had every man, woman, or child drinking an average of 3 Imperial gallons (13.5 liters) of rum each year.[13]

To support this demand for the molasses to produce rum, along with the increasing demand for sugar in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, a labor source to work the sugar plantations in the Caribbean was needed. A triangular trade was established between Africa, the Caribbean, and the colonies to help support this need.[14] The exchange of slaves, molasses, and rum was quite profitable, and the disruption to the trade caused by the Sugar Act in 1764 may have even helped cause the American Revolution.[13]

I guess rum was made here as well as in Europe. *shrug*

[Heraclitus]

In Slovenia was referred to as both Triangular Atlantic trade and the slave trade that shipped some 18 million Africans to the new world. Though the term slave trade was also used for the Roman trade and the Arab slave trade.


We where never taught about the 1.25 million European slaves taken by Muslim raiders tho. It came as a shock when a friend who studies history told me about it.

[Al B. Sure!]

Heraclitus:

I posted that statistic in the America not being a Christian nation on account of the treaty of Tripoli thread.


And I think the stat is 12 million Africans, 650,000 of so were brought to the 13 colonies. Interesting that so relatively few were brought to the would-be United States yet we're the ones most famous for slavery (not Brazil where millions and millions were sent).

[Heraclitus]

Heraclitus:

I posted that statistic in the America not being a Christian nation on account of the treaty of Tripoli thread.


And I think the stat is 12 million Africans, 650,000 of so were brought to the 13 colonies. Interesting that so relatively few were brought to the would-be United States yet we're the ones most famous for slavery (not Brazil where millions and millions were sent).

Referring to the European slaves stat? Don't remember the thread, if I read the thread then I've heard it from two sources.

Thank you for correcting me on the stat, however the 18 million may be the number of slaves sold in Africa not the number that arrived. Or maybe I mixed it up with the import of Black slaves into the Middle East (If I recall right its around 20 million or so).


Edit: From wikipedia

Most contemporary historians estimate that between 9.4 and 12 million[4][5] Africans arrived in the New World,[6][7] although the actual number of people taken from their homestead is considerably higher.

Historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million Black Africans were enslaved by Arab slave traders and taken across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 650 and 1900,[8][9][10]

Arabs also enslaved substantial numbers of Europeans. According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries.[13][14]

[Al B. Sure!]

Most historians now agree that at least 12 million slaves left the continent between the fifteenth and nineteenth century, but 10 to 20% died on board ships. Thus a figure of 11 million enslaved people transported to the Americas is the nearest demonstrable figure historians can produce

Also, interesting that there's some knowledge of the breakdown of where the slaves originated:

* Senegambia (Senegal and The Gambia): 4.8%
* Upper Guinea (Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Sierra Leone): 4.1%
* Windward Coast (Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire): 1.8%
* Gold Coast (Ghana and east of Côte d'Ivoire): 10.4%
* Bight of Benin (Togo, Benin and Nigeria west of the Niger Delta): 20.2%
* Bight of Biafra (Nigeria east of the Niger Delta, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon): 14.6%
* West Central Africa (Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola): 39.4%
* Southeastern Africa (Mozambique and Madagascar): 4.7%

I'm really surprised to see the plurality came from Congo/Angola. The sum of all the West African sources still composes the majority but surprised by how many originated in Central and South Africa.

Even 4.7% from the eastern coast. Seems a long way to go to get slaves to be delivered to the Americas.

[ColdWizard]

Sugar, rum, and slaves is how I learned it in the decadent state of New York.