Slavery throughout the world

Slavery throughout the world

Slavery throughout the world

British SlaveryAs slavery consists in placing one person at the disposal of another who may or may not abuse his power, its essential feature is not the misery of its victims but their degradation; and our first object must be to consider as the measure of this debasement the laws and customs under which the slave lived. Wilberforce complained that people wished only to be assured that the slaves were well treated, a question equally appropriate to cattle, and were too often blind or indifferent to their social condition; and a recent Betty Fladeland has said, "If you deny the rights of man to the negro slaves, you cut the heart out of the anti-slavery argument." (Bentley, J., Ziegler, H., & Streets, H. 2008) Slavery in itself admits of no justification; and, if we wish to estimate fairly any one of its types, we must consider it, not in isolation, still less on a background of freedom, but in conjunction with others. In the West Indies, if we leave out of account the small Swedish island of St. Bartholomew, there were four systems of slavery besides our own--Spanish, French, Dutch, and Danish. Examples of all these systems, except the last, had come permanently under British rule; but the Spanish system was universally admitted to be much the least onerous; and it will be well to examine this system, and then, with this model before us, to consider the condition of the slaves in our own and other colonies. (Bentley, J., Ziegler, H., & Streets, H. 2008)Spanish slavery in the West Indies was a century older and lasted considerably longer than that of any other European Power. It began and it ended as probably the worst in the world; but there was an intermediate period, happily of great length, during which its reputation for mildness was fully deserved. We often forget that there was a trade in Negroes between Africa and Europe before the discovery of the New World. It had been established by the Portuguese, whose king about 1480 assumed the title of "Lord of Guiney"; and there was a slave market not only at Lisbon, where as late as 1539 about 10,000 negroes are said to have been sold annually, but also at Seville. (Bentley, J., Ziegler, H., & Streets, H. 2008)The Spaniards began their career as slave-owners at the expense of the aborigines of Santo Domingo, and then called Hispaniola, where Columbus had planted his first colony in 1492. Their action, being neither welcome nor expected at Madrid, was first annulled and then permitted under rigorous limitations; but, as a modern historian has said, it is impossible to license crime by halves; and a population of about 800,000 was worked to death, chiefly as gold-diggers, in less than twenty years.

The Dominican missionaries, who have been called the abolitionists of their day, protested vehemently against the immolation of this feeble race; but they had less compassion for ...