Fishing towns along the south coast of England lived in fear of slavers raiding and the book Robinson Crusoe begins with the protagonist being enslaved.
I don't want to join in some pissing fight about who suffered most - all slavery is aborrent and causes generations of pain. But I think it an interesting and often overlooked dimension that the Europeans who started using slaves in the new world were from a society used to being preyed upon and enslaved by others.
On the other hand, root of Slavic or Slavonic people is captive.
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Medieval Latin, from Late Latin Sclavus, from Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος (Sklábos), probably from the Greek verb σκυλάω (skuláō), a variant of σκυλεύω (skuleúō, “to get the spoils of war”).[1]
The origin of σκλάβος has been disputed historically. Modern etymologists accept that it refers to the spoils of war, as it makes sense morphologically, but there is an obsolete theory that the word comes from plural Σλαβῆνοι (Slabênoi), from Proto-Slavic slověne (plural; the singular form Proto-Slavic slověninъ is derived from it), although this theory requires unexplained and unattested phonetic irregularities. It is argued that that the originally the term referred to Slavs (Old Slavonic словѣнинъ, словѣне), who were often enslaved during the early Middle Ages, and that the originally ethnic term came to have a more general social meaning, possibly around the 9th or 10th century when it appeared in German texts - but nowadays it is commonly regarded that it was only old German propaganda pseudo-etymology.
It's not just about the deaths, but also about the suffering and degradation spanning generations, for the sole purpose of making "superior people" more money.
I have no clue whatsoever about how much Africans suffered under slavery, but I would think that some would prefer death to watching their offspring born into slavery and ultimately die as slaves.
Absolutely, I don't see anybody making the claim that slavery is wonderful, and devoid of suffering and degradation for generations to come. Maybe the folks walking around with tiki torches, but, let's be real. You and I, and most of Hacker News interlocutors are not spending much time around that crowd day-in and day-out, so we can all safely assume nobody is advocating for that here.
The fact however is that slavery has been with us, as a species, for the entirety of our recorded history, and is still alive and well as of today, in one form or another. As horrible as the Atlantic slave trade has been for centuries, we can learn more history, transcend a US-centric, exceptionalist world view, and realize that what we're talking about was not an isolated, special and rare phenomenon, never seen before, or that never happened again since.
We pretty much are. And a lot of this weird ahistorical 'contrarian' message board stuff about slavery might not seem like marching with torches but it tends to originate from the same places - as a way to rationalize and recruit for the ideology of the marchers. It's a sell job, not some clear-eyed, unflinching take on history as the people who tend to repeat this stuff often appear to think.
The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. However the social, economic, and legal positions of slaves were vastly different in different systems of slavery in different times and places.
Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1860 BC), which refers to it as an established institution, and it was common among ancient people...
Although slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world (with the exception of penal labour), human trafficking remains an international problem and an estimated 25-40 million people are enslaved today, the majority in Asia.
Slavery is absolutely ubiquitous across both time and cultures.
Instead what I'm seeing is ad-hominem bigoteering that attempts to ascribe bad faith, nefarious motives to someone even bringing up historical facts that can be looked up by anybody with access to the web or a library.
Also regarding 3, I wonder if, comparatively, the Soviet Union forcefully moved a lot more people (even percentage-wise) through its network of concentration camps. African slaves going over the Atlantic were what.. 2-3M deaths over 300 years, whereas the USSR easily disposed of 10-30M between 1917 and the 50s and later in its various GULAGs.
Much better organized, more ruthless, exterminating its own lawful citizens, thanks to the wonders of ideology. All for the greater good of society and the working class. No ethnic difference necessary to justify unprecedented genocide. Neighbors reporting neighbors to the authorities with almost total certainty of execution, for many decades.