Comments by "Alan Friesen" (@alanfriesen9837) on "" video.
-
10
-
6
-
5
-
4
-
3
-
The major difference between the slavery of the early New World and that of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean basin is the lack of a respected local agricultural society. The Caribbean and the northern coast of South America were industrialized by plantation agriculture. These were industrial sugar farms operated by European outsiders who did not consider those lands to be their homes. Any local agriculture was buried under the plantations so that this lucrative cash crop could be cultivated almost exclusively. The local populace was enslaved to concentrate their labor on cultivation and those that weren't worked to death or killed by their own in an effort to escape such a life were destroyed by Old-World diseases.
Slavery in Africa and South Asia was not on such an industrial scale. Slaves were often captured in raids in order to boost the prestige and productivity of relatively small family units or to fill the ranks of royal retainers. It was still slavery; it was still bad, but wasn't such an integral driver of the economy until the trans-Atlantic slave trade made slaves such a lucrative commodity that coastal kingdoms in Africa began focusing on large-scale slave acquisition.
What dynamized the Western world was the sugar trade, which led to the slave trade, as well as the gold and silver mines of South America. Later, coffee, cotton and tobacco (all slave-based industries) sustained the Atlantic trade network. The skirmishes fought to obtain the fruits of these developments as well as the wars related to the Reformation, accelerated the military technology of the West.
Agriculture in Africa and South Asia was performed by local farmers who, at least in good years, reaped the benefits of their own labor. The farmers may have been tied to the land, but they weren't imported in as labor for large scale plantations, at least not until Western colonialism brought those practices. So while these other civilizations were built with slavery, slavery was a much lesser factor because they never developed slave-dependent industrial agriculture to the degree that they did in the imperial periphery of the West.
Eventually a sector of the slave-owner population in the New World began to more resemble that of the old. In North America in the nineteenth century most slave owners owned one or two slaves who were more-or-less considered part of the family. However most slaves were still owned by a small group of plantation owners and considered more like faceless planting and harvesting tools. The former group generally fared better than the latter, but they were still owned and had no recognized rights or control over their future or that of their spouses or children.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
@MsBloodyFox I'm greatly concerned about what's going on in Xinjiang, even while I don't really trust the World Uighur Congress, ASPI, Adrien Zenz, or the Uighur Human Rights Project, all of which are actively trying to either break up or weaken China, nor do I trust western media and human rights organizations to fairly report on Chinese issues or accurately assess what's happening on the ground. I've seen too many hit pieces by the likes of the Financial Times, the BBC, the New York Times, Deutsche Welle, WAPO and others.
Of course, just because these NED funded advocacy groups, their members, and their slanted media junkies regularly defame China doesn't mean there is not some truth to some of their claims. The question being, how much truth, and also, how much of China's method of deradicalization is justifiable considering the very real threat of deadly violence and separatism posed by Uighur nationalists, as well as how much of the opprobrium references the legitimate conviction of individuals who have committed actual crimes, like engaging in violence, promoting violence, or advocating for separatism.
Just to be clear, I don't think sexual abuse (which has been alleged) is ever justified. Nor do I think torture is ever justified. I think incidences of this may very well have occurred and I think China needs to investigate those allegations and punish any official who may be in any way responsible for such actions.
So I do suspect that some of the allegations made against China have some basis in fact. What I don't think is happening is genocide, or slave labor, or cultural erasure. There is no logical reason for China to engage in these practices, and if there is one thing China is, it's logical. I think that these allegations are made strictly to undermine China's reputation in the world in an effort to either break China up territorially, or to weaken China diplomatically around the world.
1