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Well, this brings up one interesting counter argument (which I don't particularly agree with). When I argue with people about land acknowledgements, and bring up that I think that they're stupid because every land is stolen land, the only interesting argument I heard in return is that since the native Americans's descents are still around, it's important to give land acknowledgements at events for native Americans as a sign of respect. Basically respect for the living. However, the people the native Americans had long ago slaughtered to get their land are long gone (as are the neanderthals), so there's no reason to acknowledge their previous ownership.
To me this sounds like they're saying we only need to apologize for the past if the descendants of the victims are still around. This quickly gets to a repugnant conclusion, which is that in some ways it's better to have killed off an entire population then leave any descendents, because if there are no descendents, there's no need to apologize.
I think this also sounds similar to another argument, which is that the only reason white people are held so guilty for slave owning is because previous slave owning populations sterilized the slaves, or the slaves otherwise went extinct before the modern era. This makes it sound like the real "sin" of white people which makes them distinct from other slave owning populations, is that they freed the slaves, and gave them enough resources that their descendents lived to the modern age. Once again, no descendents, no guilt. And white people are demonized as "literally the worst", when in fact they were one of the few groups of people noble enough to end slavery.
Copenhagen ethics strikes again. This also naturally applies to sexism and racism.
Yeah, now it's the people that solved the problems that are more bound than those for whom they solved the problems for. And while you could argue that it's not really nobility that ended these practices, and more just good business sense (slavery is not economical in the face of industrialization, and the British were the most industrialized leading to them being the most anti-slavery) with a side of taking the comparatively-unindustrialized colonies down a few pegs (which also applied to the southern US), that is not the argument most of the nags use. They do it just to nag as is their nature.
I’ve seen this explanation before but thinking about it now it no longer makes sense to me.
Wasn’t it mostly just the island of Britain itself which lead the word in industrialisation while they still controlled lots of poorly developed colonies? Why would Britain, where slavery had already been dead for hundreds of years, developing industrially change the profitability of using slaves in areas of the empire with little to no industry?
Slavery never caught on in the British isles because they had population in excess; the same time that the US was still using slave labor had the British loosing children in mining accidents.
And despite eliminating the slave trade in the early 1800s, they didn't manumit slaves in the Caribbean holdings till around the 1840s.
If you want to be very, very cynical, the British anti-slave movement was a mix of virtue signaling and economic tactics to try and neuter an up and coming economic super-power.
Please excuse the lack of sources. It's early morning for me and I'm being lazy.
I learned something new looking this up, that Scotland still had slaves in the coal mines until 1799, but my understanding is that England (and by extension Ireland and Wales) didn’t use slaves domestically simply because it hadn’t been accepted under common law since the 12th century.
It didn't stop them in the Caribbean, though.
Also, minor correction on my part. The British manumitted their slaves in 1838 - it was the French that kept them until 1848 before it was abolished. My apologies - it's been a while since I've cracked open those books.
That said, I'm perhaps being very cynical. But if I'm sure the British had required the manpower, they would have worked some legal and/or financial shenanigan out.
This is all pure supposition on my part, however, so feel free to ignore it.
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I don't know anything about the economics of slavery, so I'm just trying to understand. But why does having population in excess make slavery less enticing? I understand you can get lots of cheap labor if you have excess population. But at the same time, slavery is free labor, and wouldn't having excess population mean you have more people to enslave?
Slaves are not 'free'. Intial purchase, maintenance, oversight - all costs. Then there's the social aspects - slaves in the South were, ironically enough, treated very well compared to thier brethern that went elsewhere. It's why you get twisted situations such as the Irish Canal in New Orleans, Louisiana, that was so named due to all the Irish immigrants that died during it's construction in 1830s.
Why didn't they use slave labor? Because immigrant labor was much, much cheaper.
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It's cost of labor vs wages, something I've been wanting to talk about recently. Slaves have huge fixed and variable costs, especially if you have to do it individually and can't take advantage of coordinated/socialized investments like the county militia Catch'uh Freeman team
You need some pretty weird conditions for slavery or serfdom to coexist with widespread wage labor iirc. Lots of war captives in Rome, ways to stop serfs bailing to go work for cash in Russia, etc. (i still don't know how that second one worked tbh, anyone have a clue?)
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