Genocide, slavery and immigration: No New York Times, Slavery Did Not Make America Rich

Washington Times ^ | 01/02/2019 | Richard Rahn

[SeekAndFind]

My New Year’s wish for the coming year is for more of my fellow Americans and others to learn some basic history and try to get a grip on reality. Someone who writes for The New York Times under the name of Michelle Alexander wrote a column published last week, “Who Deserves Citizenship?”

One of her choice sentences: “But for slavery, genocide, and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist.” Hmm. Both North and South America were colonized by European countries that practiced slavery, and the United States was not the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery.

What many now call genocide of the Native American people was rarely a deliberate policy of the colonizers. The American Indians had no immunity against many diseases that the Europeans inadvertently brought with them — most notably smallpox. But many other diseases — such as measles, not normally fatal to Europeans — proved to be so to the Native Americans. The death toll was horrendous — but again, largely as a result of ignorance. The understanding of germs was still several hundred years away.

No one knows how many people lived in the Americas when Columbus arrived. Most estimates have it in single or low double-digit millions. What is more widely agreed is that there were only about 600,000 left in North America by 1650, meaning that perhaps as many as 90 percent of the pre-Columbus population had perished. By the time the English colonists began to settle in Virginia and New England, most of the mass death had already occurred. The Europeans were no strangers to mass death events. The plague in the 1300s in Europe killed an estimated third of the population.

[myerson]

Native Americans made lousy slaves.

[Loud Mime]

Verrrry interesting.

[itsahoot]

But at the time, it was a big money maker.

I guess that would explain why the Five Civilized Tribes are so wealthy, they all owned slaves.

[nicollo]

I don’t know, man. Mississippi was one of the richest states from King Cotton and look at them now.

Slavery enriched a few but did not create a middle class, as did the northern economy.

[IronJack]

all that slave mined gold and silver made Spain hugely rich.

A lot of the gold and silver was already mined when the conquistadors got there. They may have STOLEN it, or at least traded it for trinkets, but they didn't enslave the natives to mine it. Unlike in the Caribbean islands, where they DID makes slaves of the natives to produce sugar cane and tobacco.

[Eagles6]

Good article.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

Besides, slavery is hardly unique to North America, or to that era. The only literature you will be able to find in history defending the institution is from the American South because the institution was so universal historically that it had never needed defense anywhere else or at any other time.

[Svartalfiar]

It never ceases to amaze me how their understanding of the slavery issue differs so greatly from that of Americans, particularly white liberals and the race baiters who profit from the racism industry.

Not sure who originally said it, but it seems pretty applicable here:

The slave dreams, not of freedom, but to become the master.

[JimRed]

...how is it that Mexico and other nations, in South America, did not become wealthy?

The "leadership" in those places became quite wealthy while the people remained poor. That's what the RATs want for us.