#1171: comparative brutality : jewel comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: jewel <redlion@ufl.edu>

> Not as easy as all that. It varies in time and space, in terms of the
> efficiency of the plantation economy, and what was going on at that moment
> in each and every colony. Let us not let Americans, English, Spanish and
> Portuguese off the hook so easily!
>

Well said.
 Don't forget that the British had at one time the largest presence on the
globe because of their fleet. Also, don't forget the conquistadores and
their quest for El Dorado, the city of Gold, and how many south American
Indians died because of their greed for gold.
Don't forget that before the French, there were the Spaniards on Hispanola,
and that the exterminations of all the local Indian populations started with
them.

I don't think it is appropriate to rate slavery as more or less brutal,
because in essence, slavery takes away the one property theat makes a man,
freedom. Whether it is physically brutal or not, it dehumanizes the
individual and puts him/her at the level of animals. That is plenty for
psychological brutality.
The monstrosities of slavery are too great for us to rate the British slaves
as better treated than the French slaves, they were still all slaves.

E. Zennie