Comment by ClarityJones
1 day ago
England imposed the institution of slavery on the American colonies by means of their regulation of economic affairs. It didn't occur spontaneously from market dynamics, but was specifically provided for by (their) laws.
I think you're missing the forest for the trees. The slave trade existed as an institution for economic reasons, and for thousands of years before England was a nation. If it were unprofitable then people would've stopped doing it, regardless of how it started.
It wasn't just some government flex.
You also haven't addressed any of the other negatives that unregulated market dynamics have manifested.
I’m pretty sure the colonists imposed it themselves because it benefited them. England didn’t force them to buy and exploit slaves.
England literally supplied the early American (and later Australian) colonies with slaves "indentured for the term of their natural lives".
The "American colonies" were, of course, not limited to the modern USofA; Sir John Hawkins of Plymouth aka "the Pioneer of the English Slave Trade". formed a slave-trading syndicate in 1554.
He sailed with three ships for the Caribbean via Sierra Leone, hijacked a Portuguese slave ship and sold the 300 slaves from it in Santo Domingo. During a second voyage in 1564, his crew captured 400 Africans and sold them at Rio de la Hacha in present-day Colombia, making a 60% profit for his financiers.
Saying England implies in a way implies that the colonists in the Thirteen Colonies were in any way less complicit for making slavery widespread in the North American colonies. They were mostly autonomous and self regulating and chose to adopt the institution of slavery. They could have just treated the black slaves the same way as white indentured servants.
Caribbean colonies were of course quite different.
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