Slavery Routes – Part 2 From Sugar to Revolution
Al Jazeera (2018)
Film Review
Part 2 of Slavery Routes covers the so-called “Sugar Wars”* and the entry of the rest of Europe (Holland, Prussia, Denmark, England, Spain, France) into Portugal’s lucrative slave trade. It also explores the role of European banks and insurance companies in making this expansion possible. Slave traders always undertook cross-Atlantic voyages on credit, which meant they had to be insured against losing their “cargo.” Insurance companies (Lloyd’s of London was the most prominent) were happy to ensure an enterprise in which a trader stood to triple his stake.
In this way, the slave trade provided the financial capital for both European and American capitalism.
Too Valuable to Kill
Rebellions by captive slaves were continual on both sides of the Atlantic. Because it took four years of plantation work to pay off the price of a captive…
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Genocidal attacks on defenseless peoples is the biggest stain on the human race – By Mohamed Hamuldin
Genocidal attacks on defenseless peoples is the biggest stain on the human race
Jean Rostand, in his 1939 book Thoughts of a Biologist observed, “Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.”
History is replete with at least the conquerors. The Nazis killed six million Jews. Stalin’s forced famine killed up to 7.5 million Ukrainians. Pakistan’s Operation Searchlight killed three million in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Cambodian communists killed up to three million. Around two million African captives perished on slave ships during the Middle Passage. Another Stalin-imposed artificial famine killed up to 1.75 million Kazaks. Up to 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottomans. A Roman general massacred one million Jews to quash a revolt in what is now Israel and Julius Caesar’s wars against the Gauls killed more than a million Celts. Continue reading →
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