Slavery Contextualized
There are more slaves today than at any point in history
GEORGE NOGA
OCT 29, 2023
The astounding and unexpected success of the powerful fact-based movie The Sound of Freedom has focused attention on modern slavery, which today is lumped together as human trafficking. Operation Underground Railroad (“OUR”), the organization behind the movie, leads the global fight against trafficking. OUR estimates there are 50 million people being trafficked today – the most at any point in history. Moreover, this number does not include the tens of millions held in peonage, or debt slavery.
Children constitute 35% of the victims. In the US today there are over 5 million slaves found in all 50 states of which sex trafficking constitutes 70%. Other common forms of twenty-first century slavery are forced labor, forced marriage, child soldiering and forced begging. Chattel slavery, the type common in the 19th century, also exists in many countries including Mauritania, South Sudan, Ghana and Libya. In some of these places there are open slave markets – just like hundreds of years ago.
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Slavery as Taught in Government Schools
There is much controversy about how slavery is taught in government (public) schools, with many teaching CRT and the 1619 project. Slavery, in all its myriad forms, is evil always and everywhere and it is right and proper for schools to teach children about its history and evils. The problem is lack of context.
Progressives, who have an ironclad grip on government schools, teach only about slavery in América. They divorce it from all contexts and fail to inform students about mitigating factors. As a result, students believe slavery occurred only in America and are ignorant of the often-heroic efforts to abolish it. Following is some much needed contextualization – some of which likely will surprise or even shock you.
Slavery in Historical Context
Slavery always has been a tragic, but inseparable, part of the human condition. It is thriving today and is even more profitable to the criminal cartels than illicit drugs. However, I am focusing on the period after the discovery of America.
From the 16th to the 19th century, 10 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the West. However, during that same time period, a far greater number (15 million) was sent east to the Ottoman Empire. Today there are many millions of descendants of those slaves in the west but virtually none in the east. Why is that? The slaves sent east were castrated and then killed when their usefulness ended. Thus eastern countries, which imported 50% more slaves than the West, do not have a legacy of slavery because there are few surviving progeny – due to castration.
Relatively few slaves were forcibly captured by European slavers. Most were sold by other Africans, even by their own families, making them complicit in the slave trade. The slave trade could not have succeeded without the active support of African elites.
“Selling one’s neighbors, and even one’s own children, into slavery is more condemnable than buying them.” Voltaire
Slaves were not limited to Africans. As recently as the 19th century, Barbary pirates captured and enslaved over one million Europeans. In America, emancipated slaves, who could afford it, also became slave owners.
The West Africa Squadron
There were many heroic actions taken by the West to end slavery. I will describe one of them – a massive, but largely forgotten by history, effort by Britain that spanned over half a century. Slavery was abolished in Britain in 1807 and they used the Royal Navy to wipe out the slave trade throughout much of the world.
Britain established a naval squadron to patrol the coast of West Africa; the squadron grew to include 20% of its fleet. From 1808 to 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves – at a cost to the Royal Navy of over 1,500 men. Some historians have declared Britain’s West Africa Squadron the most expensive international moral action in modern history.
© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com