Englund

America’s first major war outside the New World was fought because of white slavery.  North African pirates—who enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.3 million Europeans between 1500 and 1800 as part of the Barbary slave trade—had captured many American sailors by the late eighteenth century.  Rather than continuing to pay ransoms for their return, the U.S. Marines sailed to Tripoli (modern-day Libya) and made war on their captors.  This was immortalized in a lyric of the Marines’ Hymn From the Halls of Montezuma / To the shores of Tripoli—which makes it stranger that most Americans have never heard of the Barbary slave trade. https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/Frequently-Requested-Topics/Marines-Hymn/ What I learned from teaching slavery to a group of college freshmen is that many (perhaps most) American kids graduate high school believing, falsely, that slavery happened only in America. Their minds are not blown by rehearsing the brutal facts of America...

 ... does not state that slavery caused Britain’s industrial take-off. But every page thereafter bends the reader in that direction. Those already inclined to think the worst will find compelling validation. Was the slave plantation system in the West Indies and the Americas the critical catalyst for Britain’s economic take-off in the 17th century?  Or are such claims an exercise of post hoc, ergo propter hoc "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X."  We have the vintage but ageing masterpiece of Capitalism and Slavery, a deep-dive into the colonial archives by Eric Williams, a black Oxford historian who later went on to lead Trinidad and Tobago for a quarter of a century. An archive of documents is today available online. Every known slave shipment across the Atlantic from 1500 to 1875 is posted on slavevoyages.org.  Spain, Portugal, and Brazil – or traders linked to these states – together shipped 6,909,790 slaves. Britain shipped ...

År 1784 förhandlade Sverige till sig ön Saint-Barthélemy från Frankrike.  Ön visade sig vara för torr för att lämpa sig för plantager, med hade en stor, naturlig hamn. Svenskarna insåg därför snart att det bästa sättet att tjäna pengar på ön var att locka till sig internationell handel – inte minst handel med människor. Sverige var en liten och sen kolonialmakt. Dessutom såldes Saint-Barthélemy redan 1878 tillbaka till Frankrike, då ön inte längre var lönsam. Detta har underlättat för berättelsen om Saint-Barthélemy som en exotisk och harmlös parentes i svensk historia att få fäste – inget mer än en snäll och lite tafflig lekstugeversion av kolonialism. Anna Jörngården Understreckare SvD 22 augusti 2023 En bit av Sverige som ständigt faller i glömska | Anna Jörngården | SvD