Big lies in history and the flaws of them:

I'm in total awe!

Busma...I have an assigment for you. Try googling 'slavery' or type key-word 'slavery' in Wkipedia and read all the resultant research and then come back here and report back.

I don't see how making things up would bring you any closer to the truth.

Well, obviously one could go on for pages and pages on this topic. However, i am rendered nearly speechless by the stunning ignorance which this member displays. One hint: Berber and Moroccan traders (Muslims) first established the west African slave trade, long before Europeans were involved. Go from there. One of the best sources for the slave trade is Dutch historians--after all, among the Europeans the Dutch were one of the really big players in the slave trade, and there are therefore excellent records from centuries of the slave trade in Dutch archives.

Busma, they traded them for guns and shiny pebbles...

i assumed we were talking about the answer to the question, does this ____, make me look fat?

Trading "shiny pebbles" (i.e., colored glass beads) became so profitable for the Dutch that Amsterdam became what one might call "the world capital" for the production of glass trade beads. Blue was especially valued. The Arab traders who typically sold slaves to the Europeans at the ocean's shore took highly colored cloth and glass beads, as well as firearms, in trade precisely because everyone involved understood the value of the beads and cloth as trade goods. Brightly colored cotton cloth was a good trade item--it could often be acquired from Egypt (specifically, the port of Alexandria) which was an entrepôt for the cotton trade from "Arab" lands, and traded for twice as much or more in value on the west African coast. Portuguese and Dutch traders learned in the early 16th century that colored glass beads could be traded on the east African coast for 40 and sometimes as much as 50 times their purchase price at Amsterdam or other European ports. East Africa had a slave trade, but that was mostly for the Muslim trade--slaves would not have survived in numbers which were "profitable" to attempt to get them around Africa to Brazil or the Caribbean. But East Africa was a major source for gold.

Therefore three or four point trade routes would be established, which, if cleverly exploited, could produce incredible profits. Some expeditions in the early years would go out with four or five ships, and would return with the survivors in one small ship, and yet the value of the spices and gem stones with which they returned would pay for the entire expedition--all the supplies, all the salaries and shares, the cost of all the lost ships--many times over. One good trade route would be to sell coffee in Alexandria (although a product produced by Muslims, and often in east Africa, their trade was commonly local and in small ships such as the dhow which is still used on the east African coast to this day--a Portuguese nao could carry the cargo equivalent of a dozen dhows), and buy cotton cloth. With that cotton cloth and glass beads, one could trade for slaves on the east African coast, and quickly run down to Brazil to sell the slaves, and pick up tortoise shell and lumber for sale in Europe.

Those willing to go farther afield, however, could make fabulous profits. Sailing with glass beads and cheap manufactured goods such as mirrors and hatchets and knives, one could pick up gold in east Africa for just obscenely low prices, while selling off their original cargo for 30, 40 or 50 times the purchase price in Europe. The gold could then be traded in India for gem stones and spices and silks (the gem stones came from India, but the Indians were acting as middle men for the spices and silks)--none of which filled up the hold. The hold could be filled on the return journey with coffee from Persian Gulf ports or east African ports, and colorful cotton cloth from India could also be traded for more gold on the east African coast.

The profits were so huge that 60% of ships could be lost, and a company could remain profitable. Losses that high, after the initial expeditions established the routes and often set up outposts along the way, were actually uncommon, and only occurred in time of war, when other Europeans attacked. Piracy was bad in the waters off Indochina and the south China Sea, but the Portuguese and Dutch went heavily armed. The modern insurance industry was born in the coffee houses of Europe when speculators would take shares of the cost of a trading vessel and its outward bound cargo, gambling that "my ship will come in," which could set you up for life, literally. Lloyds of London began in Lloyd's coffee house, where "young gentlemen" who didn't have enough cash to live like "swells" all their lives would invest in a ship, and wait for their ship to come in.

The classic American trading route in the early days of the English colonies was a four point trading route. The New England merchants would take rum (usually made from smuggled--illegal--West Indian sugar in the form of molasses) to England, to sell legally, and to smuggle, and to sell illegally (in the sense that English Imperial law prohibited trading directly in European countries) in Holland and France. There they would pick up colored glass beads and cheap manufactured goods--that is point one on the trade route. Point two would be the west coast of Africa, where they would trade for slaves. Point three were the West Indies, where they would sell the surviving slaves, and buy molasses (often they illegally purchased molasses from French or Dutch controlled islands, because everybody was happy to look the other way as long as everyone was making a profit, or being paid to look the other way). Point four was to return to New England and smuggle in the molasses, to be made into rum, to start the cycle all over again.

One of the factors which was important in the process that lead to the American Revolution was the Sugar Act of 1764. It was chiefly concerned with molasses and rum (hence, the Sugar Act), although it controlled the import of coffee, indigo and wine, as well. After what we call the French and Indian War (1753-60), the English royal government was deeply in debt because of the large amount of money they had spent on the Seven Years War (1756-1763), which was more or less the European version. Before 1764, the import duty on molasses from "foreign" ports (i.e., the French and Dutch West Indian ports, rather than the English controlled islands) had been six pence per gallon--but there was no enforcement, and when the Royal Navy did actually manage to catch a smuggler (a rare event before the war), they were usually let off by the local jury. The Sugar Act of 1764 actually cut the import duty in half, from six pence to three pence the gallon, but it was odious to the Americans because the English actually expected to enforce it. More Royal Navy vessels were sent to patrol for smugglers, and if they were caught, they went before Admiralty Courts (courts established by the Royal Navy), rather than local juries. Some of the first violent opposition to royal rule occurred in New England as a result of the Sugar Act.

Re: Big lies in history and the flaws of them:



Methinks you hail from an Afrocentrist historical perspective, am I right?

The transatlantic slave trade would never have been possible in such large numbers without the co-operation of African states. Due to the lack of modern medicines the West African coast south of the Gambia was known as the white man's grave, a Dutch official of the slave-trading West Indian Company had an average survival time of 6 months! This is why most slave castles on the West African coast are situated directly on the coast, military ventures into the interior were out of the question until the 19th century.

Many African states strengthened their position due to the wealth and arms that the slave trade provided. The Dutch traded especially with the Ashanti kingdom, but the Bambara kingdom to the north, and the West African kingdoms of Dahomey and Benin also profited.

Naturally, the slave trade offered a good opportunity to get rid of undesirable elements (such as criminals and crazy people, or political opponents for that matter), but the demand for slaves was such that it could only be satisfied by waging war to capture people and sell them off. The slave trading nations encouraged a state of almost continuous warfare between the peoples of West Africa.

If I remember correctly, the Dutch were one of the bigger players in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, responsible for about 5 percent of the estimated total number of slaves transported. The biggest trans-Atlantic slave traders were the Portuguese/Spanish, followed by the British and the French. Smaller players were the Danes, the Germans and the Lithuanians.

To complete the picture. Arab slave traders also fetched slaves from West Africa but the focus of their trade was East and Central Africa (numbers estimated to equal the trans-Atlantic trade, but over a longer period of time).

Re: Big lies in history and the flaws of them:


Regarding the original complexion of Jews:

If one believes the old testament and the story about Moses in the bullrushes, then those early Hebrews (I'm not so sure Jewish is a correct term for them then) were black. At least as black as the Egyptians then (the Arabs came later, I thought), since if Moses was raised in the Royal Court, he could not have stood out like a sore thumb.

By the way, I don't believe Black or White was any identity back then. It was where one came from. When the Romans conquered Carthage (Egypt) they supposedly mixed with the Cartheginians, no racial feelings whatsoever, I thought.

I think back in those days there was no identity based on race. That whole black and white identity thing is just an artificial construct made up for purposes of being Eurocentric. Did I answer your question? Not that I'm correct. I wasn't there, but what I said makes sense to me?

Perhaps what you are referring to is the connection to Nubians. If your curious why not look up the term 'Nubian' in Wikipedia: Here's the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubians

However, I know of no direct connection between Jews and Nubians other than occupied a similar geographic area. Do you know of a genetic connection?

What I was trying to say was, going back 3,500 years, or so, Hebrews were Black. But all Blacks weren't Hebrew.

The known world were people of color then, since the known civilizations had no involvement with any paler peoples living much farther north. I'm sure they existed, but they may not have documented their civilization like the Egyptians.

I assume that you have a link or will list your proof of this claim of yours that the Hebrews were black?

It is only based on the assumption that the Moses in the bullrushes story has some validity, and Moses was raised in the Pharoh's Royal Court as an Egyptian. Egyptians then were Black Africans, the Arabs conquered Egypt much later.

So, for Moses to be accepted as an Egyptian Prince, he could not have stood out by looking different. Voila, Moses and the Hebrews were Black. It's based on logic.

You don't have to subscribe to it.

How solid is the logic when you consider the historic validity of a biblical story of Moses and the bull-rushes?

And following along (for the sake of hypothetical discussion) why would the Egyptians care if Moses was "different looking" because of his skin color being different than theirs? I see no valid logic there, regardless if one considers there to be any validity of a biblical story.

No one has to subscribe to my thinking. You get three imaginary credits, regardless of whether you agree or disagree, just for attending the thread.

thanks.

I'm just trying to follow your logic.

The people around the Mediterranean Sea in North Africa, Southern Europe and Western Asia were sea's people. Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Carthagians, etc. were culturally similar and light complexioned, I believe.

I don't subscribe to Egypt, prior to the Arab conquest, having anyone other than Black Africans. Upon the conquest, they were forced to flee south.

So, in your opinion, the history/historians of Ancient Egypt lie.

I strongly suspect that what we have here is that rather simple-minded view of human history which runs something along the lines of "the Egyptians live in Africa; all Africans are black--hence all Egyptians are black." This "logic" seems to have been extended as "the Jews were once held in bondage in Egypt; Egypt is in Africa; all Africans are black--hence, all Jews once were black."

Pretty damned wacky--the more so as there is no good reason to believe that any of the stories of the bible should be taken as a reliable historical record.