Today’s midweek column is here because I’m in the early stages of a discussion with a lefty long-time buddy of mine about racism in America’s history, and today: how much of it there is, how it’s distributed across different ethnic groups, and etc.
As I was thinking about the subject, a short video on the racism-adjacent subject of slavery coincidentally showed up in my feed from Dominic Frisby, whom I’d never heard of before. A little digging showed that he’s a British comedian, author and voice actor, who writes on various topics, including finance and economics.
The piece of his that appeared in my feed was an 8-minutes video on “The 10 Largest Slaveholding Civilizations in History,” which I would recommend to everyone who wants a quick overview about the subject.
Frisby starts by defining his terms, primarily differentiating between slaves and other semi-free peoples such as indentured servants and serfs. (The distinction is important, since if serfs counted, Russia would rank much more highly in terms of numbers of people enslaved.) Then he lists the top ten enslaving civilizations – actually the top 12, since there are two ties on the list – in terms of who enslaved the most people during their history. He ends by giving a link to his sources; I looked at those briefly, and they do seem to fit with what I already knew of world history when I came to this video.
Here is his list:
1. Roman Empire (actually the western Roman empire, 27 BC – 395 AD) 160 million slaves
2. Mughal Empire (1526-1857) 112 million slaves
3 Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) 63 million slaves
4. Mali Empire (1214-1610) 57 million slaves
5. Sultinate of Delhi (1206-1526) 36 million slaves
6. (tied) Joseon Dynasty in Korea (1392-1897) and the Byzantines (i.e. eastern Roman empire, 340-1453) with around 28 million slaves each
7. Third Reich (1933-45) 26 million slaves
8. Ancient Egypt (3000-30 BC) 13 million slaves
9. China’s Qing Dynasty (1644-1910) 12.6 million slaves
10. (tied) – Abyssinia (1270-1974) 9-10 million slaves
Umayyad Caliphate (661-750) 10ish million slaves
In his commentary at the end, Frisby notes a few surprising omissions. The Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, another Muslim empire who were one of the most prolific slave trading empires, don’t make the list, but mostly for a very gruesome reason: they castrated their slaves, which prevented the cascading large number of slaves in future generations.
He also notes that the Ottomans and many other slavers (especially Muslims) got many of their slaves from eastern Europe, which is why the word for “slave” – in English, Arabic, and several other languages – comes from the word “slav.”
He also mentions that the Brits, who had a long history of slave taking and trading, don’t make the list of most prolific enslavers. The same is true of the USA, who recent textbooks and rants from leftist activists inform me, actually invented slavery, and practiced it in much greater numbers with much greater cruelty than any nation in history. (I chalk this statement up as confirmation of the famous Ronald Reagan (Peace Be Upon Him) quote, “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”)
While I already knew that a very small percentage of black slaves in the Mid-Atlantic slave trade from Africa to the New World actually went to the country that became the United States, I didn’t know HOW small.
Of all of the black people enslaved by other black people and sold to Europeans who shipped them across the Atlantic, only 3% of those slaves went to the country that became the United States. And in the larger context of world-wide slavery, only .002% (i.e. 2 one-thousandths of one percent) of all of the recorded slaves transported out of Africa (by Arabs and Europeans) went to the USA.
Other politically incorrect facts that you are unlikely to hear in a self-hating Western classroom:
*Much slave-taking was intra-racial: white Vikings enslaved white Europeans; Native Americans enslaved other Native Americans; Asians enslaved other Asians, and most Africans enslaved other Africans (at least before Arab and European slavers created a big demand for African slaves, at which point Africans began to enslave way more Africans, to sell to those groups)
*Inter-racial slave-taking went in all directions, with white Europeans enslaving black Africans, brown Arabs enslaving black Africans and white Europeans, etc. On the eve of the American civil war, an estimated 10,000 black slaves in the south were owned by black masters.
*3 of the top 12 enslaving nations/dynasties were predominately African (Abyssinia, Mali, and Egypt)
*4 of the top 12 (and 3 of the top 5) were Islamic states, accounting for 221 million slaves
*The only modern European nation on the list was the Third Reich, and the only other European nation in the top 12 was ancient Rome, in the top spot.
*As usual, the Nazis punched above their weight in terms of evil, racking up an astounding 26 million slaves in only 12 years. Compare that to Abyssinia, who “only” enslaved 10 million over 700 years, or Egypt, who “only” managed to enslave 13 million over almost 3000 years!
Perhaps the most damning fact about slavery for modern people: between 46 – 50 million people are enslaved around the world TODAY! Most of their slave masters are Asian, African or Muslim. (Unexpectedly!)
As I will shortly be telling my lefty buddy, of course (of course, of course!) all of these facts do not mean that slavery in America was not bad, or that it is not a moral stain on our history that must be acknowledged and taught as part of our history.
But these facts ARE facts, and they do contradict and undermine the propagandistic distortions and lies that the elite left has been teaching us and our kids for decades now, among them that slavery in America was uniquely evil, that it wasn’t a part of every major society from the dawn of human history until the 19th century, and that white Americans today have inherited racial guilt from the actions of a minority of long-dead whites.
But that they have NOT equally inherited nobility and the proper gratitude of all Americans for the actions of the long-dead white abolitionists who suffered and sometimes died to end slavery in America.
For the record, I reject the idea that anybody inherits either guilt or innocence from their ancestors. But then again, I’m one of those oddballs who don’t believe in double standards, about race or anything else.
Que Mala/Crockett, 2028!
0-0-0
If you enjoyed this column, please share it, and click Subscribe (on the bottom of your phone screen, or the right side of your computer screen) to receive a notice when new columns post.
Martin Simpson 