[autopilot23]

Slavery existed in every region of the world. This does not negate the destructive affects the Atlantic slave trade had on the continent, its kingdoms and resources. The article did not argue that "Slavery didn't exist under pre-Colonial rule".

Side point, it's always funny to me how a lot of Westerns are hesitant to admit that African societies in Pre-Colonial times had history, science, culture, etc. just as any other society, but very eager to exclaim that they had slavery. It's also as if the existence of slavery does not require a certain type of social organization to have been already developed, which then they claim Africans didn't have.

[Veen]

> Slavery existed in every region of the world.

This is perhaps a provocative point, but legal slavery has not existed in England for about 900 years. The rest of your points are an irrelevant and inaccurate response to my comment, so I won't address them.

[vanattab]

I mean they called them indentured surfs but I am not sure it was much different. Also the British were the main actors in the slave trade until 1800s

[arrosenberg]

I suppose, technically, Ireland isn’t in England. Feels like a distinction without a difference.

[Veen]

No one who lives in either place would consider it a distinction without a difference. Ireland abolished slavey in 1171, although, like the English, they were involved in the Atlantic slave trade.

[arrosenberg]

I’m referring to the plantations of Ulster. You know, the place where the world plantation got its current context.

[Veen]

It’s not surprising I didn’t get the reference: there was no slavery on the Ulster plantation. That was about Protestant colonisation. The local Gaelic Catholics were displaced by Scottish and English colonists, not enslaved.

Plantation implies slavery in the US, but not everywhere.

[arrosenberg]

Sure, why not? Again, a distinction without much of a difference when arguing what has and hasn’t been legal in England (proper, since most of North America WAS England/GB for 150 years) for 900 years. Sharecropping and multiple acts of genocide look pretty similar.

[Amezarak]

What would it even mean for a human society to not have 'history' or 'culture'? This doesn't make any sense, and I don't think anyone claims this. I think everyone recognizes that almost all history is undocumented, but I don't think anyone would therefore claim it doesn't exist.

I can at least imagine people quibbling about "science"; clearly, once again, every human society that has ever existed in the past two million years has some sort of technological development that required some kind of empirical process of understanding of the world, but I can see why people might not consider that science.

I think people are usually more dismissive of people turning historical molehills into glorious mountains. There's whole industries and groups dedicated to doing this everywhere in the world, on a sliding scale of extremist claims, up to and including "our ancestors had lasers and nuclear weapons, as demonstrated by these descriptions in our religious texts", but naturally you see it more often in places that aren't known as meccas of scientific and technological development...usually for good reason (they weren't). Even neutral well-intentioned people often stretch known historical reality too far in an attempt to make people look better, but it's usually nationalist partisans.

These people (the partisans) would generally be better served making their locales better today than trying to convince everyone of a glorious past that likely didn't exist or has been highly exaggerated.

[azmodeus]

In Hungary there's no history of such slavery. Peasants liberties were limited but it was not slavery. I feel your perspective is very Anglo American. There are European countries with very little or no culture of slavery.

[dagaci]

https://www.medieval.eu/slavery-in-arpad-era-early-medieval-... - with the last slave raid by the "ottomans" taking place in the 1700s.

When discussing African nuances between, slave, peasant, peon, churl, sharecropper, whatever are discarded, and all are designated slaves. In Europe such nuances are emphasised, frankly this is probably done unconciously for egotistical reasons.