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posted by CoolHand on Thursday December 17 2015, @06:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the un-reaffirming-faith-in-humanity dept.

The Economist is carrying a free story (free except for the annoying subscribe pop-up) about a French slave trading ship that crashed into a reef and sunk just off of the tiny island named "Île de Sable" on July 31st 1761.

The Island is a tiny mountain top of sand 500 miles east of Madagascar. The island was subsequently re-named Tromelin Island (google map link) for reasons explained in the article. Zoom in and out again to see just how desolate a place this still is.

The shipwrecked French crew, built a boat out of the wreckage of their ship, with the help of some of the slaves. The boat they built, for lack of materials, could accommodate only about half of the people stranded. So all 123 Frenchmen climbed into the boat, left the 88 remaining slaves (out of an original 160 or more), and sailed off toward Madagascar, with a promise to return.

The article is the story of how that promise was not kept, not entirely the fault of the French First Officer, who pleaded for a ship to rescue the slaves, but was rebuffed at every turn. Too busy worrying about the British fleet was the excuse.

Finally in November 1776, 15 years after the shipwreck, with the British Fleet otherwise distracted, a French ship arrived and rescued the last seven remaining survivors (all women except a 8 month old baby boy) from the island.

The story is an interesting read, and documents how easy it was to be callously abandoned in that day and age. (Not nearly as callous as being sold into slavery by your own disaffected relatives, mind you!).


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:26PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:26PM (#277944) Journal

    Oh, grow up. Here, have a heaping helping of white privileged microaggression. It has been documented that the slave trade flourished in Africa well before Whitey pulled himself out of the Dark Ages. Africans and Arabs traded openly, and freely. That slave trade continues today. Slaves were often sold by family, by political rivals, by raiding parties from nearby villages, by raiding parties from not-so-near villages.

    You are attributing the European with having a great deal more bravery than he ever possessed. Try to imagine, a ship landing on the "Dark Continent". Thirty or fifty men depart the ship, and make their way out into the forest, jungle, or savannah, in search of people to steal into slavery. They attack villages, and take away everyone, right?

    If you are that very afraid of white men, if you believe that kind of boogey-man story, it's really hard to understand how you got your geek card.

    Now, there's a mental picture that will stop you in your tracks. You reach into your wallet to play the race card, and accidentally get your geek card instead. How do you recover, gracefully? Try to pass it off as a comedy act?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @07:19AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @07:19AM (#278109)

    Well, the problem is that your facts are actually half-truths. The 'slavery' common in Africa before Europeans became involved was more like the ancient Roman form of slavery, like wide-spread mediaeval practice of serfdom, or like the more modern indentured servitude. The latter two are things that people do to other people who they basically consider their equals and part of their own society. Roman slavery was what the Romans did to people who they basically considered their equals but (in many cases) enemies.

    African Slave trade before the Europeans meant that when there was a war, instead of killing all your enemies you might decide to take some of them with you and make them work for you. But when Europeans started to buy enormous numbers of slaves for what were huge prices in the African context, this was reason to go on war or raids in order to make slaves.

    Also, I think I am detecting some feelings of European moral superiority over Africans that are totally out of place. Yes, African warlords who went on wars in order to hunt people and sell them as slaves were criminals - regardless of whether it was their own idea or someone else created the demand. No, it wasn't just Africans who behaved like that. For example, even long before Nazi German labour camps (which of course were much worse in that killing the victims was the goal and the labour just a bonus), in the German state of Hessen-Kassel young men were pressed into military service, then hired/sold to the British as soldiers in America. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessian_(soldier) [wikipedia.org], though the English article is not as explicit about this particular slave trade as the German version, which also points out that the gains from this trade were in part used for frivolous purposes.)

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 18 2015, @02:34PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 18 2015, @02:34PM (#278192) Journal

      Are you the same Anonymous Coward? If so, you've surprised me. You actually have some facts at your command, and seem willing and able to carry on an intelligent conversation.

      First - I think that you are attributing the Romans with a bit more morality than they deserve. Remember the gladiator games? They callously tossed slaves into the ring to be butchered. In fact, they were so callous, that they didn't care very much which slaves lived for a little longer, or which ones died today. The slaves lived on sufferance, so long as they could provide some entertainment. When they ran out of entertainment value, they could always be fed to the lions, for the amusement of the citizens.

      Slavery before the Europeans? Hmmm - please, let us separate the Europeans from Americans. Slavery as practiced in most of the world differed little from the slave trade that you describe in Africa before the Euros came along. Generally, people in South America, Central America, and even Europe who had slaves viewed those slaves as people. Slave owners in the United States were rather unique, in that they viewed black slaves as animals.

      Oddly, it wasn't that way in the early days. Originally, blacks were brought to this land under the same conditions that whites were brought here. They arrived - willingly or otherwise - as bond servants, obligated to work for some number of years, before being freed, with a stake. That is, black and white alike were freed from servitude with enough money to purchase a plot of land, the tools to work that land, and enough food to last until harvest. Other arrangements took place on an individual basis, but generally, that was the plan. In the earliest days, there was no differention between English bond servants, French, Italian, German, or African. A bond servant was a bond servant, and a bond servant who completed his obligations became a freed man.

      When did that change, exactly? Any ideas? If you don't already know, I'm sure you're not going to like these sordid little details. I'll just supply the link, no need for me to continue with a wall of text. Check it out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_%28colonist%29 [wikipedia.org]

      It must be noted that Mr. Johnson didn't create that attitude in white men's minds - but he certainly went a long way toward justifying the attitude toward black people.