The Arabic Slave Trade vs. European Slave Trade - which was worse?

in life •  7 years ago  (edited)

This is a topic that I've been reading into lately, and it's a very interesting one, especially the way we look at WHO were the "bad" people, and who were the unfortunate people. Think of the word "slavery". What comes to mind? Cotton picking africans and white slave owners, right? Let's take a look at that.

The Atlantic Slave Trade

Or the Transatlantic slave trade is what we have been thought about in school. This is the slave trade that white americans today, according to the mainstream should still be ashamed of, even though your country fought a war where hundreds of thousands of white people died to end slavery. But that wasn't enough. The mainstream, and groups like Black Lives Matter still want whites to be shamed for slavery.

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Let's take a look at some numbers

The Atlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th through the 19th centuries. Africans from the central and western parts of the continent were sold by other west africans to western europeans. Only a small minority were captured by slave traders in costal raids. So all ready at this point, we can start to point the finger at africans themselves. Or, we could realize what kind of a world they all were living in, in those days.

Of course, there are no complete records or estimates of how many people who were sold as slaves half a millennia ago, but most historians today think that the number is between 9 and 11 million people. Only about 350,000 were shipped directly to North America. The rest? Sent off to Colonial Brazil, Mexico, The Caribbean and Haiti. Dutch, French and Spanish colonies. Even Peru and Colombia had it's fair share of slaves.

The Arabic Slave Trade

Now, this one is interesting. I was 30 years old before I even HEARD about The Arabic Slave Trade. Lasting over a thousand years, from the 7th century to the 20th century, muslim slave traders raided the eastern parts of Africa, the ,Mediterranean Sea and as far north as Switzerland. As you might know, Islam was a widespread religion in Spain and Portugal for nine centuries. Islam had control over regions all the way up to mid-france. Constantly raiding non-muslim areas in Central Europe, and eventually after centuries led to resistance from the Europeans - also known as the Crusades, where we drove out the Arabs from Europe.

Some historians assert that as many as 20 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and North Africa, and more than 5 million were bought by muslim slave traders taken from Africa across the Red Sea and Sahara between 1500-1900.

Muslims enslaved Europeans too. Between 1-2 million Europeans were captured between the 16th and 19th centuries by corsairs (who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire) and sold as slaves. Numbers on Europeans taken as slaves before the 16th Century is unknown, but the numbers range from 1-4 million.

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Context

OK. So what do we got here. Whites enslaved blacks by the millions. Spaniards (Mexicans today) were among the worst. Africans raided and stole humans themselves, and sold them to the whities. Arabs enslaved whities for over a thousand years, and they enslaved Africans at almost the same rate as whities did.

We were all pretty much retarded back then. The Arabs kept on with the retardation for the longest. Whitie ended the retardation, and came up with ideas like "rights", "solidarity", "humanity", "equal rights" (We're not so bad guys!)

Yet, for some reason whites are the only ones that are blamed for slavery and racism. When you think of the word racist, I'm betting you imagine a Richard Spencer look-alike in your head.

So not only did we end slavery in our part of the world, while slavery and savagery continued in other parts of the world, we came up with the idea of "humanity", that all people have value. How racist of us. Even though we've been apologizing en masse for decades, teaching our children how horrible human beings we are and doing the best we can to give minorities and basically every other walking being, even those who identify as keyboards or are trans-chickens, extra supplementory rights and privileges, whities, and with whities of course I mean the white man, is portrayed as the worst human being that has ever lived.

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The only explanation

The only explanation I can come up with must be the "playground rule" of weakness. I'm not a psychologist, but if you're the guy who takes the blame for everything, GUESS WHO PEOPLE WILL BLAME FOR EVERYTHING! It's the easiest thing to do. If someone is willing to just raise his hand and go; "Yeah, I suppose it was my fault again. Golly, stupid me. I'm just a stupid fuck" , then you ARE a stupid fuck.

And that's what we are, whities. Stupid fucks. Now start unfucking and uncucking yourselves.

 

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The damage msm has done to race relations borders on irreparable. Passing blame and shame from hundreds of years ago does nothing but to remind us why we can never build a relationship of unity and trust. The Europeans were not the first to enslave humans and certainly not the worst perpetrators of the practice. All races in their history have been victim to this evil tradition, some religions still adhered to today passively condone it because it was so natural yet today we consider the act the vilest of practices.

I personally feel BLM does more to undo the great progress the Civil Rights movement did to integrate blacks into American society by tearing at healed wounds and passively condoning the same discrimination their previous generation faced and revolted against. My hope is that a new movement moves the sentiment back toward integration not segregation(which, ironically, blm seems more in favor of)

Great comment. I follow sensible people, so..followed.

What blows my mind is the amount of time I have been studying the European slave trade but not the arabic. Both are such relevant issues and should be discussed in unison.

Lasting a thousand years, from the 7th century to the 20th century

Correction : Lasting for thousands of years, starting from the 7th century and still going on today.

Thanks! I wrote 10th century to 20th century first from my memory, but then a voice (of a former european slave???) told me I should double check it. And then I forgot to change a thousand.

It was more about them still taking slaves today and still will take slaves as long as they exist.

Ah.. haha. That could very well be true. It's a little bit speculative, but I don't disagree with that being a possibility. ;)

Europeans have a long history of enslaving each other also.
One of the biggest Viking commodities were slaves. They did a roaring trade with the Byzantines.
The Germans had slaves.
The Celts traded in slaves.
The Romans traded in slaves.
The Greeks had slaves.

Regardless of whoever is slaving, it is a nasty business.

Good point! Slavery was just a part of life for centuries and even millennias.

Great research done on slavery, but still today slavery exists and it is done through human traficking. Nice post by the way :)

Thanks! Yup. It does unfortunately. Primarily in the third world obviously.

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I like your article.I can tell that slavery in many African countries is still exist.