Capitalism and Slavery
The book Capitalism and Slavery, by Eric Williams, is a very informative but emotionally binding book. Throughout the book my emotions are mixed and my views of the truth about the middle passage and the triangular trade are slanted. I am forced to create my own conclusions about the dynamics relating capitalism and slavery. When one thinks of slavery, only the most cruel and harsh thoughts come up. Pages 13-17 show the grim truth about how the slaves had to live and serve. (pg. 16) "The status of these servants became progressively worse in the plantation colonies. Servitude, originally a free personal relation...(now) a control... over the bodies." It is disgusting how the treatment of the slaves becomes even worse over time. The type of treatment to where they are being traded and living on these huge boats so tightly packed with only a small place to lay and rest and hardly any food. Why couldn't they be treated better, be compensated with food, comfort, religion, family? (pg. 19) "Kidnapping in Africa encountered no such difficulties as were encountered in England." This argument makes me sick; kidnapping the African people and transporting them for somewhat free labor (except feeding, fuel for ships, and
I felt good to read this knowing that there were really concrete principles which lead to the end of slavery but I just wish we could go back somehow and employ other people to cultivate the crop lands of the West Indies. The planters had a harder time making capital, the slaves were subjected to worse treatment at such a large scaled ring, and Britain prospered at the cost of this all. 34) "The 'horrors' of the Middle Passage have been exaggerated. How could such moral institutions believe in a cruelty to benefit their lives with comfort and commodities for the future? On page 46, I found this interesting excerpt, "The men most active in this traffic were worthy men. Some people did what they have to do; only God can judge if they were right or wrong, I feel wrong. The Negroes had been stimulated to freedom by the development of the very wealth which their labor had created. " Finally, the climax of the book appears the answer to all our questions. All in all, Capitalism and Slavery, by Eric Williams, was a marvelous book that was both very informative and very moving. The introduction to Chapter Two discusses monopoly and how many merchants missed out on a free trade system and were missing out on plenty of money. Everybody lost out from the British monopoly except for the British. " On one hand, how could good people, entrepreneurs, people looking for money, what seems like an honest way, do such a thing when really so many people have to suffer for it to go on? I have such mixed emotions regarding this theme.
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