Devil Sugar

Most modern dietary advice regards sugar as the devil, undesirable for health reasons. The Nineteenth Century had a better reason. The Atlantic slave trade began in the Sixteenth Century, but, as this animation shows, didn't pick up much speed until 1620 or so. By the Eighteenth Century, it had become a huge torrent, with hundreds of slave ships crossing the Atlantic every year.

Americans are most familiar with the slavery in the colonies and (mainly) in the southern States, but the overwhelming majority of slaves were destined for the Caribbean and Brazil to work the sugar plantations. The horrific conditions on these consumed human lives at such a rate that constant resupply from Africa was needed. The world's ravenous appetite for sugar had an enormous cost in blood and lives. By 1800, efforts at suppression of the slave trade had begun. It was banned in the US by 1807, and other nations passed laws which were fitfully enforced. By 1831 Brazil had outlawed the trade, and by 1850 started serious enforcement, expelling Portuguese slave traders. By 1820, the US had declared trans-Atlantic slave trading a capital offence, though only one man was ever executed for it: Nathaniel Gordon in 1862. Lincoln's refusal to commute his sentence apparently played a role in the Civil war.

The slave trade was a huge financial success for the nascent capitalist system, and a sober reminder that it workings are fundamentally amoral.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more