Boylan P wrote:
>
> On Sun, 22 Feb 1998, Bruce Miller wrote:
>
> > Bill,
> >
> > You're concise definition of slavery, "one group of humans
> > systematically degrading another for profit" misses the point. Slavery
> > is about forceful exploitation, not degradation. Slavery is degrading
> > because it callously utilises man as an expendable commodity. But
> > degradation was merely coincidental to the goals of slavers.
> >
>
> Surely the absolutely central point about slavery was that one person
> or organisation (in the economic sense) claimed to OWN as a chattel the
> slave, and to have all rights of property (particularly of buying and
> selling him/her to others) over that "chattel".  (In my first museum job -
> at the greatly under-rated and little known Hull, England, Wilberforce
> House Museum (first opened in 1905 as a museum of slave emancipation)
> there are many auction posters for sales in which slaves were clearly
> being presented as of less interest than e.g. a particularly good horse.
>
> There is surely a significant comparison with the Holocaust, though
> perhaps a rather different one that that raised so far.  The issue is not
> a comparison with "Holocaust Denial", but surely a recognition that
> claiming to own someone as property and to be able to buy and sell them
> represents a quite different order of degradation than the sort of
> (mere) gross economic exploitation and degrading of humans for profit?
> The latter has happened (and continues to happen) without the factory
> owner or whoever claiming they have the right to buy and sell the workers.
>
> In the same way, even in this century alone probably far more died in
> total in numerous other cases of gross genocide than the six million
> murdered in the Nazi Holocaust, but the calculating ruthlessness and State
> organisation of the Holocaust places that in a totally different category
> of infamy. Equally, a system based on purported ownership of and trade in
> human beings was surely far more than Bill's "one group of humans
> systematically degrading another for profit".  Surely the slave trade and
> slavery system was more than just a "DEGRADING" of those captured or born
> into slavery?
>
> Patrick Boylan

Very good response.

Now, what do you think of our concept of a "plantation (sugar)
interpretive site" with slaves (actors of course).  Will it serve the
purpose of 1.) explaining slavery as an economic system and attitudes
about Africans; and 2.)serve to make sure no one forgets the associated
evils (which, as these exchanges have noted, were many)?
--
Bob Handy, Director
Brazoria County Historical Museum
100 East Cedar
Angleton, Texas 77515
(409) 864-1208
(409) 864-1217 (Fax)
http://www.bchm.org