This is not a happy blog, but it is about things which are necessary to think about. I wrote an earlier review about an interesting book, “The Queen’s Slave Trader” – I recommend that you read it.
Some people hide from such things, taking scant comfort in a New Age “see no evil, hear no evil” gospel of positive thinking. A gospel pf pretty lies.
Some, however, prefer to be adults. This is an interesting book . An interesting history and biography of a fascinating and ruthless man, Sir John Hawkyns – an early commodity trader, merchant, and Queen Elizabeth’s official slave trader under royal warrant.
The past is always relevant today, I will demonstrate this in a hot minute. But first, the book…
Back to the review, the book painted a very interesting, though disturbing, horrifying, and tragic picture of the early origins of the slave trade. It starts with the Vatican’s early sanction and support, to the exploration of the Americas, the trade wars between the English and Spanish, and the rise of early modern corporate capitalism. Reading about him, I was impressed by how energetic a hustler he was. Hustlers always get respect from me, even if they are evil ruthless bastards.
The book is also copiously laced with an amusing and fascinating descriptions of life and business in early modern England, from frequent Plymouth Schoolboy drunken riots (yes riots), brothels, real estate wheeling and dealing, and all of that colorful texture tat escapes high school history, but forms a real part of the authentic lives of people of the past.
Given my obvious African slave ancestry, the book was interesting, to say the least. The most interesting part of the book wasn’t the ruthlessness of Capt. Hawkyns, the man was a typical commercial adventurer and merchant of his time, tough, supremely self-confident, cruel, but not without a touch of humanity. What I found most interesting were the banal matters of business, traffic, hustling, the dealing, the wheeling, and how all of this abstracted the human tragedy of thousands of bonded individuals, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sisters, and brothers, sold and traded like commodities. Made into anonymous abstract numbers and product descriptions.
This dovetails into my thoughts about the modern slave trade. Frequently commented on, under the polite euphemism “human trafficking”, the slave trade is not only alive and well today but it thrives.
My personal opinion is that I think it is impossible to eradicate slavery completely from the world. In spite of the best liberal and progressive attempts for over two centuries, Slavery continues to exist both in the developed and under-developed worlds. It is illegal, true, but with its illegality it seems to be more lucrative.
Slavery is not only still alive, but far more widespread than in the 1500’s. Not just sexual slavery (a multi, billion dollar industry) nor just in the African chocolate and diamond industry, nor only in Sudan and Mauritania (obvious easy targets given their Islamic leadership) but Slavery is widespread and endemic through Africa in Christian, Muslim, and Pagan societies.
Anglo-American or Spaniard style chattel slavery no longer openly exists in the west, because the financial imperatives underlying its initial necessity no longer exist in a post-industrial world.
However domestic slavery still exists, not only in places like Saudi Arabia (where kidnapped Philippine maids pop up in the newspaper with alarming regularity) but in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. of A. These incidents filter in and out of the press, though a diligent researcher can dig them up. Indeed whole bloody books have been written about the thousands of little boys and girls, imported from around the world, who serve as domestic slaves in suburban America. This exists, if you doubt it then you are simply naive.
The handful of cases that are prosecuted are simply the tip of the iceburg. Then there is the matter of sexual slavery. At its core the economic motivation for cheap coerced labor, and cheap coerced sex, is massive, and has always been massive. Millions of women a year are imported, exported, smuggled, bought, and sold, kidnapped mainly in Eastern Europe and South East Asia, but also from more banal places. Places very close to home.
Perhaps the question becomes mitigating the inevitable damage. If slavery is inevitable, legal or illegal, then the question becomes, self-protection and preservation – avoiding getting caught up in it (in other words, don’t let your ass get kidnapped), helping those you discover who are enslaved. Mitigating the damage where one can, as a collective community.
But when our own goverment’s power players seem knee deep in it, then frankly what hope do you have? When in the EU officials stonewall investigations into CHILD sex slave rings, then frankly, what the hell chance do you have if you accidently get caught up in something over your head?
Beyond the “safe” cover of suburban, middle class, existence that is the perogative of the educated and (mostly) well bred, there are worlds that exist concerning which you are unaware. Take little Cincinnati, if I told you a fraction of what goes on under the surface within a 2 mile radious of Clifton, you would not believe it.
Slavery is still widespread in the West – face it. Anyone who denies this is naive, or disingenuous to the extreme.
In fact, under the surface of our world economy today lies is a complex, dismal, but fascinating interweaving set of coerced labor and outright slave like relationships – there are domestic slaves in Cincinnati Ohio USA, even, such things go on in the suburbs, and surface in the newspaper now and then only to sink under the noise.
Little white blond eastern European boys and girls, and little black African boys and girls alike, smuggled into the USA “adopted” and used as domestic labor, and on some occasions used sexually. It happens all the time and even hits the press but most people are more concerned about fluff news stories..
Slavery will never end because frankly, too much money is being made. The most progressive legislation has failed to put a dent in it, only made it more underground, more profitable, and widespread. Real government action will not occur because those making money hands over fist benefiting from it have deep pockets indeed.
When you type into Goggle “DynCorp” “Halliburton” “Sex Slave” “Scandal” “Rumsfeld” what you are getting is just the very tip of the iceberg, a huge iceberg. I have become a bit of a cynic, the older I get, but I still believe in human goodness.
When I was taught as a boy that Abe lincoln “freed the slaves” I didn’t realize the history my mother saw, 15 years before I was born, back in my mom’s day it was not uncommon, in the deep south, to simply run through towns, pick up any working age black males walking around town, book them on trumped up loitering charges, sentence them and ply them into chain gangs – state sponsored slavery and its well documented.
Out walking to the store to get some milk? Too bad boy, your destiny is a chain gang.
Particularly clever entrepreneurs were in the habit of bailing some of these guys out, without their consent, holding their bail bonds as debts over their heads, and recruiting them into labor camps to work off the debts… more or less indefinitely. So you were screwed if your were convicted. And you were screwed if you were “freed.”
This happened, in modern America, in your parents’ generation, and without a doubt the older generation is well aware of such things.
Slavery is, has been, and in some form or another always will be – human nature being what it is. Some will profit from it, some will reject it, and still some others will be able to look down on it all from a higher perspective, like an eagle in his nest, able to see the ugly truths behind the pretty lies, and to choose meaningful action.
This freedom, to see the truth for what it is, without flinching, without guilt, without cowering, and to be able to freely choose good in how you interact with the world, once illusion are stripped away, is an opening for the most profound Satori.
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