re: #122 KGxvi

That’s not the whole story… there were also sugar plantations in the colonies. And it’s not like slavery was a brand new concept in Europe, it had existed almost continuously to some degree since the Roman Empire

Not to defend what was done in Europe, but it was rather different. Serfs/peasants came with the land and unlike slaves, they actually had quite a few, dare we say, rights as opposed to chattel slaves. This not to defend European serfdom, which was based on the idea that the lord protected his serfs and in exchange they were obligated to give him a percentage of their livestock, crops. etc. Of course, that’s not exactly how it worked in practice, where the lord’s share didn’t take into account crop failures, war and inflation.

This started falling apart in a big way after the bubonic plague swept through Europe, labor was scarce and serfs found they had a bargaining power they didn’t have before. It hastened through various political changes which ended feudalism and moved towards a state-based nationalism. That said, Russian serfdom hung around until 1866, but one could make the argument that Russia was autocratic and semi-feudal until the 1918 Revolution.

Slavery in the Americas was quite a different thing, and as a white woman descended from landless white Southerners, I have to point out the complicity my ancestors had in propping up slavery, and, later, Jim Crow. I hate this bullshit revisionism that tries to soft-pedal the fact that 4 million people were owned as chattel, movable property until the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment. Grrrrrr.