It has become fashionable to bash the South – not only by removing war memorials or looking the other way as they are vandalized, but even in discussions of things like slavery. It’s never just slavery; it’s Southern slavery. The existence of slavery in the North has been whitewashed and sent down the memory hole.
Frankly, most of our American history as we learn it in school – especially in recent decades – is court history. It is a narrative. In the age of political correctness, our American history has been rewritten, often by Socialists and extreme leftists who have a Marxist (Economic or Cultural) agenda. Often the best history books are the older texts. And the very best ones are based on the original sources themselves – the compilation of which is painstaking and a great exercise in patience.
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Re: "The existence of slavery in the North has been whitewashed and sent down the memory hole.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, most of our American history as we learn it in school – especially in recent decades – is court history. It is a narrative. In the age of political correctness, our American history has been rewritten, often by Socialists and extreme leftists who have a Marxist (Economic or Cultural) agenda."
That's precisely true,and well-said. I am a historian and know whereof I speak, as I have been inside the belly of the beast, so to speak.
Slavery is a human institution, once found in all places and times and cultures; wherever humans were, there was bondage and slavery also. Yet, when one reads an academic text on it, of the kind used in many history departments to teach our young people, there is no mention of that - or scant mention of it. Instead, it is invariably a littany of sins specifically of European civilization and the United States, i.e., the West. They call it in leftist circles, "The Atlantic Slave Trade," meaning that their courses and books leave out anything that happened in most of Africa, the Middle East, Asia or the rest of the world.
These books and course also conveniently omit the fact that Muslims are the greatest slavers in history, meaning that they have taken (as captives), bought, sold and owned more slaves than anyone else in human history. Few westerners know it, but slavery was only outlawed in much of the Arab world starting only in the 1960s, and the last Islamic nations of Africa to render slavery a crime, Muritania, did so in the 21st century.
What is also left unsaid and untold is that two western nations, specifically the U.K. and the U.S., did the most to eradicate slavery in the Christian/non-Muslim world over the last two centuries.
Slavery is still common in the Islamic world, only now it is practiced more-discreetly and quietly so as not to offend or embarrass the Arab's oil business partners or the tourists coming to those new resorts in Dubai, UAE, or the like.
You are also quite correct that older texts are more-reliable and free of the crippling and ridiculous ideological cant now found in so many modern works. If you want to learn something new, read an old book!
Thanks.https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2021/10/comment-on-southern-slavery.html
DeleteBut at least you can be sure that they will not bring up the Gulag death-through-labor camps, so there is that. Although they might think that is an appropriate way to deal with "wreckers" and "Trumpists"
ReplyDeletethey will not bring up the Gulag death-through-labor camps,
DeleteFor sure.
Modern employment vs. slavery....worth a serious analysis?
ReplyDeleteWell worth while, I believe.
DeleteSo right on the newer texts. I like mid '50's and older.
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
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