Thank you, Anita.

-- Stephan


On 14 Jun 2007, at 21:06, Anita Wills wrote:

> Stephan,
> This is an excellent response, and well written. I remember that we  
> discussed this in one of my history classes, and it never hurts to  
> hear it again.
>
> Anita
>
>
>> From: "Stephan A. Schwartz" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia  
>> history              <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Islamic Slavery (was Re: Slavery and immoral stance,  
>> etc.)
>> Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:54:21 -0400
>>
>> Let me suggest that the association of slavery with Southern  
>> American  history (including Virginia) stems from the unique  
>> disposition and  cultural affect of the American colonial and post  
>> independence  periods, which made possible a coherent industrial  
>> agricultural  system built around cotton and tobacco. One which  
>> required large  numbers of workers, in the absence of the  
>> machinery which would  ultimately displace this approach to agri- 
>> business.  That these  workers were African, as opposed to  
>> indentured Irish, say, I would  propose is a product of both  
>> historical synchronicity: the rise of  exploration and the place  
>> of slavery at the time, in the Africa the  explorers discovered,  
>> and the evolutionary development that produced  a resistance to  
>> Malaria in Africans, particularly west Africans --  and which also  
>> was the source of this same population's problems with  sickle  
>> cell trait -- about 2 million Americans have sickle cell  trait.  
>> About 1 in 12 African Americans has sickle cell trait.
>>
>> -- Stephan
>>
>> On 14 Jun 2007, at 16:29, Anita Wills wrote:
>>
>>> It is interesting that you now lay the association of Islam with   
>>> slavery in my lap. I did not make that association, which is why  
>>> I  posed the question. We are supposed to be discussing Virginia   
>>> history in general and American history in particular. I was  
>>> simply  attempting to bring the discussion back to Virginia  
>>> History. BTW I  was not posing the question to anyway in  
>>> particular, so please do  not take offense.
>>>
>>> However, thank you for at least attempting to answer the question.
>>>
>>> Anita
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: David Kiracofe <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia   
>>>> history              <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: Re: Islamic Slavery (was Re: Slavery and immoral  
>>>> stance,  etc.)
>>>> Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:21:55 -0400
>>>>
>>>> I'm a bit put off with your association of Islam, which is a  
>>>> cultural
>>>> and religious system, with the institution of slavery as  
>>>> practiced in
>>>> its various locales.   Yes, Islamic law validated the holding  
>>>> of  slaves,
>>>> but so did Christianity and numerous other faiths.  But surely the
>>>> association of the buying and selling of people should be with the
>>>> people who did the buying and selling and not their presumed belief
>>>> systems.  Neither the African Muslim seller (and not all  
>>>> sellers  were in
>>>> fact Muslims) nor the European Christian buyers were behaviing  
>>>> in  ways
>>>> that one would call specifically religious, rather they were   
>>>> engaged in
>>>> a very secular economic activity.
>>>>
>>>> To get to your question though (I wouldn't want to be accused  
>>>> of  evading
>>>> it), Europeans began associating Africans with exploitable labor  
>>>> well
>>>> before Columbus.   The Portuguese who acquired the first  
>>>> African  slaves
>>>> (around 1440) did so from Muslim merchants in West Africa.  The
>>>> degradation of people who were so different from themselves  
>>>> validated
>>>> Europeans' sense of occupying a higher place in the hierarchy  
>>>> of  nature.
>>>>   Europeans were quick to exploit Native workers in the Americas as
>>>> well.  When desease and other problems with Native workers created
>>>> shortages, the contacts with those West African merchants were   
>>>> already
>>>> in place and ready to fill the need.   Muslim merchants didn't  
>>>> create
>>>> this worldview, their role was simply to make it concrete for   
>>>> Europeans.
>>>>
>>>> To jump ahead to Virginia, we can see that the English came to  
>>>> the  new
>>>> world with pre-existing social notions about the nature of the   
>>>> universe
>>>> -- in which some were of higher order than others -- and  
>>>> economic  ideas
>>>> about the exploitation of the labor of lower orders, including both
>>>> Native Americans and Africans as well as other Europeans.   If  
>>>> Native
>>>> American people resisted coerced labor, those who were prepared  
>>>> to be
>>>> dominant were ready to turn to other "lower" people.   In  
>>>> Virginia  that
>>>> meant principally the lower orders of English society and so  
>>>> there  was
>>>> the massive migration of lower class servants.
>>>>
>>>> One result of bringing over people from the English-speaking  
>>>> world  was
>>>> that the society of early Virginia was very fluid: one could  
>>>> serve  one's
>>>> time and then acquire freedom, and possibly land and status,  
>>>> and  so move
>>>> up from the lower ranks.  As the colonial society matured, however,
>>>> there was a desire to make a more fixed, less fluid, society  
>>>> (more  like
>>>> that of England where rank was very clearly delineated) and so   
>>>> there was
>>>> a need to settle on a labor system where labor was unable to  
>>>> achieve
>>>> freedom and its material and social benefits.  Therefore we see the
>>>> movement toward slavery and particularly African slavery.   It  
>>>> wasn't
>>>> all about race and yet race was so central to the practice of  
>>>> it  as to
>>>> make the distinction all but irrelevant.
>>>>
>>>> I know this is a very truncated history of the beginnings of   
>>>> slavery in
>>>> Virginia, leaving out the perhaps anomalous experience of the first
>>>> Africans brought to Jamestown, and further skipping past the
>>>> developments in Virginia law pertaining to labor and race, but I  
>>>> will
>>>> leave it there and if anyone wants to add, subtract or even just
>>>> quibble, well, that's what we're all here for.
>>>>
>>>> David Kiracofe
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> David Kiracofe
>>>> History
>>>> Tidewater Community College
>>>> Chesapeake Campus
>>>> 1428 Cedar Road
>>>> Chesapeake, Virginia 23322
>>>> 757-822-5136
>>>> >>> Anita Wills <[log in to unmask]> 06/14/07 12:53 PM >>>
>>>> My question is what did Islam have to do with Europeans enslaving
>>>> Indians?
>>>> No one seems to want to answer that.
>>>
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