Feb
23
“The Jews’ role in the commercial [slave trade] process shows them to be neither better nor worse than others in an era when the morality of slavery was a nonissue. Color was not a criterion: Whites also bought and sold other whites, and Africans enslaved Africans. Slaves were coin in every realm, and Europe’s seagoing nations bid for and zealously guarded the right to sell Africans to a Christian New World. As the historian Eli Faber documents in Jews and the Slave Trade, after the demise of New Holland, Jewish involvement in the trade was negligible.”
edward kritzler, jewish pirates of the caribbean (chapter 6). i mean. not that i necessarily assume any of the things he is saying to be a total lie? i can buy that jews on either side of the atlantic were the same as anyone else in those spheres when it came to the slave trade, sure. but i am… not really convinced that color had NO IMPACT whatsoever on the shape slavery took for the slaves in question, and also i think it’s disingenuous to be like “hey everyone had slaves” when slavery, while horrific and just about the worst thing possible in any manifestation, did not mean the same thing in all countries at all times to all enslaved peoples. and the thing is, this guy has been glossing over the horrors of south american colonization for so long (this is on page 136) that at this point this just reads like so much ass-covering, like, “oh yeah the slave trade, um, that was going on also, LET’S GET BACK TO HOW AWESOME THIS SEPHARDIC JEW RAISED IN HOLLAND WAS.” which, i mean, moses cohen henriques, very interesting guy. he was apparently integral in a fuckton of goods being stolen from the spanish empire, who can possibly be AGAINST stealing from the spanish empire, amirite? but… meh. MEH I SAY. you’re not pretending to be an academic, if you can come down on the side of “these dudes were baller” you can come down on the side of “SLAVERY WAS BAD” and not this “the morality of slavery was a nonissue FOR THOSE DOING THE ENSLAVING” bullshit. ugh.
