I did an independent study back in college to make maps like these. At the time there was a CD-ROM floating around with a database containing all of this data. It must have been an amazing amount of work to compile that database from the shipping records. As impersonal as numbers can be, work like this really helps you wrap your mind around the magnitude of the slave trade and how it shaped the Americas.
No mention of who sold these slaves to the Europeans. For 1300 years, right up to the 20th century, the business was dominated by Muslim slavers. Slavery is truly America's original sin and will be a stain on her memory forever, but Europeans didn't just march in and grab them. They bought slaves wholesale from an African dealer network that goes back centuries.
I'm seeing this meme every time slavery is brought up these days. I'm trying to understand why it's so important to some people to add this bit of context. The only reason I can think of is it out some desire to bring an "all sides are bad" mentality to things, to somehow lessen the wrongness of what was done by Americans.
> I'm trying to understand why it's so important to some people to add this bit of context.
For me, context is important. For example, killing is bad. Killing someone in the process of shooting up a school or subway is less bad. I believe deeply in diversity, and I am also to keep more than one concept in my mind at the same time--America's evil, and that of others.
> to somehow lessen the wrongness of what was done by Americans.
If you mean to include my comment, I find your observation bizarre and revealing. Bizarre because you can't read my mind, and revealing because apparently you think you can. My wording about America was pretty strong. I honestly couldn't think of a more appropriate and accurate description. How would you phrase it?
Context and clarification is not a meme. You are just too young to remember when context and clarification weren't served up to you with a few clicks. Once upon a time you had to plough through copious volumes of primary sources. If you were lucky, you had a "professor" (the nice lady who gave you a C in World History when you probably should have failed) who could help you navigate through the miles of "opinions" (that is like a Status Update) dressed up as "facts" (pesky annoyances to be avoided).
>trying to understand
"Try not. Do or do not. There is no try." -Ghandi
>bit of context
This particular bit of context was particularly shattering to me when I was given it, as my education (private school, America) never once covered the source of slaves. It was deemed inconsequential. This, for me, is the scariest mindset: certain elements of history are inconsequential because of X. Your comment personifies this willful ignorance.
>'all sides are bad' mentality
This is my favorite fallacy. People are inclined to seek out a hero and/or Good Side in history. It does not exist. The concept of State Morality is new (it's 100 year birthday is 08 January 2018). Even a concept as fundamental to the modern age as The People is relatively new (France 18th century). There was an article I read a while back about how quickly human societies incorporate Common Knowledge into their shared identity. We then assume it was always this way (try explaining the concept of "second class citizen" to a Babylonian eunuch... after you explain what a "citizen" is of course) and extend our psyche into the humans of the past. The cold truth is that Good Guys cease to exist when the credits roll and history has no Right Side (who is the bad guy between the Mongols and the Muscovites? The Kieven Rus!).
I don't think you are actively trying to erase history, but I get the feeling you see history as a tool for politics, and that makes me sad.
One has to read until the fourth paragraph of TFA before running across anything hinting at placing blame for any of the slave trade. Indeed, the first paragraph spells out how little what became the USA had to do with slavery in general.
How about we just appreciate the visualization of an interesting data set?
This kind of makes me wonder if there are museums or memorials in Europe and central/south America dedicated to their role in the slave trade, the way we have them here in the states.
Indeed they do — far more impressive museums and monuments than we have here [1]. Notably, they do not have hundreds of monuments dedicated to those who fought to preserve slavery.
That one in the Guadeloupe Islands looks like a pretty big deal. We have the Freedom Center here in Cincinnati, which gets like 0 visitors a year, but the city spent a fortune on it and the water-front location.
Henry Louis Gates did a documentary where he visits some of the monuments in Benin (and elsewhere in West African port cities) that commemorate the people forced into slavery.
I could rephrase my somewhat retorical question: Has any African nation publicly apologised for selling hundreds of thousands of its kinfolks into foreign slavery?
The british were by far the largest atlantic slave traders and the american colonies were largest market to ship slaves to. Once they lost the colonies, they lost their largest slave market and switched to anti-slave trade to punish the US and also to hurt the french slave markets as well. They even ran blockades against the US and french to keep slaves from markets and starve the economies of slaves.
Pretty interesting how self-interest and economics drove american/british views on slavery back then.
