In most American history texts, the topic of slavery occurs minimally during the Slave Trade of the 1700s. Even though slaves existed in the American Colonies during the 1600s, they were very hard to come by until after the early 1700s because most slaves were sold in the West Indies.

During the 1600s, Africans brought to the Americas were treated as indentured servants. Indentured servitude was a status by which a person signed a set amount of years of their life away to another person to pay off an outstanding debt, such as passage by ship from one country (England) to another (America). Sometimes, very poor white people also became indentured servants.

Until Bacons Rebellion in 1676???, slaves were a highly minimal occurence in the colonies for the sole reason that slaves were more expensive than indentured servants. Bacon’s Rebellion was an incident where man former indentured servants, far too poor to make it on their own, rebelled against the rich landowners. Realizing that indentured servitude fostered negative impacts once the contract of servitude was fullfilled, many landowners began to purchase permanant slaves during the 1700s. Since landowners actually owned the life of these slaves, there was no worry about having to free them later on.

It isnt until pre-Civil War that slavery emerges again under which Abraham Lincoln led the movement to free all slaves in the southern states.

Howard??? Zinn’s text isn’t just about American history. In most high schools, the book “Guns, Germs and Steel” is taught concurrently with the AP World History course. As a result, Zinn’s text takes you straight into the heart of Africa where neighboring tribes squabbled amongst each other and prisoners of war became the slaves of the victorious tribe.

Since slavery existed long before the colonial period of Europe, Zinn’s placement of slavery should be no surprise since American History is an alltogether independent course. In addition, Zinn’s text helps to explain why Africans took to slavery so willingly. Since slavery had been a common instance in native Africa for generations, it made no difference to them that their new masters were of a different skin color.

In fact, during the time of the Salt trade, African tribal leaders even approached European merchants offering to sell slaves that the village had either kidnapped or taken prisoner through war. The Salt trade itself developed during the Spice Trade with India in which European merchants, having to sail around Africa, stop at trading posts along the Afican coast to restock. While there, one of the main commodities of Africa was its salt production. At one point, one pound of salt was equal to one pound of gold. As Europe grew a taste for African salts, so did its insatiable appetite for its slaves.

The obvious purpose of the inclusion of slavery to traditional texts is to explain the prominence of Europe during the Colonial Era. Spain spawned colonies in Central American and manipulated the local populations for their gold and treasures. Portugal set up posts in Brazil and conscripted the indigenous folk to work the silver mines. Britain set up colonis in North America and used native americans as travel guides, servants, trading partners, and in some cases, mercenaries.

The main purpose of Zinn’s text was to understand the reasons for which Europe and the white man dominated the world and came out as master rather than slave. He tried to assess the economic, ecological, environmental, social, and political ramifications which prevent Africa, Native America, or even New Zealand/New Guinea from emerging masters over the white man. If you attribute the issue of the commonpractice of slavery in Africa vs. indentured servitude in Europe, one can see why African so willingly gave up themeslves to servitude while Europeans were sensitive to avoiding becoming servants themselves.

At the same time, you could also assume that New Guineans lack of interest in shipfaring or exploration lead to a civilization that never changes or adapts, and a civilization that never changes, dies.

According to Zinn, up until the dawn of mainstream Europe, europeans were highly fragmented while the rest of the world, especially those of the great African kingdoms, showed the greatest potential for world dominance. However, somewhere along the line, for one reason or another, the versitility of Europeans surprisingly reversed the situation pushing Europe into the centerfold and leaving the rest of the world in the dust.

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