[ExI] History of Slavery

[Fred C. Moulton]

On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 17:58 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Oh, all right.  :-)     My superficial and over-polarizing statement
> doesn't hold a candle to Sowell's description anyway:

Actually I expected someone with Sowell's reputation to be more precise;
in particular to have a more nuanced categorization instead of Western
versus non-Western.

If "instrumental view of history" has the common meaning of using
history in furtherance of some short term personal and non-historical
project then I caution that we all should be careful.  It is like many
concepts - a double edged sword.

Since there are no specific names attached to the phrase "those with an
instrumental view of history" I do not know if he is talking about a
dozen persons or a gross or more.  The passage would be easier to take
seriously if it had a bit more specificity.

I think attempting to understand slavery, theft of homelands, apartheid,
segregation and a host of other problems in a historical context is a
worthwile per.  I just urge an appropriately complete view with honesty,
clarity and accuracy; and not attempting either to condemn or to absolve
with sweeping over generalizations.

And as for the rejoinder "well we all know what he means"; let me just
say that can trigger me to extra skepticism.

Fred

> He writes on page 134
> 
>      In short, where European and European-offshoot societies
>      held direct and effective power in the nineteenth century,
>      slavery was simply abolished. But where theWestern world's
>      power and influence were mediated, reduced or otherwise
>      operated only indirectly, there non-Western peoples were
>      able to fight a long war of attrition and evasion in defense of
>      slavery----a war which they had, however, largely lost by 
>      the middle of the twentieth century, but which they had not yet
>      wholly lost even at the beginning of the third millennium, when
>      vestiges of slavery remained in parts of Africa.
> 
>      Despite all this, those with an instrumental view of history have
>      managed to turn things upside down and present slavery as an
>      evil of "our society" or the the white race or of Western civilization.
>      One could as well do the same with murder or cancer, simply
>      by ignoring these evils in other societities and incessantly
>      denouncing their presence in the West. Yet what was peculiar
>      about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide
>      evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evilt, no only in
>      Western societies but also in other societies subjectot Western
>      control or influence.
> 
> Lee
> 
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