So lets try to keep this as /pol/ free as we can.
Why exactly did slavery become illegal?
Looking at history nothing is ever done solely for 'moral' reasons.
What made people favor freeing slaves, when it meant giving up so much wealth?
It's kind of an oddity in human history from my perspective.
It used to be necessary for having a powerful empire, by that time the technology and alternative labor forces made it unnecessary. It was still profitable but the moral aspect was no longer outweighed by the profit for many people.
the industrial revolution shifted the economy from the fields to the cities and increased the availability of cheap consumer goods
so in one hand, you don't need that much labor on the fields (which was the main reason to have slaves) and in the other the need to have people who can buy your shit increases, but since slaves have no salaries or even property it's more difficult
>Looking at history nothing is ever done solely for 'moral' reasons
You don't think people could possibly have moral objections to owning human beings?
>You don't think people could possibly have moral objections to owning human beings?
I do.
But moral objections alone never caused massive overhauls to an economy.
People had the same moral objections to slavery for at least a thousand years. But nobody did anything about it because slaves got shit built.
>so in one hand, you don't need that much labor on the fields (which was the main reason to have slaves) and in the other the need to have people who can buy your shit increases, but since slaves have no salaries or even property it's more difficult
That is very interesting.
I was always wondering 'why not just have the slaves work the factories' but not having a salary would be a problem for the economy as a whole.
The first major push to abolish slavery was an economic move by Britain to cripple their rivals in the Netherlands, who were making a killing off the Atlantic Slave Trade, so Britain enforced a ban on overseas slave trading and used a moral high ground to gain public support for the move, while pressuring the Netherlands to give it up.
But this ban did not include internal slave trading, just overseas, where the Southern US and Brazil had more than enough internal slaves to keep their own domestic trading alive.
The Industrial Revolution's advance however really put an end to the slave trade, where machines could do the work of hundreds of slaves, and there was a higher demand for skilled, educated labor rather than unskilled laborers, making slaves more or less archaic and outdated by the 1860's. Regions like Brazil and the Southern United States were effectively held back by sticking to slavery for so long, where regions like India and Egypt began producing more spices and cotton through machines and skilled labor than the South could through slaves. the only thing that kept the South alive for so long in competition with Egypt was the sheer size of the South's cotton fields compared to Egypt, but the picking and harvesting process started to greatly favor Egypt as industrial machines took the role over hand-laborers.
Didn't the cotton gin increase the value of slaves though?
Thank you user.
This is what I was looking for.
The cotton gin didn't revolutionize harvesting, just processing. This just meant that the slaves had more time to pick cotton. You have to revolutionize both halves, otherwise all the work just gets transferred to one side of the equation.
Also processing the seeds out of cotton is a much bigger pain in the ass than picking it.
Did mechanized harvesting methods exist before the American Civil War?
>The first major push to abolish slavery was an economic move by Britain to cripple their rivals in the Netherlands
Perhaps partly, but Britain abolished the slave trade also through moral and/or religious motives. The Abolition of Slave Trade Act was proposed by British Quakers.
True, but religious reasons do not trump economic reasons, at least usually. There has to be an economic reason, and usually the economic reason will be masked with the religious or moral reason. Things don't happen because religious people complain. They happen because Lord Moneybags thinks it will help his bottom line.
The US probably was probably more influenced by religion than the UK at the time. Slavery was banned in New England and Pennsylvania because Puritans and Quakers saw it as being morally wrong, The second Great Awakening also played a major role in the abolition movement, the movement took it's message to millions of receptive Americans and preached about the immorality of drinking, war, and slavery. I can't say that the Second Great Awakening was able to convince Lord Moneybags, but it certainly got the people to denounce slavery.
The (((North))) used its I HAS INDUSTRIAL TECH as a clever reason to free niggers when in reality they wanted to free niggers to cause what is happening in America today. Eventually white people started to actually believe niggers were people just like them then niggers nogged around and segregation was enacted.
I ask /pol/ to politely leave.
Or improve post quality.
>but the moral aspect
More like you get even more money if slaves became wage laborers since your consumer base drastically grew.
>You don't think people could possibly have moral objections to owning human beings?
People objected to the shit that went on in colonies but nothing really happened.
On top of that caring went out of the window once the power says "free settler starter pack and free shit"
>That is very interesting.
>I was always wondering 'why not just have the slaves work the factories' but not having a salary would be a problem for the economy as a whole.
Wasn't there something that Ford said? Like "I pay my employees a good wage that let's them afford one of my cars"? That kinda toes into paying wages for workers.
/pol/ please go back.
>the immorality of drinking, war, and slavery.
>drinking
Tried out a ban, we all know how that turned out.
>war
No real progress there, although Quakers and the Amish had moderate success with the whole "conscientious objector" thing, even if never on a wide scale.
>slavery
Score!
So, about 50/50?
Because the British decided it should be, they made a lot of money from capturing American/French/Spanish slave ships and putting the free slaves in their militia/navy
and eventually they became the dominant power in the world, the last nation to abolish slavery was Ethiopia in 1926 under British/Italian pressure.
Also a special nod to the Ottoman empire, sexual slavery was still being enforced under the covers until they were occupied by the french and brits post 1918
>(((North)))
>When the Confederate Secretary of State was Jewish
His name was Judah Benjamin for fuck's sake. Just how ignorant of history ARE you fucks?
there were, with the Mechanical reaper being the real gamechanger in harvesting cash and food crops. It was still in its infancy in the 1850's, but it was still outperforming slave labor.
In the era of skilled and semi-skilled industrial tradesmen and the growing significance of machines, chattel slavery just wasn't economically viable
Enlightenment, shitty productivity compared to just giving wages to workers
>the last nation to abolish slavery was Ethiopia in 1926
Yeah, no. Saudi Arabia and Mauritania.
Sexual slavery is still alive and well.
And forced and/or compulsory labour, and debt labour and captive labour.
>be California
>arrest hundreds of thousands of people on federal weed charges
>use this massive free workforce for industrial labor and public services
>make weed legal but tax the hell out of it, take control of production, and refuse to release your free workforce even though what they were arrested for is now legal by using the old federal loophole and ignoring local governments when it suits them
Slavery exists everywhere.
Medieval Christian Europe banned slavery on ethical grounds (at least owning Christian slaves).
It got replaced with serfdom so it's not much.
It wasn't instant but gradual and it wasn't clear and dry but shades of gray.