
Originally Posted by
Alleluia
I mean re: the Aztecs, I would still say everything that was mentioned was better than being a subject to an empire that performed ritualized human sacrifice with its human tribute. I never claimed the Spaniards were utopian. It was a comparison. The quote I was responding to claimed that historically there haven’t been cases where the conquered were worse than the conquerors, and I don’t think that’s true.
And the Brits didn’t only abolish slavery within their own territory, they enforced a stop on trade of them in international waters, too by other countries. It wasn’t cheap in either blood or money. There was a moral conviction there for people to be willling to die over it. And I don’t see how profit and cost reduction would force abolition of slavery. If slavery was a hit to the bottom line then factories could have simply not bought them? It wouldn’t require abolition to simply not use the system. Alternatively, if you mean slavery being in competition with factories hurt factories’ bottom lines, that must mean slavery was profitable. Which would actually be an incentive to keep slavery by the, presumably older money and more influential, people who had them and were using them in competition to the factories. So either way, a purely profit motive for abolishing it, much less enforcing that abolition elsewhere, makes no sense to me. Im sure there were interests that had a money motive to abolish it, but I don’t think it’s fair to claim that was the only reason.
But, regardless of pure or mixed motives, slavery was still abolished. Which is inherently a better condition than having slavery.
My point was less bad civilizations have arguably conquered more unpleasant civilizations before. Which was the quoted statement I was responding to.