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Talk:Essay:Greatest Myths of American History (view source)
Revision as of 15:15, September 2, 2008
, 15:15, September 2, 2008→The term was invented by an historian more than 100 years later. - Clueless.: reply
Whoever wrote this is clueless as to what historians do - and one of the things that they do is look at the past, analyze events and then come up with typologies and taxonomies and categorizations and even just plain old names and titles for those events. Even if no-one in the 17th and 18th centuries used the term "triangular trade," that doesn't mean such a thing did not exist - nobody called the Middle Ages "the Middle Ages" until much later, but we can still point to a certain time and call it so. An overwhelming amount of documentary evidence exists to justify thinking about the Atlantic system this way - after all, do you think the Africans just gave away a valuable economic resource such as slave labor? [[User:AliceBG|AliceBG]] 10:43, 2 September 2008 (EDT)
Whoever wrote this is clueless as to what historians do - and one of the things that they do is look at the past, analyze events and then come up with typologies and taxonomies and categorizations and even just plain old names and titles for those events. Even if no-one in the 17th and 18th centuries used the term "triangular trade," that doesn't mean such a thing did not exist - nobody called the Middle Ages "the Middle Ages" until much later, but we can still point to a certain time and call it so. An overwhelming amount of documentary evidence exists to justify thinking about the Atlantic system this way - after all, do you think the Africans just gave away a valuable economic resource such as slave labor? [[User:AliceBG|AliceBG]] 10:43, 2 September 2008 (EDT)
: You ignore the main point: no actual, specific triangular trade route has ever been found. This term was a creative suggestion by a historian over 100 years later, one that apparently captured your imagination. Africa was too poor at the time to engage in any meaningful purchase of goods.--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 11:15, 2 September 2008 (EDT)