Difference between revisions of "Talk:Essay:Greatest Myths of American History"

Revision as of 15:34, September 2, 2008

Triangular Trade?

Manufactured goods from Europe to Africa. Slaves from Africa to the Americas. Sugar, timber and cotton to Europe from the Americas. A gross oversimplifiction, perhaps, but how is this not "triangular trade?" Moreover, how would the author of this little point-form "essay" describe the Atlantic system in place of the "triangular trade" model - and what sort of "conservative insight" is being offered with this contribution? AliceBG 19:38, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

The term was invented by an historian more than 100 years later. - Clueless.

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? 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.--Aschlafly 11:15, 2 September 2008 (EDT)

And you ignore basic economic history. Africa was by no means poor - it was rich in the resource that drove the Atlantic system - the labor of enslaved human beings. How else would the colonies have been able to grow the cotton and sugar? And you're evading the most important part of the argument towards the existence of "triangular" trade system - the fact that something had to be traded for that slave labor - often guns, but also other types of manufactured goods. Maybe you should read "Capitalism and Slavery" by Williams, or the introduction to "The Black Jacobins" by CLR James- or if you find those too difficult, the article on the slave trade in the Encyclopedia Britannica. AliceBG 11:29, 2 September 2008 (EDT)

You still ignore the main point, which I've now repeated several times, and I'm not going to waste my time further on this discussion until you address it.--Aschlafly 11:32, 2 September 2008 (EDT)

Thomas Jefferson

Um, since when has Thomas Jefferson not written the Declaration of Independence? Do we have a citation or some proof otherwise? --Ampersand 11:34, 2 September 2008 (EDT)