Posted at 12:00 p.m.
While I share the author’s desire for concrete steps to be taken to address systemic racism, I find the lack of rigor in her assertions about the history of slavery and racism frustrating. It is a gross oversimplification to assert that “the horrors of slavery” flow from the theories of racism promoted by the doctrine of nulla terris.
Slavery has existed at least since human beings developed agriculture and hierarchical societies, and has spread to the four corners of the planet, in the vast majority of countries and nations. It touched people of all ethnicities on all continents.
Persians, Romans, Egyptians, Indians, Chinese, Natives, Vikings, you name it — they all had slaves and it was only very recently in human history that the movement for the abolition of slavery developed.
China has used Vietnamese slaves for centuries; the Ottoman Empire imported not only black slaves, but also many white slaves, especially from the Caucasus. Vikings brought British and European slaves home during their famous raids. The “panis” of New France were prisoners of war of other natives, who sold them to the runners of the woods. No one is innocent in this exploitation of humans by other humans.
A widespread practice
Note also that the first slaveholders in Africa were the various African tribes themselves, who exploited their prisoners of war among themselves and ended up exporting their own peoples first to the Arabs (as far back as the IXe century) and then to Europeans at the time of their “discoveries”. Africans at home continued to indulge in slavery well into the 20the century and some of them are still doing it today (think Sudan war and Boko Haram).
The history of slavery is very long and complex and varies in time and according to place and cannot be reduced to the impact of the transatlantic trade which prevailed from the 16th to the 19th centuries, even if its effects are extremely important in the development of systemic racism in America.
We can demand that our governments act, among other things, to eradicate all traces of racial discrimination from our laws and regulations, without trying to put all the blame on Europeans.
Also, note that New France no longer existed in 1834, when slavery was abolished in Upper and Lower Canada. New France ceased to exist with the Treaty of Paris and the Royal Proclamation in 1763. Me Thermitus could have revised his text better to remedy such a glaring error.