As most of you know, slaves were usually sold by Africans to Arabs and Europeans. This had severe bad effects on Africa. Largely agricultural societies were militarized to take prisoners of war for sale. Much of this wealth was spent on repeating the process and buying alcohol, tools, and cloth. At the end, African slave traders exported several generations of workers in prime working years and failed to sensibly invest the capital.
In England, some of the wealth from the slave trade was sensibly invested. Thomas Sowell says the role this had in capitalizing the Indistrial Revolution had been greatly exaggerated. Over the years, I have seen many docum5 about Georgian building by slave owners that absurd vanity project: capital wasted. It made England no better off.
In America, much of the wealth was sensibly invested. Lots of that invested capital was destroyed during the Civil War. Is that unfortunate? Yes but that wealth that Africa wants is just as gone as that which the slave traders wasted.
Stop whining and ask why a continent awash in natural resources remains poor today.
No comments:
Post a Comment