A Comm for Historymemes

Explanation and some thoughts: First, I would like to note, in unfortunate if mild agreement with the PragerU bullshit, that the development of slavery in settled societies was an improvement over genociding all the defeated enemies. As societies develop, conflicts with ever-further-flung foes means that societies cannot integrate peoples who are extremely hostile and culturally distinct into the polity without extensive assimilative institutions, which are fairly late developments in most societies. This leaves either expelling the enemies, murdering them, or reducing their ability to resist (ie through the restriction of their liberty). As population densities increase, expulsion ceases to be an option - leaving only murder or reduction of the defeated's state. This is not an excuse for the individuals who participate in the institution of slavery (with the odd reinforcing note that even in many slaver societies, slave traders and overseers are seen as utter scum), but that, on a societal level, slavery is an unfortunate lesser evil compared to genocide. This is a large part of the reason why slavery is so widespread in human history, across vastly different cultures and regions, and in societies where the economic influence of slavery remains minimal.

HOWEVER

First, the Atlantic Slave Trade was not based on this unfortunate development of early human society - it was the trade of flesh for cash by European societies which not only had developed means of overcoming resistance by legal institutions WITHOUT resorting to slavery, like earlier polities, but were not even seriously involved in the wars on the African continent at the time, making their involvement purely and objectively a fucking evil, not even a lesser evil like early slavery, but a greater one. The Europeans fueled wars between African tribes on the continent (who were largely restricted by the aforementioned circumstances making slavery the least-bad option after intense wars) all in the name of buying cheap slave labor, because the prospect of paying a decent share to their own Filthy Poors(tm) was too much for their precious little pocketbooks to handle.

Second, Christopher Columbus was a piece of shit by the standards of a time wherein we would regard the 'baseline' of behavior as representing total pieces of shit. Not only was he a slaver before he became a explorer, but when he found and was welcomed by the people of the Caribbean with gifts and supplies after a long journey, his first instinct was to plunder, murder, and enslave them. If that wasn't bad enough, his treatment of them after being granted control of the region was so abhorrent that the Spanish crown, itself hardly a bastion of humane treatment and sentiment, stripped him of his position on grounds of cruelty.

And third, offering someone a choice between slavery and death for the crime of existing while being weaker is not a fucking good thing, and certainly not something that a fucking children's 'educational' program should be playing apologist for. The 'nuances' of slavery should not exactly be high on the fucking curriculum.