You have to get slaves (who are usually not too keen on the idea), you have to ship them (once you've genocided the locals), distribute them, house and feed slaves, and you need to make sure that you put them on viable land rather than just selling or leasing it to some poor farmer who is paying you back for the transit with half his profits for 14 years and seeing if he dies or not. Slaves are more profitable in the long (well medium-long, since tenant farmers tend to improve the land on their own dime.) run, but the initial capital costs are way higher.
In fact a pattern you see a lot is, run off the First Nations, occupy with tenant farmers, press them until they go out of business, and then buy the successful plots, turn into slave plantations. Happened in the US, Happened in Australia too.
I mean, the fourth map shows slave distribution. But I think people are just being overly critical of this meme, like it's supposed to contain all the nuance of a history textbook.
The planters who settled Alabama in the early 1800s already had black slaves, plus they probably didn't trust Highlanders to work in the heat. Imagine taking someone who's never seen a day over 70 degrees F and trying to work them to the bone in a Southern summer.
Plus, most slaves in places like Alabama came from plantations further in Virginia, North Carolina, etc., not all the way from Africa. Trying to get Highland peasants to come over would already be less efficient.
Yeah but the development of chattel slavery has a lot more to do with than just geography. It wasn't high latitude short photoperiods that made Europe develop into genocidal colonialists.
but they threw the black people there to do forced labor because those zones had high fertility soil.
That's true, but why slaves and not, say, shipping out some peasants made homeless from the clearances.
because they'd have to pay peasants, but not Black people
Sure, but it's more complex than that.
You have to get slaves (who are usually not too keen on the idea), you have to ship them (once you've genocided the locals), distribute them, house and feed slaves, and you need to make sure that you put them on viable land rather than just selling or leasing it to some poor farmer who is paying you back for the transit with half his profits for 14 years and seeing if he dies or not. Slaves are more profitable in the long (well medium-long, since tenant farmers tend to improve the land on their own dime.) run, but the initial capital costs are way higher.
In fact a pattern you see a lot is, run off the First Nations, occupy with tenant farmers, press them until they go out of business, and then buy the successful plots, turn into slave plantations. Happened in the US, Happened in Australia too.
Okay. And that's exactly how it happened.
Not sure what we're arguing about tbh
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I mean, the fourth map shows slave distribution. But I think people are just being overly critical of this meme, like it's supposed to contain all the nuance of a history textbook.
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The planters who settled Alabama in the early 1800s already had black slaves, plus they probably didn't trust Highlanders to work in the heat. Imagine taking someone who's never seen a day over 70 degrees F and trying to work them to the bone in a Southern summer.
Plus, most slaves in places like Alabama came from plantations further in Virginia, North Carolina, etc., not all the way from Africa. Trying to get Highland peasants to come over would already be less efficient.
Yeah but the development of chattel slavery has a lot more to do with than just geography. It wasn't high latitude short photoperiods that made Europe develop into genocidal colonialists.
Well like, if I decide to throw you into a lake, technically geography explains where you end up, but not really in the Jared Diamond way