My super liberal history professor said that without the enslavement of Africans...

My super liberal history professor said that without the enslavement of Africans, America would not have been prosperous. Did slavery really render America a superpower?

No, because America really didn't become a superpower until after World War 2, some 75 years after the end of slavery

How much slavery did Canada, Australia and New Zealand have? If they didn't have much, it's arguable that slavery wasn't necessary, as they are all as prosperous as the US, roughly.

Yes. As long as you produce a lot of cotton your country will become a superpower

>he has this saved on his computer

I know, but the exploitation of their labor built immense wealth for Americans and subsequently helped lead to the industrial revolution

Brazil, the Middle East, and Africa itself utilized exponentially more slave labor than North America, with Africa and the Middle East having done so for thousands of years prior to European contact with sub saharan Africans. You tell me.

america did not become a superpower because they relaxed on their porch while their slaves worked on the field

Brits owned the American colonies, remember? It benefited Britain via increased profits in the colonies prompted by trade.

there are plenty of countries that used slavery before and after us that are still shit.

also there is really no way of telling.


it absolutely helped i dont think there is any room for debate but no one can say we would not be a superpower without it.


the main reason is our geographic location allowed us to be safe from the wars the kept setting the other continents (an not being fucking criminals like the ozzys)

Other countries used slaves. Why aren't they just as powerful? If you really want to be specific, German scientists were a very important part of becoming a super power.

...

Op is always a faggot

exactly. if you want to make a case about slavery's influence as a factor of success, you have to look at the whole picture.

Slavery has been abolished relatively early on in Europe and they are arguably a superpower

LEL

Cotton helped the South out for a while. But Cod and manufacturing in the North East and gold out west made the US prosperous.

If that was true then the slave holding south would have won that war.

Whatever money we made exporting cotton has been blown a billion times over supporting a negro population that multiplied a hundred times over in the centuries since.

Nope. Most of the wealth built up on the backs of slaves was torched during Sherman's march to the sea.

No it's actually the reason the South is so fucking poor

Slavery ingrained in white southerners a culture of sloth and ignorance

Here's a passage from Democracy in America, The Free state of Ohio is compared to the Slave state of Kentucky

the three races of the united states
560
The white of the right bank, obliged to live by his own efforts, made
material well-being the principal goal of his existence; and since the country
that he inhabits presents inexhaustible resources to his industry, and offers
constantly recurring lures to his activity, his ardor to acquire has surpassed
the ordinary limits of human cupidity. You see him, tormented by the desire
for wealth, go boldly down all the paths that fortune opens to him; he be-
comes indiscriminately seaman, pioneer, manufacturer, farmer, bearing
with an equal constancy the work or the dangers attached to these different
professions. There is something marvelous in the resources of his genius,
and a sort of heroism in his greediness for gain.
The American of the left bank scorns not only work, but all the enter-
prises that work brings to success; living in idle comfort, he has the tastes
of idle men; money has lost a part of its value in his eyes; he pursues fortune
less than excitement and pleasure, and he expends to these ends the energy
that his neighbor deploys elsewhere; he passionately loves the hunt and war;
he takes pleasure in the most violent exercises of the body; the use of arms
is familiar to him, and from his childhood he has learned to risk his life in
single combat. So slavery not only prevents whites from making a fortune,
it turns them away from wanting to do so.
The same causes, operating continuously for two centuries in opposite
directions in the English colonies of North America, have ended by creating
a prodigious difference between the commercial capacity of the Southerner
and that of the Northerner. Today only the North has ships, factories, rail-
roads and canals

Not really
Like the difference between billionaires and millionaires, sometimes it's just luck and circumstances
America's standing in ww1 helped much more
Jump in at the last second, win, be richer with favorable deals, and wear sunglasses while europe (including the winning side) tries to recover

Muhhh dick

Slavery did not lead to the industrial revolution, it actually hindered it in many ways because slave owners had a vested interest in making sure that the development of new technology (which would make their slaves obsolete) did not become widespread.

It's not because of slavery. It's because:
1. Geography = destiny
2. Relatively free markets and low corruption
3. Being the only major power in WW2 to escape significant damage to infrastructure.
4. Nukes

So why was the South so much less productive than the North? The answer is given as slavery

If I wanted to push the parallel further, I would easily prove that nearly all the differences that are noticeable between the character of the Ameri-
cans in the South and the North are born out of slavery; but this would go
beyond my subject. I am trying at this moment to find out not what all the
effects of servitude are, but what effects servitude produces on the material
prosperity of those who have accepted it.

Here it's explained how economically the slave costs more to maintain and is less efficient. The institution of slavery also causes the white man to become slothful in nature

The free worker is paid, but he works faster than the slave, and rapidity
of execution is one of the great elements of economy. The white sells his
help, but you buy it only when it is useful; the Black has nothing to claim
as the price for his services, but you are obliged to feed him all the time; he
must be sustained in his old age as in his mature years, in his unproductive
childhood as during the fruitful years of his youth, during illness as in
health. It is therefore only by paying that you obtain the work of these two
men: the free worker receives a salary; the slave, an education, food, care,
clothing. The money that the master spends for the maintenance of the
slave melts away little by little and on small particulars; you hardly notice
it. The salary that you give to the worker is given all at once, and it seems
to enrich only the one who receives it; but in reality the slave has cost more
than the free man, and his efforts have been less productive.
38
The influence of slavery extends still further; it penetrates even into the
very soul of the master, and gives his ideas and his tastes a particular
direction.
On the two banks of the Ohio nature has given man an enterprising
and energetic character; but on each side of the river he makes a different
use of this common quality.

What i'm trying to say is...
America is that faggot camper who has a k/d ratio of 11.5
(Then they became neocons and fucked themselves in the ME)

Not in Europe. And not in most of America.
Slave labor is first noticeably less efficient than free labor, second a incentive not to invest in machinery. Slavery was the main obstacle to the industrial revolution.

late to the party, what was it?

Slavery did not build immense wealth for Americans. Slavery made a small group of southern plantation owners slightly weather than they would of been if they had to use slave labor. The South, which had slavery was very poor and it showed during the civil war. The North, which did not have slavery was very wealthy.

I too, would like to know.

Slavery is an economic net loss because you have a self perpetuating black hole (kek) of unpaid laborers not investing in the economy. Ironically, curbstomping the Confederacy likely saved it from its own retarded economic policy.

If anything, slavery held the country back. The North industrialized much quicker while the south maintained its muuuh cotton economy,

Wrong. Tell your moronic teacher that it was the robber barons like Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, & Carnegie that built America. All the cotton those niggers picked and the economy it supported were destroyed in the civil war. Hence how could slavery have built America when the north destroyed everything slavery built?

No it did not, if anything it hindered it. If you would like to argue with your professor it would be intelligent of you to refer to the arguments made by Tocqueville in Democracy in America which I posted some of here

>can slave labour push the economy?

When 20% of your labor force works for free, it's very easy to generate a lot of money.

Ask your history professor how she knows this to be objectively true. Then ask her what the next winning lottery numbers will be.

Thats bullshit. People seem to forget that the Civil War happened and then Reconstruction right afterwards.

oh, the alternate history game, i love it, but what if elephants couldve been domesticated and beavers developped wings?

jesus christ...

on a serious note: there was a fuckton of irish and i think also asian slaves (not sure bout the asians), what wouldve stopped the slaveowners of that time to just import potatonigger instead of nigger slaves?

btw, slavery hampers industrialisation due to free labour, getting rid of slavery helps development

and fpbp