Colonialism and slavery are explained through the
concept of capitalism rather than racism. It is because the concept of
slavery has been in existence in the world history from a very long period of time
where the concept of racism was yet to be introduced.
Thirteen centuries before Aristotle, the Hammurabi
code of Babylonia gives us the strong and undeniable account of slavery in that
period. At that time slaves could be sold and inherited. The difference is that
slaves in this period were working class people of the same society who had a
very poor economy. People used to sell family members for money. So, slavery
has been in existence from almost the starting of human civilization. And in this time the concept of race was yet to be introduced to the
people.
The capitalist
type of powers can be seen throughout the human history. Apart from new
capitalist powers in the modern world which developed themselves to this stage
in last 500 periods of time we can see many other colonial powers long before
that. Egypt, Rome, China, Mughal India,
Feudal Russia, Ottoman Turkey etc. are some examples of capitalist type of
colonial powers known.
The concept of
racism seems to be introduced later in 17th century to reinforce the
slavery function in a complex way since the concept of slavery and racism both
were incompatible with the Christianity. Since the Indian slavery
was abolished with the help of Pope the colonial powers had to search for an
alternative for labor shortage. Then, African slavery was
started. African enslavement made easier to the colonial powers to fulfill
their labor demand because there were no supporters or powerful allies for
African blacks who could object their enslavement.
The main aim of capitalism has been the collection of
wealth and it has been practiced in the world throughout the centuries by the
colonial powers. Expansion of colonies, exploitation of natural resources in
their colonies and using slaves as major labor group made it possible. If we
look at the entire human history we can see such trends in each colonial
history. In this trend the African slaves proved to be the most valuable
property for the colonial powers to gain wealth in a very short period of time.
The formation of new colonies and searching the
manpower is the basic need of capitalism. So the earlier colonial powers
explored new lands and exterminated the indigenous people in different ways.
They tried to enslave the indigenous people but it was not quite profitable.
The information of land areas of the indigenous groups made them easy to escape
and in addition to this they were not quite immune to worldly diseases. Most of
them used to die after a hard labor. In this case the enslavement of African
people made the colonial powers easy because they were working in the new land
other than theirs so they had no knowledge about the landscape which prevented
them from escaping there. They were highly immune to the worldly diseases and
they could do a very hard labor. So in this process after the 17th
century very large number of African people were forcefully enslaved in
different parts of the world. When the colonization was at its peak almost 40
million (conservative number) people were moved from their actual location.
Statistics shows that 15 million people were moved to new world colonies and 5
million slaves were dead during their transportation.
The concept of racism has been used just to justify
the slavery system. The superior powers in the earlier history used to give the
justification of Indians being irrational people so they should be forcefully
made slaves. But later, after the seventeenth century the concept of natural
selection was introduced to justify the slavery system. The weak races should
be involved in slavery for the betterment of whites or strong races so that the
stronger races will move forward in the new generation and the weaker one will
be removed entirely, was the main idea which was used.
The powerful elites have been using slaves and
supporting the enslavement of working class or people of weak states as slaves.
Although direct enslavement has been eradicated in the world but the new form
of slavery has been set up which takes slavery to its very high peak. Many
justifications have been used to enforce slavery in the modern period also.
Super powers have been using different justifications to attack and control oil
rich countries and other countries with abundant natural resources.
Racism is only a weapon for the formulation and
maintaining the racial hierarchy and maintains slavery system in different
forms for the betterment of powerful elite (Spencer, 71). Irrational behavior,
survival of fittest, nationalism etc. are the concepts used then and now. But the
main aim of these concepts is to enforce slavery and the weaker powers are
still forced to be enslaved by the super powers.
So, colonialism and slavery can be explained through
capitalism and not through racism. For the accumulation of wealth the
capitalist powers always tried to colonize and expand and used slavery to
ensure that there is no labor shortage. Racism was only a justification for the
slavery system when the Christian paradigms were against both slavery and
racism. So the idea of race was introduced to implement the slavery system in a
complex way in the modern history.
References:
Spencer, Steve. Race and Ethnicity: Culture,
Identity and Representation. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.
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