Just to add something interesting about them. Many of our favorite dances and music in Bolivia have being originated and developed from that zone, like Morenada or Caporales. It is a mix of african and andean sounds, which I think is wonderful. And yes I'm Bolivian :)
Here some Saya I randomly found in YT (https://youtu.be/WbI1ncuyWbk)
The Kingdom of Kongo had a civil war resulting two factions claiming the throne and a lot of victims being enslaved and being sent to South America. The monarchy was only disestablished in 1914. The ancestral story mentioned in the article is quite plausible.
Potosi is well worth the visit, if anybody had ever doubts how brutal slavery could be, look no more. Slaves lasted 6 weeks before dying horribly in some of the jobs they had, mostly in ore processing parts. Or if you want to see why its really not a good idea to be pregnant in >4000m altitude, look at their local church.
Mines themselves are surprisingly still open and locals work there, even if they know very well within 15-20 years most of them will develop aggressive lung cancer. IIRC its from fine silica dust that is all over those mines in form of thick dust (and sometimes even raw crystals form on the walls). The hill in which the mines are is pure emmental, around 5000 entries IIRC from various directions and ages.
Visited them with my wife/fiancée few years ago, local woman whose husband died from what I described above guided us quite deep inside. Never saw actual red sticks of dynamite with the burning string till that day. We offered very strong alcohol and coca leaves to Pachamama, had some leaves with 'activator' ourselves (and then went blabbing for half an hour due to mouth and tongue anesthesia). Those silica in the air are not benign, so there are warnings everywhere (and good modern masks should definitely help, we didn't have those unfortunately this was well before covid).
A powerful experience, as backpacking around whole Bolivia is, to us its the most interesting country in South America to visit for intense adventure and lifelong memories. Yungas death road on a rented bike is another very memorable experience, from snowed plains and glaciers 4700m high into jungle in few hours.
Potosi - "the first global city" [1]
Potosi: The Silver City That Changed the World by Kris Lane[2]
I've encountered Kris's work during the pandemic; He released a book "Pandemic in Potosí: Fear, Loathing, and Public Piety in a Colonial Mining Metropolis" [3] about the pandemic in 1719 which killed third of the city
Potosi as a silver hotspot had a coin mint, and of course it had a fraud[4]
The impression this series gives is that Bolivia can be somewhat dangerous.
For instance, from his Wikipedia article, the ... video about a trip to Patamanta in Bolivia was reported by Gizmodo Español as "more scary than entering Chernobyl". In the video, he informed a local woman that he was a tourist, prompting her to warn him that "they burn people" in the area. Two men later approached Rich, inspected his passport, and gave him 30 minutes to explore and leave the area.
And that video actually is terrifying.
But, given that you backpacked around Bolivia with your fiance, your experience must have been different? Was Bald unfair to Bolivia? Is it relatively safe?
Bolivia was a high point in my trekking around S. America. I felt perfectly safe, and had no negative experiences. Beautiful kind people. In La Paz, I asked directions from a random passerby to their electronics market (I wanted to replace a pair of lost headphones), and the man cautioned me that some sellers might try to take advantage of me. He asked me what I was after, and told me what he would expect to pay. But, I had no issues, the price offered, by the first seller I approached, for a pair of Sony ear buds was less than $4-- the headphones only differed in color from the pair I had lost-- I had paid $16 at Target in the US for them.
I was alone, and, when in urban areas, mostly stayed in the hotels in the spaces above street-level businesses that are not geared toward foreign tourists (Spanish required). Except for La Paz, it was less than $10/night and usually between a few dollars to $5. Food was inexpensive and excellent too.
There were amazing historical sites. And, really interesting "hmmmmmm" contemporary things to encounter, if paying attention-- e.g., there was a tribe near Rurrenabaque that spoke Quechua?! (A language you would expect to encounter in central Peru, not there).
The Bolivian high desert is so high that the low hills are topped in ice (14000ft/4000m at the valley floor) and in the low-lands are tropical jungles and pampas. While trekking in the jungle, I saw Tapirs, sloth, jaguar scat/tracks, caiman (alligator/crocodile type animal), spider monkeys, howler monkeys, so many birds... It was amazing!
You will need some level of proficiency in Spanish, unless sticking to tourist places, but even then Spanish will be helpful though not required.
Highly recommend.
(for those unaccustomed to seeing men with guns, you will encounter men with rifles e.g., outside banks, in large cities like La Paz-- so, yes crime exists, but I didn't ever feel that sketch feeling where you decide it is time to leave a place, or not enter it, in the first place-- Bolivia felt very safe to me)
It's definitely not "relatively safe" in what I as a European would consider a safe place - although I was told it got a lot better in the last decade. If you look like a rich tourist than you need to be careful, like pretty much anywhere in S. America. However if you present yourself as a nomad hippie looser with nothing worth the trouble of messing with you, you can go around and probably you'll have no big problems, but still requires a bit of common sense in interaction with people. And speaking at least some Spanish. It's not that people are not friendly, they're just poor, and the line between being friendly and hustling you is very thin.
I have not been to Bolivia myself, but this question is always relative.
It depends what you count as save and where do you want to go, but also on your experience.
"for intense adventure and lifelong memories. Yungas death road on a rented bike is another very memorable experience"
Parent seems to have a higher risk tolerance.
Also it matters a lot, if you can speak spanish and can act like a local. But if you look and act like a helpless gringo tourist, then you will likely get robbed or worse on the first day.
But I know people who hitchhiked there without serious trouble as white gringos. So the answer is probably, it depends.
Everywhere has their bad parts. I arrived in La Paz in rough shape, as I hadn't slept on the red eye on the way in. I could have easily been taken advantage of. Instead the taxi driver took me right where I was going, helped me unload and communicate with the front desk of the building where my airbnb was.
The people are really friendly, generous, and happy.
Like with a lot of countries in South America, there are certainly places you shouldn't just wander about in. VRAEM in Peru is another example. But there is a lot of tourism in Bolivia. Most places are perfectly safe. Lonely Planet can be a good place to start if you're unsure.
There are a lot more places worth the visit in Bolivia, apart from the Yungas and Potosí. Salar de Uyuni, Sucre (especially the Indigenous Art and Textiles Museum), National Reserve Torotoro, Pantanal (the Bolivian part is better than the Brasilian part), Tarija, and a lot more.
Bolivia is at least as safe as the USofA. Just stay out of Chapare and keep an eye on your money and passport when traveling with bus (and of course in crowded places, but this is true for near the whole planet).
Also, if you're interested in History and enjoy "off the beaten path" type of tourism, it's 100% worth the ~8 hour ride from Santa Cruz to visit La Higuera, the little pueblo where the Bolivian Government captured and executed Che Guevara. The schoolhouse that they executed him in is now converted into a tiny little museum, and the whole town has art and statues of him, it's a super interesting place.
Cochabamba(Chapare) indeed known for gangs and drugs, and also for the water war against privatization of water company(influenced James bond Quantom of solace)
In 2019 there were protests after alleged election fraud, Evo morales the president fled out of the country
In La Paz was a hotspot for tourists abduction in the early 2000s, there is also a known market of stolen goods
I had a visit from Interpol in a hostel in Sucre couple of years ago
Interpol is an organisation for cooperation between national police organisations. They don't visit ordinary citizens or tourists, nor are they allowed to do any police actions in (other) countries. Are you sure that wasn't part of some (attempted) scam?
Seeing other countries from the reductionist lens of tourism is the McDonalization of humanity. Now the human condition has been reduced to a list of superficial and trivialized activities on Tripadvisor.
Take a selfie next to a statue, eat at a restaurant, buy some souvenir made in China... now you can check a country in your country list and say "I have been to n+1 countries". What was the cost? burning a massive amount of plane fuel to get you there that is equivalent to you burning your trash for a full year, something that in a planet governed by a rational species would be illegal to do.
The article talks about something much more profound. Long distance tourism is at our current technological level a planet-killing industry and should be outlawed.
Car dependent suburban sprawl necessitating 3 hours a day commutes by car 5 days a week,50 weeks a year is a much heavier load on the planet than an annual plane trip .
This is fascinating. If you're interested in African communities in South America, you might also like to read about San Basilio de Palenque. A community of escaped slaves that managed to fight off the Spanish so effectively the king gave up and granted the city freedom. Many people there speak the only Spanish-based creole language in South America
He is very humble for a king. Many are prone to vulgar and ostentatious displays of wealth. However he has the dignity of a hard worker. Many could learn from his example.
Industrialization is what brought prosperity to the masses.
Colonialism and slavery benefited the reigning elite, but the average person almost didn’t see any benefit.
Unfortunately that won’t stop people from lying that slavery is the foundation of wealthy western democracies.
Brazil had 10x more slaves than the USA [1]. They would have been the richest country in Latin America per capita if slavery was the foundation of rich modern democracies, but that’s far from the case
I say this as a Nigerian whose country was colonized by the British.
Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1840s that slave-holding America was much poorer than non-slave-holding America, and why, and it's not the climate because there were cases where simply crossing a river border was crossing from wealth to poverty. Slavery absolutely did not benefit the masters, except in so far as it helped them feel better about themselves. "I'm better than you" is a human instinct that continues unabated to this day -- many absolutely adore that feeling as if it was a mind-altering drug hit.
Industrialization relied heavily upon raw materials generated cheaply with slavery - cotton picked in the American South was exported and was a necessity to fuel the industrialization of textile production in England, for example. There is a reason that industrializing and industrialized countries that relied on slavery and other exploitative economic relationships have achieved greater wealth than more newly industrializing countries have. America's wealth is largely supported by cheap labor and raw materials in other countries, opened up for the use of international corporations by state-sponsored violence - see America's history of interfering in South American politics or Chiquita's recent guilty verdict for sponsoring paramilitary forces in Colombia.
> Industrialization is what brought prosperity to the masses.
workers organization did. Early industries were mostly run like slaveshops and the only reason we didn't end up in that world was that the reigning elite needed someone to manage the colonies and thus needed some people educated a bit more (which then also went into industry too) - which turned out problematic.
> They would have been the richest country in Latin America per capita
Oh, the former slave-owners for sure are. Likely too in Nigeria if you know how to look.
Only a few years ago did I learn through an economic historian, that throughout Dutch colonial rule, the entirety of that activity has been a loss, not a gain, to the Dutch state and thus the Dutch citizen (it is evident it was a loss for those enslaved in the process). All it did was make _some_ people _very_ rich, who in turn managed to convince everyone it was all worth the while.
The real money, also for the state, was made through trade with the Baltic area, during the Dutch Golden Age. Not trade with the Indies.
> Industrialization is what brought prosperity to the masses.
Industrialization brought prosperity to the elites, just like colonialism and slavery did. You act like the poor masses were the biggest beneficiaries of industrialization. Most of the benefits of industrializations has gone to the elites. Just like colonialism and slavery.
> Colonialism and slavery benefited the reigning elite, but the average person almost didn’t see any benefit.
Simply false. Tens of millions of europeans crowded in the smallest continent on earth were able to migrate to other parts of the world and gain land ( which is one of the primary sources of wealth ). And the ability to offload excess population allowed european elite to invest in production rather than waste resources on their excess population. A win-win situation.
> Unfortunately that won’t stop people from lying that slavery is the foundation of wealthy western democracies.
Slavery and colonialism were the foundations of industrialization. Industrializaton requires two things - excess capital and excess resources. How do you think europe was able to procure excess capital and resources?
> Brazil had 10x more slaves than the USA [1]. They would have been the richest country in Latin America per capita if slavery was the foundation of rich modern democracies, but that’s far from the case
And one of the most industrialized nations ( North Korea ) is one of the poorest in the world. What's your point? Brazil ended slavery in the 1800s and industrialized. It still isn't 'one of the richest in Latin America per capita'? Obviously you need something more than industrialization. Like political safety and stability and competent leadership.
You seem to think people are saying you need slavery and colonialism to industrialize. That's not the case. The point is that europe industrialized due to slavery and colonialism.
It remarkable how many here watch silly youtube videos to get their understanding of history and economics.
> Wether we like it or not these are the pillars of the western world
Not sure I understand you correctly, but I strongly disagree that colonialism was a necessary foundation for todays wealthy western democracies.
I would consider it more another symptom-- once the perpetrators realized how outmatched the rest of the world was in military/logistics (especially compared to their direct neighbors).
Older cultures acted exactly the same way, compare e.g. Romans, Huns, Egyptians, Persians (European colonialism just had the naval logistics to make this work on a bigger scale).
> Not sure I understand you correctly, but I strongly disagree that colonialism was a necessary foundation for todays wealthy western democracies.
Then go visit Sevilla and enjoy the output of the mines in the cathedral (no danger at all). And then think a little how amassing enough silver by slavery to make a 60feet high altar 300 years ago didn't give you quite a nice headstart on dominating a world where most other competing cultures valued the same metals as currency.
Not saying this is particularly wrong in the grand scheme or we need to all be in eternal deference to anyone claiming to be a descendant of the people our ancestors exterminated for this. But it should be clear, getting access to these resources and ruthlessly exploiting them made Europe rich and enabled all the other colonialization which followed.
I had a number of cringes moment in spain with my latin american partner when overhearring some spanish people justifying colonization with webroughtthemcivilization bullshit. Also reading plain insults with similar colonization justification bullshit aimed at latin american workers who clean the facilities in the restrooms of a Corte Ingles in Madrid center. Made me want to burn the whole place.
In a way colonization hasn't stopped and should still be talked about and denounced.
Just to add something interesting about them. Many of our favorite dances and music in Bolivia have being originated and developed from that zone, like Morenada or Caporales. It is a mix of african and andean sounds, which I think is wonderful. And yes I'm Bolivian :) Here some Saya I randomly found in YT (https://youtu.be/WbI1ncuyWbk)
The Charango and the Siku are Iconic in my opinion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kQZHYbZkLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnqXtz3sxjU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charango https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siku_(instrument)
You'll probably like Markama :-)
--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNZD5buXlmY
That's interesting, thanks for sharing!
The Kingdom of Kongo had a civil war resulting two factions claiming the throne and a lot of victims being enslaved and being sent to South America. The monarchy was only disestablished in 1914. The ancestral story mentioned in the article is quite plausible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongo_Civil_War
I am not sure where Uganda comes in, possibly the king has other relatives from there.
Potosi is well worth the visit, if anybody had ever doubts how brutal slavery could be, look no more. Slaves lasted 6 weeks before dying horribly in some of the jobs they had, mostly in ore processing parts. Or if you want to see why its really not a good idea to be pregnant in >4000m altitude, look at their local church.
Mines themselves are surprisingly still open and locals work there, even if they know very well within 15-20 years most of them will develop aggressive lung cancer. IIRC its from fine silica dust that is all over those mines in form of thick dust (and sometimes even raw crystals form on the walls). The hill in which the mines are is pure emmental, around 5000 entries IIRC from various directions and ages.
Visited them with my wife/fiancée few years ago, local woman whose husband died from what I described above guided us quite deep inside. Never saw actual red sticks of dynamite with the burning string till that day. We offered very strong alcohol and coca leaves to Pachamama, had some leaves with 'activator' ourselves (and then went blabbing for half an hour due to mouth and tongue anesthesia). Those silica in the air are not benign, so there are warnings everywhere (and good modern masks should definitely help, we didn't have those unfortunately this was well before covid).
A powerful experience, as backpacking around whole Bolivia is, to us its the most interesting country in South America to visit for intense adventure and lifelong memories. Yungas death road on a rented bike is another very memorable experience, from snowed plains and glaciers 4700m high into jungle in few hours.
Kris Lane[0] has excellent work on potosi
Potosi - "the first global city" [1] Potosi: The Silver City That Changed the World by Kris Lane[2]
I've encountered Kris's work during the pandemic; He released a book "Pandemic in Potosí: Fear, Loathing, and Public Piety in a Colonial Mining Metropolis" [3] about the pandemic in 1719 which killed third of the city
Potosi as a silver hotspot had a coin mint, and of course it had a fraud[4]
https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/history/people/faculty-staff-... https://aeon.co/essays/potosi-the-mountain-of-silver-that-wa... https://www.amazon.com/Potosi-Changed-California-History-Lib... https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09198-3.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Potos%C3%AD_Mint_Fraud_o...
I do not know much about Bolivia. The little I know comes from this series by the travel vlogger Bald and Bankrupt: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWdYjn21PdFLL0gOBMRf3Hmy...
The impression this series gives is that Bolivia can be somewhat dangerous.
For instance, from his Wikipedia article, the ... video about a trip to Patamanta in Bolivia was reported by Gizmodo Español as "more scary than entering Chernobyl". In the video, he informed a local woman that he was a tourist, prompting her to warn him that "they burn people" in the area. Two men later approached Rich, inspected his passport, and gave him 30 minutes to explore and leave the area.
And that video actually is terrifying.
But, given that you backpacked around Bolivia with your fiance, your experience must have been different? Was Bald unfair to Bolivia? Is it relatively safe?
Bolivia was a high point in my trekking around S. America. I felt perfectly safe, and had no negative experiences. Beautiful kind people. In La Paz, I asked directions from a random passerby to their electronics market (I wanted to replace a pair of lost headphones), and the man cautioned me that some sellers might try to take advantage of me. He asked me what I was after, and told me what he would expect to pay. But, I had no issues, the price offered, by the first seller I approached, for a pair of Sony ear buds was less than $4-- the headphones only differed in color from the pair I had lost-- I had paid $16 at Target in the US for them.
I was alone, and, when in urban areas, mostly stayed in the hotels in the spaces above street-level businesses that are not geared toward foreign tourists (Spanish required). Except for La Paz, it was less than $10/night and usually between a few dollars to $5. Food was inexpensive and excellent too.
There were amazing historical sites. And, really interesting "hmmmmmm" contemporary things to encounter, if paying attention-- e.g., there was a tribe near Rurrenabaque that spoke Quechua?! (A language you would expect to encounter in central Peru, not there).
The Bolivian high desert is so high that the low hills are topped in ice (14000ft/4000m at the valley floor) and in the low-lands are tropical jungles and pampas. While trekking in the jungle, I saw Tapirs, sloth, jaguar scat/tracks, caiman (alligator/crocodile type animal), spider monkeys, howler monkeys, so many birds... It was amazing!
You will need some level of proficiency in Spanish, unless sticking to tourist places, but even then Spanish will be helpful though not required.
Highly recommend.
(for those unaccustomed to seeing men with guns, you will encounter men with rifles e.g., outside banks, in large cities like La Paz-- so, yes crime exists, but I didn't ever feel that sketch feeling where you decide it is time to leave a place, or not enter it, in the first place-- Bolivia felt very safe to me)
2 replies →
It's definitely not "relatively safe" in what I as a European would consider a safe place - although I was told it got a lot better in the last decade. If you look like a rich tourist than you need to be careful, like pretty much anywhere in S. America. However if you present yourself as a nomad hippie looser with nothing worth the trouble of messing with you, you can go around and probably you'll have no big problems, but still requires a bit of common sense in interaction with people. And speaking at least some Spanish. It's not that people are not friendly, they're just poor, and the line between being friendly and hustling you is very thin.
Entering Chernobyl is not scary unless you go digging in a few highly radioactive places like ruzzian soldiers did in 2022.
Prior that, you could go to Chernobyl with a tour and it was absolutely safe. Much safer than walking around random US city, actually.
1 reply →
"Is it relatively safe?"
I have not been to Bolivia myself, but this question is always relative.
It depends what you count as save and where do you want to go, but also on your experience.
"for intense adventure and lifelong memories. Yungas death road on a rented bike is another very memorable experience"
Parent seems to have a higher risk tolerance.
Also it matters a lot, if you can speak spanish and can act like a local. But if you look and act like a helpless gringo tourist, then you will likely get robbed or worse on the first day.
But I know people who hitchhiked there without serious trouble as white gringos. So the answer is probably, it depends.
7 replies →
Everywhere has their bad parts. I arrived in La Paz in rough shape, as I hadn't slept on the red eye on the way in. I could have easily been taken advantage of. Instead the taxi driver took me right where I was going, helped me unload and communicate with the front desk of the building where my airbnb was.
The people are really friendly, generous, and happy.
I can't wait to go back
Like with a lot of countries in South America, there are certainly places you shouldn't just wander about in. VRAEM in Peru is another example. But there is a lot of tourism in Bolivia. Most places are perfectly safe. Lonely Planet can be a good place to start if you're unsure.
Downvote, really? Why? Explain.
There are a lot more places worth the visit in Bolivia, apart from the Yungas and Potosí. Salar de Uyuni, Sucre (especially the Indigenous Art and Textiles Museum), National Reserve Torotoro, Pantanal (the Bolivian part is better than the Brasilian part), Tarija, and a lot more.
Bolivia is at least as safe as the USofA. Just stay out of Chapare and keep an eye on your money and passport when traveling with bus (and of course in crowded places, but this is true for near the whole planet).
Also, if you're interested in History and enjoy "off the beaten path" type of tourism, it's 100% worth the ~8 hour ride from Santa Cruz to visit La Higuera, the little pueblo where the Bolivian Government captured and executed Che Guevara. The schoolhouse that they executed him in is now converted into a tiny little museum, and the whole town has art and statues of him, it's a super interesting place.
Par for the course. They may as well have one for Butch Cassidy too.
4 replies →
Cochabamba(Chapare) indeed known for gangs and drugs, and also for the water war against privatization of water company(influenced James bond Quantom of solace)
In 2019 there were protests after alleged election fraud, Evo morales the president fled out of the country
In La Paz was a hotspot for tourists abduction in the early 2000s, there is also a known market of stolen goods
I had a visit from Interpol in a hostel in Sucre couple of years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Bolivian_protests
Interpol is an organisation for cooperation between national police organisations. They don't visit ordinary citizens or tourists, nor are they allowed to do any police actions in (other) countries. Are you sure that wasn't part of some (attempted) scam?
1 reply →
Seeing other countries from the reductionist lens of tourism is the McDonalization of humanity. Now the human condition has been reduced to a list of superficial and trivialized activities on Tripadvisor.
Take a selfie next to a statue, eat at a restaurant, buy some souvenir made in China... now you can check a country in your country list and say "I have been to n+1 countries". What was the cost? burning a massive amount of plane fuel to get you there that is equivalent to you burning your trash for a full year, something that in a planet governed by a rational species would be illegal to do.
The article talks about something much more profound. Long distance tourism is at our current technological level a planet-killing industry and should be outlawed.
Car dependent suburban sprawl necessitating 3 hours a day commutes by car 5 days a week,50 weeks a year is a much heavier load on the planet than an annual plane trip .
2 replies →
McDonalds flopped in Bolivia :)
This is fascinating. If you're interested in African communities in South America, you might also like to read about San Basilio de Palenque. A community of escaped slaves that managed to fight off the Spanish so effectively the king gave up and granted the city freedom. Many people there speak the only Spanish-based creole language in South America
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Basilio_de_Palenque
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XkOlzCoNstM
He is very humble for a king. Many are prone to vulgar and ostentatious displays of wealth. However he has the dignity of a hard worker. Many could learn from his example.
Would prefer to simply get rid of the idea of kings entirely, personally.
Wait, holup... :D
> the mines are notorious for claiming the lives of roughly 8 million enslaved indigenous South Americans and Africans over a 300-year period
As Spaniard this is disgusting to me and I don’t understand how talking about this still raises anger and some weird historic justifications.
Wether we like it or not these are the pillars of the western world and why today we have privileges over most of the planet.
Industrialization is what brought prosperity to the masses.
Colonialism and slavery benefited the reigning elite, but the average person almost didn’t see any benefit.
Unfortunately that won’t stop people from lying that slavery is the foundation of wealthy western democracies.
Brazil had 10x more slaves than the USA [1]. They would have been the richest country in Latin America per capita if slavery was the foundation of rich modern democracies, but that’s far from the case
I say this as a Nigerian whose country was colonized by the British.
1- https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/comparative-histori....
Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1840s that slave-holding America was much poorer than non-slave-holding America, and why, and it's not the climate because there were cases where simply crossing a river border was crossing from wealth to poverty. Slavery absolutely did not benefit the masters, except in so far as it helped them feel better about themselves. "I'm better than you" is a human instinct that continues unabated to this day -- many absolutely adore that feeling as if it was a mind-altering drug hit.
6 replies →
Industrialization relied heavily upon raw materials generated cheaply with slavery - cotton picked in the American South was exported and was a necessity to fuel the industrialization of textile production in England, for example. There is a reason that industrializing and industrialized countries that relied on slavery and other exploitative economic relationships have achieved greater wealth than more newly industrializing countries have. America's wealth is largely supported by cheap labor and raw materials in other countries, opened up for the use of international corporations by state-sponsored violence - see America's history of interfering in South American politics or Chiquita's recent guilty verdict for sponsoring paramilitary forces in Colombia.
1 reply →
> Industrialization is what brought prosperity to the masses.
workers organization did. Early industries were mostly run like slaveshops and the only reason we didn't end up in that world was that the reigning elite needed someone to manage the colonies and thus needed some people educated a bit more (which then also went into industry too) - which turned out problematic.
> They would have been the richest country in Latin America per capita
Oh, the former slave-owners for sure are. Likely too in Nigeria if you know how to look.
1 reply →
Only a few years ago did I learn through an economic historian, that throughout Dutch colonial rule, the entirety of that activity has been a loss, not a gain, to the Dutch state and thus the Dutch citizen (it is evident it was a loss for those enslaved in the process). All it did was make _some_ people _very_ rich, who in turn managed to convince everyone it was all worth the while.
The real money, also for the state, was made through trade with the Baltic area, during the Dutch Golden Age. Not trade with the Indies.
> Industrialization is what brought prosperity to the masses.
Industrialization brought prosperity to the elites, just like colonialism and slavery did. You act like the poor masses were the biggest beneficiaries of industrialization. Most of the benefits of industrializations has gone to the elites. Just like colonialism and slavery.
> Colonialism and slavery benefited the reigning elite, but the average person almost didn’t see any benefit.
Simply false. Tens of millions of europeans crowded in the smallest continent on earth were able to migrate to other parts of the world and gain land ( which is one of the primary sources of wealth ). And the ability to offload excess population allowed european elite to invest in production rather than waste resources on their excess population. A win-win situation.
> Unfortunately that won’t stop people from lying that slavery is the foundation of wealthy western democracies.
Slavery and colonialism were the foundations of industrialization. Industrializaton requires two things - excess capital and excess resources. How do you think europe was able to procure excess capital and resources?
> Brazil had 10x more slaves than the USA [1]. They would have been the richest country in Latin America per capita if slavery was the foundation of rich modern democracies, but that’s far from the case
And one of the most industrialized nations ( North Korea ) is one of the poorest in the world. What's your point? Brazil ended slavery in the 1800s and industrialized. It still isn't 'one of the richest in Latin America per capita'? Obviously you need something more than industrialization. Like political safety and stability and competent leadership.
You seem to think people are saying you need slavery and colonialism to industrialize. That's not the case. The point is that europe industrialized due to slavery and colonialism.
It remarkable how many here watch silly youtube videos to get their understanding of history and economics.
2 replies →
> Wether we like it or not these are the pillars of the western world
Not sure I understand you correctly, but I strongly disagree that colonialism was a necessary foundation for todays wealthy western democracies.
I would consider it more another symptom-- once the perpetrators realized how outmatched the rest of the world was in military/logistics (especially compared to their direct neighbors).
Older cultures acted exactly the same way, compare e.g. Romans, Huns, Egyptians, Persians (European colonialism just had the naval logistics to make this work on a bigger scale).
> Not sure I understand you correctly, but I strongly disagree that colonialism was a necessary foundation for todays wealthy western democracies.
Then go visit Sevilla and enjoy the output of the mines in the cathedral (no danger at all). And then think a little how amassing enough silver by slavery to make a 60feet high altar 300 years ago didn't give you quite a nice headstart on dominating a world where most other competing cultures valued the same metals as currency.
Not saying this is particularly wrong in the grand scheme or we need to all be in eternal deference to anyone claiming to be a descendant of the people our ancestors exterminated for this. But it should be clear, getting access to these resources and ruthlessly exploiting them made Europe rich and enabled all the other colonialization which followed.
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I had a number of cringes moment in spain with my latin american partner when overhearring some spanish people justifying colonization with webroughtthemcivilization bullshit. Also reading plain insults with similar colonization justification bullshit aimed at latin american workers who clean the facilities in the restrooms of a Corte Ingles in Madrid center. Made me want to burn the whole place.
In a way colonization hasn't stopped and should still be talked about and denounced.
If you expect a spaniard to feel guilt over something Carlos I did. Maybe we should talk about who Carlos I was.
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