Quote:
Originally Posted by HoneyBadger
There were white slaves in America, and many more "indentured servants", who were more or less temporary (for up to a decade or more) slaves-by-contract. The Spanish had also enslaved the natives of South America, but so many died, or escaped (a lot easier to run for the nearest mountain, than to swim to Africa, although many African slaves did escape to join Native American tribes).
It was also probably a little easier for some slaveholders to ignore and stomach the horrors of slavery, if you were inflicting it on someone so clearly foreign.
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Furthermore, there were wage-slaves once industry picked up. The big advantage of skin tone based slavery was the ability to call it the natural order of things, and take advantage of descendants as further slaves. Sure, there were places that rarely happened, bu that was usually due to slaves being cheap commodities in those places. Brazil for instance largely cut out the chain of middle men, and had cheaper voyages to and from Africa, so slaves there were cheap, expendable commodities. Which sucked something awful.