Who controlled the American slave trade?
White people are singled out in the media as the perpetrators of slavery. But after extensive research we can see that this is not true at all. In fact, the opposite is true.
Having said that, to answer this question require us to divide it into two perspectives.
1) The owners. (to understand the ownership) 2) The slave ships. (to understand who brought them to America)
1) The Owners:
To the average layman, or a regular fan of history, navigating through the abundance of contradicting conclusions about this is a nightmare. You'd need to understand what to read, how to read it, compare and understand what to compare in order to get a sincere answer.
If you have, then history is quite clear on this, but the result will not be what most people would want to hear. Let's dive into it.
Should you look at a diagram of the slave trade you would see a constant fluctuation and to explain this we would have to dedicate an extensive comment so I will leave it at that.
At the peak of American slavery somewhere in the 1780s, where an average of 77 000 - 80 000 slaves were brought to America annually, these numbers are carefully researched and objectively true:
78 % - 79.5 % of the slave owners were of Jewish ethnicity 39 % - 41 % of the Jewish population owned slaves 0.33 % - 0.51 % of white Americans owned slaves
By numbers:
~ 1200 out of 3000 Jews owned slaves (Arithmetic mean) ~ 9700 out of 2,770,000 white Americans owned slaves (Arithmetic mean)
Result: The slave owners in America were mostly of Jewish ethnicity.
2) The slave ships:
The discrepancy between ethnic ownership is even greater when we take a look at the most notable slave ships but the result remains the same. This could be explained in many ways, looked at from multiple angles and studied until your eyes bleed.
Regardless of whether or not you are looking at the amount of slaves the ships could carry, the number of times the ships went back and forth between Africa and North America and/or seen through the lens of pure ethnic ownership of the slave ship owners - make no difference in the end. Especially when it comes to the core essence of the question.
The definition of notable according to http://dictionary.com is:
Worthy of note or notice; noteworthy: a notable success; a notable theory. Prominent, important, or distinguished: many notable artists. Archaic. capable, thrifty, and industrious.
https://vid8.poal.co/uploads/WorldsEndFriend/QkZABLo.jpg
Incorporating the above parameters, the most notable slave ships were:
Ship: Abigail | Owner: A Lopez, Moses Levy, Jacob Franks | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Anne & Eliza | Owner: Justus Bosch, John Abrams | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Antigua | Owner: Nathan Marston, Abram Lyell | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Betsy | Owner: Wm. De Woolf | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Caracoa | Owner: Moses Levy, Sam Levy | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Charlotte | Owner: M Levy, S Levy, Jacob Franks | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Crown | Owner: Isaac Levy, Nathan Simpson | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Elizabeth | Owner: Mordecai, David Gomez | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Expedition | Owner: John & Jacob Roosevelt | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Four Sisters | Owner: Moses Levy | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Hester | Owner: Mordecai, David Gomez | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Nassau | Owner: Moses Levy | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Polly | Owner: James De Woolf | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: Prudent Betty | Owner: Henry Cruger, Jacob Phoenix | Ethnicity: Jewish
Ship: White horse | Owner: Jan De Sweevts | Ethnicity: Jewish
Note: Another notable ship was Hannibal, a gigantic 450 ton wooden slave ship. It would make the list had it sailed more times, instead it's most known for a catastrophic voyage in the late 1600s where half of the onboard slaves were killed or died.
Result: Most notable slave ships had Jewish owners.
What is true?
Depending on your sources, assuming you are choosing somewhat truth based sources, you will also see other notable slave ships mentioned. These will all overwhelmingly have Jewish ownership directly or indirectly but it should be added that it was not exclusively Jewish owners. Claiming so would, objectively, be factually incorrect since that statement assumes nothing but an absolute 100 % ownership. Then again, if that is the basis of a compelling argument - Then no asymmetric irregularity on the planet could objectively be called “objective reality” in the first place.
We'd all have to accept subjective realities while being stuck in endless echo chambers of interpretative predicaments along the lines with: "1+1 does not equal 2 but rather 2.00 or 3 minus 1".
Undoubtedly, Sokrates would love those kinds of debates from a philosophical standpoint, but in the midst of a contemporary dark planet where uncertainty is for certain and where ambivalence certainly grows the certainty of a certain group of serpents who certainly knows that in a generation or two, what's certain today, or certainly close, will be uncertain and old, forgotten and cold.
(post is archived)