Horrifying? Absolutely. Unique? I ask you to look at Caribbean sugar plantations, Brazil, the Belgian Congo, like c’mon. “Others were doing it too” is no excuse but you gotta reach a little further for your circlejerk man.
The Belgian Congo also came to my mind. They were teaching Christianity, too, at the same time as they were cutting people’s hands off. I read someone not that long ago who was talking about his firsthand observations of some of the results and how Christianity tied in with it. It wasn’t good.
Regardless of all that, it’s not a contest. US slavery and this particular instance of trying to brainwash people into support of it can be horrifying and the founding fathers can be hellbound for their support for it, without any kind of reference to what anyone else in the world was doing.
Right is right. Wrong is wrong. “Best” or “worst” or “look at what these other people were doing” is rarely relevant, in my eyes.
Brazil is Americas??
Edit: But, yes, same deal. The racialized element of the forced labor system is what I’m referring to. The social concept of race is modern. sustained, large scale, intercontinental?migrations are required. And it was this forced labor system, mostly in the tropics… depending how you measure…
The uniquely cruel aspect to chattel slavery in the continental US was the breeding programs.
Incidentally