(02-17-2023, 11:08 AM)Lucky2Last Wrote:

(02-17-2023, 09:58 AM)mikesez Wrote: What a silly question.
Let's take "the west" to mean western Europe.  Indeed, western Europeans like Sonthonax and Wilberforce did start and lead the effort to eradicate slavery from the Western Hemisphere.  But it was Western Europeans themselves who, two centuries earlier, had established African slavery in the Western Hemisphere in the first place, on a scale and over a distance that was previously unimaginable.  So who else was going to lead the eradication effort? Morally, is this anything more than a wash?

No. It's not a wash, you nincompoop. 

Slavery was an accepted practice and already common across the globe. Africans enslaved each other. Europeans enslaved each other. Native Americans enslaved each other. Asians enslaved each other (still do). 

Europeans didn't invent slavery. They harnessed new technologies, which gave them a dominance that was unique in world history. The only thing that changed was the reach. That doesn't give them a reason to stop the practice of slavery. So, Mikey, I ask you again. What VALUE or VALUES caused the WEST to be unique in history and eradicate slavery when they had the capability to continue enforcing it?

Slavery was absent in Western Europe from about 300 AD onwards. It may have come back for a time in Britain, but it was gone again by the Norman conquest. The Arabs reintroduced slavery into Spain, but they were gone from that scene by 1492. Native Americans, Africans, and Asians, not all of those societies practiced slavery.  Some did, some didn't.
The Portuguese began purchasing African slaves in the mid 1400s. They were offered for sale in various parts of Europe, but found no buyers in Britain or France. Those kings and societies frowned on it at the time. Only the Spanish purchased any significant amount of Africans for slavery in Europe.

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