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The rush to condemn colonialism ignores the illiteracy, tribal slavery and warlord anarchies that the colonies replaced. Slave conditions would have lasted for centuries until indigenous literacy or Enlightenment values were independently discovered. Whatever vices and abuses occurred under the name of Western imperialism, it was the only tortuous path to freedom.

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I also published quite a bit about the good and bad of European colonials, including the compromises they made with slavery they inherited (not establish).

Sciurus wrote:

I do have a hard time buying into your big reveal that it was “colonialism” that actually introduced slavery to the Americas" (or elsewhere, for that matter). As you are well aware, slavery has a long and well-entrenched history almost everywhere in the world.

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In the literature on Native Americans, terms such as slavery, slave, adoption, or prisoner often are used interchangeably Moreover, they tend to refer to social relations between individual and different Native American tribes, as well as to those between Indian and non-Indian persons. Not uncommonly, one author speaks of an individual as the adoptee of an Indian tribe, while another author may classify the same individual’s social status as that of a slave or prisoner. These terms express Euro-American conceptions applied to social institutions of Indian tribes, who often did not possess a word for slave in their own language.

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BEE itt enacted That in case any English servant shall run away in company with any negroes who are incapable of makeing satisfaction by addition of time, Bee it enacted that the English so running away in company with them shall serve for the time of the said negroes absence as they are to do for their owne by a former act.