Before The Age of the Donald by Dave Jaffe: Part Twenty

    Before the Age of the Donald - Part Twenty.


          Trading African slaves and making money from this deplorable business sprung to life in the 16th century and only ended in the mid-1800's. Eric Williams was prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago for many years. In his book 'Capitalism and Slavery' Williams claimed that the money British merchants made from the slave trade, enabled them to start the Industrial Revolution.
      True or not, British merchants gained  a lot of money from trading slaves.
     "The sun never sets on the British Empire," my British parents' generation used to say. But the empire that Britain gained was won by force and violence. After defeating France in the 1760's and then the French again between 1793 and 1815, Britain did rule the world for a time. Yet it surely did some terrible things when it was top dog.
     It forced opium from India onto the Chinese and when China refused to allow this to happen, Britain waged two wars against China until the Chinese emperors gave way on this issue. British troops seized India and then brutally crushed the Indian Mutiny in 1857. British troops then gunned down Africans in parts of the African continent and then turned the conquered lands into colonies. It also crushed many rebellions in Scotland and Ireland.
     France was no angel either as its troops went around the world. It grabbed chunks of Africa nd turned them into colonies. Belgium did the same as did Germany. The U.S. as I've shown on some of my past blogs did many bad things as it piled up power and wealth. One episode I haven't mentioned yet occurred near the end of the 19th century.  U.S. troops  crushed the Spanish army in 1898 and then moved to annex the Phillippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba. All these countries were revolting at the time against Spain and wanted to be free.
     That didn't bother the U.S.. It simply invaded the Philippines and killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and thousands of Cubans. "America has no colonies," an American historian told me. "We're not like the European powers." Technically that may have been true. Still, the three above countries were basically ruled by the U.S. government and both Puerto Rico and the Philippines are still under the thumb of Washington. Only Cuba has any independence and even here the Cuban government had to fight hard to keep out of the U.S.embrace.
      So it's clear that every ruling power in the world has done terrible things. Yet would China do any better if it became number one in the global power system?