Letters show how humans priced for sale during slave trade

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Letters show how humans priced for sale during slave trade
Sylvia Hui, Associated Press
Updated 6:46 pm, Wednesday, August 12, 2015

LONDON (AP) — Researchers at Britain's Cambridge University have released letters showing how slaves were priced for sale during the 18th century, giving an insight into the wealth and influence behind the pro-slavery lobby at the time.

St. John's College, which released the papers Thursday, said the papers helped show the powerful vested interests that the abolitionists had to fight against — an often-neglected side of the story.

The papers date from the 1770s to the 1790s — during the peak of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in Britain and America — and deal with the operation of a Jamaica sugar plantation run by English businessman William Philip Perrin.

One list containing details of slaves to be bought for Perrin's plantation included entries such as "Dick, 25, able field negro, 140 pounds" and "Castile, 45, cook and washerwoman, 60 pounds." The total valuation for 54 male and female slaves came to 5,100 pounds, which researchers say is equal to around 500,000 pounds ($782,000) today.




Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Letters-show-how-humans-priced-for-sale-during-6441035.php

[valerief]

1. I wonder how much slaves are sold for today, since slavery hasn't ended.

http://www.alternet.org/story/142171/there_are_more_slaves_today_than_at_any_time_in_human_history

Some prices at the link.

[Scuba]

7. They don't buy them anymore, so they're not responsible for food, housing, medicine, etc ...

They just hire the slaves now and let those who make just a wee bit more than these new-day slaves pay for their needs.

[Fred Sanders]

18. That is not an apt comparison at all, it could be seen as diminishing to the experience of actual slavery.

[candelista]

19. That's why free labor is cheaper than slave labor.

If a slave dies, his master loses an investment. If a free worker dies, his employer loses nothing. He just hires another worker. So free labor is cheaper (more cost effective) than slave labor. Here I am assuming a free market--one without unions, government regulations, i.e., the Republican Valhalla.

[Scuba]

21. This is the point I was trying to make. Thanks.

[roguevalley]

16. the u n has authenticated a slave list for people to buy one

sex slaves ...

1 year to 9 years: $160.00

there is a sliding scale for older slaves.

I could just die

[forest444]

2. Paul Singer and the Koch brothers are no doubt taking notes.

Despotism and feudalism. The future looks frighteningly like the past to these types.

[FLPanhandle]

3. Pretty much what companies do when outsourcing their work offshore to the cheapest bidder

I doubt the workers in sweatshops are worth that much to the business owners here in the states.

[Supersedeas]

24. their is a cost and benefit to everything

[navarth]

4. Slavery didn't stop. It evolved.

Cheap labor, globalism, etc.

edit: typo.

[Hydra]

5. Yup, wage slavary was the more "efficient" kind

Didn't have to worry about losing investment via your slave's health. Just get a new one.

[Hydra]

6. So around 100 pounds per slave

They had plantations with staffs of 100+ in the Carribean, but the sugar was netting them a fair return on such a large down- the banks were probably making a killing loaning out the funds to get a lot of that going. Lots of dirty money among many dirty hands.

[seveneyes]

8. Ask ISIS how much they pay

And how cheap it is to kill those they do not want ...

[bluestateguy]

9. Lovely. Moneyball for the slave trade.

:barf:

[JoeOtterbein]

10. The modern way of doing it is better....

Nowadays, to make it less complicated for business and to appear more compassionate now, we just pay our modern slaves minimum wage! After all, as Trump would say, we are the GREATEST SLAVE OWNERS!

[jwirr]

11. Makes one sick to think how much we buy from these countries and to know that only the rich

owner society is getting the money. Enough to make on into an isolationist. How ever that does nothing to help the slave either.

[candelista]

12. Dick, able field negro = $23,303

£140 in 1790 = $23,303 in 2014

Castile, 45, cook and washerwoman = $9987

NB: the same price range appears in ancient Rome, where an ordinary field slave cost about as much as a new car. But for a beautiful virgin the price could go to over $100,000.

[dem in texas]

13. Same old thing, the slave owners were the 1% of the pre-civil war era

Only the richest Southern people could afford slaves. Why did the poor Southern farmer, barely feeding his family, fight for the slavery system? I think it was because of the hysteria of the United States invading them. The poor white Southerner certainly stood to lose so much, leaving his family to eke out a living, not knowing if he would be killed in the war. They had the draft riots in the North caused by the rich paying for someone to fill in for their sons, but never heard of any resistance to the war in the South.

[Fred Sanders]

14. Not just the richest could afford slaves, most approved of the evil, anyway. The opinion you embrace is a RW meme to excuse the Confederacy from treason.

[dem in texas]

17. I am not embracing anything

I am just wondering why a poor southerner would fight in this war to defend a way of life that only benefited the rich. I don't know anything about RW sentiments on this matter, I don't keep up with that stuff. Here in this post, I am reading how much a slave would cost and try image if I were a poor white person, why would I go to war to try to preserve this system.

[JDPriestly]

20. In some cases, they believed that the Bible instructed them to keep slaves and that Black

people were destined by God to be slaves. That is how they justified slavery to themselves. Slavery was an aspect of many primitive cultures. They Southerners really persuaded themselves that Black people were somehow inferior. That is hard for us to imagine today, but in the not so distant past that belief was still held by many Southerners and a minority of Northerners.

[FLPanhandle]

22. Many of the poor Southern farmers fought because they had to

Most were draftees.

[Grins]

23. There was resistance in the south

Find the book, "The State of Jones", by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer.

There was no hysteria by poor southern farmers that the United States might invade.

[Starry Messenger]

15. k&r