Cannibals and Race and Triangular Trade

Triangular Trade 

• These two pictures show the basics of triangular trade to the colonies, Africa, and Europe 
• Raw materials came from New World through the use of slave labor and were brought to Europe to be manufactured and these manufactured goods were traded for slaves in Africa.

Michel de Montaigne: On Cannibals (1580)

• An essay that was more about the Europeans than Cannibals
• "The Europeans were doing exactly what the Cannibals are doing, but Europeans were so quick to judge the Cannibals because they were different... when in reality the Europeans were just as bad" - Me (I was told to quote myself) 
• They view everything that is even slightly different as bad but they fail to see their own problems
• Spanish Inquisition was burning people alive and feeding them to animals 
• He doesn't excuse their violence, he just compares it to the Europeans in a way that highlights their hypocritical nature
• He is also known as the father of the essay

• Cultural Skepticism and Relativism 
• Michel de Montaigne also was a skeptic 
• He did not easily believe what the Europeans were saying about the Indigenous peoples in the Americas 
• A helpful quote from the textbook
• "Skepticism is a school of thought founded on doubt that total certainty or definitive knowledge is ever attainable. The skeptic is cautious and critical and suspends judgment. Cultural relativism suggests that one culture is not necessarily superior to another, just different." 
• A quote from Montaigne 
• “Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, research is the means of all learning, and ignorance is the end.”

Race & Indigenous and African Peoples 

• Africans 
• Most were viewed as barbaric by Europeans at this time 
• They were used for slavery so commonly due to the Atlantic slave trade that many just saw them as property that could be bought and sold
• They had drastically different religions, cultures, and methods of war from those of the Europeans 
• Used the idea that Africans were barbaric to defend and increase slavery
• Some even said that it benefitted slaves because they could be converted
• Race became a source for inequality in a way that it never was before 
• Africans and Native Americans were seen as less than human 
• Bartolomé de Las Casas 
• There was a lot of debate about the treatment of the Indigenous peoples by Catholic missionaries
•  Sparked a discussion about how these people should be treated by Europeans 
• Las Casas wrote about the brutal treatment of the natives in Spanish colonies 
• "To these quiet Lambs . . . came the Spaniards like most cruel Tygres, Wolves and Lions, enrag’d with a sharp and tedious hunger"
• "Black Legend" - Spanish colonists treated the natives miserably 
• Shakespeare 
• Wrote plays about racial tolerance and included a diverse cast in many of his plays 
• Showed the globalization of the world due to trade and colonization