I’m skimming through Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen, which contains the following passage:
…Gold and silver from America replaced land as the basis for wealth and status, increasing the power of the new merchant class that would soon dominate the world. Where Muslim nations had once rivaled Europe, the new wealth undermined Islamic power. American gold and silver fueled a 400 percent inflation that eroded the economies of most non-European countries and helped Europe to develope a global market system. Africa suffered: the trans-Saharan trade collapsed, because the Americas supplied more gold and silver than the Gold Coast ever could. African traders now had only one commodity that Europe wanted: slaves… (69)
How much cheaper did gold really become ? Anyway, assuming for argument’s sake that gold producers in Africa went bankrupt, how does it follow that they should turn to slave trading ? Maybe that’s more marxist nonsense ? The poor slave traders had no choice but either be criminals or starve … ?
What’s so funny about this due to pure silliness is the Gold Coast had gold so they went bankrupt. And that whole statement is full of State’s clobbering each other. One could go on all day about the whole paragraph. I still don’t get what your looking for.