History questions not worth their own thread II
- Thread starter Plotinus
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Was it legal to own white slaves in the US South before the civil war?
AFAIK, no where near the level of his stature in the West.
There were instances of children of slaves who were white (ie >75% white ancestry) but who were born into slavery and therefore remained enslaved. I don't know about the actual legal aspect of it though.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
I think the legal definition of black, in some southern states, was 1/32 black. This might have been post-civil war definitions, where Jim Crow laws required a distinction, I can't recall.
If the question is clearly white individuals who were not the descendants of black slaves, I think the answer is no (although I could be wrong). There were indentured servants, but the south built much of its justification for their contradiction between liberty and slavery on the notion of "African slavery." If you read the secession documents, it's consistently referred to by those terms.
If the question is clearly white individuals who were not the descendants of black slaves, I think the answer is no (although I could be wrong). There were indentured servants, but the south built much of its justification for their contradiction between liberty and slavery on the notion of "African slavery." If you read the secession documents, it's consistently referred to by those terms.
1/32? That's pretty little..
Anyhow, I was mainly interested about how direct they were about their racism. Obviously capturing, say, Frenchmen to slavery wouldn't have been tolerated, but was it written or common law?
Anyhow, I was mainly interested about how direct they were about their racism. Obviously capturing, say, Frenchmen to slavery wouldn't have been tolerated, but was it written or common law?
Cynovolans
Not in my dimension.
For a person to be considered a slave their mother had to be a slave, this law was passed sometime after a trial when the daughter(I forgot her name) of a slaveowner and a slavewoman, successfully sued for her freedom based on the fact her father was a freeman(which had something to do with an old English Common law brought to the colonies that status was based on the father).
EDIT: Looking back I think that was just a Virginian law, I'm not sure what the other states did.
Sofista
Deity
What Traitorfish said, basically. On the second question, I translate from the official governamental page (which apparently has no English version...):
When medieval scribes copied books, did they copy the text onto pieces of parchment/paper that were later bound into quires and books, or did they ever use prebound collections of blank parchment? The former seems most likely, but I do not know for sure.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
It's generally undisputed that Stalin did intend to attack Germany at some point, and that his plans were mucked up because everything hinged on the idea that the Axis would enter a prolonged war with France rather than rapidly take over the continent.
This. Stalin, being a good Communist, wanted to see Germany and the West kill each other, then swoop in to pick up the scraps. After Germany's stunningly quick defeat over France he was forced to improvise. Stalin became friendlier and friendlier towards Germany, likely with the intention of buying time for his own military preparations, but they were nowhere near complete when Operation: Barbarossa began.
My own evaluation of Soviet preparedness makes me think Stalin planned an invasion in 1944, as that's when his own intelligence suggested Germany would be prepared to invade the USSR, so he'd have to do it then as a pre-emptive strike. Of course, his intelligence didn't predict that Hitler might be dumb enough to attack before Germany was ready for such a war, which is what happened.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
There was never an alliance. It was a non-aggression pact. Germany and Italy were allied, Germany and USSR were not.
The point of that pact was to buy USSR the maximum time possible before the inevitable war began. The Soviets knew they could and were outpacing German industrialization, and thus the more time they bought themselves, the better-set they would be (this had been the mindset since the Nazis rose to power in 1933). So would they have taken the initiative if the Germans never attacked? Probably, at some point, once the Germans and the West had exhausted one another. Do I agree with Suvorov, that they were merely weeks away in June 1941? Absolutely not.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Zheng He really was the era's greatest tank commander.
Such agreements were only ever intended to be temporary; both the Third Reich and the the USSR placed great value on autarky, Germany within a specially cultivated economic bloc and the USSR within its own territory. The trade was merely the recognition of a mutual opportunity: the USSR needed trade partners to help develop its industry, and had a hard time finding them among the more "respectable" liberal democracies, while the Third Reich needed more export opportunities than its bloc then offered and saw in the USSR a partner who could be easily dropped at a later date.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
"They will sell us the rope with which they will themselves be hanged."
Dragonlord
Fantasy Warlord
Yes, well, Hitler seems to have read Lenin as well .... since the USSR was supplying him with essential raw materials right up to the very minute he attacked.
Seems it was more a question of two thugs trading ropes in this case...
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