Rum & slaves

[Matusalem]

Bill Moyers will be airing a movie called Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North on his show P.O.V. , which is principally about the Triangle trade route, which is basically about the dirty business cycle of making rum/bartering rum for african slaves/exchanging slaves for sugar & molasses in the caribbean/then back home to make more rum with the goods procured from the caribbean..so on & so forth.

P.O.V. 10:00 PM (22:00) EST June 24th Tuesday night on your nearest PBS station

Needless to say, it focuses on my old hometown, Bristol. R.I., and takes a pretty hard swipe at the DeWolf family, which we in town all know personally. After the end of the slave trade, some of them owned the very factories we worked for & looked up to. As for the actual slave trade itself, I will tell you that it was illicit and immoral business then and people then just looked the other way...which is how it was down in Newport a few years before with Tew, Bellamy, Kidd, Vane, etc when they showed up in town. It is an interesting fact when you are aware that your town holds a dark past, but this is not so honorable.

Here's one of the actual rum factories:

Our town historian on the dockside, 'tellin it like it was' to tourists:

And the dock where it all went down. A good then&now picture:

[Iron Hand]

.....Thanks for the info......will be watchin' this one as my ancesters were involved in Import Export, if ye will, as well...The Triangle Trade was one of events that helped us on our way to becoming a viable commodity to England. Also it opened up our whole Eastern Seaboard to Sea Rovers lookin' for profit......

[CaptainSatan]

It was informative and entertaining but...

The whiny, privileged New Englanders wallowing in self indulgent white guilt made me want to vomit. I'm not ashamed that one of distant ancestors that I am not even aware of may have possibly owned a slave two hundred years ago. But I am embarrassed to be a members of the same race as the sniveling elitist pillow biters featured in this documentary.

Edward Holland

Dallas, Texas

[Bilgemunky]

Wow - I never thought I'd say these words, but "I agree with Satan on this one".

Interesting show, but the guilt is just amazing. In my neighborhood I witness racial inequity daily, and reparations of any kind won't even begin to bridge this gap. And I can comforatably say that as an heir of no slave money whatsoever (my father built himself from nothing - white trash, by today's terms.)

And did I mishear, or did she refer to the cheiftain from Ghana as an "african american"???

[CaptainSatan]

And did I mishear, or did she refer to the cheiftain from Ghana as an "african american"???

There were some black tourists visiting from America. The woman who refused the shake hands with one of the white guys was a black American. She is the one that allegedly said "I was hoping that there wouldn't be any white people here". There was also at least one black American woman at their guilt fest when they spoke with some of the local African people.

[Matusalem]

It was informative and entertaining but...

The whiny, privileged New Englanders wallowing in self indulgent white guilt made me want to vomit

Yeah, it was pretty sappy. Even my mom who (someone who was born there & knows a few of the people in the docu) watched it with us and got fed up also. The stuffiness of the family gets to you very quickly. There were a few people in particular that I had the inclination to kick down a stairway. I'd have more choice words to say, but I'd leave that to my late grandfather who worked at one of their factories back in the 1920's.

I most dissapointed that it didn't focus on the trade itself, and instead it focused on the family's guilt trip. Sheesh! There weren't even any ships.

Well, I will say I had to watch it because I was there. When the Bristol public schools (even Colt school is directly next to the mansion) taught that the major industry in town was the importation of rum, sugar & molasses, that's all we heard. Nothing about the slaves...even though we all knew.

[Bloodrose]

I watched it as well and had the same thoughts. I expected to watch a History Channel-style documentary and actually learn something. Instead, I learned that the only thing these pretentious, privileged Harvard-educated white people were interested in was trying to figure out how to assuage their guilt by making reparations to the descendents of former slaves. And... at the end they discussed this over a loaded dinner table in a huge, expensive house in a probably all-white upper class neighborhood. Feh!

[CaptainSatan]

My only favourable comments is that the film makers did point out that Africans were usually sold into slavery by other Africans. In some cases for rhum, tobacco and handkerchiefs. And they also disclosed that the abolitionist movement didn't take root until the Northern States were finished profiting from the international slave trade. It pleased me that those two issues were not glossed over.