In the middle ages, the Swedish king had no permanent capital instead the king traveled around with the court in Sweden and lived periodically on various royal estates where the bailiffs stored what they collected by taxation from the farmers. When the stored goods were consumed at one royal estate, they traveled on to the next royal estate. It had not worked in a warmer climate where what the bailiffs collected could not be stored for any longer time without being spoiled. And if the storage period is too short, the tax collection system stops working, thereby it is not possible to finance a kingdom by taxation from the farmers.
It may seem strange that among those with dark skin color it is more common to have the warfighting white slave master with Jewish and African slaves as a moral role model, which is not as common among those with light skin color. However, this is due to the fact that the difference in solar radiation between different parts of the world, which created a difference in skin color before the 20th century, also affected the rulers' ability to finance kingdoms through tax collection. In the north with weaker solar radiation that gives light skin color, where the climate is colder and food could be stored for a longer time without being destroyed, the rulers could create kingdoms through taxation of agriculture. Most worked in agriculture to produce food, so the taxes consisted mainly of agricultural products that were distributed to those who worked in the service of the kingdom, mainly in the armed forces. It was necessary to create a surplus to survive the winter before spring comes and new crops can be grown. By taxing this surplus, the people were forced to increase their work effort to get enough to both survive the winter and provide for the government.
In tropical Africa, on the other hand, with stronger solar radiation that gives dark skin color and a warmer climate, food could not be stored for as long without being destroyed, so it was more difficult to create kingdoms through taxation of agriculture. More bailiffs are needed who have to visit the villages more often to collect tax, which received a smaller amount at each visit, which must be passed on more quickly to those who are to be supplied with the collected tax. With too short storage times, tax collection became unprofitable and therefore could not be used by rulers to create kingdoms. The lack of growing seasons meant also that the people could produce crops for immediate consumption all year round and thus minimize surpluses that could be spoiled during longer storage periods or taken by tax collectors. Since it was not pissible to create kingdoms by taxation of agricultcre, rulers could insteade create kingdoms that were financed by slavery by taking prisoners and exporting them as slaves, using the incomes to finance the army needed to conquer and defend the kingdoms. Since slave exports provided greater income than taxation of agriculture, rulers who exported slaves could defeat those who sought to create kingdoms through taxation of agriculture. To justify the slave export, the rulers chose the religion with the warfighting slave master as prophet and moral role model. To reduce the risk of being taken prisoner and sold as slaves, the people had to convert to the religion of the rulers with the warfighting slave master as prophet and moral role model, which is why it became common among those with dark skin to have the warfighting slave master as moral role model.
Slavery stifles innovation. The maps shows when slavery ended in different parts of the old world. In northern Europe, slavery ceased in the Middle Ages, which gave us a technological development that led to European Christian nations dominating the world in the 19th century. If you compare the map with a map of GDP per capita today, you see a strong connection. We should therefore be grateful to our Christian ancestors who abolished slavery in the Middle Ages.
In regions with a colder climate, such as in Europe, where kingdoms could be financed through the taxation of agriculture, rulers did not need a religion to justify slavery. Instead, rulers who most often came to power and created kingdoms through victories in war chose the religion with Jesus, who did wonders and healed the sick, the Son of God who through crucifixion died on a cross for our sins and resurrected on the third day, to appear more good and thus be accepted by the people. The rulers were also able to show how good they were by banning slavery, whereby slavery in 1335 was abolished in Sweden. This meant that it became more common among those with light skin color to have the crucified Son of God as moral model. The technological development that resulted from the replacement of slaves by hired labor since slavery in the Middle Ages was banned in our part of the world led to the industrial revolution and the success of Western civilization. The value of a product does not depend primarily on how much work is needed to manufacture it but on what a buyer is willing to pay for it. By maximizing the benefits and minimizing the work effort by developing products or working methods, a worker who gets paid for the work can have the opportunity to get paid better. As it is those who perform the work who have the best knowledge and thus the opportunity to find changes that can make it more efficient, you get a technical development if the work is performed by paid labor that is not obtained if the work is performed by slaves. In the Middle Ages, workers belonged to guilds for different professions and professional knowledge was passed down from father to son or that one went as a journeyman to a master. Professional knowledge was a competitive advantage that was kept secret from outsiders, which is why there is little mention of it in medieval literature, which is why many people today do not realize what technological development there was in the Middle Ages. If the work had been done by slaves, we would not have had this development of professional knowledge. Many believe that the success of Western civilization is due to Lutheran work ethic. A precondition for this work ethic to arise was that slavery had ceased because if work is something performed by slaves, there would have been no Lutheran work ethic Why other parts of the world did not have a similar development is due to that the abolition of slavery came much later. In large parts of the world where they have the war fighting slave master as prophet and supreme moral role model and rulers who financed their kingdoms with slave exports, slavery was not seen as something negative to be abolished, so they missed the development we got in our part of the world. Slavery remained there until the 19th/20th century when western imperialism forced them to close their slave markets, resulting in a world divided into a rich developed western world and poor non developed world.
The fact that it was more difficult to create kingdoms in regions with warmer climates than in colder ones meant that the Spanish conquerors found no major kingdoms in South America except the Inca Empire in the Andes Mountains where the climate due to high altitude is colder. Even in the Ethiopian mountains in Africa where the climate due to high altitude is colder there was a kingdom that could be financed through taxation of agriculture, which is why the rulers there could choose the doctrine with crucified Son of God as a moral model. The rulers of Africa could export slaves to the slave markets in the Middle East and North Africa, but there was no corresponding export market for possible slave-exporting rulers in South America, so Spain and Portugal with a small group of conquerors without meeting large resistance could divide South America in the 16th century. If Spain and Portugal had had to send the Spanish and Portuguese armies to conquer America, they would not have been feasible. The armies were needed in Europe to fight the Moors and other European rulers and how to supply large armies in America. The difficulty of storing food in tropical climates meant that the plantations Europeans had in America produced products that were less edible for both macro- and micro-organisms and could therefore be stored as sugar, tobacco and cotton and thus could be shipped for sale in Europe. Less edible products, however, are not useful for local rulers to create kingdoms based on the taxation of agriculture. That it was not possible to tax the people in central Africa was something even King Leopold of Belgium experienced when, after the congress in Berlin in 1884, he got his own kingdom in Africa. They found a product, rubber, that could be stored and exported, but that was not a vital product for the people, so there was no domestic rubber production that could form the basis for tax collection, resorting to inhumane methods to force the people to produce rubber. The import of unhealthy products such as sugar and tobacco from the colonies in America is not, as the left believes, the basis for prosperity in Europe. Although slave owners in America became rich, it had a negative impact on the people of Europe. It was the abolition of slavery in the Middle Ages that provided the conditions for creating prosperity for the European people and thus a market for products from the plantations in America.
Polygamy promotes slavery. As there are equal many men born as women, polygamy means that there are not enough women for all men. That created a great demand for female slaves which the rulers could exploit to finance wars, by in enemy countries "houses of war" capturing villages, killing the men and taking the women as captives to be sold in slave markets. To make the people regard it as morally right to conquer villages, kill the men, and take the women as captives to be sold in slave markets, a moral role model was needed who had conquered a city, killed the men, and took the women as slaves. In the 6th century the Arabs believed in Jesus but Jesus had not conquered any city, killed the men and taken the women as slaves. The Arabs had a prayer which read; There is only one god Allah. Blessed is his messenger. The blessed messenger was Jesus, but the rulers introduced a new messenger with the name "Blessed", the ruler of Medina, who had conquered a city, killed the men and took the women as slaves so that the people would believe that it is the prophet "Blessed" who is God's messenger and thus see it as moral right to conquer villages, kill the men and take the women captive to be sold in slave markets. And so they compiled a holy book with all the messages that God's messenger the prophet "Blessed" had recieved from God. In order to maximize the proportion of men who had families to support and thus incentives to work, the church in Christian Europe worked to ban polygamy. The rulers gained income by taxing the labor of the men instead of gaining income by selling slaves taken in war. Because the men of the church could get the people to pay taxes but were less good at warfare, the fact that the rulers got income by taxing labor instead of getting income by selling slaves taken in war meant that the power of the church increased against the royal power.
The transatlantic slave trade arose when European rulers with colonies in America discovered that there were slave-exporting rulers in Africa who had long ago exported slaves to the Arab world. Since as many men as women are born, the polygamy meant that many men lacked women, thus the Arabs mainly demanded women to have as sex slaves and castrated men had higher value than uncastrated ones. The great demand for female slaves meant that the Crimean Tatars in their raids on the Russian/Ukrainian countryside often killed men to take women prisoners for sale in Ottoman slave markets, which ceased when Russia conquered Crimea in 1783. European empires with colonies in America needed male slaves to work on the plantations in America, so the African slave-exporting rulers could sell men to the Europeans and women to the Arabs. This increased the income of the slave-exporting rulers in Africa and thus their ability to defend their kingdoms. However, after thnat the British Parliament banned the slave trade in 1807 and British warships began to hunt for slave ships and forcing the Africans to close the slave markets, the income of the slave-exporting rulers in Africa ceased, thereafter the Europeans could conquer and divide Africa.
Erik Levlin
Ass Professor, PhD.