Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 45

[cahn]

Unfortunately, there was then at Berlin a King who pursued one policy only, who deceived his enemies, but not his servants, and who lied without scruple, but never without necessity.

(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )

Comments

Re: Toussaint Louverture

[luzula]

*reads the comments*
Yeah, it's an interesting discussion in the book, which you comment on too, how profitable the plantations with enslaved labor on Haiti actually were? In a broad sense, millions of people today are stuck in various forms of forced labor, even if they are not slaves who are bought and sold; it's hard to imagine that exploiters would do this if it wasn't profitable. But maybe that makes the question too broad—a sugarcane plantation must be a very specific enterprise, with large investments that perhaps the owners went into debt to pay, and the enslaved workers are all in large groups, where maybe it’s easier to develop ways to malinger… Probably the question is hard to answer.

(I got curious about how old the method of getting sugar from sugar beets is, and apparently that only got going in the 19th century.)

Re: Toussaint Louverture

[selenak]

Mind you, according to Duncan Saint Domingue was the most lucrative French colony of the (early) 18th century and certainly was regarded, inaccurately or accurately, as a gold mine by the contemporaries.

Re: Toussaint Louverture

[luzula]

Good to know--I know nothing about the subject and it was indeed my assumption that it would be lucrative! So I was struck by the possibility that it might not have been, and wondered at it.