What most of you forget is that Christianity, specifically Catholicism and certain varieties of Protestantism, is the reason slavery was ended in the West. In the East, Middle and Far where Christianity is not the dominant ideology for over a thousand years, slavery is still alive and well.
Case in point; the abolitionists of America were Christian men and women trying to better obey Jesus' command to love your neighbor as yourself, and they were proselytizing their cause to mostly Christian men and women. When the USA was formed out of the ashes of the Articles of Confederation, this movement was given even greater strength by the ideology of a nation where all men were "shabby kings", owners of their own lives and destinies; a nation where despite their individual positions and wealth, no man was inherently better than any other. In a cruel irony, the "shabby kings" concept was also used to give strength to the slave-owning cause: even as the ongoing Industrial Revolution proved that an economy where all were free was greater than an economy of slavery, a desire to keep "their" property against "the degradations of the Yankees" hardened their hearts until war was the only way to settle things.
This raises an interesting question: Why did America require a civil war to break out of slavery and Britain didn't? Because the British people still considered themselves "obedient subjects", not "shabby kings". For all the little back-room skirmishes and double-dealings, for all the bloody little confrontations up and down the African coasts, the British people were not so invested in personal freedom that they would choose to defend themselves and "their property" in open war against the Crown and Parliament when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed and enforced in 1833.
Some folks have commented on how disquieting that the MC so easily goes along with slavery in this chapter; it's no surprise to me at all. Christianity had to fight against an entire world's worth of evil and apathy for over 18 centuries before a good chunk of the world could dispose of that noisome institution; why would a random Japanese neet / young man with a bloody and broken past decide to suddenly stick his neck out and oppose a practice that is, at this time, convenient for his purposes
Case in point; the abolitionists of America were Christian men and women trying to better obey Jesus' command to love your neighbor as yourself, and they were proselytizing their cause to mostly Christian men and women. When the USA was formed out of the ashes of the Articles of Confederation, this movement was given even greater strength by the ideology of a nation where all men were "shabby kings", owners of their own lives and destinies; a nation where despite their individual positions and wealth, no man was inherently better than any other. In a cruel irony, the "shabby kings" concept was also used to give strength to the slave-owning cause: even as the ongoing Industrial Revolution proved that an economy where all were free was greater than an economy of slavery, a desire to keep "their" property against "the degradations of the Yankees" hardened their hearts until war was the only way to settle things.
This raises an interesting question: Why did America require a civil war to break out of slavery and Britain didn't? Because the British people still considered themselves "obedient subjects", not "shabby kings". For all the little back-room skirmishes and double-dealings, for all the bloody little confrontations up and down the African coasts, the British people were not so invested in personal freedom that they would choose to defend themselves and "their property" in open war against the Crown and Parliament when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed and enforced in 1833.
Some folks have commented on how disquieting that the MC so easily goes along with slavery in this chapter; it's no surprise to me at all. Christianity had to fight against an entire world's worth of evil and apathy for over 18 centuries before a good chunk of the world could dispose of that noisome institution; why would a random Japanese neet / young man with a bloody and broken past decide to suddenly stick his neck out and oppose a practice that is, at this time, convenient for his purposes
