Other examples of similar bad-faith arguments can be found everywhere in the current debate on slavery and empire. For example, it is now common to hear the Atlantic slave trade being described as though it had been an act of genocide. Though this is, on its own terms, a nonsensical argument. Appalling as it was, the transatlantic slave trade was dedicated to getting as many living people as possible from Africa into the New World. Though many people died on the way, the aim of the exercise was not to kill the slaves but to get them to the Americas alive so that they could be put to work. That
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