I Thought It Looked Familiar

How Slavery Made the Modern World

Slavery was the flywheel on which America’s market revolution turned—not just in the United States, but in all of the Americas.

Many in the United States were outraged by the remarks of conservative evangelical preacher Pat Robertson, who,...went on TV and gave his viewing audience a little history lesson: the Haitians had been “under the heel of the French” but they “got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’”

A supremely callous example of right-wing idiocy? Absolutely. Yet in his own kooky way, Robertson was also onto something,..