[jcx]

[ QUOTE ]
That's an odd way of seeing things. So you don't believe immigration would have extended to Africa and only slavery would have brought Africans to the Americas? I say if anyone is being presumptuous here, you are.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since there have been no great African migrations to the US outside of slave ships I don't believe I'm being presumptous. When the US industrial machine began to ramp up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries great labor forces were imported - almost exclusively from Europe (A few Chinese in the west). Why no Africans then? Perhaps because the available Africans who would/could have emigrated spoke a completely alien toungue and had likely never even heard of the US?

Lets assume slavery never existed. The footprint of western man would have been much smaller on Africa - how would members of a deep jungle dwelling tribe in Ghana even have known about the possiblity to emigrate? What makes you think they would have been interested? Where are the ships that would have born these immigrants over the ocean? Also, if given the choice (decidedly non-PC speech coming) why would the nation import millions of blacks when there was no shortage of white immigrants?

I'm no apologist for slavery. It was obviously wrong. But remove it and you remove a large segment of American (Not to mention Carribean and Brazilian) society. There would certainly not be millions of blacks living among us today. But perhaps I'm missing something. If you see a reasonable scenario by which many millions of Africans would have found their way to the New World from the 1600's to when the great (legal) immigration boom ended in the early-mid 1900's I'll consider it.