Introduction
Slavery has roots in the sugar production that occurred in Palestine during the late middle ages. When slavery reached the New World, it was in many ways similar to the type of slavery that had happened earlier. The fact that the institutionalization of slavery occurred over many centuries and continents and occurred in many different forms, it is plausible arguing that it worked for various economic systems. The objective of this work, however, is to analyze the relationship between capitalism and slavery trade. The work finds that since capitalism refers to a system of the economy in which privately owned factors of production such as capital, labor, and land are assembled for individuals and firms that seek profits, the slave trade was capitalistic by its the inception.
The Origins of Contemporary Slave Trade Slave Trade from a Capitalistic Point of View
The foundations of slavery date back to the production of sugar in Palestine during the middle ages. The internal sugar plantation economy, the structure of the sugar industry, as well as the economic output offered by the slaves during their own time away from the plantation discipline all happened within a system of markets and profits (Solow and Engerman, 2004). Apart from bullion, the Western Hemisphere slaves were fundamentally responsible for the production of products, services, as well as capital, which flowed across the Atlantic world from the last half of the seventieth century through the eighteenth to the ninetieth centuries (Solow and Engerman, 2004). The commodities that slaves produced resulted in a significant impetus to the development of capitalism in every region, African, European, and Americas, that were involved in the trade. It is noteworthy that social, legal and political systems related to capitalism in Europe failed to be replicated within the slave societies that created their distinct ideologies and institutions, but they all existed inside the framework of a capitalistic economy.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Slavery could exist within almost every system of economy. Except in regions around the Mediterranean, the slave trade had stopped across Europe by as early as the year 1000 (Conrad and Meyer, 1958). In the areas that still practiced this trade, small-scale artisanal and domestic slavery flourished. Such as use of slaves as sexual partners, workshop assistants, guards, and servants should be considered as an independent form of slavery that did not fit the generalized model of labor within any society by then. The origins of modern capitalistic slavery were not from the limited usage of slaves of this type, which gradually atrophied through time, but instead, it arose from the usage of slaves within large-scale productive institutions defined by forms of capitalism from their invention (Conrad and Meyer, 1958).
The favoring of slave labor as opposed to free labor, in which the returns should cover investment, was affirmed if the usage of slaves brought cost advantages. In this case, slave labor was cheaper compared to free labor if the work were onerous and free forms of labor would need high wages even before such work was considered. The slaves would additionally have to evade such work, which meant that they would be motivated to sabotage, perform poorly, and run away in extreme conditions (Davis, 1999). For such a reason, the onerous crop forms a good candidate for slave laboring since the slaves made tight control of the labor force neither costly nor impractical. The crop would also result in returns to the global economy that would be high enough to cover the costs of the discipline of labor if slavery was to be significant. To a weaker level, the use of slave labor had advantages in expenses within indigo, rice, tobacco, and later cotton (Drescher, 1987). However, slavery and sugar were almost inseparable from the completion of the middle ages through the 1800s, and the inception, adoption, and growth of contemporary slavery followed the growth of the sugar industry closely in the tropical Atlantic.
Some scholars opine that slave labor was at least a component of the labor force since their earliest forms of sugar cultivation within southwestern Asia (Drescher, 1987). It is also thought Arab Muslims could have used that slave in the advancement of sugarcane in Mesopotamia long before the invasion during the seventh century, even while the Arab merchants could have introduced it to the region following the spread of Islam (Conrad and Meyer, 1958). In whatever circumstance, Europe only met with the crop after the Crusaders had captured Syria and Palestine towards the completion of the eleventh century (Conrad and Meyer, 1958). It should also be noted that the growth of sugar also reached the Iberian Peninsula at almost the same tine of the invasion by Muslims that came from North Africa. The Venetians conquered the Levantine sugar industry, saw its spreading to Crete, and brought it to the European market (Solow and Engerman, 2004). The Genoese and Venetians took the growing industry to Cyprus following the expulsion of Christians from Palestine and Syria by Saladin at the completion of the thirtieth century. Since then, the Venetians ran the markets for the selling and buying of slaves on Crete within the fourteenth century and utilized some of them in the production of sugar (Solow and Engerman, 2004). Also, Genoese and Venetians operated markets for slaves on Cyprus, and slaves originating from Arabia labored there alongside the native serfs as well as Palestinian immigrants.
It was at this point that the Italians took over the production of sugar, first taking it to Sicily even while the output in Sicily did not use slave labor. Slavery emerged as a more prominent form of labor on the sugar farms following the shifting of the sugar production centers from Italy to the West (Solow and Engerman, 2004). The production of sugar within the Iberian Peninsula multiplied and spread to the Atlantic islands within the fifteenth century. At around the sixteenth century, Madera, Portugal, was the most significant producer of sugar globally while the Canary Islands embarked on the production of sugar as well. The labor force in the sugar industries of the Canaries and Madeira was made up of Africans, Moriscoes, Muslims, and Berbers that worked alongside other non-slave employees (Mintz, 1986).
The production of sugar on large-scale moved from these islands in the sixteenth century, first to Sa Tome, which is off the cost of equatorial Africa before moving to Brazil, the Caribbean region, and lastly the mainland of Tropical America (Mintz, 1986). Plantation agriculture of the Western Hemisphere came to be connected with an exclusive use of slaves. The connection of sugar production with coerced laboring became strong in time up to the mid-ninetieth century. During that time, sugar production occurred only through free labor only on rare occasions worldwide. Instead, the growing of sugar happened through slave labor.
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Capitalism
Should capitalism mean the system of economy in which private individuals and organizations seeking profit through the production of commodities for the market combine owned factors of production such as capital, labor, and land, then the slave sugar industry must have been capitalistic from the start. The Catalan and Venetian families on Cyprus as well as the Catholic church and the Hospitalers all owned plantations, assembled their labor forces, imported capital, grew, and processed sugarcane for an exportation to the markets in Europe. Also, Price Henry the Navigator (1418-1460) introduced a similar system in Madeira using a chatter of partnership that did not have any trace for feudal forms (Solow and Engerman, 2004). The fact that Madeira was mostly uninhabited, all the labor force used in the growing and processing of sugar had to be imported alongside all the supplies and capital. The investors of the sugar industry of the Canaries came from Iberia, Germany, and Italy while labor originated from Africa and Iberia as supplies emanated from England as well as the Low Countries. Eventually, the product, the sugar, was sold to Europe.
The Slave-Sugar complex did not only form an example of capitalism, but also acted as a pioneer of the system. At the time when its complex international commodity, labor, credit, and the capital network was at its full operation, the rest of Europe, especially Western Europe, was slowly emerging from feudalism (Wright, 1984). The manorial society that existed at the time was founded on the labor provided by serfs who offered their consumption with the inputs that were obtained through their holdings. The serfs proposed a set of tribute that was set traditionally to their lords; their service was determined through a mutual rights and obligations system in addition to communal limits to the making of decisions. For such reasons, there were no labor market, land market, and capital market in the contemporary sense within the earliest society immersed in feudalism. However, there existed markets for traded goods that were mostly the luxurious ones, but production did not occur through the capitalistic system of the private ownership of the resources of production, which facilitated the management of them according to the market prices (Wright, 1984).
It is noteworthy that slavery caused the integration of the West into the international economy. As soon as the introduction of slavery had occurred in the Americas, the trade in Europe turned in the same direction. At the onset of the eighteenth century, ships from Europe plied the Atlantic taking supplies and slaves to the slave colonies that were concentrated in North America, Brazil and the Caribbean region (Wright, 1984). Such ships carried the products produced by slave laboring to Europe in addition to taking back to the Americans manufacturers from Europe brought to revenue from the sales to the economies of the plantation. Slavery enabled the exchange of manufactures for the raw materials and foodstuff of the American region. The colonial wars of the eighteenth century that happened between France and England were partly fought because of the need to control the Atlantic slave trade as well as the ownership of the regions of the slave trade and those that had the slave-grown crops, mainly sugar.
All the economies that grew sugar were required to generate or import or generate capital for them to get started. It was also a need for new economies to introduce the same capital. The new marketplaces within the American colonies needed to develop their exports for them to pay for the consumer goods and equipment that they could not produce on themselves as well as to remit returns on their foreign investment. Largely, the production of slaves offered the exports essential for the development of the West at the time of colonialism. The regions that did not have slaves or those that did not have links to slave trade remained behind in wealth and income terms. The British colonies of North America that did not have slaves benefited indirectly because they were connected to those that used them (Mintz, 1986). For instance, the British West Indies offered a market for almost all the agricultural products during the latter part of the eighteenth century, which means that the growth of New England merchant class was therefore connected to the slavery of West Indies.
The Atlantic slave trade benefited the Old World because of the provision of slaves. It should be understood that slavery added a principal amount of labor the global economy. At that time, labor was supplied elastically, and was very productive, which was beyond what the native people within the new world and the immigrants were both willing and able to provide. Such labor was coupled with sufficient fertile soils for the production of crops that the Europeans wanted. For such a reason, it is plausible arguing that colonial slave production, therefore, improved the rate of return on investment on the capital of Europeans.
In conclusion, while capitalism might be an older concept than slavery, it is notable from the argument in this work that it inspired the development of the Atlantic slave trade. Capitalism meant that individuals who owned the factors of production would gain economically at the expense of those who did not. For such a reason, inspired the need to produce more for more profits, the sugar industry was the first economic venture to motivate the world for the demand for cheap labor. During the earliest forms of slavery, the slaves were to offer their labor on the sugar plantations. The growth of the industry and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world from Palestine during the end of the middle ages, therefore, founded the Atlantic slave trade. In this trade, the slaves were captured from Africa and elsewhere before being taken to the Americas from where they would work on the sugar plantations. The produce of the slave labor was then taken to Europe, which resulted in a flow of capital around the world, with investments being made in the Americas and the product being sold in Europe. Therefore, as long as the sugar industry remained a profitable venture for investors, the Atlantic slave trade continued to flourish because the capitalistic concept of the control of factors of production meant that only those investors that did enough to acquire slaves benefited more. Resultantly, the world improved first from the cheap labor provided by the slaves during the time of the Atlantic slave trade.
References
Conrad, A. H., & Meyer, J. R. (1958). The economics of slavery in the ante bellum South. Journal of Political Economy , 66 (2), 95-130.
Davis, D. B. (1999). The problem of slavery in the age of revolution, 1770-1823 . Oxford University Press.
Drescher, S. (1987). Capitalism and antislavery: British mobilization in comparative perspective . Oxford University Press on Demand.
Mintz, S. W. (1986). Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in modern history . Penguin.
Solow, B. L., & Engerman, S. L. (2004). British capitalism and Caribbean slavery: The legacy of Eric Williams . Cambridge University Press.
Wright, G. (1984). Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism. By Fox-GenoveseElizabeth and GenoveseEugene D.. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp. xxii, 469. $29.95 cloth, $10.95 paper. The Journal of Economic History , 44 (2), 631-632.
