Black Death labour shortages revived white slavery in Italy from multiple regions

Evidence

“[I]t was the labour shortage after the Black Death of 1348 that suddenly caused a demand for domestic slaves to revive, and brought them to Italy not only from Spain and Africa, but from the Balkans, Constantinople, Cyprus and Crete, and, above all, from the shores of the Black Sea Many of them mere children of nine or ten, they belonged to a great variety of different races: yellow-skinned, slanting-eyed Tartars, handsome fair Circassians, Greeks, Russians, Georgians, Alans, and Lesghians. Sold by their parents for a crust of bread, or kidnapped by Tartar raiders and Italian sailors, they were brought from the slave-markets of Tana and Caffa, of Constantinople, Cyprus, and Crete to the Venetian and Genoese quays, where they were bought by dealers and forwarded to customers inland.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1765

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the early argument that European slave trade was not initially race-based, reinforcing the book’s claim that racial capitalism emerged later than slavery itself.
• SHARE: Nerdy history fact for someone interested in pre-Atlantic slavery demographics.