Du Bois reconceptualized American slavery as a subsystem of world capitalism

Evidence

The terms of his analysis were quite important to Du Bois. They were a part of his beginning of the transformation of the historiography of American civilization—the naming of things. In the changing of the names of things, he sought to provide the basis for a new conceptualization of their relationship. In the first three chapters of his work, Du Bois established the rules of his analysis. The institution of American slave labor could not be effectively conceptualized as a thing in and of itself. Rather, it was a particular historical development for world capitalism that expropriated the labor of African workers as primitive accumulation. American slavery was a subsystem of world capitalism. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 931

The terms of his analysis were quite important to Du Bois. They were a part of his beginning of the transformation of the historiography of American civilization—the naming of things. In the changing of the names of things, he sought to provide the basis for a new conceptualization of their relationship. … The institution of American slave labor could not be effectively conceptualized as a thing in and of itself. Rather, it was a particular historical development for world capitalism that expropriated the labor of African workers as primitive accumulation. American slavery was a subsystem of world capitalism. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 931

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Du Bois’s historiography: renaming American slavery from a Southern thing-in-itself to an expropriative moment in world capitalism — one of the intellectual foundations of the Black radical tradition.
• XREF: The ‘naming of things’ as methodological move connects to the larger Black radical tradition’s reclamation of terminology; and ‘primitive accumulation’ is a Marxian concept Du Bois applies to African labor, a move also pursued by later scholars of racial capitalism. — connects to: British capitalism ended West Indian slavery but thrived on American, Cuban, and Brazilian slavery; European capitalist hegemony reduced African labor to pawning across the world system; Slavery’s phenomenology forged the twentieth-century Black intelligentsia. (+13 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 931

Broader Connections

• Du Bois concluded slavery and capitalism were systemically linked and periphery drove revolution #expands (0.80)
• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 584
• Abolition of slavery coincided with capitalism’s reorganization toward new labor forms #corroborates (0.70) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434
• American slavery was a forewarning of how capitalism would exploit global labor #expands (0.65)
• Marx presupposed a coherent racist and imperial ordering of world capitalism #corroborates (0.60)
• Capitalists extracted Black labor while letting African social formations reproduce the supply #expands (0.60)
• The slave trade supplied the cause that turned racialism into the Negro #expands (0.60)
• Capitalism conserving non-capitalist modes produces racial and colonial ideologies. #expands (0.55)