Enslaved people ran a vibrant internal market that towns depended on

Evidence

What slaves caught or harvested, and what they grew on their own plots of land, they also often sold, supporting an important internal economy. In one section of the large market of Le Cap a “multitude of vendors” from plantations offered oranges, pineapples, guavas, papayas, apricots, and avo- 48 av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d cados. Other vendors sold decorative crafts such as calabashes that had been carved on the outside in an “ingenious or bizarre” way. The inhabitants of the towns, whether white or black, depended on such markets; the residents of one southern town, Moreau noted, suffered during periods of heavy rain or the coffee harvest, when plantation slaves did not come to the market. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 177

Categorization

• XREF: This slave-run internal economy and market autonomy connects to the informal economy and reputation-system themes in the diamond trade and Milgrom’s law-merchant works. — connects to: Linnaean botany’s founding collections depended on slave-based world trade — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 766