Madeira’s sugar plantations first institutionalized slave labor as capitalist commodity production

Evidence

The use of slave labor in the New World of the sixteenth century by the Spanish Crown (and soon after the Portuguese) and its merchant concessionaires was consequently a most natural step. Slave labor had been a basis for colonial trade in the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Indies; it was already the foundation of colonization in the Canaries, the Azores, and the Madeiran islands. At first, the relationship between capitalism, colonization, and slave labor had appeared almost coincidental. … As Italian capitalism matured, however, this emphasis on trade was to change for three reasons. Briefly, they were the expansion of the power of the Ottoman Turks in the eastern Mediterranean in the fifteenth century, the extension of sugar-cane cultivation from Asia Minor to Cyprus, Sicily, and the Atlantic islands (Madeira, Cape Verde, and the Azores) at the end of that century, and the collaboration of Genoese capitalists with the ruling classes of Iberia. These events transformed the incidental relationship between capitalism and slave labor into the very foundation of New World enterprise. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 82 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Du Bois concluded slavery and capitalism were systemically linked and periphery drove revolution; Sugar’s labor demands drove the English to mass importation of African slaves; Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 584 (+17 more)

Related

• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism (similarity 0.93)
• Slave labor was integral to modern capitalism, not a pre-capitalist stage (similarity 0.92)
• Sixteenth-century sugar plantations required enormous capital and labor investment. (similarity 0.91)
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery foreshadowed Atlantic colonial slavery (similarity 0.90)
• Caribbean sugar colonies drove the rise of Atlantic capitalism (similarity 0.88)
• European colonization employed slave labor as its foundational institution, not incidentally (similarity 0.88)
• Sugar’s labor demands drove the English to mass importation of African slaves (similarity 0.88)
• Slave labor sustained the extra-European market that industrial capitalism built on (similarity 0.87)
• Columbus’s success depended on three centuries of Genoese capitalist infrastructure, not personal qualities (similarity 0.87)
• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism (similarity 0.86)
• Slavery was central to capitalism, not a mere primitive precondition (similarity 0.86)
• Capitalists extracted Black labor while letting African social formations reproduce the supply (similarity 0.86)
• Du Bois concluded slavery and capitalism were systemically linked and periphery drove revolution (similarity 0.86)
• American slavery was a forewarning of how capitalism would exploit global labor (similarity 0.85)
• Slave trading rescued the Mediterranean bourgeoisie from eclipse by northern merchants (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556
• Slavery was central to capitalism, not a mere primitive precondition #corroborates (0.80)
• Capitalist accumulation was built on colonial conquest and enslavement. #corroborates (0.75) — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 82
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery foreshadowed Atlantic colonial slavery #expands (0.70)
• Slave labor was integral to modern capitalism, not a pre-capitalist stage #corroborates (0.70)
• American slavery was a forewarning of how capitalism would exploit global labor #contradicts (0.60)
• Africa supplied slave labor because its region lay outside Europe’s world-economy #expands (0.50)
• Slavery’s meaning was psychological subjugation beyond mere economic exploitation #qualifies (0.50)
• Du Bois reconceptualized American slavery as a subsystem of world capitalism #corroborates (0.40) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 931
• Abolition of slavery coincided with capitalism’s reorganization toward new labor forms #qualifies (0.30) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434