Medieval Mediterranean slavery foreshadowed Atlantic colonial slavery

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial agrarian reform drew blueprints from European penal agricultural colonies; Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 584; Madeira’s sugar plantations first institutionalized slave labor as capitalist commodity production (+15 more)

Related

• Madeira’s sugar plantations first institutionalized slave labor as capitalist commodity production (similarity 0.90)
• Slave labor was integral to modern capitalism, not a pre-capitalist stage (similarity 0.90)
• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism (similarity 0.90)
• Sixteenth-century sugar plantations required enormous capital and labor investment. (similarity 0.86)
• Sugar’s labor demands drove the English to mass importation of African slaves (similarity 0.86)
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery provided the full model for Atlantic slavery (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery directly prefigured Atlantic colonial slavery. (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery was the template for Atlantic colonial slavery. (similarity 0.85)
• Caribbean sugar colonies drove the rise of Atlantic capitalism (similarity 0.84)
• Slave trading rescued the Mediterranean bourgeoisie from eclipse by northern merchants (similarity 0.84)
• European colonization employed slave labor as its foundational institution, not incidentally (similarity 0.84)
• Columbus’s success depended on three centuries of Genoese capitalist infrastructure, not personal qualities (similarity 0.84)
• Italian capitalist networks enabled the Portuguese Empire and its slave trade (similarity 0.83)
• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism (similarity 0.83)
• Slave labor sustained the extra-European market that industrial capitalism built on (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism #expands (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556
• Commodification of labor predated American slavery in Europe #corroborates (0.70)
• Islamic societies originated modern racial stratification and racialized slavery #corroborates (0.60)
• Medieval slave and serf labor forms were not sharply distinct in practice #expands (0.55)
• Sugar’s labor demands drove England from Irish to West African slavery #expands (0.50)
• Racism against Europeans like the Irish predated color-based slavery #corroborates (0.50)
• American slavery was a forewarning of how capitalism would exploit global labor #contradicts (0.40)