Slave trading rescued the Mediterranean bourgeoisie from eclipse by northern merchants

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: Medieval Mediterranean slavery foreshadowed Atlantic colonial slavery; Slave-trade fortunes funded the bourgeoisie who made the French Revolution — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 574; Slave labor sustained the extra-European market that industrial capitalism built on (+10 more)

Related

• Italian capitalist networks enabled the Portuguese Empire and its slave trade (similarity 0.88)
• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism (similarity 0.86)
• Slave labor sustained the extra-European market that industrial capitalism built on (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery foreshadowed Atlantic colonial slavery (similarity 0.84)
• Slave labor was integral to modern capitalism, not a pre-capitalist stage (similarity 0.83)
• Madeira’s sugar plantations first institutionalized slave labor as capitalist commodity production (similarity 0.83)
• The slave trade advanced European capitalism while underdeveloping Africa’s economies. (similarity 0.82)
• Columbus’s success depended on three centuries of Genoese capitalist infrastructure, not personal qualities (similarity 0.82)
• Slave-trade fortunes funded the bourgeoisie who made the French Revolution (similarity 0.81)
• Sixteenth-century sugar plantations required enormous capital and labor investment. (similarity 0.81)
• Sugar’s labor demands drove the English to mass importation of African slaves (similarity 0.81)
• Slave wealth funded the very French Revolution that freed slaves (similarity 0.80)
• Slave-created colonial wealth financed British commercial and industrial growth (similarity 0.78)
• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Slave-trade fortunes funded the bourgeoisie who made the French Revolution #expands (0.70) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 574
• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism #expands (0.70) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556
• The slave trade advanced European capitalism while underdeveloping Africa’s economies. #expands (0.70)
• Slave wealth funded the very French Revolution that freed slaves #expands (0.70)
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery foreshadowed Atlantic colonial slavery #qualifies (0.60)
• Italian capitalist networks enabled the Portuguese Empire and its slave trade #expands (0.60)
• Italian merchant capital more than politics drove Portugal’s slave-trade role #corroborates (0.60)
• Genoese and Florentine merchants dominated Europe’s backward regions through trade #expands (0.60)
• Italian colonial systems in the Mediterranean foreshadowed Iberian and Dutch empires #expands (0.60)
• Slave labor sustained the extra-European market that industrial capitalism built on #expands (0.55)
• Madeira’s sugar plantations first institutionalized slave labor as capitalist commodity production #expands (0.50)
• Fear of Russian expansion, not lost Mediterranean markets, drove Palmerston’s opposition to Mehmed Ali #contradicts (0.50) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1569
• Spanish colonial tax revenues depended substantially on the slave trade by 1612 #expands (0.40) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 581