Slaves were deliberately worked to death because replacement was cheaper than upkeep

Evidence

The slave population of Brazil required regular replenishment through the transatlantic slave trade. One reason for this was the very high slave mortality rate. Many slaves never survived their initial acclimatization and training; others died as a result of poor diet, insanitary living conditions and disease… . More important, since it was considered most economic to “work out” slaves … and then to replace them with others, a great many Africans died from ill-treatment and sheer exhaustion. At the same time, the rate of natural reproduction amongst slaves was extremely low. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 751

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reframes ‘naturally decreasing’ slave population as an economic calculation, not biology.
• XREF: connects to: Enclosures briefly gave evicted serfs the economic choice they had lost — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 99