Powerpoint on The Transatlantic Slave Trade

Today’s Outline

• The Rise of Europe: Mercantilism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

• Recap: Spanish Imperialism and the Rise of the New World Economy

• Today: The New World Economy and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

• The Big Idea: Why Did England and France Rise on the Global Stage While Spain Faltered?

• Reminder: Reading Response Survey is due tonight

Picking Up From Last Time: The Decline of the Spanish Empire

• Why did the Spanish Empire decline? explored through guiding questions

• War and Waste: Recreating the Roman Empire? difficulty and overextension

• “Owned the Cow but Did Not Drink the Milk”: challenges of early modern empire (opportunity costs, resource extraction vs. embedded governance)

• Asia Holds Onto the Center: ¾ of American silver flowed to China; Potosí (modern-day Bolivia) as a key source of silver

How Does One Do This Colonialism Business Right? Turning Towards Adam Smith

• Question: How might colonies help their home countries rather than hinder them? (economic rationale behind mercantilist thinking and laterSmithian critique)

While Spain’s Empire Faltered, the English Empire Thrived. Why?

• The Mercantilist System: emphasis on accumulating resources and fostering domestic industry

• The Global Market: shift from cash crops (tobacco, sugar) to consumer goods; rising global demand

• The National Market: imperial trade integration into a European-wide economic system

• All Ushering in the Rise of a New World Economy

One Missing Ingredient: Labor

• The crucial missing piece for the colonial and plantation economies: labor force (enslaved Africans) to meet sugar and other commodity demands

Why Transatlantic Slavery?

• The challenges of sugar cultivation: labor-intensive and land-intensive agricultural systems

• Europeans in the Tropics: seventeenth-century death sentences and brutal conditions as part of the plantation system

• The Portuguese Experiment: African exploration and the plantation system as a proto-model for Atlantic slavery

What Can This Image Tell Us About Transatlantic Slavery? How Does it Differ from Slavery in Other Societies (e.g., Ottomans)?

• Visual and textual sources (e.g., Olaudah Equiano) illuminate the brutality, codified racial hierarchies, and the particular regime of chattel slavery in the Atlantic

• Differences from Ottoman/other slave systems: hereditary chattel status, race-based bondage, and plantation economy versus other forms of servitude and debt bondage in different regions

The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Transformation of the Atlantic World

• The Slave Trade and the Americas:

• Rise of European ecologies (ecological impact of cash-crop economies, new crops, diseases, etc.)

• Rise of race and necropolitics (racialization and the politics of death/deportation associated with slavery)

• Rise of settler colonies (European settlement patterns shaped by slave labor and colonial planning)

• The Slave Trade and Europe:

• Rise of manufacturing, trade, and capitalism (inputs from slave labor fueling European industry and finance)

• The Slave Trade and Africa:

• Decline in population, economic productivity, and state capacity due to the slave trade and disruption of traditional structures

• Key statistics:

• 12 imes 10^6 (12 million) Africans forcibly exported from Africa to the Americas

• 5 imes 10^6 (5 million) Africans killed or died during the middle passage or as consequence of the slave system

• 96\% of enslaved Africans were sent to plantations in Latin America and the Caribbean (as opposed to North America)

The Triangle Trade in Art: William Blake – Europe Supported by Africa and America (1796)

• Iconography and propaganda surrounding the triangular trade; how art reflects and reinforces geopolitical and racial ideologies

Wrapping Up – The “New World” Economy Takes Shape

• Overall big changes introduced by the New World economy:

• Globalized: integrated global trade networks across continents

• Hegemonic: European powers’ dominance in global commerce and political influence

• Winners and Losers: uneven benefits across regions and groups

• Biological Transformation: ecological and demographic changes driven by colonization and slave systems

Moving Forward – The Reformation: What Difference Did It Make?

• Link between religious upheaval and political/national state formation

• Implications for England, France, and broader European state construction

• Revolutions and state-building in England as part of broader shifts in governance and sovereignty

Cross-cutting connections to prior lectures

• Continuity with discussion on Spanish imperialism and the rise of the New World economy

• Foundations of mercantilism and emerging capitalist dynamics

• Early forms of global economic integration and the ethical, political, and social implications of slavery and colonial economies

Key themes to remember for exams

• Mercantilism vs. early capitalism: how state policy and trade networks supported growth

• The role of labor in the plantation system and the centrality of the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Atlantic world economy

• How Africa, Europe, the Americas were interdependent through commerce, migration, and coercive labor systems

• The racialization of slavery and its long-term social and political consequences

• The shift from a Spain-centered world to a Europe-centered world economy and political order

Notable figures and sources to review

• Olaudah Equiano (as a primary account of the transatlantic slave experience)

• William Blake (artistic representation of the Triangle Trade)

• Adam Smith (questions about the role of colonies and the benefits of colonies to the home country)

Glossary of key terms to recall

• Mercantilism, cash crops, plantation system, transatlantic slave trade, necropolitics, settler colonies, proto-industrialization, geopolitical economy, navigation of colonial markets