Lecture 5

Indentured labour: sign a contract, shipped from Europe to the Americas to work, at the end → can have land * Does not work well for sugar plantations → cannot force the workers to do more than a day’s work * Competitive market doesn’t allow for free labour - solution = slavery
Slaves work in all sorts of industries, but plantations are key (because the production is so large)
Americas: slave society! The entire economy is based on the plantation system
The only way to increase production is to increase land and workers → expansion
Sugar: very valuable (rhum)
To keep costs low: slaves would do the food production themselves for themselves → can feed themselves
Slave mines: slaves can’t grow their own food - harder

A mix of cultures because they are prisoners of war (soldiers, leaders, peasants) * Former leaders from Africa → lead these communities * Some defeated European colonizers because they were soldiers!
Ex: Haiti * Slaves were born in Africa, kidnapped from very large areas → very different languages * Europeans organize different groups of people so they can’t organize to rebel * Only successful slave revolution!
Tried to use white European slaves * Didn’t work, local white people rebelled because didn’t permit it, were scared that them too could become slaves

Sugar
Cotton: inefficient to grow and labour intensive * Incorporate industrial machines to help with production * Starts making the United States powerful
Tobacco
Indigo
Lumber and timber
Rice and wheat

Triangular trade * Europe to Africa: manufactured goods * Africa to America: slaves * America to Europe: raw materials

1550-1560 West African Coast: major changes * State building: coastal villages, larger towns/cities * Large cities rely on trade (European) * Administrative core starts the process of state building * States incorporate a lot of different groups - needs a lot of organization * States build through a series of war → creates a massive number of new slaves
States who were equipped (militarily) by Europeans became dominant!
Gold coast becomes more unified → Europeans are able to expand slave trade
More powerful states = win more wars, so they capture even more slaves

Causes: * Europeans don’t want to deal with stronger and wealthy states. * These states also want to incorporate slaves into their own territory. * Wars are getting bigger → slows down gold production, destroying the states’ wealth * Flow of gold across the Atlantic reverses (from Brazil to Gold Coast) * With the gold, Europeans buy slaves → SLAVE TRADE EXPANDS

Slaves would have been way more valuable in their community than the price they were sold at
Lack of opportunity
Loss in labour * Hard to build infrastructure because it takes a lot of labour-power * Hard to develop a base of trained workers
Loss in markets * No internal market
Loss in pressure for technological advancement: Europeans wouldn’t sell them/show them new industrial ways that would help them develop
Losing population so no developmental progress (intensification/expansion is hard)
Loss of wealth due to wars

Abolition movement in Britain was because slavery was becoming not enough profitable
Profits made from the slave trade allowed the Industrial Revolution to happen in England
Infrastructure, banks, productive capacity

Money from plantations → produced a very stable fiscal environment because of guaranteed income → foreign investors
20-50% of British capital came from slave trade + plantations * Invested in nonfinancial assets

People in faraway regions whose employment and work depend on people on other continents → GLOBALIZATION * People are completely dependent on other continents * Interconnected world

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