The question of the impact of slavery has gained new importance in debates on the history of economic development, capitalism and inequality. This edited volume explores how Atlantic slaved-based economic activities and their spin-offs have contributed to the economic development of Europe.
The contributions to this volume each provide new data and methods for assessing the impact of Atlantic slavery, the slave trade and slave-related economic activities on Europe’s economic development. It traces this impact across Europe, from maritime and colonizing regions to landlocked regions, of which, the ties to the Atlantic slavery complex might seem less obvious at first glance. Together the studies of this volume indicate that slavery and colonialism played a pivotal role in the rise of Europe and globally diverging economic fortunes.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Slavery & Abolition.
Foreword, Introduction, 1. Introduction: the impact of slavery on Europe – reopening a debate, Explorations, 2. The profits of the Portuguese–Brazilian transatlantic slave trade: challenges and possibilities, 3. Governance, value-added and rents in plantation slavery-based value-chains, 4. Slavery and the Dutch economy, 1750–1800, 5. Slave-based coffee in the eighteenth century and the role of the Dutch in global commodity chains, 6. A cloth that binds: new perspectives on the eighteenth-century Prussian economy, Reflections, 7. How important was the slavery system to Europe?, 8. The value of figures, 9. Revisiting Europe and slavery
Tamira Combrink is Lecturer in History and Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History (Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences). Matthias van Rossum is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History (Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences), and specialized in global labour history, and the history of slave trade and slavery. He is Co-leader of Exploring Slave Trade in Asia and Leader of GLOBALISE, research infrastructure projects that explore histories of slavery and colonialism.
