Either through mass indentured servitude or through a reverse slavery scenario, were there any places in the Americas (or anywhere in the world that can have plantation colonies for that matter) where white slavy can be practical without the majority dying of disease? I think northern Argentina might be a reasonable location but otherwise I'm not sure what all the factors put together is supposed to look like.
PC: Viable Climates for White Slavery
- Thread starter Kaiser Tito
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Maybe the Slavs are considered good slave stock by the West too? Religious objections of enslaving fellow Christians aside (and that's if the colonizers even are Christians) were there any locations where you can have White slave plantations without the climate killing them off en masse?
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They certainly were considered as such by the Venetians, Armenians and Caucasians too.
Certainly, the southern US, the Mediterranean… historically the Romans used most of their slaves - who were mostly European - in latifundias. They weren’t growing cash crops iirc just mostly basic food products, but nevertheless. I’m not sure the main hindrance to white slavery has anything to do with the climate or tropical disease, btw.
The Russian Empire had serfs for centuries until 1861. Obviously there are differences between serfs and African slavery as practiced in the Americas, but this simply raises a question of definition. If your question is, "would it be possible to have a slave regime similar to and as brutal as that practiced in the Americas in place largely populated by "white people" I think the answer is unambiguously yes. That Russian serfdom was slightly less brutal is historical accident rather than some inherent difference between Russians and Africans.
The Barbary states in North Africa spent hundreds of years raiding the coasts and shipping lanes of Europe for slaves that were then sold onward into the Ottoman Empire, resulting in multiple wars waged by the Europeans (and the United States) in the 19th century to stop them. Apart from the First and Second Barbary Wars that are semi-known in the United States ("to the Shores of Tripoli"), to the joint British-Dutch bombardment of 1816 and 1824, and ultimately the French invasion and conquest of Algiers. The Ottomans meanwhile routinely enslaved vast numbers of people from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the Caucuses on their military expeditions. Including 2.5 MILLION people from just the Black Sea area between the fall of Constantinople and 1700 .
This does raise the question - could transatlantic slavery be possible using a population other than sub-Saharan Africans? If for example a North African power managed to set up a colony in the Americas, or alternatively the Europeans managed to subjugate parts of the muslim world (for example, if Sebastian of Portugal succeeded in his “crusade” against Morocco).
The Portuguese and others actually acquired a not-insubstantial number of slaves from South Asian and East Asian areas such as Japan at around this time, it’s just that they were dwarfed in numbers by the Africans.
Given that there were a substantial number of European slaves held by the Ottomans, as well as earlier Muslim caliphates in the Mediterranean, that might be the answer: an Islamic colonization of the Americas, in whole or in part.
Just think of any place where whites live and due difficult labour, if they can do something like farming somewhere then there is no reason that they cant do it while being owned by someone
Maybe if the Slavs had largely avoided Christianization for at least a few more centuries, just long enough for the New World to be discovered and exploited by Western Europe, they would have been considered acceptable targets for slavery by political and religious authorities. The process might still be gradual, though, in the same way that African chattel slavery in the American colonies evolved out of the racially neutral institution of indentured servitude...
Or, to reverse things, maybe the Norse stay pagan and engage in much more effective colonization of Vinland, Markland, and points to the south and west. Once the skraelings start to die en masse of disease, the Vikings bring over their thralls from Europe - Christian, heathen and otherwise - to do the hard labor.
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So there never was a problem with American diseases wiping out indentured servants and Africans were just more convenient?
Would it have been possible for this slavery to go both ways? And if it does what impact would be added to that if a stubborn Lithuania remained pagan as well?
American diseases? Not really. There was yellow fever, but it originates in Africa probably and to my understanding its first major outbreaks in the Americas were only in the 17th century, well after transatlantic slavery already became a big thing.
White people were rarely used because relocating across the ocean to work in grueling conditions on a sugar plantation for the benefit of some rich aristocrat is not a very appealing prospect, and the number of white Europeans who can be forced to do it was much smaller than the number of slaves Africa could export.
Maybe Ottomans set up colonies and import enslaved Eastern Europeans there ? Or maybe have North African Pirates conquer a Carribean Island and import enslaved Europeans there.
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So just to clarify, a European is able to put in the same amount of labor as an African with deaths from exhaustion being about even, is that right? You can use Europeans at the equator and it'd have the same effect?
I mean, it's not an issue of like physical capability of different races, which isn't that different across the globe. It's not like Africans can take more workload. It's about exposure to disease. Indigenous Caribbeans, despite being from a tropical climate, died en masse on Spanish encomiendas not because they couldn't take the amount of labor an African slave could, but because they were exposed to new diseases that ravaged them (and also because the Spanish were exceptionally cruel in those early stages of colonization, and became slightly better later on). Europeans likewise are not any less capable to take the same workload. Unlike Native Americas, Europeans have of course already been exposed to European diseases, while diseases native to the Americas were just far less deadly (e.g. Syphilis has a very high mortality rate but it spreads much slower than smallpox). Europeans were more prone to die from diseases native to Africa, but those only began spreading in the Americas after there was already a large population of African slaves.
If a colonial African kingdom (Islamic, Christian, or even folk religion) were to enslave war prisoners (likely in addition to slaves bought from less advanced kingdoms), what would they need to do to avoid a coalition ganging up on them? Could they take advantage of the religious wars during the reformation?
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