Query- how did the powers rank in 1650-1700 in terms of reliance on slavery?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Looking at the later 17th century, which empires were the least and most dependent on African slavery:

Britain
France
Spain
Netherlands
Portugal
 
Portugal
France
Britain
Spain
Netherlands
Btw Britain didn't exist in that time bracket but I am assuming tht you meant England
 
Yes- England, which was in personal union with the other Kingdom in Britain, Scotland.
I wasn't trying to be picky.It is just that Scotland didn't got itself involved in colonialism until the XVIII century.The same could be said about Castile and Aragon btw
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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I wasn't trying to be picky.It is just that Scotland didn't got itself involved in colonialism until the XVIII century.The same could be said about Castile and Aragon btw

Yes, that's a good point.

--I get the impression that although it was the first to introduce African slaves in the 1490s or early 1500s to the New World, Spain (Castille) did not have a system in most colonies where intergenerational and perpetual African slavery was the defining feature of the economy. Others were also enslaved a lot or put into involuntary forms of servitude. At the same time, as late as 1700, the contract to sell Africans to Spanish America, the asiento, was considered highly lucrative and a thing England fought to gain, so there must have been demand for slaves.

--Portugal innovated in large scale slave-based sugar plantations and was a consistently big player throughout.

--However, by 1700 or England and France had surpassed the Spanish and Portuguese in the sophistication and scale of their plantation regimes. The Dutch and Danes were probably about as sophisticated and modernized, they were just limited to fewer and smaller islands than the English and French.
 
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