Slave Trade with an earlier Suez Canal

So, before we get started, lets all accept one premise: That the Suez Canal (a proper one, connecting the Red and Med directly) is technologically feasible in earlier eras. I've run numbers on it, and its not outside the realm of possibility. There's obviously plenty of reasons it wasn't built earlier, but its not as though we're suggesting a bunch of technological leaps to dig it. It is a topic worth debating, but lets please save that for another thread.

All on the same page? Great!

Our scenario is that the Ottomans decide to build a Suez Canal in response to the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration. They do so at some point in the 16th century (obviously after the conquest of Egypt). This will, of course, lead to massive butterflies all throughout history, but I'd like to focus on just one aspect. With a direct connection to the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal, how might the slave trade be impacted?

We have two largely independent slave-trading networks: on in the Atlantic Ocean, with largely West African slaves, and one in the Indian Ocean, with largely East African slaves. The Atlantic Slave Trade would be really taking off shortly after this canal is completed, though slave trade in the Indian Ocean is a bit more mature. These two are now much more closely linked. Would we likely see some interchange between them?
 
The presence of the Suez Canal should not affect the Atlantic slave trade. Using sailing ships, the time from East Africa to the Americas will still be substantially longer than from West Africa. The longer the transit time from where the slaves are loaded on to the ship to where they are offloaded, the greater the loss. In the late 16th/early 17th century, when this canal opens for business, there is simply not much market for slaves in Europe. Using Suez to move East African "cargo" to Europe, either Ottoman ports or other ports in the Med, would be more efficient than using West Africa to be sure, the problem is the market. I expect you might see a small increase in the number of African slaves in Europe, perhaps more in the Ottoman realm possibly with young boys taken to enrolled as Janissaries.

The need for slaves for plantation labor in the Americas is what drove the slave trade. Supplying those needs, especially the sugar plantations in the Caribbean which had huge death rates, can be supplied adequately from West Africa and East African slavers could not be sold profitably in competition with West African "goods".

Tons of other butterflies of course.
 

raharris1973

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Who would be the main European consumers and perhaps toll-payers for this precocious Suez Canal - Frenchmen and Venetians?
 

raharris1973

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The presence of the Suez Canal should not affect the Atlantic slave trade. Using sailing ships, the time from East Africa to the Americas will still be substantially longer than from West Africa. The longer the transit time from where the slaves are loaded on to the ship to where they are offloaded, the greater the loss. In the late 16th/early 17th century, when this canal opens for business, there is simply not much market for slaves in Europe. Using Suez to move East African "cargo" to Europe, either Ottoman ports or other ports in the Med, would be more efficient than using West Africa to be sure, the problem is the market. I expect you might see a small increase in the number of African slaves in Europe, perhaps more in the Ottoman realm possibly with young boys taken to enrolled as Janissaries.

The need for slaves for plantation labor in the Americas is what drove the slave trade. Supplying those needs, especially the sugar plantations in the Caribbean which had huge death rates, can be supplied adequately from West Africa and East African slavers could not be sold profitably in competition with West African "goods".

Tons of other butterflies of course.

I basically agree there would not be a lot of market integration, but perhaps more of the slaves in the Ottoman Maghrib might be east Africans instead of West Africans or West Europeans.
 
Perhaps its not as popular an idea as the East African slave trade (Which, I imagine, is going to be conducted primarily by the Omani/Zanzibar Arabs and Swahili city-states raiding/trading into the interior, similar to how the Portugese Factory system pulled it off, and could trigger the early adoption of large-scale plantation cotton agriculture in Egypt), I can see this development allow the survival of another slave trade: The Indian one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India#Delhi_Sultanate_(12th_to_16th_century_AD) . Due to distance of shipping and the loses involved (Which was always one of the main expenses of the maritime slave trade) its always going to be cheaper to get manual laborers from West Africa to the Americas, but what about the effects the increased spice flow would have on the viability of slave plantations in the East Indies? I can see Ottoman clients or the VOC using the method.
 
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