Was slavery an inevitable part of the rise of the West?

Was slavery a needed precondition of the rise of the West?


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Valdemar II

Banned
Herm. The fatality rate among indentured servants in 17th century Virginia was horrifically high. How much of that was just disease is unclear, but it doesn't agur well.

Indentured servants are a entirely different thing from "small tenant-farmers in pseudo-serfdom" , you have little incentiment to not work indentured servants to death, when their indentureship are over you get no benefits from them anymore. Tenants farmers whom pay their rent with corvee would be a multigeneration thing.
 
THe first question that comes to my mind is are there any other models in history?

How many slaves where there in Canada? Austriala?

Those are both rich, powerful Western states.

Not really comparable honestly. Both were only heavily settled in the 1800s, when Britain had already made boku bucks through slave exploitation. It's fair to say without slavery these two nations would have ended up with smaller populations and less developed, if only because the UK wouldn't have had as much capacity to funnel settlers overseas.
 
Since slavery was abolished for reasons which are economically irrational, inspite of certain old Marxist claims to the contrary slavery seems to have only become more profitable over time rather than less, there doesn't seem any reason why it couldn't be rendered illegal earlier.

I have always thought the "agricultural-industrial revolution was made possibly only through wealth secured by plantation farming in the Caribbean from 1650-1750" is a bit weak. On the otherhand I don't really have the sources to argue the case. At the end of the day you don't need slaves, its just beneficial to security to control the supply of labour. But then if total production was less prone to expanding by the rapid expansion of slaves the price of commodities would presumerably be more stable and so there would be less risk anyway.
 
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