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When I look back at the arc of modern history, I always note the great disjuncture between the slavery of the middle ages, and the slavery of the early modern era.

Medieval slavery was essentially a continuation of the Roman slave tradition, and was slowly on the decline. Enslaving non-Christians was seen as somewhat unseemly, and sources of pagan slaves were becoming limited on the continent. Indeed, most slaves from the period of 1000-1500 were heading out of Europe and into the Muslim lands - in latter days it was mainly Genoa and Venice facilitating the flow of slaves to the Ottoman Empire.

But it began to change in the mid 1400s, for several reasons. Portuguese exploration of the African coast meant that sub-Saharan Africans were within the European trade network for the first time. The Church issued several papal bulls legitimizing the hereditary enslavement of non-Christians. And the Spanish and Portuguese began converting the economies of the Canaries and Madeira to giant sugar plantations. This, along with the lack of disease resistance by Native Americans, was enough to set the stage for the massive trans-Atlantic slave trade.

But was it inevitable plantation slavery would have to be discovered? What if the Popes at this juncture were consistently against the expansion of slavery? Could the New World have been successfully integrated into the European economic system without slavery? Or would the lack of slavery have caused most colonial ventures to fail, leading to the essential abandonment of the New World, or at least the parts used to grow sugar, cotton, and tobacco IOTL?

I guess my ultimate question is is a TL possible where the West is as omnipresent, wealthy, and powerful as it is IOTL, without the creation of a slavery-based economic system?
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