Is there any plausible alternate history scenario where the European colonization of Americas could happen WITHOUT African slavery? What would have to happen in Europe's history to prevent it? Or is there something that could of happened in Africa's development that could of prevented it? Since without African cooperation the slave trade couldn't be feasible.
Was Trans Atlantic Slave Trade inevitable with European Colonization of Americas?
- Thread starter sirjackalot
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I mean, i wouldn't say so. but the African slave trade bloomed because Portugal and Spain already had investments in the local west African slave trade at least 20 years before columbus set sail, so i'd say you need to limit that stuff and move Columbus north
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
If Europe hadn't pretty much started it's presence in the Western Hemisphere with trying to establish plantations in the Caribbean, I can see the demand for imported African slave labor being a lot less, at least in the 16th Century.
So if instead of Columbus sailing west on behalf of Spain, you might see a different navigator (eg Cabot) sailing on behalf of England, and taking the northern route; then they arrive northeastern North America, maybe making it as far as the St Lawrence river in the early years, and have to make their way south to find a way "around" this "landmass", so they can arrive in Asian markets. Then, some years into this exploring, they find the southern tip of Florida, and when they sail due west from there, they find Mesoamerica.
Important thing to note in this scenario is, the caribbean islands and most other prime agricultural real estate would end up being an afterthought; by the time anyone found out that these people had gold trinkets, they would already know about the truly wealthy civilizations on the continent to the west. So there's way less pressure early on to someone find a way to make the "west indies" profitable for Europe.
So if instead of Columbus sailing west on behalf of Spain, you might see a different navigator (eg Cabot) sailing on behalf of England, and taking the northern route; then they arrive northeastern North America, maybe making it as far as the St Lawrence river in the early years, and have to make their way south to find a way "around" this "landmass", so they can arrive in Asian markets. Then, some years into this exploring, they find the southern tip of Florida, and when they sail due west from there, they find Mesoamerica.
Important thing to note in this scenario is, the caribbean islands and most other prime agricultural real estate would end up being an afterthought; by the time anyone found out that these people had gold trinkets, they would already know about the truly wealthy civilizations on the continent to the west. So there's way less pressure early on to someone find a way to make the "west indies" profitable for Europe.
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A non-zero amount of slavery was inevitable but I think you can prevent the scale of slavery seen in the 18th and 19th century.
My thesis is that sugar and some other crops that require intensive labor with high mortality rates need slavery to exist and thus you need to remove the demand or replace the supply with something that doesn't need slavery, other crops like cotton or domestic slaves can be replaced by free European or native labor, it won't be as profitable or convenient to the upper classes but I don't think the cost would be this prohibitive as to make farming these crops not possible.
My thesis is that sugar and some other crops that require intensive labor with high mortality rates need slavery to exist and thus you need to remove the demand or replace the supply with something that doesn't need slavery, other crops like cotton or domestic slaves can be replaced by free European or native labor, it won't be as profitable or convenient to the upper classes but I don't think the cost would be this prohibitive as to make farming these crops not possible.
They didn't though, at least not universally.
If Vinland had survived we would likely have seen no or very little transatlantic slave trade (at least of African people, the Irish and Wendish slave trade would have been a big deal the first two centuries) , as it would have given Europeans half a millennium to develop and populate the Americas before such a trade became possible. I doubt a mixed Norse-Amerindian Caribbean would have the same need for labor or accept the total dominance of sugar cane farming.
I wouldn't be so sure, plantation slavery was used even in populated areas, like Roman latifundia or Zanj slavery in Islamic Mesopotamia or sugar plantations in the Mediterranean.
But you are right that a robust local farming population could resist these practices, although even this comes with a caveat, in Cuba slavery grew in the 18th century despite having both European migration, Chinese guest workers and already existing population.
If you want to strangle Caribbean sugar plantations, earlier sugar beets are probably your best bet. Experiments only started in the 18th century, but I don’t see any reason they couldn’t have started earlier, given sugar was known to Europe all the way back to the Classical period.
A major problem would be that other crop would likely becin use, and while it’s not impossible African slaves would still be imported, it would likely happen on smaller scale.
Sugar cane was also grown by free populations in Asia, I'm not sure if that is possible in all biomes.
In OTL the first experiment with beet sugar happened in the early 17th century. But it ended up something of a cul-de-sac because the beet used was red beet. So while sugar was extracted, it was harder thanks to the coloring tending to burn and discoloring the extracted sugar. Let the French scientist use fodder beet instead or let someone make the same experiment with fodder beet in another country earlier.
But it lead us to the next problem, extracting the sugar is fuel intensive. So we need an easy access to fuel.
Industrialization fueled by the search for sugar? England was using tons of coal already in the 17th century.
The Spanish and Portuguese modeled their Caribbean sugar cane plantations on the ones they'd established on the Canary Islands and Sao Tome, so the idea didn't spring up out of nowhere. And maybe if a European country that wasn't invested in sugar cane plantations dominated exploration of the Americas, they wouldn't build plantations and wouldn't be hungry for workers to man those plantations.
It would not lead to an industrialization. I think beet sugar manufacturing being fueled by Baltic charcoal would be more likely. It would result in coastal region good for sugar beet production like Lolland-Falster and Schleswig-Holstein being the center of beet sugar production being more likely. The best time for this to happen would be in the 16th century, when Denmark still had access to the heavily forested coasts of Halland and Blekinge. But it won’t stop the transatlantic slave trade, but with a little luck it spread to England and France and produce enough sugar by 1700, so we don’t see the worst century of the slave trade.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Come again?
That's a good point; if England (or some other European power other than Spain or Portugal) is the one who starts out exploring the Western Hemisphere, especially if they first arrive in the north, that will be a factor.
Well, to prevent the slave trade, we have to deal with Brazil and consequently with Portugal. Portugal already had an intimate relationship with slaves, importing them to do certain jobs in Lisbon (which nobody wanted). Brazil took +- half of all slaves that came from Africa. Even if it does not occur in the caribbean, brazil produced the vast majority of the sugar in the new world. Maybe the Dutch didn't invade Brazil and with that they didn't learn to make sugar cane plantations.
The first colonists weren't seeking to create slave plantations, at least not the Spanish, French or English as far as I know.
sure that maybe can prevent, in north america. But what about the rest of America?
everyone was after gold, but when most didn't find it, the explorers went looking for something else to get rich sugar was prefect for that.
Even if the Incas and Aztecs are not conquer, the Caribbean ,Brazil, southern North America and the region of Gran Colombia can be used to produce sugar.
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John Fredrick Parker
Donor
And when I said "plantations" I meant "plantations", which it should be remembered includes but isn't the same thing as "slave plantations" as we may understand them (eg Ireland from around this time). When europeans arrived in the caribbean expecting to find the east indies, they needed to find some way quick to make the venture profitable. What they came up with, practically as a first instinct, was to force the natives into labor to grow crops for their conquerors. When this native work force continuously rebelled and died in droves, they found their project beset with labor shortages, and so turned to importing African "laborers" (whether they were "slaves" at this early stage of the institution's history is a matter of some semantic quibbling; in any even the racial caste systems that would define the slave system as OTL later came to know it still had yet to be fully invented.)
This is why starting in the northern part of the hemisphere matters so much; if explorers unexpectedly run into the American continent there, they won't see this new territory as something that has to turn a profit so soon to justify themselves to their royal backers, since they're naturally expecting the real return on investment to lie further west. And by the time they do find the caribbean, nobody's expecting settlements on the island to turn long term profits, so any "conquest and plantation" ambitions that emerge will be pretty small scale compared to what Columbus managed OTL, and likely won't develop the same "demand" for" imported labor" to nearly the same scale that OTL's caribbean colonies did.
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Some amount of slavery would still exist, the matter is more about the extent and source of the trade
Gloss and Jürgen made a great point about an earlier and more widespread use of sugar beets substituting sugarcane.
Maybe, in combination with less labor intensive crops, another source of labor can be found in eastern europe?
Gloss and Jürgen made a great point about an earlier and more widespread use of sugar beets substituting sugarcane.
Maybe, in combination with less labor intensive crops, another source of labor can be found in eastern europe?