Was Trans Atlantic Slave Trade inevitable with European Colonization of Americas?

[Arkenfolm]

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.

But what are you going to grow in the Caribbean instead? It's a hot, humid climate beset by hurricanes, unpleasant and dangerous for Europeans. It has practically no purpose for colonising outside of minor bases for an empire or for growing crops like sugar or tobacco, and the latter has limited demand compared to sugar.

As for slaves, I think if demand for slavery was limited enough they'd convert Eastern North America into slave raiding grounds much as English colonists did with the American South. They would just start paying the Iroquoian and Algonquian-speaking peoples at the fringe for their slaves, and then encourage them to bring more captives to enslave. This worked very well for several decades and ended because the indigenous slave trade was a victim of its own success.

 

[Gloss]

But what are you going to grow in the Caribbean instead? It's a hot, humid climate beset by hurricanes, unpleasant and dangerous for Europeans. It has practically no purpose for colonising outside of minor bases for an empire or for growing crops like sugar or tobacco, and the latter has limited demand compared to sugar.

As for slaves, I think if demand for slavery was limited enough they'd convert Eastern North America into slave raiding grounds much as English colonists did with the American South. They would just start paying the Iroquoian and Algonquian-speaking peoples at the fringe for their slaves, and then encourage them to bring more captives to enslave. This worked very well for several decades and ended because the indigenous slave trade was a victim of its own success.

Tobacco? Is there something that could be produced in bulk that doesn't kill the people harvesting the plant or kill the people consuming the product of this crop?

 

[DJ03]

But what are you going to grow in the Caribbean instead? It's a hot, humid climate beset by hurricanes, unpleasant and dangerous for Europeans. It has practically no purpose for colonising outside of minor bases for an empire or for growing crops like sugar or tobacco, and the latter has limited demand compared to sugar.

Pepper? Some eastern spice? Cocoa? Coffee?

 

[Nyegosh]

Why would it? I feel like the trade itself was more of an exception, and wouldn't have happened otherwise, European conquest or not. Initially was very much opposed, mostly on religious grounds.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Tobacco? Is there something that could be produced in bulk that doesn't kill the people harvesting the plant or kill the people consuming the product of this crop?

Like I said, limited demand compared to sugar. Food can always be made sweeter and sugar can be made into rum (which itself was a valuable trade good and used to buy more slaves). Tobacco in some areas like New York or New England didn't seem to lead a heavy slave presence either and even in the South tobacco growing areas didn't have as many slaves as cotton areas.

Pepper? Some eastern spice? Cocoa? Coffee?

This would be an interesting POD since coffee didn't take off in the Caribbean until later (18th century IIRC) and eastern spices like nutmeg only became valuable much later. Although it would be hard to spread the latter since it was very tightly guarded.

 

[DJ03]

This would be an interesting POD since coffee didn't take off in the Caribbean until later (18th century IIRC) and eastern spices like nutmeg only became valuable much later. Although it would be hard to spread the latter since it was very tightly guarded.

Maybe postponing the discovery of the Americas a little bit could play a role?

 

[Nivek]

You can't have trans Atlantic without crossing the Atlantic?

 

[Gloss]

Like I said, limited demand compared to sugar. Food can always be made sweeter and sugar can be made into rum (which itself was a valuable trade good and used to buy more slaves). Tobacco in some areas like New York or New England didn't seem to lead a heavy slave presence either and even in the South tobacco growing areas didn't have as many slaves as cotton areas.

I'm not following your line of thinking, let's say there is no real alternative to sugar and tobacco indeed has lower demand and can't fill entire islands with such plantations, isn't this a good thing if you are trying to stop mass slavery(which can't be fed by enslavement of native Americans in the long term)?
Cuba up to the late 18th century was economically "backwards" but that meant it didn't have as much slavery as Jamaica or Haiti, do you think it's impossible for Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and other islands to be like this if we say a stable and self-sustaining European or mixed European-Amerindian population forms?

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Enslaving fellow-Christians was forbidden for religious reasons, so if West Africa turns Christian sometime before the 15th century, the area wouldn't become such a big source of slaves. At the very least, slave traders would have to capture slaves from much further away, making them more expensive and thus less suitable for cheap plantation labour.

Complementary/alternate scenario: Is it possible to grow sugar cane in West Africa itself? If so, perhaps you could get a scenario where sugar cane is produced there instead of the Caribbean, meaning that there's no need to set up plantations in the Caribbean and, hence, no need to import large numbers of slaves to work on them.

 

[holycookie]

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.

The Portuguese did not discover Brazil to find a different way to the Indies. Even if the first discovery takes place in North America, you already have the Iberian powers interacting with the African coast, exchanging metals, tobacco and other things in exchange for slaves and products such as ivory. The colonization of Brazil did not take place through gold but through the paubrasil wood used for dyeing. In North America we have furs among other products. If, for example, England discovers North America and sees nothing of value in the region and gives up on the continent, there are still the Spanish, Portuguese and French exploring

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,

People who take these trips are exploited with usually no morals, coming from nothing and wanting to get rich. The Portuguese acted like vikins or pirates in the indian ocean because the members are not nobles but poor peasents with nothing to lose. If, for example, the conquest of the civilizations of Mesoamerica and the Andes does not occur. The Caribbean is easy to colonize as well as the coast of Brazil. Both have valuable products. Even if the production of sugar takes longer to occur, it will occur because all the factors for its creation are there.

and likely won't develop the same "demand" for" imported labor" to nearly the same scale that OTL's caribbean colonies did.

I honestly don't see how you have the sugar boom in the caribbean due to the colonization of brazil which developed good techniques in sugar production and after the invasion of the dutch this in turn brought the techniques to the caribbean (this literally caused a mini crisis in the Portuguese colony).
Christopher Columbus, introduced the planting of sugarcane in America, on his second trip to the continent but the Spaniards discovered the gold and silver of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, in the early 16th century, the cultivation of sugarcane and the production of sugar were forgotten. In 1532, the first sugarcane was moved to Brazil, in the northeast of the colony where sugar mills multiplied. After several difficulties, after 50 years, Brazil began to monopolize world sugar production.
Portugal and the Netherlands, which marketed the product, had high profitability. Europe, enriched by gold and silver from the New World, became a major consumer of sugar. In the year 1578 Portugal was annexed by Spain. The Spanish king, Felipe II, a fervent Catholic, was bitterly opposed to Holland and England, Protestant countries. Dutch trade collapsed and in 1630 the Dutch invaded Brazil, remaining in Pernambuco until 1654, when they were expelled. To reduce dependence on Brazilian sugar, the Dutch started sugar production in the Caribbean and later the English and French themselves did the same in their colonies, ending the monopoly of Brazilian sugar.

 

[holycookie]

so if West Africa turns Christian sometime before the 15th century, the area wouldn't become such a big source of slaves.

in that case it has to prevent Islamic expansions. Even so, there are kingdoms like Kongo that sold slaves to Europeans in large quantities.

At the very least, slave traders would have to capture slaves from much further away, making them more expensive and thus less suitable for cheap plantation labour.

Europeans bought esvrados from all over Africa

Complementary/alternate scenario: Is it possible to grow sugar cane in West Africa itself?

yes but the technique is used by members of the middle east and europe (they didn't share the knowledge)

 

[TheKutKu]

Maybe either a Songhai wank or , likely more efficiently , another sudanese empire (Fulani gunpowder empire?) appearing shortly after its fall could monopolise and control slave trade across west africa... After all, its need for slave labour would likely outcompete american one at a time the carribean plantations were young. If at the same time you have Portuguese-Dutch war resulting in both losing ground there (mostly luanda in face of Kongo) and wrecking northern brazil this could slow down transatlantic slave trade to the point it doesn't become large scale.

 

[CHKeeley]

I haven’t read the thread, but I was reading Fernand Braudel’s Civilization and Capitalism Vol I and at one point and he argues that:

"Europe, because of its political partition and the lack of flexibility in its economy, was not capable of dispensing with any more men. Without Africa it could not have developed the New World for many reasons, notably the climate, but also because it could not divert too much manpower from its own labour force. Contemporaries probably exaggerate easily, but the effects of emigration must have been felt on Sevillian life for Andrea Navagero to have said in 1526: 'So many people have left for the Indies that the town [Seville] is scarcely populated and almost in the hands of women."

(Braudel, 54)

 

[Ogrelord420]

If the Spanish and Portuguese focus more on their crusades into North Africa in the 16th century then they could have possibly used Maghrebi captives as slaves instead of Black Africans.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

@holycookie Aside from gold trinkets, what did the Caribbean have of value? If it comes down to “land for plantations”, then I’d question how an organization not backed to the hilt by a powerful European monarchy is going to have a chance in hell pacifying any part of the region for such a venture (given the trouble they have Columbus and the subsequent Spanish).

Now on Brazil, you actually do have a point. Honestly, I don’t know how you stop the Portuguese from starting at least some version of the slave trade once they’ve started sailing down the African coast and trading with the kingdoms, given how easily they found eastern South America; once they put together that they had a source of slave labor and easily reachable land to put them to work on, the rest kind of follows.

That being said, there’s no reason such a venture had to expand significantly beyond Brazil; Spain was the only other European power at the time with access to African markets.

 

[Cryptic]

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.

I am thinking.....

Make the African tribal nations more into nation states. IOTL, this had happened to a degree (Ghanan trade was controlled by the Kingdom of Ashanti), but African society was still largely tribal. Larger nation states increase African demand for locally produced African agricultural products and give local African forced labor more value in Africa.

To meet the increased demand for agricultural products, the dominate African nations dive into large scale "serfing"- and also adopt Russian Imperial serf rules:

Serfs of the dominate ethnicity (ex. Russian) can only be uhmm...."held" others of the same ethnicity (ex. Russian).
Serfs of any imperial ethnicity cannot be transferred beyond the empire.
Direct sales of serfs can occur on occasion, but its frowned on. Closed door, indirect "transfers" don't facilitate large scale, open air markets that the Europeans need.

So.... when the European clients come calling to west Africa, they are told: 1.) We dont have any exportable forced labor to sell you. 2.) We are strong enough to resist any demands for internal policy changes regarding serfing. 3.) Our serfs are very valuable- in Africa, because we need them to support our system. Yes, we still like your guns. But, we"ll pay for them with other means.

So.... the Europeans leave with no slaves. Some Europeans are allowed to set up large scale agricultural operations under the dominate African empires- so long as they play by local rules regarding serfing. Some Portuguese and Dutch even become long term subjects of the African empires similar to Baltic Germans.

 

[Gloss]

I haven’t read the thread, but I was reading Fernand Braudel’s Civilization and Capitalism Vol I and at one point and he argues that:

"Europe, because of its political partition and the lack of flexibility in its economy, was not capable of dispensing with any more men. Without Africa it could not have developed the New World for many reasons, notably the climate, but also because it could not divert too much manpower from its own labour force. Contemporaries probably exaggerate easily, but the effects of emigration must have been felt on Sevillian life for Andrea Navagero to have said in 1526: 'So many people have left for the Indies that the town [Seville] is scarcely populated and almost in the hands of women."

(Braudel, 54)

With all due respect this sounds like complete bullshit that lacks perspective, England was able to sustain tons of emigration, grow rapidly in size demographically AND feed the rapid growth of London all in the 17th century while not exactly being the most stable country, this alone contrast with France that didn't send many colonists despite having many more people, this makes any Europe-wide argument needlessly generalizing, especially given you have just 4-10 European countries that engaged in any American colonialism and most of them(Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Scotland, Courland, "HRE"/Austria and Netherlands) barely did so.

Also the level of emigration from Spain to the Americas up to 1600 totalled to 120k people out of a country with 5+ million, basically 2% of the population emigrated in 108 years, how in the world is that high? This is not even an exaggeration, we can pretty much say this Andrea person was just wrong and could be misattributing the cause of depopulation.

Edit: Also the climate argument is bullshit, I have discussed it previously but there is simply no real evidence that crops that could be grown by a self-sustaining African slave population couldn't be grown by a self-sustaining European one(and crops that were harvested through labor force subjected to high mortality would default to non-European populations because you couldn't justify sending so many Christian subjects to their deaths like that).
I can accept in a vacuum that Africans would suffer less from sunburns, are more adapted to tropical diseases and so on but the idea that this is alone makes certain plantations only viable if they use African populations is not yet self-evident to me.

 

[holycookie]

I can accept in a vacuum that Africans would suffer less from sunburns, are more adapted to tropical diseases and so on but the idea that this is alone makes certain plantations only viable if they use African populations is not yet self-evident to me.

They were used because they were cheap and easily accessible. African tribes wanted European resources such as weapons, medicine and more elaborate products. In exchange they gave slaves from enemy kingdoms. For the tribes and kingdoms of the coast it was a great deal. They were also not Christians, which helps justify slavery. It's not color strength or anything like that, it's the convenience of the agreement that benefits both sides (Europeans and African kingdoms/tribes).

 

[Tentrees]

African Slavery existed in America because of the tropical disease environment of southern US and Caribbean. It wasn't until the 1800s that we began to get a hold of them and thus the need for new slaves decreased. Slavery in any form, time and place is a drag on industrial and social evolution (compare/contrast Northern and Southern industrial development in the US pre-1860) and while I wish it had never happened it did.

 

[Gloss]

They were used because they were cheap and easily accessible. African tribes wanted European resources such as weapons, medicine and more elaborate products. In exchange they gave slaves from enemy kingdoms. For the tribes and kingdoms of the coast it was a great deal. They were also not Christians, which helps justify slavery. It's not color strength or anything like that, it's the convenience of the agreement that benefits both sides (Europeans and African kingdoms/tribes).

I'm not necessary opposed to the idea, I just don't see the argument being made to support it, you need to factor out both the fact the kind of slavery that had high mortality rates by design and also factor out the fact slaves costed less in the long term because of far lower negotiating power over what they get out of their labor.
If you do that, IE look only into self- plantations using self-sustaining African populations(with balanced gender ratios, without needing massive continuous inflow of new slaves) and try to estimates how much the "wages" of slaves(cost to upkeep them and buy them in the first place vs paying free labourers or indentured labourers for the same work) were depressed specifically by slavery then maybe the remaining difference in cost could be due to biological or even cultural fitness to the specific environment.
It's not easy to make this comparison because on average the 2 labor sources were put in very different conditions and African labor ended up being 8 times more abundant until 1800.