1st Edition

Slavery and Europe Exploring the Economic Impact of Atlantic Slavery

Edited By Tamira Combrink, Matthias van Rossum Copyright 2023

    The question of the impact of slavery has gained new importance in debates on the history of economic development, capitalism and inequality. This edited volume explores how Atlantic slaved-based economic activities and their spin-offs have contributed to the economic development of Europe.

    The contributions to this volume each provide new data and methods for assessing the impact of Atlantic slavery, the slave trade and slave-related economic activities on Europe’s economic development. It traces this impact across Europe, from maritime and colonizing regions to landlocked regions, of which, the ties to the Atlantic slavery complex might seem less obvious at first glance. Together the studies of this volume indicate that slavery and colonialism played a pivotal role in the rise of Europe and globally diverging economic fortunes.

    The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Slavery & Abolition.

    Foreword 
    Marcel van der Linden 
    Introduction 
    1. Introduction: the impact of slavery on Europe – reopening a debate 
    Tamira Combrink and Matthias van Rossum 
    Explorations 
    2. The profits of the Portuguese–Brazilian transatlantic slave trade: challenges and possibilities 
    Filipa Ribeiro da Silva 
    3. Governance, value-added and rents in plantation slavery-based value-chains 
    Klas Rönnbäck 
    4. Slavery and the Dutch economy, 1750–1800 
    Pepijn Brandon and Ulbe Bosma 
    5. Slave-based coffee in the eighteenth century and the role of the Dutch in global commodity chains 
    Tamira Combrink 
    6. A cloth that binds: new perspectives on the eighteenth-century Prussian economy 
    Anka Steffen 
    Reflections 
    7. How important was the slavery system to Europe? 
    Guillaume Daudin 
    8. The value of figures 
    Pepijn Brandon 
    9. Revisiting Europe and slavery 
    Sven Beckert 

    Biography

    Tamira Combrink is Lecturer in History and Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History (Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences).

    Matthias van Rossum is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History (Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences), and specialized in global labour history, and the history of slave trade and slavery. He is Co-leader of Exploring Slave Trade in Asia and Leader of GLOBALISE, research infrastructure projects that explore histories of slavery and colonialism.