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Jersey played ‘active’ role in transatlantic slave trade

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An exhibition on the island’s role in the transatlantic slave trade will be held in 2022.

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A Brief History of Slavery That You Didn’t Learn in School (Published 2019)

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A child’s shackles, a West African legacy, a black sergeant in the Union Army — these are stories you need to hear.

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The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you - Anthony Hazard

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Various forms of slavery, servitude, or coerced human labor existed throughout the world before the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. As historian David Eltis explains, "almost all peoples have been both slaves and slaveholders at some point in their histories." Still, earlier coerced labor systems in the Atlantic World generally differed, in terms of scale, legal status, and racial definitions, from the trans-Atlantic chattel slavery system that developed and shaped New World societies from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
SLAVERY IN WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA
Slavery was prevalent in many West and Central African societies before and during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. When diverse African empires, small to medium-sized nations, or kinship groups came into conflict for various political and economic reasons, individuals from one African group regularly enslaved captives from another group because they viewed them as outsiders. The rulers of these slaveholding societies could then exert power over these captives as prisoners of war for labor needs, to expand their kinship group or nation, influence and disseminate spiritual beliefs, or potentially to trade for economic gain. Though shared African ethnic identities such as Yoruba or Mandinka may have been influential in this context, the concept of a unified black racial identity, or of individual freedoms and labor rights, were not yet meaningful.

West and Central African elites and royalty from slaveholding societies even relied on their kinship group, ranging from family members to slaves, to secure and maintain their wealth and status. By controlling the rights of their kinship group, western and central African elites owned the products of their labor. In contrast, before the trans-Atlantic trade, western European elites focused on owning land as private property to secure their wealth. These elites held rights to the products produced on their land through various labor systems, rather than owning the laborers as chattel property. In contrast, land in rural western and central African regions (outside of densely populated or riverine areas) was often open to cultivation, rather than divided into individual landholdings, so controlling labor was a greater priority. The end result in both regional systems was that elites controlled the profits generated from products cultivated through laborers and land. The different emphasis on what or whom they owned to guarantee rights over these profits shaped the role of slavery in these regions before the trans-Atlantic trade.

Scholars also argue that West Africa featured several politically decentralized, or stateless, societies. In such societies the village, or a confederation of villages, was the largest political unit. A range of positions of authority existed within these villages, but no one person or group claimed the positions of ruler or monarchy. According to historian Walter Hawthorne, in this context, government worked through group consensus. In addition, many of these small-scale, decentralized societies rejected slaveholding.

As the trans-Atlantic slave trade with Europeans expanded from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, however, both non-slaveholding and slaveholding West and Central African societies experienced the pressures of greater demand for enslaved labor. In contrast to the chattel slavery that later developed in the New World, an enslaved person in West and Central Africa lived within a more flexible kinship group system. Anyone considered a slave in this region before the trans-Atlantic trade had a greater chance of becoming free within a lifetime; legal rights were generally not defined by racial categories; and an enslaved person was not always permanently separated from biological family networks or familiar home landscapes.

The rise of plantation agriculture as central to Atlantic World economies from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries led to a generally more extreme system of chattel slavery. in this system, human beings became movable commodities bought and sold in mass numbers across significant geographic distances, and their status could be shaped by concepts of racial inferirority and passed on to their desendants. New World plantations also generally required greater levels of exertion than earlier labor systems, so that slaveholders could produce a profit within competitive trans-Atlantic markets.
SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS
In the centuries before the arrival of European explorers, diverse American Indian groups lived in a wide range of social structures. Many of these socio-political structures included different forms of slavery or coerced labor, based on enslaving prisoners of war between conflicting groups, enforcing slavery within the class hierarchy of an empire, or forced tribute payments of goods or labor to demonstrate submission to a leader. However, like West and Central African slavery, American Indian slavery generally functioned within a more fluid kinship system in contrast to what later developed in the New World.

Ultimately, the practice of slavery as an oppressive and exploitative labor system was prevalent in both Western Africa and the Americas long before the influence of Europeans. Still, the factors that defined the social, political, and economic purposes and scale of slavery significantly changed, expanded, and intensified with the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and American plantation agriculture launched by European expansion. For these reasons, African and American Indian slavery before the trans-Atlantic trade differed significantly from the chattel slavery systems that would later develop in the Atlantic World.
THE DECLINE OF SLAVERY IN WESTERN EUROPE
In contrast to other Atlantic World regions, slavery was not prevalent in Western Europe in the centuries before the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Instead, labor contracts, convict labor, and serfdom prevailed. This had not always been the case. During the Roman Empire and into the early Middle Ages, enslaved Europeans could be found in every region of this subcontinent. After the Roman Empire collapsed (starting in 400 A.D. in northern Europe), the practice of individual Europeans owning other Europeans as chattel property began to decline.

As described in the following sections, this decline occurred due to unique religious, geographic, and political circumstances in Western Europe. By 1200, chattel slavery had all but disappeared from northwestern Europe. Southern Europeans along the Mediterranean coast continued to purchase slaves from various parts of Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In Lisbon, for example, African slaves comprised one tenth of the population in the 1460s. Overall, however, the slave trade into southern Europe was relatively small compared to what later developed in the New World.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, western European elites began to focus on acquiring and controlling land, and the goods produced on the land they owned, rather than controlling laborers through slavery to accumulate goods. The European labor systems that began to replace slavery should not be confused with modern free labor, but serfdom, convict labor, and contract systems did grant workers access to rights that were denied to slaves. For example, European serfs were bound to work for the lord of a manor, but in return the lord provided protection and land that serfs could farm for their own subsistence. While serfs did not own the land they worked, they could not be sold away from it like chattel slaves. Instead, serfs were bound to whichever lord currently owned the manor. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, serfdom declined in Western Europe due to population changes and economic shifts resulting from the Black Death. Hiring contract laborers became more profitable for landowners in Western Europe and as a result, European laborers gained greater control over their own labor and mobility.

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Slavery before the Trans-Atlantic Trade · African Passages, Lowcountry Adaptations · Lowcountry Digital History Initiative

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Various forms of slavery, servitude, or coerced human labor existed throughout the world before the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. As historian David Eltis explains, "almost all peoples have been both slaves and slaveholders at some point in their histories."

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Europe and slavery

Academic interest in the economic importance of slavery across history is part of a wider trend that is re-examining the history and meaning of slavery and its legacy in relation to European histories and identities. Since 2010, museums in particular have started reflecting on their collections and links to or origins in colonial expropriation, violence and slavery. These re-examinations are not just increasing in number or reviving interest in histories that thus far still have been dealt with far too little, but more importantly they are part of and contributing to the improvement, or perhaps even transformation, of our understanding of the dynamics and impact of slavery. The slavery exhibition organised by the Dutch national Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam due to open in early 2021, for example, challenges a longstanding tradition of portraying 'Dutch' national self-imagery centred around ideas of tolerance, enlightenment and science, while simultaneously for the first time bringing together in one integrated public narrative the understudied history of slavery and the slave trade in the Dutch East Indies with the more traditionally dominant Atlantic history.

These public initiatives to make the historical connections of slavery tangible and explore them from hitherto underrepresented angles have in turn fuelled new academic questions. The question of contemporary knowledge on as well as the visibility of slavery in early modern Europe, for example, has stimulated a rising interest in the understudied history of the lives and experiences of enslaved people from the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago worlds who were taken to Europe. Roughly one-fifth of the population of the city of Lisbon consisted of people of colour in the eighteenth century. In Germany, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, research indicates that the presence of enslaved individuals was widespread at courts but was certainly not limited to the estates of nobility, patricians and the richest merchants. An early 'black' presence in northern Europe was not as extensive as in southern Europe, but did lead to modest communities in places such as London and Amsterdam from the early seventeenth century onwards. Despite classic dogmas that tend to associate Europe with the history of freedom and civil rights, and despite claims that 'any slave who touched foot on French soil' would be freed, studies increasingly indicate that enslaved people brought to France, the United Kingdom or the Dutch Republic were mostly not freed, but remained under the control of their masters and in positions of unfreedom. The dogma that there was 'no slavery' in north-western Europe thus does not hold up, since slavery existed at least in practice and often even in law. In the context of Amsterdam, for example, the practice of slavery was even confirmed by law as late as 1776. The connections between Europe and slavery were much deeper and more complex than its involvement in regimes of overseas colonial exploitation alone.

Europe, connections and comparisons

These re-examinations along a wide spectrum of routes are necessary to understand the complex and diverse ways in which slavery, the slave trade and regimes of colonial coercion and exploitation have impacted on both the non-European world as well as Europe itself. At the same time, however, knowledge is not only advanced by embracing and adjoining complementary insights of different approaches - a certain focus is instrumental and even needed, perhaps, to advance our insight into specific central research questions. This thematic special issue takes the latter as its point of departure.

This issue aims to further the debates on slavery, early modern globalisation and economic development by bringing together new research based on a global-comparative perspective. It builds upon the conference session Europe and Slavery. Estimating the share of slave-based activities in European economies, 1500-1850 (WEHC 2018, Boston), which was organised as a follow-up to the conference session Global Impact of Slave Trade and Slavery (WEHC 2015, Kyoto). Central to the Boston session and its discussions were the recently (re)discovered method of global value chain analysis, indicating the economic and financial links between different stages of investment, manufacture, trade and consumption (see, for example, the focus on global value chains by the World Trade Organization in its 2014 annual report). The global commodities and their chains of production and trade driving early modern expansion are a reminder that there are long-lasting and global histories behind contemporary commodity chains.

Considering the dynamics and impact of the global connections that flowed from the early modern slavery complex, this special issue argues for making the impact of slavery and the slave trade on the development of the European economy into a field of more thorough interrogation. The issue thus stresses connections and shows that the impact of slavery, the slave trade and slave-related economic activities not only led to coercion and extraction in colonial contexts, but through global commodity chains created an economic impact that resulted in higher gains in the metropole and to overall contributions that mattered significantly in the economies of Europe. The articles here do not provide the final answers but must be seen as a first step towards a more systematic, comparative and connecting international research agenda for exploring and discussing the economic impact of slavery in different parts of the world. We start with a comparative approach, covering both regions that were at the forefront of European imperial expansion and that laid the basis for overseas slave-based production, as well as regions that may seem to have been less directly involved.

We have chosen to start this exploration with comparisons of the impact of the Atlantic slavery system on Europe in the early modern period, mostly the eighteenth century, because of its central role in debates on global economic divergence, colonialism and inequality. Taken together, the studies in this special issue challenge the persistent notion of the 'marginality' of slavery and the slave trade, and especially their economic gains, to the history of the economic development of Europe. This contribution is all the more urgent considering the resurgence across the globe of narratives that recycle claims of European (enlightened) exceptionalism and cultural, economic and institutional superiority.

Of course, early modern Europe was not the only time and place that depended heavily on slave-related economic activities. Slavery was at the core of European society and economic development from at least the time of the Roman Empire, and this remained the case in the Mediterranean until the nineteenth century. And slavery existed outside Europe and European colonies as well. And, as is discussed in some of the contributions in this special issue, slave-related commodity chains generated their own dynamics and impacts in West Africa and the Americas. At the same time, the impact of slavery was not uniform across Europe. Different regions were connected to the Atlantic slavery system in different ways. This is most clear, of course, in comparisons between landlocked Europe and maritime regions, but is also important when comparing the different European maritime empires. The historiographic dominance of the British case has in that respect not been helpful in coming to terms with the differences in the multiple European imperial circuits, and has perhaps played a role in the relative late rediscoveries of and attention to overseas trade circuits outside the control of the European metropole (for example, between West Africa and Brazil, or the intra-American trade), the importance of inter-imperial connections, and the differences in the structure of Iberian, Dutch, French and Scandinavian imperial involvement. And to further complicate this picture, the slavery-related commodity chains that connected different parts of the world did not exist in isolation, but were continuously interlocked in complex constellations of interdependence, complementarity and competition in the stages of consumption, transport, refinement and production. Again, these interactions cut right through the boundaries of nations and empires. All these considerations, however, do not inflate the relevance of assessing the role of slavery in European economic development and in its acceleration in a period of global economic divergence.

This issue thus brings together research articles from authors who were each asked to contribute to a collective attempt to assess the role of slave-based economic activities in the wider economies of various European regions. We therefore asked authors to contribute by exploring ways in they could provide information on national economies as a whole or for specific sub-regions, identifying slavery-related trade and industries, indicating the size of such industries and branches of trade where possible, and estimating their role in relation to economies at large (for example, through indicators on the value of economic performance [GDP], the size of trade, economic growth or employment figures, etc.). The national or regional levels and the quantitative approach were instrumental in our aim to develop more systematic comparative insights. This open quantitative and comparative set-up thus served to facilitate comparisons for assessing assess the importance of slavery for societies across time and space, irrespective of whether the slavery itself was based in that society or externalised and overseas. By raising awareness of (global) value or commodity chain approaches we hoped we could also provide a way of highlighting the interconnections and intertwinements between political and economic clusters. The collection could thus at the same time provide a starting point for further exchange and discussion on the methodologies used. The discussion at the Boston roundtable suggests that this may have succeeded, and we support the idea that the next steps would be to further develop quantifications, methods and connections in future research.

The approach taken here does not mean we think we should limit research to the set-up now chosen for practical means. Rather, we hope that this modest comparative, still very much national-structures oriented, quantitative exercise provides a contribution to a much broader reinvigoration of the debate on the question of the impact of slavery. We believe that, at this stage, a focused and collective quantitative approach is needed to further our understanding, but we do not contend that this should be the only way forward. To further our insights, it should in fact be accompanied by qualitative approaches to the economic, institutional, political, cultural, and social dimensions of these histories.

The complementarity of insights gained from different methods and thematic domains, however, is not the only issue that requires our immediate attention. The contributions to this special issue also provide important reminders that it is of key importance to consider both the scope and scale of our future historical enquiries. While it is clear that slavery was not only an 'overseas' history, it is simplistic to analyse the impact of slavery along rigid lines (Europe-Atlantic, or Global North-Global South). The attempt to reconnect and reintegrate Europe in the analysis of the history of slavery and the impact of slavery, especially when we try to understand these through the transformations and connections forged by commodity chains, remind us of the complexities that mark these histories of coercion and exploitation.

First, this means it is important to not oversimplify or even reify the (national) entities needed in the course of our analytical exercises, but to deal with the political-economic structures that moulded or attempted to steer control of flows of trade, production and consumption along increasingly national and imperial lines. Neither these structures nor their boundaries were stagnant, and - just as important - they were continuously influenced by economic and political elites that were not only to be found in the metropole, but also in Brazil, Surinam and North America. Moreover, these often 'national' imperial projects stood in complex interplay with legal and illegal trade across imperial and national borders and inter-imperial collaborations and connections. And in the new-found states created in Atlantic colonies that broke away from European metropoles (except if their revolts were led by slaves demanding their freedom, as in the case of Haiti), slave-based production regimes generally continued or even accelerated, as was the case in the United States (until 1865) and Brazil (1888).

Second, this means that - although this special issue again revisits the connections between the Atlantic and Europe - the history of (colonial) commercial slavery was not confined to the Atlantic: its scope was much wider, including the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago worlds, and it was continuously related to and interacting with the broader histories of coercion and colonial exploitation, both in the Atlantic and elsewhere. In particular, the histories of the development of the 'corvée' and 'cultivation' systems in South and Southeast Asia, but also the early Asian histories of contract migrant labour and colonial carceral regimes are important reminders that colonial coercive labour regimes spread throughout the world and would in in an early stage start to transform the global countryside beyond the Atlantic realm in the early modern period. The experiences and labour regimes of these other regimes of colonial exploitation increasingly fed into the Atlantic world in response to the nineteenth-century abolition of slave trading and slavery.

In better understanding the impact of these histories of coercion, scale matters. First, in discussing 'regimes', 'systems' or 'chains' it is important to recall that a real understanding of what such abstraction implied in terms of coercive practices, social relations or other effects for the people involved can only come from testing how these abstractions functioned in everyday life contexts. Second, recent studies, including those in this special issue, indicate the concentrated and sometimes very high local impact of the spoils of slave-related commodity chains, with the local economies of some cities heavily dependent on economic activities related to slavery-related industries. The economies of port cities such as Flushing (Vlissingen), Nantes and Liverpool, for example, were deeply connected to the slave trade and its provisioning. It is clear that other cities, such as Amsterdam, London or Bristol, not only profited from the slave trade, but also from slavery-related provisioning and (re)processing industries, trade and other economic activities, for example banking, insurance, sugar, coffee and even glass bead trades. The contributions to this special issue point out not only that this mattered at a national level (the Dutch Republic, Portugal, the UK), but that the impact could be much deeper at the regional and urban level (for example, for Holland, or Amsterdam and London) and that both the connections and impact stretched far into European hinterlands (Silesia) as well as back across the Atlantic (Brazil). Our quest for measuring impact should, in future research, thus not be guided by methodological nationalism, but steered by the search for the key levels if we are to make sense of the role and impact of slavery - this should be both quantitative (focusing on the importance of specific sectors) and quantitative (focusing on political-economic regimes that were consciously nurtured and shaped by elites of merchants and rulers).

Slavery's impact across Europe

This special issue attempts to assess the impact of slavery and slavery-related on Europe, with its collection of articles covering ways of assessing the role and weight of slave-based colonial activities for Portugal and Brazil (Filipa Ribeiro da Silva), the sugar value chain for Great Britain (Klas Rönnbäck), the coffee trade (Tamira Combrink) and the wider Atlantic slave-based economy for the Dutch Republic (Pepijn Brandon and Ulbe Bosma) and linen production for Silesia (Anka Steffen). Expanding on very unevenly developed historiographies, the contributions collectively expose not only the importance of the Atlantic slave-related commodity chains of trade, production and services for the early modern European economy, but also that these forged connections that reached far beyond the European metropoles, into European hinterlands as well as across different Atlantic colonies, that at times played pivotal roles in shaping larger political and economic developments.

For the Dutch Republic, Tamira Combrink shows in her contribution how the commodity chain of slave-produced coffee was important in re-orienting the Dutch economy from the Baltic and Mediterranean to the Rhine and the German hinterland, with the coffee trade rising 'from very little' to a share of '9.5% of the total trade value' of the Dutch Republic in the second half of the eighteenth century. These studies on the Dutch case contribute to a reviving debate on the impact of the slave trade and slavery to the wealth of the Netherlands. Earlier studies that stirred up the Dutch debate employed an approach focusing on the 'gross margin' or 'impact' of the slave trade, and indicated that this single industry - despite earlier claims that it was an unprofitable business - already contributed up to 0.5% to the economy of the entire Dutch Republic (Van Rossum and Fatah-Black), with one-tenth or even one-third of the economies of specific port cities such as Middelburg and Flushing arising from economic activities related to the slave trade (De Kok). In 2012, Van Rossum and Fatah-Black therefore called for 'further reconstructions of the size and impact of other elements of the Atlantic system' in order to 'provide new insights for the debate on the role of slavery and the related economic activities in the trans-Atlantic trade system and the influence on the development of early modern Europe'. In their contribution in this special issue, Pepijn Brandon and Ulbe Bosma take up this call and expand on this approach, calculating the contribution of slave-based activities to the GDP of the Dutch Republic (5.2%) and the province of Holland (10.36%) around 1770.

Of course, the implications of such basic assessments are often challenged by questioning whether specific percentages should not be considered small rather than large. Some examples could provide a clear point of reference to the importance of these indications of the slavery-related contributions to early modern economy. In 2006, on the eve of the globally disruptive financial crisis of 2007-2008, it was calculated that the gross value added of the entire 'financial and insurance services' was 7.7% of the UK's GDP and 7.5% of the US's GDP. This comparison provides two clear arguments as to why the impact was significant. First, these sectors were considered too big to fail, as indicated in the 2007-2008 crisis with massive bailouts and the subsequent deep economic downturn. Second, as with the financial sector, the early modern Atlantic slave-related trade and economy was deeply connected to a myriad of other sectors, from supplying, processing and servicing industries. The Dutch Republic was obviously not alone in its strong reliance on slavery and slave-based economic activities, and these studies join a wider landscape of new research that suggest the importance of slavery for different parts of Europe.

The contributions of this special issue confirm that the impact of slavery-related economic activities was not confined to the European maritime colonial nations, and that much more research is needed to create a comprehensive insight into the complex connections between and impacts on different parts of the European continent. For Portugal it has been estimated that the overseas empire contributed to 'around 20 percent' to Portugal's per capita income. In her contribution on the Portuguese empire, Filipa Ribeiro da Silva brings the complex links between Portugal and Brazil to the fore, making it clear that the slave trade and slavery-related economic activities clearly affected both sides. She calls for us to reconsider our methods of assessing the multi-directional relationship and the gains that were found both in Europe and in the colonies. Anka Steffen integrates the history of Silesian linen production into that of Western Europe and its history of slavery in the Atlantic. She estimates that the production of linen for the Atlantic slavery complex accounted for some '15% of the total value of all manufactures produced in the Prussian state' at the end of the eighteenth century. In this way, she brings the history of the European 'hinterland' into the analysis of the history of slavery, while simultaneously asking whether the labour-intensive orientation of economies in Eastern European regions might have favoured capital-intensive developments in the western parts of the continent.

To conclude, the implications of the contributions in this special issue for our understanding of the impact of slavery on European economic development, as well as for the direction of future debates and research, are discussed in a roundtable with essays by three special experts in the fields of the history of slavery, early modern economic development and capitalism. These contributors to the roundtable have taken it upon themselves not only to reflect on the contributions and implications of this special issue, but also to debate what direction future research should take. Guillaume Daudin argues for an approach that focuses more on economic theory and the development of counterfactuals to assess the role and significance of the slave trade and slave-based activities. Pepijn Brandon encourages us to continue the quantitative reconstructive approaches that have been given a new impulse with research on the impact of the slave trade and the Atlantic slavery complex in the UK, for example, and the Dutch Republic. Sven Beckert warns against a-historic counterfactuals and against approaches that take too exclusively quantitative directions, and points out the importance of the wider roles of slavery and colonial exploitation.

We embrace these pointers towards future research, although our suggestion here is to avoid easy counterfactuals and fragmented research agendas, as these could disguise the specific strategic role of coerced mobilisation, transplantation and coercion of people in early modern and later economies. Slavery and the slave trade were part of the larger structures of political-economies (or modalities of domination and dependence) of which we can only improve our understanding if we reconstruct their roles and effects through systematic (quantitative with qualitative) comparative and connecting global approaches.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Additional information

Funding

This special issue was the result of the conference session Europe and Slavery. Estimating the share of slave-based activities in European economies, 1500-1850 at the World Economic History Conference in Boston in 2018. This was organised by the editors as part of their research efforts for the respective projects Slaves, commodities and logistics. The direct and indirect, the immediate and long-term economic impact of eighteenth-century Dutch Republic transatlantic slave-based activities, NWO Project Number 360-53-170 (principal applicants Marcel van der Linden, Karel Davids and Henk den Heijer) and Between local debts and global markets: Explaining slavery in South and Southeast Asia 1600-1800 (Matthias van Rossum, NWO Veni Grant, 2016-2019) funded by Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO).

1 E.g. Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

2 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1944); for a treatment of this debate, see Pepijn Brandon, 'Rethinking Capitalism and Slavery: New Perspectives from American Debates', Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis / Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 12, no. 4 (2015): 117-37. On the Atlantic: R.B. Sheridan, 'The Wealth of Jamaica in the Eighteenth Century', Economic History Review 18, no. 2 (1965): 292-311; Barbara L. Solow and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 11; H.S. Klein, The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); H.A. Gemery and J.S. Hogendorn, eds., The Uncommon Market. Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Academic Press, 1979). On Europe: Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (New York: Verso, 1997); Gad Heuman and James Walvin, 'The Atlantic Slave Trade: Introduction', in The Slavery Reader, eds. Gad Heuman and James Walvin (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 3-10; Klas Rönnbäck, 'Who Stood to Gain from Colonialism? A Case Study of Early Modern European Colonialism in the Caribbean', Itinerario 33, no. 3 (2009): 135-54; Matthias van Rossum and Karwan Fatah-Black, 'Wat is winst? De economische impact van de Nederlandse trans-Atlantische slavenhandel', TSEG/ Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 9, no. 1 (2012): 3-29; Karwan Fatah-Black and Matthias van Rossum, 'Beyond Profitability: The Dutch Transatlantic Slave Trade and Its Economic Impact', Slavery & Abolition 36, no. 1 (2015): 63-83; Gerhard de Kok, 'Cursed Capital: The Economic Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on Walcheren around 1770', TSEG/ Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 13, no. 3 (2016): 1-27; Klas Rönnbäck, 'On the Economic Importance of the Slave Plantation Complex to the British Economy during the Eighteenth Century: A Value-Added Approach', Journal of Global History 13, no. 3 (2018): 309-27; Pepijn Brandon and Ulbe Bosma, 'De betekenis van de Atlantische slavernij voor de Nederlandse economie in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw', TSEG/ Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 16, no. 2 (2019): 5-46.

3 For example, the Dutch NWO-project Slaves, commodities and logistics, IISH and Leiden University, 2014-19; the German DFG-project The Globalized Periphery, Europa-Universität Viadrina, 2015-17; Cátia Antunes, Exploiting the Empire of Others, NWO Vici Grant, 2020-25.

4 With varying initiatives in, for example, France, Germany, Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands.

5 The regular exhibition displays of the Rijksmuseum, in fact, still strongly supports this national self-imagery. More information on this exhibition: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/slavery.

6 See for example: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/.

7 See for example: https://mappingslavery.nl/ ; http://www.theblackarchives.nl/#.

8 See for example: http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/ ; http://www.harvardandslavery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Harvard-Slavery-Book-111110.pdf. European examples: Glasgow, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Utrecht.

9 For example, revisiting the relation between Europe and the Atlantic, see e.g. Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft, eds., Slavery Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680-1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016).

10 James H. Sweet, 'The Hidden Histories of African Lisbon', in The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade, eds. Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Matt D. Childs and James Sidbury (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 233-247, 237; Erin Kathleen Rowe, Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

11 Norma Myers, Reconstructing the Black Past: Blacks in Britain 1780-1830 (London, 2013); R. von Mallinckrodt, 'There Are No Slaves in Prussia?', in Brahm and Rosenhaft, Slavery Hinterland, 109-32; Dienke Hondius, Blackness in Western Europe: Racial Patterns of Paternalism and Exclusion (London: Routledge, 2017); Mark Ponte, '"Al de swarten die hier ter stede comen": Een Afro-Atlantische gemeenschap in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam', TSEG/ Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 15, no. 4 (2018): 33-62.

12 Sue Peabody, There Are No Slaves in France: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Samuel L. Chatman, '"There Are No Slaves in France": A Re-Examination of Slave Laws in Eighteenth Century France', The Journal of Negro History 85, no. 3 (2000): 144-53; Sue Peabody and Keila Grinberg, eds., Free Soil in the Atlantic World (London: Taylor and Francis, 2016) - based on special issue Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 32, no. 3 (2011); Karwan Fatah-Black and Matthias van Rossum, 'Slavery in a 'Slave Free Enclave'? Historical Links Between the Dutch Republic, Empire and Slavery, 1580s-1860s', Werkstatt Geschichte 66-67 (2015): 55-74, 67.

13 Karwan Fatah-Black, Sociëteit van Suriname - 1683-1795 * Het bestuur van de kolonie in de achttiende eeuw (Zutphen: Walburg Pers 2019).

14 Andrea Mosterman, 'Nieuwer-Amstel, Stadskolonie aan de Delaware', in De slavernij in Oost en West: Het Amsterdam onderzoek, eds. Pepijn Brandon, Guno Jones, Nancy Jouwe, and Matthias van Rossum (Amsterdam: Spectrum, 2020).

15 Matthias van Rossum, Kleurrijke tragiek. De geschiedenis van slavernij in Azië onder de VOC (Hilversum: Verloren, De Zeven Provinciën reeks, 2015). For example, there is the outspoken role of contra-remonstrant Reynier Pauw, who led the Amsterdam city council from 1611, and was a major figure amongst the bewindhebbers that appointed Jan Pietersz Coen to ensure a more aggressive expansion politics. See Matthias van Rossum, 'Van Amsterdam naar Azië: slavernij en de VOC', Pepijn Brandon, Guno Jones, Nancy Jouwe and Matthias van Rossum, Amsterdam en de slavernij.

16 See: Deborah K. Elms and Patrick Low, eds., Global Value Chains in a Changing World (Geneva, 2013); https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/aid4tradeglobalvalue13_intro_e.pdf

17 Maxine Berg, ed., Goods from the East, 1600-1800: Trading Eurasia (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

18 See e.g. M. van Rossum, 'Labouring Transformations of Amphibious Monsters - Globalization, Diversity and the Effects of Labour Mobilization under the Dutch East India Company (1600-1800)', International Review of Social History s64 (2019): 19-42; C.G. De Vito, J. Schiel, and M. van Rossum, 'From Bondage to Precariousness? New Perspectives on Labor and Social History', Journal of Social History (online preview: 22 August 2019), doi: 10.1093/jsh/shz057.

19 J.L. van Zanden and P. de Zwart, The Origins of Globalization: World Trade in the Making of the Global Economy, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

20 Pepijn Brandon and Aditya Sarkar, 'Labour History and the Case against Colonialism', International Review of Social History 64, no. 1 (2019): 73-109.

21 Christopher Ebert, Between Empires: Brazilian Sugar in the Early Atlantic Economy, 1550-1630 (Leiden: Brill, 2008); David Richardson and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, eds., Networks and Trans-Cultural Exchange: Slave Trading in the South Atlantic, 1590-1867 (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Cátia Antunes and Amélia Polónia (eds.), Beyond Empires: Global, Self-Organizing, Cross-Imperial Networks, 1500-1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Bram Hoonhout, Borderless Empire: Dutch Guiana in the Atlantic World, 1750-1800 (Athens, OH: University of Georgia Press, 2020).

22 New research agendas are developing for these regions, focusing on furthering comparisons, case studies and the development of quantifications based on better use of the wealth of available sources and data. Titas Chakraborty and Matthias van Rossum, 'Slave Trade and Slavery in Asia - New Perspectives', Journal of Social History (forthcoming).

23 E.g. Jan Breman, Mobilizing Labour for the Global Coffee Market: Profits From an Unfree Work Regime in Colonial Java (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2015); Van Rossum, 'Labouring Transformations'; 'The Carceral Colony - Colonial Exploitation, Coercion, and Control in the Dutch East-Indies, 1810s-1940s', International Review of Social History s63 (2018): 65-88; C. Anderson, ed., A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).

24 E.g. Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Matthias van Rossum, 'Redirecting Global Labor History?', in Explorations in History and Globalization, eds. C. Antunes and K. Fatah-Black (London: Routledge, 2016), 47-62.

25 Van Rossum, Fatah-Black, 'Wat is winst?' [translated as 'Beyond profitability']; De Kok, 'Cursed Capital'.

26 Fatah-Black and Van Rossum, 'Beyond Profitability', 80.

27 Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, https://www.bea.gov/, consulted March 2020; Chris Rhodes, Financial Services: Contribution to the UK Economy, Commons Library Briefing no. 6193, 31 July 2019, www.parliament.uk/commons-library.

28 Rönnbäck, 'On the Economic Importance'.

29 Rönnbäck, 'Who Stood to Gain', 144-5.

30 Ulrich Pfister, 'Great Divergence, Consumer Revolution and the Reorganization of Textile Markets: Evidence From Hamburg's Import Trade, Eighteenth Century', Economic History Working Papers, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), no. 266, 2017.

31 Leonor Freire Costa, Nuno Palma, and Jaime Reis, 'The Great Escape? The Contribution of the Empire to Portugal's Economic Growth, 1500-1800', European Review of Economic History 19 (2014): 1-22.

32 Rönnbäck, 'On the Economic Importance'.

33 Van Rossum, Fatah-Black, 'Wat is winst?' [translated as 'Beyond profitability']; De Kok, 'Cursed Capital'; Tamira Combrink, 'From French Harbours to German Rivers: European Distribution of Sugar by the Dutch in the Eighteenth Century', in La diffusion des produits ultra-marins en Europe (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), eds. M. Villeret and M. Martin (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2018); Brandon and Bosma, 'De betekenis van de Atlantische slavernij'.

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Introduction: the impact of slavery on Europe - reopening a debate

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Academic interest in the economic importance of slavery across history is part of a wider trend that is re-examining the history and meaning of slavery and its legacy in relation to European histories and identities. Since 2010, museums in particular have started reflecting on their collections and links to or origins in colonial expropriation, violence and slavery.

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Slavery today in all its forms - Anti-Slavery International

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Slavery today takes many different forms, including human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage and others. Learn about them all here.

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The history of slavery is a large and untellable story, full of tragedy and cruelty that spans both centuries and continents. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact year that slavery began, historians can trace the roots of this inhumane practice back roughly 11,000 years. Keep reading to learn about the origins of slavery, how it developed across ancient cultures and what you can do to help end slavery for Haitian children .

The Origins of The Slavery Practice

The precise beginning of slavery is difficult to track because its origins predate historical recording and the written word. Due to the sociological makeup of the groups, we know that slavery wasn't a part of hunter-gatherer societies, so the first identifiable evidence of slavery comes from the Code of Hammurabi out of Mesopotamia. This ancient text refers to slavery as a common practice throughout the region which had been in place for thousands of years at the time it was written.
Slavery Throughout the Ancient World
The practice of human slavery grew as the world became more civilized and organized cities and farms were developed. Sumer or Sumeria is still thought to be the birthplace of slavery, which grew out of Sumer into Greece and other parts of ancient Mesopotamia. The Ancient East, specifically China and India, didn't adopt the practice of slavery until much later, as late as the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC. Historians debate whether or not the practice of slavery in India existed before this time, but many believe argue against its existence as there is no word in ancient Sanskrit that can be translated as "slave."
The Life of a Slave in Ancient Times
Slavery in ancient times typically came about as a result of debt, birth into a slave family, child abandonment, war, or as a punishment for crime. At the outset, the slave trade wasn't very popular and was certainly not a booming global business. Rather, slavers would often seek out a buyer who could use the specific skills of a slave, matching supply with demand on a local and personal level. According to historical texts, the lives of slaves in ancient times were typically better than that of peasants in the same era, as they had regular care, food, shelter and clothing. Slaves rarely attempted to run away unless their masters were atypically cruel.

The Middle Ages

Throughout the Middle Ages, (defined by historians as a three-part time period between 500 AD and 1500 AD) the practice of slavery changed dramatically as global warfare, raiding and conquering spanned across continents. This led to chaos and confusion as the citizens of conquered regions were taken as slaves and transported across many miles to work as slaves for their captors.
Medieval Slavery in Europe
King Charlemagne is responsible for uniting large parts of West and Central Europe at the outset of the Middle Ages. This unification came about through war and violence and many of his campaigns involved taking slaves and selling them to the highest bidders. Throughout his reign, European slaves became wildly popular throughout Muslim countries, marking the true beginning of the global slave trade. Throughout this period in history, Vikings were also taking slaves across Europe, concentrating heavily on The British Isles. Additionally, Spain and Portugal were in an almost constant state of Holy War between Muslims and Christians, leading to many women and children being taken into slavery in the name of God or Allah.
Medieval Slavery in Asia
Throughout the Middle Ages slavery was also taking root in Asia as Islamic invasions of India resulted in the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Indians. One historical record shows that in the year 1001 the armies of Mahmud of Ghazna conquered Peshawar and Waihand, capturing and enslaving roughly 100,000 children and young people.

During this same time period in China, documents show that royals from the Tang Dynasty purchased many European and Jewish slaves. The soldiers and pirates who serve the Tang Dynasty also took countless slaves in raids on Korea, Turkey, Persia and Indonesia as well as thousands of slaves taken from indigenous Aboriginal tribes.

Slavery in the Americas

The story of the American slave trade is the first chapter in the history of slavery where most of us already have some familiarity. Whether it be from graphic films on the transportation of Africans aboard slave ships or your high school American history class, most adults are aware of the origins of slavery in the United States. The long story of slavery has not yet come to a close as many, including children, still find themselves enslaved.
The Origins of American Slavery
The first slaves were brought to the Americas in 1619, when 20 men from Africa were brought to Jamestown, VA. Historians are not sure whether this was the true beginning of the legal slave trade in the colonies. Indentured servitude already existed in the region. Roughly 60 years later, via the Royal African Slave Company, records show that the slave trade was booming in the British Colonies, and colonists began to acquire slaves in larger numbers. Evidence suggests that the main reason for this dramatic increase was a sharp decline in the availability of indentured servants.
Slave Concentration Throughout the Americas
Despite what you likely know about slavery in the Americas, you may not know that the majority of African slaves were concentrated in the Caribbean to work on plantations. European colonies depended on African slaves on the islands to produce their sugar and coffee. Additionally, many African slaves were sold to owners in both Brazil and the Spanish Americas for both field and household work.
The Journey from Africa
The journey from Africa to the Americas was a horror that many did not survive. The ships were tightly packed, low on food, and without proper sanitation. This led to a rapid spread in fatal diseases such as dysentery, fever, and smallpox, killing both the Africans and the ship's crew. Death was commonplace on the slave trade, and when a man or woman passed away, their bodies were simply tossed into the ocean. This was an additional point of shock for the Africans, as they believed that death and burial should be handled with care and honor.

Depending on the origin and final destination of the slave ship, this journey could take anywhere from three weeks to several months. Records estimate that between 10 and 20 million Africans were brought to the Americas in this inhumane fashion, although many were cast into the ocean along the way, a tragedy too horrifying to wrap your mind around.

The Abolitionist Movement

Slavery is an appalling practice that has existed since the origins of human history. Although at many points in history, liberators have worked to free specific groups of people, the Abolitionist Movement was different, as it aimed to put an end to slavery as a practice.
The Roots of the Abolitionists
Some of the first countries to do away with slavery as a practice were located in Western Europe, around 1500. Many European countries were careful not to use slavery in their homelands, but relied heavily on slaves to build their empires abroad. The next step in the abolitionist movement was the ending of the slave trade globally. Slavers who were caught transporting slaves across the ocean were tried in court, and those captured were set free. However, there were still large numbers of slaves already in place in the Americas, and the profitability of the work they provided made them a valuable commodity to their owners.
The American Civil War
At the time of the American Civil War, there were more than 4 million slaves working in the United States, 95% of whom were in the Southern states. The major political issue leading up the beginning of the Civil War was the expansion of slavery to the West. Northern abolitionists believed that if they could stop the spread of slavery, they could end the practice altogether.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, and the Southern states seceded from the Union shortly after, forming the Confederacy. The Confederate States of America were centered around the preservation of slavery, while the Northern Union was focused on preserving the country, as well bringing an end to slavery.
The Emancipation Proclamation and Beyond
With the stroke of a pen, President Lincoln changed the war by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, changing the status of all enslaved Americans from bondage to freedom. This meant that although slaves were still working throughout the South, if they could escape to the North, they would be legally free. Many slaves were able to escape to northern states using the Underground Railroad. In 1865, the Union regained control of the Confederate States, and the slaves in those areas were formally freed. Many of the freed men joined the American Army and Navy to ensure their free status.

Although legally free, the lives of black Americans did not immediately improve. The battle for racial equality is one that is still ongoing in the United States, a reminder of our dark past.

Modern Day Slavery

Sadly, even through the hard work of abolitionists the world over, the end of slavery didn't come in the 19th century. Modern or contemporary slavery still exists across the globe, often in places you wouldn't expect. Experts estimate that there are roughly 40.3 million enslaved people currently in bondage.
What Does Contemporary Slavery Look Like?
There are many forms of modern day slavery, all of which involve people being forced to work against their will. This can take the form of prostitution, physical bondage, forced labor, human trafficking, debt bondage or simply being born into slavery. Researchers estimate that worldwide these numbers breakdown to 25 million in forced labor, 15.4 million in forced marriages, 4.8 bin sexual exploitation and more than 10 million child slaves.

The most vulnerable among us are always the most likely to become enslaved. Women and children are often forced into slavery against their will because they have no other options or resources with which to fight back. Other times, migrants and refugees are sold into slavery when seeking asylum, as is currently the case with thousands of Rohingya Muslims currently working in the Thai fishing industry.
Countries with the Highest Concentration
Research from the Global Slavery Index shows that North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, India, and Qatar have the highest percentage of slavery among their population. In North Korea roughly 4.37% of the population is enslaved, most of these by the North Korean government who force them into slavery, even selling them to work abroad in Russia, China and even the United States. In India, modern day slavery often involves debt bondage, where individuals are forced into to slavery to pay off debt, either their own or from previous generations.
How You Can Help End Slavery in Your Community
One way you can help stop contemporary slavery is by knowing and understanding the signs. For example, if a person cannot leave their job, reports low wages, isn't properly cared for or never speaks for themselves, they may be victims of slavery. For children, look for a lack of access to education, poor nutrition, shabby clothing, and lack of playtime. If you notice children's beds or clothing in factories or businesses where they don't belong, this is an indicator of child slavery . If you recognize any of these signs, call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 to report it.
Join Us to Help Enslaved Haitian Children
In the nearby island of Haiti, many children are caught in a system of slavery known as restavek. Haiti is one of the poorest countries on the planet, and many Haitians are starving and unable to care for their children. In these situations, they are left with no option but to send their children to live with wealthier families to survive, where they become slaves in the family tasked with their care. These children spend their formative years working long hours with little food, playtime, or attention from the adults around them.

Restavek Freedom is one of the top charities working to end child slavery in Haiti. Through child advocacy , education, and intervention our teams are giving Haitian children the chance to learn, play and thrive. You can partner with us through child sponsorship , creative fundraising and more. Help us end slavery in our lifetime.

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The history of slavery is a large and untellable story, full of tragedy and cruelty that spans both centuries and continents. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact year that slavery began, historians can trace the roots of this inhumane practice back roughly 11,000 years.

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Colonization of Africa - Summary on a Map

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By Adam Abu Bashal and Gokhan Kavak
ABUJA
The Dutch colonial history is littered with blood and tainted with tales of misery of thousands of slaves who were kidnapped and then sold to markets in Europe and America.

The Dutch colonized many parts of the world -- from America to Asia and Africa to South America; they also occupied many African countries for years.

From the 17th century onwards, the Dutch started to colonize many parts of Africa, including Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, Angola, Namibia and Senegal.

According to a report prepared by Anadolu Agency, the Dutch began to colonize the African continent from West Africa. It used natural and human resources of Ghana and Senegal in the 16th century, Ivory Coast and South Africa in the 17th century, and Namibia in the 19th century after colonizing them.

The Dutch exploited natural resources as well as human resources in African countries. People were slaughtered and many were abducted to be used as slaves in America and Europe.

Makaziwe Mandela, daughter of South Africa's legendary leader Nelson Mandela, told Anadolu Agency, our ancestors lived without facing any problems until the English and the Dutch came to this part of the world.

Mandela said: "Our ancestors living in South Africa were expelled from here when the mines in the continent were discovered, and happiness came to an end."
'Golden Age' of colonialism
The Dutch established colonial rule mostly in the coastal areas of Africa and enjoyed a "golden age" of colonialism between the 15th and 17th centuries.

The Dutch had established colonial territories in Africa before the English and French came to loot the continent; they eventually lost their power and handed over territories to the then British Empire and the French in the 18th century.

The Dutch first went to Ghana, one of its earliest colonies in the 16th century and exploited underground mines, mainly gold, there. Thousands of Africans were abducted and sold as slaves to America and Europe from Ghana by the Dutch; they were taken through the Elmina Castle built in Ghana in 1642.

The colonial Dutch arrived in the coast of Namibia in 1793 and seized the port of Walvis Bay, the most popular port of the country, and slaughtered the inhabitants there.

The port of Walvis Bay, which was seized by the Dutch, was then used as a slave port.
First colonizer of South Africa
The Dutch established a colony in Africa before many other European countries.

It is also the first colonial country which came to South Africa. The Dutch increased its activities in colonial territories and laid the foundations of a port city in Cape Town on South Africa's southwest coast by establishing The Dutch East India Company in 1652.

The number of Dutch in South Africa was only 90 in 1652, which reached 16,000 in 1795. The same year, the number of South Africans, enslaved in the country by the Dutch, rose to 16,839.

The Dutch, who used South Africa as a hub for their slave trade, took thousands of slaves, especially in Cape Town, to the American and European continents by ship.

According to historians, in 1795 two-thirds of Cape Town's population consisted of slaves.
Khoikhoi massacre
The Dutch also carried out massacres to enslave the Khoikhoi tribe in Cape Town in 1659 and 1673 and between 1674 and 1677. The massacres of the Khoikhoi people by the Dutch is the most well-known of the Dutch colonial traces in Africa.

The Dutch had attacked the Khoikhoi tribe with firearms, killing thousands of Africans. They also confiscated their homes and lands, abducted them as slaves and exploited the natural resources of the region.

Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. Please contact us for subscription options.

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Dutch colonization wreaked havoc from Asia to Africa

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By Adam Abu Bashal and Gokhan Kavak ABUJA The Dutch colonial history is littered with blood and tainted with tales of misery of thousands of slaves who were kidnapped and then sold to markets in Europe and America.

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In the 15th century, Europeans began to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of new routes to China and the East, but in the process they discovered an entirely New World: North and South America, plus many other lands.

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Historians generally recognize three motives for European exploration and colonization in the New World: God, gold, and glory.

Religious motivations can be traced all the way back to the Crusades, the series of religious wars between the 11th and 15th centuries during which European Christians sought to claim Jerusalem as an exclusively Christian space.

Europeans also searched for optimal trade routes to lucrative Asian markets and hoped to gain global recognition for their country.

The Crusades: increased religious intolerance and forceful religious conversion

The year 622 brought a new challenge to Christianity. Near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a prophet named Muhammad claimed he received a revelation that became a cornerstone of the Islamic faith. The Koran, which contained the revelations received by Muhammad, identified Jesus Christ not as God but as a prophet. Islam spread throughout the Middle East and into Europe until 732.

Soon thereafter, European Christians began the Crusades, a campaign of violence against Muslims to dominate the Holy Lands -an area that extended from modern-day Turkey in the north along the Mediterranean coast to the Sinai Peninsula-under Islamic control, partially in response to sustained Muslim control in Europe. The city of Jerusalem is a holy site for Jews, Christians, and Muslims; evidence exists that the three religions lived there in harmony for centuries. But in 1095, European Christians decided not only to reclaim the holy city from Muslim rulers but also to conquer the entire surrounding area.

The Crusades provided the religious ideology for the Reconquista, which in turn inspired Atlantic colonization. The Reconquista, or reconquest, refers to the 800 years of violence and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula after the failed Crusades. The Crusades and the Reconquista cemented religious intolerance, and the Christians looked to colonization partly as a means of continuing religious conquests. Particularly in the strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal, religious zeal motivated the rulers to convert Native Americans and sanctify Christian global dominance.

The lure of gold: finding new routes to trade Eastern goods

Despite the consequent religious polarization, the Crusades dramatically increased maritime trade between the East and West. As Crusaders experienced the feel of silk, the taste of spices, and the utility of porcelain, desire for these products created new markets for merchants.

Merchants' ships brought Europeans valuable goods, traveling between the port cities of western Europe and the East from the 10th century on along routes collectively labeled the Silk Road. However, transporting goods along the Silk Road was costly, slow, and unprofitable. Muslim middlemen collected taxes as the goods changed hands. Robbers waited to ambush treasure-laden caravans.

As well as seeking a water passage to the wealthy cities of the East, sailors wanted to find a route to the exotic and wealthy Spice Islands in modern-day Indonesia, whose location was kept secret by Muslim rulers. The lure of profit pushed explorers to seek new trade routes to the Spice Islands and to eliminate Muslim middlemen.

A thirst for glory: European competition for global dominance

Competition between the Portuguese and the Spanish motivated both nations to colonize quickly and aggressively. Prince Henry the Navigator spearheaded Portugal's exploration of Africa and the Atlantic in the 1400s. Portuguese sailors successfully navigated an eastward route to West Africa, where they established a trading foothold. Portugal then spread its empire down the western coast of Africa to the Congo, along the western coast of India, and eventually to Brazil and the Atlantic islands. Although the Portuguese did not rule over an immense landmass, their strategic holdings of islands and coastal ports gave them almost unrivaled control of nautical trade routes.

The travels of Portuguese traders to western Africa also acquainted the Portuguese with the African slave trade, already widely in practice in West Africa and funded by sugar production on the newly colonized Atlantic islands. Upon discovering the immense global market for sugar, the Portuguese began to trade enslaved people across the Atlantic to toil on the sugar plantations. The Portuguese fort Elmina Castle, located in modern-day Ghana, became more of a holding pen for enslaved Africans from the interior of the continent than a trading post, as the markets for slave labor in both Europe and then the New World boomed.

Portuguese colonization in the 1400s inaugurated an era of aggressive European expansion across the Atlantic. The Spanish, threatened by the Portuguese monopoly on enslaved Africans and expansion in the Atlantic, started their own colonization project with Christopher Columbus in 1492. The competition between the two nations continued and drew more and more Europeans to the New World.

What do you think?

How did the Crusades influence European colonization projects?

Explain the relationship between religion, commerce, and conquest at the beginning of European exploration and colonization.

Imagine you are a European explorer in the 1400s. Do you think you would be most motivated by religious conversion, global market opportunities, or competition with other European nations? Why?

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Motivation for European conquest of the New World (article) | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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It will be open to the public from Wednesday 24 August. Credit: Jersey Heritage

A new exhibition examining Jersey's role in the transatlantic slave trade officially opens on Tuesday at Jersey Museum's Victorian House.

'Trade Roots' exposes "uncomfortable new stories" from the island's past, as well as the ongoing legacy of the slave trade in Jersey. It will open to the public tomorrow (Wednesday 24 August).

Visitors can learn about the island's past role in the global trade of slave-produced goods, such as sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco, and mahogany.

Organisers have spent two years researching the project, with new evidence showing the Jersey Museum's Victorian House was partly built with profits from the slave trade.

Jersey Heritage have organised a schools programme that focuses on the exhibition. There are also a number of events scheduled in October to mark Black History Month.

Jade Ecobichon-Gray, a member of Jersey Heritage's Diversity & Inclusion Group, said: "The importance of decolonising history cannot be underestimated.

"Challenging long-held dominant viewpoints allows for a broader, more nuanced understanding of the history that continues to shape our societies and communities."

More about the exhibition can be found .

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Jersey's role in slave trade exposes 'uncomfortable new stories' | ITV News

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A new exhibition examining Jersey's role in the transatlantic slave trade officially opens on Tuesday at Jersey Museum's Victorian House. 'Trade Roots' exposes "uncomfortable new stories" from the island's past, as well as the ongoing legacy of the slave trade in Jersey. It will open to the public tomorrow (Wednesday 24 August).

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‘Blood and chains’ thrown over Carteret statue

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The statue of New Jersey founder and slave trader Sir George Carteret has been covered in red paint and bound in ‘chains’.

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Friday 15 October 2021

Jersey was not a bystander in the transatlantic slave trade - but played an "active" and even "pioneering" role in it, according to a new report aiming to give a "fuller picture" of the island's history.

Published by Jersey Heritage yesterday, the 'Report on Legacies of Transatlantic Slavery in Jersey' sets out a comprehensive list of islanders and businesses involved in the trade in a first step towards providing a wider account of Jersey's history that is not "selective" or "biased."

The report was compiled by Jersey Heritage's Director of Curation and Experience, Louise Downie, with research contributions from Martin Toft and Doug Ford.

One of the most striking conclusions is that one of Jersey Heritage's key sites, which forms part of its museum - No. 9 Pier Road - was built from wealth earned through the trade.

The building was put together by Phillipe Winter Nicolle in 1818, using funds inherited from his uncle, Josué (Joshua) Mauger, who was a merchant trading in enslaved people.

However, this is only a small part of a much broader picture painted by the document, which casts its eye over Jersey's wider culture and industries.

In this article, Express explores some of those findings, and what it means for how the island views its heritage going forward...

A name listed near the beginning of the report - under the category of people who generated wealth from trading enslaved people - is one that may be familiar to islanders: founder of New Jersey, Sir George Carteret.
Pictured: Last year, a statue of Sir George Carteret was covered in red paint and paper chains.
He was a founder of the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa, which traded in enslaved people, ivory and gold, and his son also profited from the trade.

Carteret became a figure of much contention last year, after campaigners called for his statue to be taken down because of his involvement in the slave trade - in one incident, red paint and paper chains representing 'blood and chains' were thrown over the statue.

However, it's not only well-known names included in this section of the report - other stories are also told, such as that of Captain François Messervy and his brother, Jean Messervy.

Aboard the Ferrers of London in 1772, the pair bought and transported over 3,000 enslaved people.

During this voyage, the enslaved people mutinied three times because of the lack of food, resulting in the deaths of 43 of them and eight crew, including Captain Messervy and his brother Jean.

Others also mentioned were Richard Richardson of St. Martin, who owned or ran a sugar plantation in Jamaica in the 1660s and 1670s, and John Frederick Gibaut, one of the largest plantation owners in Salvador in the 1840s and 50s who used enslaved people.

Gibaut's tobacco and medicinal plants plantation later went bankrupt around the same time slavery ended in Brazil in 1888.

The report notes that Jersey's links with the slave trade "chiefly" stem from the mahogany industry, which is mentioned several times in the report.

It notes that mahogany "was harvested using enslaved people. Many Jersey merchants either owned or traded in mahogany" and that some Jersey families even "had mahogany plantations in British Honduras (now Honduras and Belize)."
Pictured: Jade Ecobichon-Gray explained that Jersey's involvement in the slave trade was primarily centred around the mahogany trade.
Aaron de St Croix and brothers, James and Clement Henry and Co, George Mauger, Francis Valpy, Francis Alexandre Bradley and George Le Geyt were identified as being part of the mahogany industry.

John and James Poingdestre were London merchants dealing in mahogany and captains of ships transporting mahogany.

Speaking on the topic in more detail on this week's Bailiwick Podcast, Jersey Heritage Diversity Group representative Jade Ecobichon-Gray, said that Jersey's involvement in trading mahogany made its relationship to slavery "fundamentally different" to what was happening in the UK.

"We know that Jersey in a lot of ways almost created its own trade route based around mahogany, and actually there were some Jersey individuals that were in some senses pioneering and actually going out to Honduras and Belize and setting up those plantations from the offset," she explained.

"So actually that's a very important narrative and it's a very profound narrative because we've never really talked about Jersey not only being part of the trade, but in some senses and some parts of the world, starting it."

With this trade connection, some of the most common Jersey structures to end up involved with the slave trade were boats.

One boat mentioned in the report is the Speedwell, commandeered by Sir George Carteret's son, James Carteret (who also owned a plantation in California).
Pictured: A conclusion the report reached was that Jersey Heritage's "main place of connection [to the slave trade] is Number 9 Pier Road."
The Speedwell left London 1663, and picked up 302 enslaved people at Offra, Benin. By March 1664 it had sold 155 men, 105 women and 22 boys to plantations in Barbados and St Kitts.

Another ship was the Defiance, owned by Peter (Pierre) and Thomas Mallet of Jersey and Parry.

The Defiance sailed under Captain John Kimber, a man who earlier had been tried and acquitted by William Wilberforce having been accused of causing the death of an enslaved girl by inflicting injuries because she refused to dance naked.

In 1797 it sailed from the Gold Coast with 409 enslaved people and arrived in Barbados with 408.

The records of Jersey ships associated with the trade even stretched beyond the point where slavery was abolished, with the Newport, owned by F Le Sueur, P Le Sueur and J F Le Sueur and captained by Charles Philippe Hocquard of Rozel, who was later described by his great grandson as "the last of the Jersey slavers".

The ship was stopped in 1854 by the Royal Navy, and arrested the crew for involvement in supplying materials for the transatlantic slave trade - this crew comprised of TF de la Mare, Mathew Gallichan and Charles Gallien, John Le Rossignol and Thomas Gallichan, Daniel Hacquoil and an African boy, Joseph.

In this case, the report adds that "further research [is] now being carried out to establish how involved the captain and his crew were or whether they were scapegoats."

The report notes how there was a "triangle trade" of cod and mahogany with links to South America, Newfoundland and Gaspé.

Charles Robin, a merchant and entrepreneur in the Newfoundland cod trade, and founder of a commercial empire in the Gaspé Peninsula in Canada, was part of the "triangle". His vessel, the Telegraph, was recorded as having carried enslaved people.

George Ingouville was also recorded as owning an ex-slave carrying vessel, 'Clara'.

The report explains that the slave voyages database was consulted to check if any ships mentioned in the Maritime Museum were included, but none were. However, the report acknowledged that a "deeper level of research" was now required to check their ownership and captaincy.

The Maritime Museum was, however, found to hold objects associated with slavery:

Thomas Pickstock's sword and reproductions of the ship Herald. Pickstock had close ties with the British Honduras mahogany plantation owner and enslaved person owner Joshua Gabourel, and shipped mahogany to the Poingdestres. Pickstock's son, also Thomas, was a British Honduras magistrate and merchant who owned seven enslaved people.

'The Ship Master's Assistant' - an 1803 book on how enslaved people should be transported.

Mahogany longcase clocks, which were made from mahogany harvested at a time when enslaved people were involved.

Another key element of the report was a collection of names who claimed compensation in 1834 when slavery was abolished.

The list shows that more than 30 people in Jersey were on the list, claiming compensation for enslaved people often numbering in the hundreds, and some even going over a thousand.
Pictured: A selection of Jersey names from the 1834 register.
Indeed, one claimant, Adam Cliff took compensation for as many as 1,114 enslaved people in Jamaica.

Another, Joseph Gordon of Meadowbank St. Lawrence, claimed compensation for 1,043 enslaved people in Jamaica.

The report has also recorded those with connections to the island on the list - this includes Jersey-born Joshua Gabourel, of whom Mr Pickstock was an associate.

Mr Gabourel owned a mahogany plantation in British Hondouras in the late 18th century, with his Jersey-born wife Elizabeth who lived with him in his townhouse - Hondouras later had a second wife with his mixed race wife Catherine White, who lived with him on his plantation.

The report notes that fact Joshua and Catherine's three mixed-race children inherited their enslaved people was "an example of the complexities of history."

A particularly notable part of the 1834 register that the report highlights is the name of Hortense Watson, a freed enslaved person owned by William Burke and living with the family in Jersey.

Ms Ecobichon-Gray said Heritage's Diversity Group want to see more stories of enslaved people living in Jersey come to light.
Pictured: Jade Ecobichon-Gray will be guest curating an exhibition focusing on Jersey's slave trade to the No. 9 Pier Road section of Jersey Museum next year.
"I think wherever possible Jersey Heritage and the Diversity and Inclusion Committee have made a real commitment to tell as many untold stories as is possible," she said.

"The reality is that we know that coming across those histories and those narratives is incredibly difficult, just in relation to the aspect of power and privilege and the way that history is told and also the history that survives in our communities and our societies.

"So that might be more difficult than we would like it to be, but absolutely wherever possible we want to bring the personal nature of this history to bear.

"We want to tell the stories of people that like Hortense Watson were enslaved and were subsequently freed, because that adds to the notion of the story and it brings about a wider conversation about [the fact that] this is not something that happened in a far flung place away from Jersey that had no ramifications for island.

"We had enslaved people on this island, and that brings the transatlantic slave trade right onto our doorstep and that requires a very uncomfortable but very necessary conversation."

On future steps, the report states that Heritage now has enough knowledge to start creating projects addressing the issues raised.

This includes further audits and research in areas, including: people who opposed the abolition of slavery; people who opposed the rights of other disadvantaged groups, expressed discriminatory views or carried out discriminatory activities; collections of human remains or items of religious or cultural significance from outside of Jersey; people or companies which promote the cause of equality, diversity and inclusivity either now or historically.

Jersey Heritage will also be working with academics from Liverpool to create a guide for appropriate and sensitive terminology to use in future.
Pictured: A number of initiatives, including a new plan for Heritage's blue plaque scheme, are now underway following the report.
Heritage's blue plaque scheme will also be reconsidered to "include previously excluded voices".

One plaque acknowledging where former Lieutenant-Governor Sir Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner (1764-1843) lived, for example, does not include that he claimed compensation for 485 enslaved people in Jamaica when slavery was abolished. Consideration may be given to including such information.

The Diversity Group also wants Jersey Heritage to support the island community in marking International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade on 23 August 2022.

At the centre of these initiatives will be an exhibition opened that day, guest-curated by Jade Ecobichon-Gray, which will be based in the dining room of No. 9 Pier Road - which includes mahogany furniture, stairs and rails - and give information on the Jersey's links with transatlantic slavery, with particular focus on the mahogany trade.

It will also include information on how white islanders can be good allies to Black and mixed race people.

Speaking about what she hopes the island will begin to take out of this movement, Ms. Ecobichon-Gray emphasised she did not want it to be about feeling guilt, but about moving forward with a better understanding of our history.

"I think it would be fair to say that all of us acknowledge that this is not about cancel culture," she said.

"It's not about taking information away, if anything it's about adding information - we want to be able to open up history and tell the nuanced and complex story that sits there.

"And so if things haven't been mentioned that feel necessary for an understanding of who individuals were, I think that's absolutely a conversation to be had

"This is not about taking things down, it's about adding to the story and making sure that people get the whole history, not just a part of the history that feels more comfortable."

Express sat down with Jade Ecobichon-Gray to talk about Jersey's links with slavery in further depth...

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Published by Jersey Heritage yesterday, the 'Report on Legacies of Transatlantic Slavery in Jersey' sets out a comprehensive list of islanders and businesses involved in the trade in a first step towards providing a wider account of Jersey's history that is not "selective" or "biased."

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2006 Article, 'A Respectable Trade or Against Human Dignity?'

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2006 Article, 'A Respectable Trade or Against Human Dignity?'

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The trial of Captain John Kimber, for the murder of two female Negro slaves, on board the Recovery, African slave ship : tried at the Admiralty Sessions, held at the Old Baily, the 7th of June, 1792 ...

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Signatures: pi1 [A]² B-E⁴ E[bis]². ESTC N13767 Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress Web site.

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Description

The deck of a slave-ship showing the stern, the lower part of a mast and sail. A girl is suspended by an ankle from a rope held over a pulley by a sailor (right), who hauls at it, leaning back, and saying, "Dam me if I like it I have a good mind to let go". Two other sailors on the extreme right walk away, saying, "My Eyes Jack our Girles at Wapping are never flogged for their modesty," and, "By G-d that's too bad if he had taken her to bed to him it would be well enough, Split me I'm allmost sick of this Black Business." The captain (Kimber) stands on the left looking at the spectator with a grinning leer, his hands to his chest as if laughing; in his right hand is a whip. Two scourges lie on the deck. In the background three naked slaves are sitting. Beneath the title is etched: 'Or the Inhumanity of Dealers in human flesh exemplified in Captn Kimber's treatment of a Young Negro Girl of 15 for her Virjen Modesty.' 10 April 1792. Hand-coloured etching

Curator's comments

(Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VI, 1938) This brutality was described by Wilberforce in the House of Commons on 2 April, and in response of cries from all parts of the House of 'Name!', he gave that of Captain Kimber, 'Parl. Hist.' xxix. 1070-1. Kimber was tried at the Admiralty on 7 June 1792 on a charge of murdering a negro girl by terrible punishments for refusing to join the other negroes in dancing. The evidence was that of the ship's surgeon Dowling and the mate, who were both committed for perjury, Kimber being honourably acquitted. Dowling had given evidence before the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, without speaking of this 'murder', but had 'mentioned' it to Wilberforce the day before his speech for abolition. 'Trial of Captain John Kimber' and 'Lond. Chronicle', 9 June 1792. Wilberforce, however, believed Kimber substantially guilty, and thought the witnesses 'scandalously used'. When released Kimber demanded 'a public apology, £5000 in money, and such a place as will make me comfortable'. 'Life of Wilberforce', i. 356 - 9. Cf. BMSat 8081. For the slave trade see BMSat 7848, &c. See See Temi Odumosu, "Africans in English Caricature 1769-1819: Black Jokes, White Humour" (Harvey Miller) 2017, p.155.

Exhibition history

2007 April-May, Hull, Ferens AG (Sth Bank Tour), Blake 2007/8 Nov-Jan, Glasgow, Burrell Coll (Sth Bank Tour), Blake 2008 Jan-April, Manchester, Whitworth AG (Sth Bank Tour), Blake

Registration number

1868,0808.6179

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The deck of a slave-ship showing the stern, the lower part of a mast and sail. A girl is suspended by an ankle from a rope held over a pulley by a sailor (right), who hauls at it, leaning back, and saying, "Dam me if I like it I have a good mind to let go".

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The Sugar Plantations of British Barbados 

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The Sugar Plantations of British Barbados 

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The Sugar Plantations of British Barbados

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Commercial continuities, analysing the evolution of merchants, firms and financial institutions receiving slave compensation, and their use of slave-derived wealth in investments in Britain.

This strand allows the user to trace the continuities of people and firms over the 19 th century and in some cases into the 20 th and even 21 st centuries, and to explore the redeployment of slave-wealth into Victorian Britain, including in railways, new industrial and commercial activities and the development of the City and regional financial centres.
Browse the commercial legacies
Here you can view information about commercial and economic activities focusing on the firms themselves.
Browse the commercial firms
What role did the wealth of slave-owners play in the collection of books, paintings and objets, and in philanthropy and cultural institutions in the 19 th century? Some slave-owners were very significant as collectors or in a variety of institutions as this strand shows.
Browse the cultural legacies
This strand is concerned with tracing the historical lineages and memories of the slave trade and slavery in historical and imaginative writing in the 19 th century. As the idea of Britain as the 'anti-slavery nation' developed after abolition, issues of slavery and race were re-worked and often suppressed in accounts of what being 'British' meant.
Browse the historical legacies
Imperial legacies, tracing the role of slave-owners in the wider circuits of Empire, as investors, administrators and settlers in colonies beyond the slave-colonies.

This strand, which has the potential to be significantly expanded, allows users an initial sense of the movement in the first half of the 19 th century of British colonial slave-owners and former slave-owners into governing, settling and financing the new settler colonies of the British Empire, especially but not only Australia, Canada and New Zealand, at critical stages of their development.
Browse the imperial legacies
The imprint of former slave-owners on the physical fabric of Britain was considerable. While there is much more to learn about this, this strand enables users to explore some of that imprint through documenting the ownership of country houses, urban residences, public monuments, and other physical evidence.
Browse the physical legacies
Users can explore here the involvement of individuals at all levels of politics, including parliament, national and local government, and political parties and organisations. The connections between former slave-owners and their families and British political life stretched well into the 19 th century and across a range of important issues.
Browse the political legacies

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Commercial continuities, analysing the evolution of merchants, firms and financial institutions receiving slave compensation, and their use of slave-derived wealth in investments in Britain.

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The lie that invented racism | John Biewen

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The Illustrated History of How Sugar Conquered the World

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The Illustrated History of How Sugar Conquered the World

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If you want to understand Western history, you have to understand sugar. And vice versa. Because sugar's not just something sweet: over the centuries it's been a medicine, a spice, a symbol of royalty, and an instrument of disease, addiction, and oppression.

Here's a selective highlight reel of just how sugar has shaped our world, from India to Hawaii and everywhere in between.

The Days Before Cane

10,000 B.C.: Before sugar ruled the world, honey is queen. Basically any part of Europe, Africa, or Asia that isn't covered in ice has bees, and thus honey. There are no bees in the Americas, though, so their sweeteners are syrups from trees, agave nectar from cactus, or mashed fruits. People eventually domesticate bees, so instead of happening upon a hive and feeling lucky to encounter honey, they keep hives nearby.

The Birth of Sugar

8,000: Sugar is native to, and first cultivated in, New Guinea. Initially, people chew on the reeds to enjoy the sweetness. 2,000 years later, sugar cane makes its way (by ship) to the Phillipines and India. Sugar is first refined in India: the first description of a sugar mill is found in an Indian text from 100 A.D.

400-350: Recipes call for sugar in the Mahabhashya of Patanjali. They include rice pudding with milk, sweet barley meal, and fermented drinks with ginger.

327: Greeks and Romans learn about sugar during visits to India. Nearchus, Alexandria's general, writes of "a reed in India that brings forth honey without the help of bees, from which an intoxicating drink is made, though the plant bears no fruit." Small amounts are brought back to the Mediterranean and traded to physicians who use it for medical purposes.

The University of Sugar

500-600 A.D.: Jundi Shapur, a university in Iran, becomes the meeting place for the world's scholars (at least those west of China). Greek, Christian, Jewish, and Persian scholars gather to create the first teaching hospital. They study texts from various cultures, and by 600 A.D. they are writing about a potent Indian medicine: sugar. They also develop better methods for processing sugar cane into crystallized sugar.

Arab Expansion

Circa 650: The Arabs were masters of growing, refining, and cooking with sugar; they begin to conceptualize it not just as a medicine or spice, but as a rare delicacy for royalty and the most wealthy. They combine it with ground almonds to create a moldable sweet still popular today-marzipan-and sugar sculptures become regular parts of lavish dinner parties.

As armies of Muslims take over Egypt, Persia, India and the Mediterranean, they bring their knowledge of sugar with them. Many European doctors learn of the medicinal uses for sugar from Arab texts. Under Arab rule, Egyptians master the refining process and become known for making the purest, whitest sugar.

The Crusades

1099: Europeans conquering Jerusalem learn the details of sugar production, which was a profitable business in the city at the time. When the soldiers return home, they bring sugar with them, sparking widespread demand across Europe.

Venice had been trading with the Muslim world prior to the Crusades, which gave them a fast inroad to dominate the sugar trade in the Mediterranean for almost half a century. But the sweetener remains so rare and expensive that it's only available to the wealthiest classes until the 1300s.

Sugar Conquers the Western Hemisphere

1402-1500: The Spanish colonize the Canary Islands, setting up sugar plantations and enslaving indigenous people to run the mills. Export back to Spain is up and running by 1500, though, when the islands become mostly deforested, the sugar industry falters. In 1493, Columbus brings sugar cane from the Canary Islands to Hispañola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). By 1516, Hispañiola is the most important sugar producer in the New World.

1500: Pedro Cabral of Portugal lands on Brazil by accident and establishes sugar plantations there. Portuguese growers make technological advances in sugar production: a new mill design that could be powered by animals, water, or even wind, and a new method for refining sugar that allows them to operate on a larger scale. Brazilian sugar production eventually dominates the industry.

At this point, sugar's purported medicinal properties have become widely established across Europe. Tabernaemontanus (c.1515-90) writes of it: Nice white sugar from Madeira or the Canaries, when taken moderately cleans the blood, strengthens body and mind, especially chest, lungs and throat, but it is bad for hot and bilious people, for it easily turns into bile, also makes the teeth blunt and makes them decay. As a powder it is good for the eyes, as a smoke it is good for the common cold, as flour sprinkled on wounds it heals them. With milk and alum it serves to clear wine. Sugar water alone, also with cinnamon, pomegranate and quince juice, is good for a cough and a fever. Sugar wine with cinnamon gives vigor to old people, especially sugar syrup with rose water which is recommended by Arnaldus Villanovanus. Sugar candy has all these powers to higher degree.

Sugar and Slavery

1583: São Tomé, a Portuguese colony that can't keep up with Brazil's rate of sugar production, starts exporting slaves to Brazil and other New World islands to work on sugar plantations. It's a profitable business. By the late 16th century, Brazil out-produces all of the New World colonies and the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean sugar industry collapses.

1600s: At this point, coffee, tea, and chocolate have made their way to Europe. Their arrival drastically increases sugar consumption, making sugar more popular than alcohol ever did, and increasing demand-with lower prices-means a greater reliance on slavery. During the 17th century alone, over half a million African slaves are shipped to Brazil and other New World colonies to work on sugar plantations.

1791: The British Parliament fails to pass the Slave Trade Abolition Bill, which leads to an abstention movement. Abolitionists boycott slave-grown sugar, and the movement increases the demand for slave-free sugar grown in India. American abolitionists also try to avoid Caribbean-grown sugar, turning instead to the maple sugar industry. In 1789, some residents of Philadelphia agree to buy certain amounts at fixed prices in hopes of helping the industry take off. The U.S. government urges Americans to make maple syrup at home and to avoid sweets sold in shops.

1807: Thomas Jefferson signs a bill that prohibits importing slaves to the U.S. Shortly after, the British House of Lords passes an act for the abolition of the slave trade. But slavery remains a widespread practice, continuing in:

the British West Indies until 1834
the French colonies until 1848
the U.S. until 1866
Cuba until 1886
and Brazil until 1888

1817: Ribbon Cane, a fast-maturing sugarcane variety that grows well in the Louisiana territory's swampy climate, is introduced to the region's 75 sugar mills. The new production is enough for Congress to pass tariffs on imported sugar, raising demand for cheap slave labor to grow the American sugar industry. Higher yields and plummeting prices, across the U.S. and the Caribbean, help make sugar cheap and accessible to common consumers.

Rise of the Sugar Beet

1747: Prussian chemist Andrea S. Margraff discovers that sucrose can be derived from beets.

1801: Franz Carl Achard, a student of Margraff, is credited as the first person to extract sugar from beets on a commercial level.

1815 The beet sugar industry thrives in Europe through the Napoleonic Wars, though Napoleon is the subject of much ridicule for supporting the industry. When the wars end, cheap Caribbean sugar is once again exported to Europe, severely damaging the sugar beet business.

1837: Vilmorin, a French seed company, creates the sugar beet, which has a high sucrose content and a structure designed for optimal sugar extraction. As slavery dies out in the Caribbean, European governments enact policies to support their beet growers. With governmental support, the European beet sugar industry expands through the 20th century.

The Industrial Age

1864: The largest and most technologically advanced sugar refinery in the world opens in Williamsburg on Long Island. With improvements in manufacturing, the production of American sugar increases and drives down the prices.

1887: Lower prices mean less profit, so in 1887, eight leaders in the American sugar industry form the American Sugar Trust with the intention of reducing production to increase prices and profits for all of their companies. After acquiring more companies, they change their name to The American Sugar Refining Company (ASRC). They close facilities they deem inefficient and combine others with ones they already own, essentially fixing the price of refined sugar.

1900: The ASRC creates the Domino Sugar brand to market all of the sugar they produce under one name. By 1907 ASRC controls 97% of all American sugar production.

1906: C&H sugar company is formed by Claus Spreckles, a German immigrant who ran a beet sugar factory in California (C&H stands for California and Hawaii). Spreckles dominates sugar production in Hawaii until the 1930s, when sugar plantations are converted for other uses. Today C&H is part of Domino Sugar, and there are no more sugar factories or mills in operation on Hawaii. Read about the last days of Hawaiian sugar here.

A Sweet Public Menace

1942: The American Medical Association's Council on Food and Nutrition suggests that it "would be in the interest of the public health for all practical means to be taken to limit consumption of sugar in any form in which it fails to be combined with significant proportions of other foods of high nutritive quality."

1966: Medical professionals recommend a decrease in sugar intake, noting new studies that correlate sugar consumption with diabetes and other diseases. These studies, and the increasing rates of diabetes and obesity, spark an interest in sugar substitutes.

1980: The FDA considers fat a greater villain than sugar, driving a trend of reduced-fat (but high-sugar) manufactured food. Sugar-related health issues continue to rise.

The Age of Artificial Sweeteners

1879: A graduate student at Johns Hopkins refines saccharin, a crystalline powder 300 to 500 times sweeter than sugar but with no calories. It doesn't see widespread use until World War I, when sugar was subject to strict rationing; once sugar became available again, saccharine was shunted to diet foods. A 1977 study reports that saccharin caused cancer in test animals, causing the FDA to place a moratorium on saccharine use, which is only lifted in 1991.

1952: Calcium cyclamate starts appearing in diet sodas. Studies in the 1960s show that it's likely carcinogenic, and the FDA bans the sweetener in 1970.

1965: Aspartame (a.k.a. NutraSweet and Equal) is invented in 1965, and by the late 1970s is used in diet sodas.

1967: High-fructose corn syrup hits the scene.

1998: Sucralose, which goes by the brand name of Splenda and is a whopping 600 times sweeter than sugar, is approved for use in the U.S. Artificial sweeteners supplement or replace sugar in all kinds of food products, but have yet to prove rigorously measurable health benefits.

And We Come Full Circle

2000s: As artificial sweeteners fall out of vogue, ancient forms of sugar make a major comeback: agave nectar, stevia, dates, and of course honey, which is delicious, shelf-stable, and linked to many health benefits. Nothing beats the classics.

More From The Sugar Files

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The Illustrated History of How Sugar Conquered the World

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If you want to understand Western history, you have to understand sugar. And vice versa. Because sugar's not just something sweet: over the centuries it's been a medicine, a spice, a symbol of royalty, and an instrument of disease, addiction, and oppression.

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There is a link between Jersey, Canadian cod and central America. This is connected through international trade.

Jersey vessels would leave the eastern seaboard of Canada laden with salted cod and head for Hispanic Catholic countries (Portugal or Spain or Spanish colonies) where this commodity was in demand.

After selling their cod, ships did not want to return home empty, so they bought mahogany and other woods which would command a good price back in Jersey and elsewhere in Europe. Mahogany could be sourced from Honduras, where enslaved people were used to fell and load up the trees- dangerous work which could result in injury and death.

Mahogany furniture is still seen in Jersey households, including within the Victorian House at Jersey Museum.

The trade in mahogany has been noted in shopping logs and letters, newspaper articles, the 1851 census and the 1834 enslaved people register.

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Free guided educational tours and in school visits with the Jersey Heritage Education Team for local schools 

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Free guided educational tours and in school visits with the Jersey Heritage Education Team for local schools 

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Contact education@jerseyheritage.org for booking and more information.

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A collection of resources to support the teaching of Black, Asian and minority ethnic contributions throughout history in the classroom. Part of the Black experiences hub.

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A new staff toolkit has been released as part of a three-year project addressing the disparities in outcomes and experience of BAME students at UCL. The new resource is a cornerstone of UCL's commitment to eliminating the university's awarding gap between undergraduate Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and white students by 2024.

As we plan for remote or socially distanced teaching in Term 1 of the next academic session, engaging every student with their academic community - whether on campus or remote - should be the norm from the outset of the programme. BAME students are potentially more at risk of losing a sense of belonging if peer interactions are also reduced or removed from their university experience, so creating this engagement in your class should be a priority.

"The Covid-19 pandemic is presenting us with extraordinary unforeseen challenges, but the Education Strategy continues to provide us with the principles on which we can base our response. Foremost among these is that every student, regardless of their background, experience or stage of learning, should be supported to thrive and make the most of their time at UCL. I welcome the development of the new toolkit and warmly encourage colleagues to use it to inform and enhance their teaching - Prof Anthony Smith, Vice-Provost (Education and Student Affairs).

Four key themes

The toolkit is designed to help staff understand factors associated with the awarding gap, which are broken down into four key themes: inclusive curriculum, inclusive teaching, learning and assessment, belonging and creating safe spaces.

Each section explains why the theme is significant and provides a selection of practical tips, resources and further reading related to that theme. Importantly, BAME student voices, from UCL and the sector, are incorporated into each section of the toolkit to emphasise how the academy's structure, culture and curriculum impact students' experiences, feelings and personal development:

In a lecture there are pictures of scientists on the board. Lecturer asks what is wrong with slide. A student answers all of these scientists are male'. Lecturer says this is the correct answer. Lecturer moves on. Whilst I, the one student of colour was going to say 'all of these scientists are white - UCL student.

A lot of the content on the courses is extremely Eurocentric which doesn't make sense to me seeing as there are a wide variety of non-European ideologies and resources to learn from - UCL student."

The toolkit is available as a single PDF, or online as Teaching Toolkits (broken down by theme) on UCL's Teaching and Learning portal:

The new resources have been designed to provide staff with a better awareness of what the issues are, some practical tips to get started and ideas on successful strategies we might adopt/adapt from other institutions to apply at UCL.

About the BAME Awarding Gap

Analysis of UCL data shows that there is a statistically significant discrepancy in the rate of good degrees (First or 2:1) awarded to UK Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students compared with UK White students, despite entering UCL with the same high entry qualifications. This phenomenon, more commonly known as the 'attainment gap' is not unique to UCL, but is a pervasive and long-standing issue across the sector. The existence of differential outcomes like the awarding gap suggests we are falling short in our efforts to ensure success for all our students.

Since launching the University's BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) Attainment Project in 2017, the project team have raised awareness of the gap and established various initiatives, such as UCL's Inclusive Curriculum Health Check (ICHC) and the recruitment of Faculty Leads (senior academic staff) to drive change at a local level. However, the institution is continually learning from its own efforts and those of the wider sector; the project's next steps are to focus on further supporting departments to find out what local interventions work, and how we can share our learning beyond UCL.
Download the BAME Awarding Gap toolkit

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A new staff toolkit has been released as part of a three-year project addressing the disparities in outcomes and experience of BAME students at UCL. The new resource is a cornerstone of UCL's commitment to eliminating the university's awarding gap between undergraduate Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and white students by 2024.

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photocred: matthewrmorris.com

It's hard to begin this list in light of the events that have transpired over the past week. First, e have a major fashion retailer producing a decisively racist advertisement featuring an innocent young black boy and then president trump, lower case "t" at this point, speaking on immigrants as if...Geez, I can't even compare a group or characterize a person because I feel that it would be insulting to them. Nevertheless, we must continue to work and move forward. We must take care of the children whose parents or grandparents may have come from some of these so-called "shithole" countries. So here are my 10 ways to make your classroom more inclusive of black students:

1. Include materials that are reflective of black culture, for example, books that have a black person as the protagonist or history assignments that highlight the impact that black people have made.

2. Instead of displaying generic posters with positive slogans, create posters that feature significant figures of black culture with quotes from them and display those.

3. Create student to teacher connections by talking to your black students about things outside of the curriculum you are teaching them. Ask them what they ate for breakfast, how their family celebrated Thanksgiving, what music artists they currently like.

4. Do not be afraid to hold a dialogue with your black students concerning topics on which you are not the "expert". This strategy is both culturally and generationally relevant as it deepens relationships and fosters more relevant teaching practices in the long run.

5. Let your students teach. Create a structure where you moderate students in the creation of a student-led lesson. You will be amazed at the ways your own students can create relevant examples of concepts in math or science that make the learning easier for everyone involved.

6. Turn parts of your classroom into parts of their community. For example, at the intermediate level, instead of naming a corner of your classroom the "reading corner", label it an intersection within your community. This small gesture creates a context where the neighborhood and community of the school are seen as part of the classroom.

7. Instead of diving into curriculum during the first week of the school year, use this time to engage with students in ways that create authentic relationships.

8. Be humble. Acknowledge the limitations of your knowledge and provide opportunities for your students to help you build your expertise.

9. Foster a classroom environment in which students have a role in how the class operates and in what is taught. Examples include creating "classroom duties" and outlining the curriculum with your students and then allowing them to brainstorm ways that they could possibly demonstrate their knowledge (for projects, assignments, and presentations).

10. Hip-hop Education. Provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of the content through written songs and hip-hop performances.

Ironically, it seems like we have to be more explicit and diligent with our teachings to black students than anytime in recent memory. It's a sad statement but it's a fact. Way number 11 would be to "just try". Take a step, try something from one to ten out. Trust me, it won't hurt anywhere close to the pain they already feel or will eventually feel once they leave school and get into the so-called "real world" of today.

(original blog posted here.)

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10 ways to make your classroom more inclusive of black students

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It's hard to begin this list in light of the events that have transpired over the past week. First, e have a major fashion retailer producing a decisively racist advertisement featuring an innocent young black boy and then president trump, lower case "t" at this point, speaking on immigrants as if...Geez, I can't even compare a group or characterize a person because I feel that it would be insulting to them.

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Trade Roots Exhibition with Jade Ecobichon-Gray

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Co curator of Trade Roots, Jade Ecobichon-Gray explains the importance of exploring the Island’s links to transatlantic slavery...

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A discussion exploring the Legacies of Transatlantic Slavery with Jean-Francois Manicom, Lead Curator of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and Jade Ecobichon-Gray and Vic Tanner Davy of Jersey Heritage’s Diversity Panel.