On Slavery

The institution of slavery had broad implications far beyond the obvious result of millions of sub-Saharan Africans being forcibly recollected to the western hemisphere. These implications were political, cultural, and economic in nature and can be seen throughout the eighteenth century. They include the catalyzing of the independence movement in the British colonies of North America, the racial intermarriage and the resultant institutionalization of racism in Europe and the Americas, and the emergence of a triangular trans-Atlantic trade among the Americas, Africa, and Europe. 

Politically, a major event in the eighteenth century was the emergence of the United States of America in the aftermath of a war for independence fought by British colonists in North America against the monarchy. Although the role of slavery in this independence might not be immediately apparent, slavery did play a key role. Although slavery had been legal for some time in the British colonies, it had particularly grown in the southern colonies, which had developed a plantation economy and therefore relied rather heavily on slavery for their economic viability. Fernandez-Armesto writes that the ruling by a judge in the United Kingdom in 1772 outlawing slavery, while welcomed in some of the colonies, was viewed with suspicion and fear by those colonies that relied on slavery for their well-being. He notes further than virtually the whole black population of the colonies sided with the British in the war for independence, likely as a result. While it is likely that the colonists would have sought independence for other reasons, slavery nevertheless contributed in a significant way to the desire for independence.

Culturally, the mere presence of a substantial black population in places where they had not lived before led to changes. In much of the western hemisphere, the intermingling of racial groups gave rise to large populations of people of mixed race. Along with this demographic change came significant linguistic changes. African languages, native American languages, and European languages melded first into pidgins to facilitate trade and then into full-fledged creole languages. However, at the same time that racial intermingling began, laws against such relationships were passed, although Fernandez-Armesto stipulates that these laws often sought to preserve sexual inequality as much as racial inequality. In Dutch Surinam, he reports, women were subjected to corporal punishment for fornication with black men, but not vice versa. Racism ultimately increased as both a cause and an effect of fear of the corruption of white womanhood.

Economically, slavery likely had the greatest impact of all, with this impact taking on a truly intercontinental scale. People of European descent in the western hemisphere operated plantations that required slave labor for their economic viability. Western Africa served as the reservoir for slave labor, and Europeans who operated the slave stations along the coast of western Africa became wealthy through the slave trade. This wealth, in turn, greatly enriched the nations from which those Europeans came -- primarily the United Kingdom but also the Netherlands and France. As a result, these countries grew in their economic influence, not to mention their military and political influence. By the time the eighteenth century ended, a well-established triangular trade with stations in the Caribbean, western Europe, and west Africa, with slaves transported from Africa to the Caribbean, agricultural products transported worldwide from the Caribbean, and money earned from trading in slaves transported to Europe. Although, as noted above, the British began to intimate a move away from slavery in the 1770s, it was largely as the result of expanded colonial endeavors, primarily in India, that the British were able to finally abolish slavery in the 1830s.

In conclusion, it is clear that slavery had widespread political, cultural, and economic consequences. From its important role in inspiring British colonists in North American to seek independence to the rise of a multiracial population in much of the western hemisphere, the backlash against this so-called miscegenation, and the increasingly economically lucrative interrelatedness of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, slavery was a truly transformative factor in the eighteenth century. Although slavery would be abolished in most of these places by 1890, its consequences can still be felt today.

On the Columbian Exchange

The period of global interaction inaugurated by Columbus's arrival in the Western hemisphere lay the groundwork for much of the social, cultural, and political changes worldwide in the 16th and 17th centuries. These changes were either developments resulting from this interaction or reactions against it. Specific examples include demographic changes Brazil, the political transformation of Russia, and the closing of Japan to the west.

Slavery was a major driver of demographic change in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Fernandez-Armesto discusses at length how the need for agricultural labor in the tropical regions of the western hemisphere with pre-existing ability to tolerate extreme heat and humidity drove the slave trade to increase exponentially over the period under discussion. In Brazil, the influx of black slaves from sub-Saharan Africa by nominally Christian plantation owners, under the careful eye of Catholic missionary organizations, resulted in a syncretic effect on black religious belief. The confraternities that arose, which Fernandez-Armesto calls "lay brotherhoods" dedicated to "black artistic vocations and religious devotion … centered on the cult images."[1] The author then goes on to describe how, rather than having a placating effect on slaves, Black Catholicism was a motivating force for self-empowerment even within the obviously strict confines of slavery.

Politically, global interaction affected the role of government in Russia under the guiding hand of Tsar Peter the Great. Fernandez-Armesto notes that Peter modeled his political reforms on what he observed in central and western Europe while traveling incognito, modeling his new capital city of St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea on the rapidly growing cities of Amsterdam, Paris, and London. Not coincidentally, these cities were all capitals of metropoles of large empires that enriched themselves through colonialism. Peter observed the influx of wealth into these cities and countries and, in emulating them, introduced Russia permanently into the community of European nations, both as member of military alliances and as a trade partner.

However, as noted, not all of the changes wrought by global interaction were marked by positive reactions. Fernandez-Armesto discusses how, unlike in the Americas, where Christianity was largely embraced by the population, Christianity was unsuccessful in penetrating Japan because the Japanese leadership suppressed its practice. He mentions this suppression in the context of both an increasing closing of Japan to the west, reporting that the government "practically forbade its subjects to travel overseas,"[2] as well as Japan's resultant embrace of Buddhism and its melding withindigenous ancestor worship. Fernandez-Armesto nevertheless notes that Japan's rejection of the west and westerners did not negate its imperial endeavors or economic growth. The latter factor transformed Japanese politically, such that the power of the samurai declined, while the shogunate emerged, with the shoguns playing roles similar to the empowered nobility of the European monarchies or the mandarins of the late Ming Dynasty in China.

Clearly the global exchange of the post-Columbian period had enormous effects worldwide, politically, socially, and culturally. Politically, economic transformation as a result of colonialism resulted in the tsardom of Peter the Great in Russia and the shoguns in Japan. Socially and culturally, the rapidly shifting demographic nature of the western hemisphere resulted in the rise of a unique form of Christianity that stood in contrast to its European original, while the same religion was rejected in Japan in favor of more "authentic" Asian forms of belief. While it cannot be conclusively stated that these changes would not have occurred without the global exchange following 1492, it is unlikely to have happened as rapidly and pervasively without it.

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[1] Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The World: A History, vol. 2, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson, 2015), 511.

[2] Ibid, 446.

Stuff I'm Reading

The Shaping of Modern America: 1877-1920, Vincent P. DeSantis
The Muslims of Medieval Italy, Alex Metcalfe