Table Of ContentHerausgegeben im Auftrag der
Karl-Lamprecht-Gesellschaft e. V. (KLG) / European
Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH) von
Matthias Middell und Hannes Siegrist
Redaktion
Gerald Diesener (Leipziger Universitätsverlag), Andreas
Eckert (Humboldt Universität Berlin), Ulf Engel (Univer-
sität Leipzig), Harald Fischer-Tiné (ETH Zürich), Marc
Frey (Universität der Bundeswehr München), Eckhardt
Fuchs (TU Braunschweig), Frank Hadler (GWZO Leip-
zig), Silke Hensel (Universität Münster), Madeleine Herren
(Universität Basel), Michael Mann (Humboldt Universität
Berlin), Astrid Meier (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-
Wittenberg), Katja Castryck-Naumann (GWZO Leip-
zig), Matthias Middell (Universität Leipzig), Ursula Rao
(Max-Planck-Institut für ethnologische Forschung, Halle),
Dominic Sachsenmaier (Georg-August-Universität Göttin-
gen), Hannes Siegrist (Universität Leipzig), Stefan Troebst
(Universität Leipzig), Michael Zeuske (Universität Köln)
Anschrift der Redaktion
Universität Leipzig, Research Centre Global Dynamics,
SFB 1199
Redaktion COMPARATIV
IPF 34 800 1
D – 04081 Leipzig
Tel.: +49 / (0)341 / 97 37 888
E-Mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.uni-leipzig.de/comparativ/
Comparativ erscheint sechsmal jährlich mit einem
Umfang von jeweils ca. 140 Seiten. Einzelheft:
12.00 €; Doppelheft 22.00 €; Jahresabonnement
60.00 €; ermäßigtes Abonnement 30.00 €.
Für Mitglieder der KLG / ENIUGH ist das Abonne ment
im Mitgliedsbeitrag enthalten. Ein Bestellformular finden
Sie unter www.uni-leipzig.de/comparativ/.
Wissenschaftlicher Beirat
Nadia Al-Bagdadi (Central European University, Budapest ), Stefan
Eklöf Amirell (Linnaeus University, Växjö) Stefano Bellucci (Leiden
University), Zaur Gasimov (University of Bonn), Margarete Grandner
(University of Vienna), Hanna Hodacs (University of Dalarna / Uppsala
University), Sandrine Kott (University of Geneva), Markéta Krížová
(Charles University Prague), Marcel van der Linden (University of
Amsterdam), Mikhail Lipkin (Russian Academy of Sciences, Mos-
cow), Barbara Lüthi (University of Cologne), Attila Melegh (Cor-
vinus University, Budapest), Matthias Middell (Leipzig University),
Katja Castryck-Naumann (GWZO Leipzig), Diana Roig Sanz (Open
University of Catalonia, Barcelona), Antonella Romano (EHESS,
Paris) Hagen Schulz-Forberg (Aarhus University), Sujit Sivasundaram
(University of Cambridge), Alessandro Stanziani (EHHS / CNRS Paris),
Corinna Unger (European University Institute, Florence), Eric Vanhaute
(Ghent University), Holger Weiss (Åbo Akademi University, Turku)
Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH
Oststraße 41
D – 04317 Leipzig
Tel. / Fax: +49 / (0)341 / 990 04 40
[email protected]
www.univerlag-leipzig.de
The Slavery / Capitalism Debate Global.
From “Capitalism and Slavery”
to Slavery as Capitalism
Ed. by Stephan Conermann and Michael Zeuske
Leipziger Universitätsverlag
Comparativ.
Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung / hrsg. von
Matthias Middell und Hannes Siegrist – Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl.
ISSN 0940-3566
Jg. 30, H. 5 / 6. The Slavery / Capitalism Debate Global. From “Capitalism and Slavery”
to Slavery as Capitalism. – 2020
The Slavery / Capitalism Debate Global. From “Capitalism and Slavery” to Slavery
as Capitalism. Ed. by Stephan Conermann and Michael Zeuske – Leipzig: Leipziger
Univ.-Verl., 2020 (Comparativ; Jg. 30, H. 5 / 6)
ISBN 978-3-96023-342-8
Rezensionsredaktion
Gilad Ben Nun, Research Centre Global Dynamics, SFB 1199
Geert Castryck, SFB 1199, Universität Leipzig
Lena Dallywater, Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus EEGA
Antje Dietze, SFB 1199, Universität Leipzig
Megan Maruschke, SFB 1199, Universität Leipzig
Steffi Marung, SFB 1199, Universität Leipzig
Uwe Müller, GWZO Leipzig
Adam Skordos, GWZO Leipzig
Jan Zofka, GWZO Leipzig
© Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, Leipzig 2021
Comparativ.
Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 30 (2020) 5 / 6
ISSN 0940-3566
ISBN 978-3-96023-342-8
DOI: 10.26014/j.comp.2020.05-06.00
Inhaltsverzeichnis | Contents
Editorial 445
Preface 447
Michael Zeuske / Stephan Conermann
Introduction 448
Aufsätze | Articles
A. History, Historiography, and Theory
José Antonio Piqueras
Some Uncomfortable Evidence on Slavery and Capitalism 464
Trevor Burnard
Slavery and Industrialization: Williams Redux 488
Bruno Lamas
Slavery, Abstract Labour, and the Constitution of Capitalism 503
Dale W. Tomich
Capitalism in Slavery, Slavery in Capitalism: Original Accumulation,
Slave Rent, and the Formation of the World Market 522
B. Africa, Indian Ocean, and Asia
Angus Dalrymple-Smith / Matthias van Rossum
Globalization and Coerced Labour in Early Modern Asia and Africa 543
Enrique Martino
Money, Indenture, and Neo-slavery in the Spanish Gulf of Guinea,
1820s to 1890s 560
C. Atlantic, Americas, and Europe
Pepijn Brandon
The Political Economy of Slavery in the Dutch Empire 581
Martín Rodrigo y Alharilla
From Slave Trade to Banking in Nineteenth-Century Spain 600
444 | Inhalt
Rafael de Bivar Marquese
Visuality and Slave Management in the Brazilian and Cuban Coffee
and Sugar Plantations, c. 1840–1880 615
Rezensionen | Reviews
Sven Beckert / Dominic Sachsenmaier (eds.): Global History, Globally. Research
and Practice around the World, London / New York 2018
Matthias Middell 637
Pim de Zwart / Jan Luiten van Zanden: The Origins of Globalization. World Trade
in the Making of the Global Economy, 1500–1800, Cambridge / New York 2018
Klaus Weber 641
Felix Wemheuer: Chinas große Umwälzung. Soziale Konflikte und Aufstieg im
Weltsystem, Köln 2019; Stefan Schmalz: Machtverschiebungen im Weltsystem.
Der Aufstieg Chinas und die große Krise, Frankfurt am Main/New York 2018;
Kai Strittmatter: Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur. Wie China den digitalen
Überwachungsstaat aufbaut und uns damit herausfordert, München 2020
Thorben Pelzer 644
Judith Devlin / Maria Falina / John Paul Newman (eds.): World War I in Central and
Eastern Europe. Politics, Conflict and Military Experience, London / New York 2018
Sabine Rutar 649
Ang Cheng Guan: Southeast Asia’s Cold War. An Interpretive History,
Honolulu 2018
Ragna Boden 652
Unternehmen Mammut. Ein Kommandoeinsatz der Wehrmacht im Nordirak
1943, hrsg. von Bernd Lemke und Pherset Rosbeiani, Bremen 2018
Uwe Pfullmann 654
Frank Bösch / Caroline Moine / Stefanie Senger (Hrsg.): Internationale Solidarität.
Globales Engagement in der Bundesrepublik und der DDR, Göttingen 2018
Immanuel Harisch 656
Stephen A. Emerson/Hussein Solomon: African Security in the Twenty-First Century.
Challenges and Opportunities, Manchester 2018
Ulf Engel 660
Maria Jalava / Stefan Nygård / Johan Strang: Decentering European Intellectual Space,
Leiden 2018
Alessandro De Arcangelis 663
Inhaltsverzeichnis des 30. Jahrgangs 2020 | Contents of Vol. 30, 2020 666
Autorinnen und Autoren | Authors 673
Editorial
The role of the slavery-based plantation economy in the development of capitalism has
preoccupied many generations of scholars. This is related to a number of very important
questions, the answers to which have a lasting impact on narratives about modernity and
the ways it emerged in what is often called the early modern times. Was slavery-based
production good for the initial accumulation of vast fortunes that became the precondi-
tion of modern capitalism, but ultimately incompatible with a capitalism based on the
marketization of labour that is “freely” offered and demanded? Or did the history of
slavery and other forms of forced and coerced labour, regardless of the moral scruples
that became public for religious reasons (in England and the USA) or out of a predomi-
nantly secular-humanist motivation (in France), accompany capitalism until the social
counterforces of decolonization were strong enough to shake off this form of particularly
crass exploitation (even if not inconsiderable remnants persist to this day)?
This fundamental debate, which provides a subject for an entire direction within cur-
rent historiography, namely the New History of Capitalism, is now profiting from the
enormous expansion of its empirical basis through the global-historical interest of the
last three decades. It makes a difference whether one looks at the problem from the per-
spective of the one or the other empire. This was already clear to contemporaries who,
in the famous renunciation of the slave trade at the Congress of Vienna, left a loophole
for the Spanish and Portuguese, who were allowed to continue taking slaves on board
south of the equator and transporting them to their colonial empire in South and Cen-
tral America (which was, however, soon to shrink considerably). Napoleon had indeed
burned his particularly republican-minded troop contingents in a vain attempt to restore
slavery on Saint Domingue, but immediately after returning from his first exile on Elba
he decreed the abolition of slavery. In between lay the dramatic defeat of the French
against the English navy at Trafalgar and the sale of Louisiana to the USA: in view of the
impossibility of asserting naval supremacy against the British competitor, there followed
a provisional rejection of the Atlantic as the relevant space of expansion and geopolitical
projection which implied a return to a different type of capitalism, based not on the trade
ports on the coast but on agriculture and manufactures in the hinterland of metropolitan
France. That this meant neither a definitive rejection of colonial projects nor of exploita-
Comparativ | Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 30 (2020) Heft 5 / 6, S. 445–446.
446 | Editorial
tion through forced labour by French elites was soon to become apparent in North Africa
and later in Southeast Asia.
What was supposed to be exemplified here by the French case is made plausible by this
thematic issue with many more examples: there is no one, universally valid answer to
the question of the relationship between slavery and capitalism, but slavery and other
forms of forced labour are part of the history of capitalism and cannot be excluded from
its definition. What form this connection took, what consequences it had for the per-
sistence of monocultures (and therefore impacting chances for diversified development
afterwards and until today), and how it inscribed and continues to inscribe itself in the
cultural patterns of societies that were based on slave labour to a huge extent varies and
invites a history of capitalisms in the plural.
Matthias Middell / Katja Castryck-Naumann
Preface
Established on 1 January 2019, the Cluster of Excellence (EXS 2036) at the University
of Bonn is dedicated to “Beyond Slavery and Freedom” Asymmetrical Dependencies
in Pre-modern Societies” (www.dependency.uni-bonn.de). So far, general debates about
forms of bondage and forced labour have focused primarily on slavery. Furthermore, the
historical experiences with transatlantic slavery, which is closely linked to the develop-
ment of the modern West, shape our understanding of freedom and bondage to this day.
The cluster would like to overcome this dichotomous idea of “slavery versus freedom”
by developing a new key concept: “asymmetrical dependency”. This concept covers all
forms of dependencies, such as debt bondage, forced labour, servitude, serfdom, house-
work, but also wage labour and forms of patronage.
Although these phenomena are being researched upon in around 100 projects in the EXS
2036, there is currently no project that specifically deals with the connection between
slavery and capitalism. It is well known that Eric E. Williams (1911–1981), who was not
only the prime minister of Trinidad for many years but also an interesting historian, had
already presented theses in his work Capitalism and Slavery (1944). In this monograph,
he states that the investment capital of industrialization came from the profits reaped
from slave labour in the Caribbean, and the discussions about the abolition of slavery
became more intense in Great Britain at the very moment when the profits were declin-
ing. Against this background, slavery was considered to be outdated and moral could
denounce the form of forced labour to be rejected. Many revisionist studies in the last 15
years have confirmed the interdependencies between the “rise” of Europe and the capital
generated by slavery. This interweaving also formed the basis for the second slavery as well
as the development of slavery capitalism in the nineteenth century, with which most of
the articles in this volume deal.
With all this in mind, we felt it was very fortunate that the two editors of this journal
gave us the opportunity to create a special edition of Comparativ on the subject of “The
Slavery / Capitalism Debate Global: From ‘Capitalism and Slavery’ to Slavery as Capital-
ism”.
We would like to thank the editors of Comparativ very much for this. Our thanks also go
to all contributors. The cooperation with them was extremely constructive and goal-ori-
ented. This has decisively contributed to the success of this special edition of Comparativ.
Stephan Conermann / Michael Zeuske
Comparativ | Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 30 (2020) Heft 5 / 6, S. 447.
