Late Stage Capitalism
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I am agreeing with most of that but calling slave trade in Africa "effectively nonexistent", before the Europeans is misleading at best. It was orders of magnitude smaller, as Europe basically industrialised slave trade but it was far from an alien concept and the European slave trade was also employing older systems to its end.
Chattel slavery, as a core component of African economies, did not exist. There was slavery, but it was not inherited, not a major aspect of the economy, and not a motivating factor for development. When Europeans came to Africa, they found States that in many ways put European ones to shame. Benin shocked European explorers with its high culture and developement.
Europe, however, had begun the exponential growth that comes with capitalism. This created industrialized production, more advanced technology, and thus a monopoly on these key goods that could give African States leverage over their neighbors. Europeans took advantage of this, and required slaves in return. Those who resisted were met with naval cannons and European guns.
The reason for this was to aid with the massive labor required for all of the land Europe was stealing in the Americas. Agricultural products needed labor. African countries were made dependent on export of human lives. This created demographic crises and stunted development, after all, how can you develop when your economy isn't focused on productivity but instead on warring with neighbors and exporting your own people? This widened the gap, which then was taken advantage of further by Europeans, resulting in colonialism.
The point isn't that slavery did not exist at all. The point is that it was extremely minor, and not at all the focus of African economies until European capitalists established contact, and forced it if not by advanced technology to trade, then by gun and cannon. Europe even refused to share how to create guns, as this way they could control the flow of weaponry, and de-fang resistance. They controlled who had guns, for what reasons, and to what extent. Replacement parts were monopolized, creating dependence.
This is the ball and chain put around African necks, and what began the balkanization of what were, until Europe's involvement, states that rivaled those of Europe. This is the history European settlers wiped away, trying to manufacture a narrative of "civilizing savages." This is what Walter Rodney debunked.
A lot of qualifiers there. Slave trade did exist before. Of course it was different much smaller, economically much less significant. Europeans arguably did not just industrialise it though but made it substantially worse (inheritable, racism, industrial style exploitation etc). They did not invent slave trade however.
The slave trade practically did not exist. Slavery did, but it was not an industry. This is why it dramatically expanded.
Slave trade did exist. Where there are slaves there is usually slave trade.
Slaves were largely taken from conquered enemies, there was not an industry of taking and gathering slaves. African economies were instead more feudal and communalistic, rather than slave-based. It wasn't until the arrival of the Europeans that slaves became as important as they did for gaining technology and avoiding invasion by the Europeans, and thus the slave trade proper was created. There existed proto-slave trade formations that grew vastly.
I think you're getting a bit hooked on how I'm wording things. Am I denying the existence of anyone buying a slave ever before the Europeans arrived? No. Am I denying that there was a real slave trade, an economy of slavery, before the Europeans arrived? Yes.
I think this argument is missing the nuanced component where the continent of Africa experienced this brief moment between the fall of the roman empire and the rise of the european slave trade where Africa wasn’t being raped by Europe. As i understand my slavery history the early-middle roman empire got the ball rolling a few thousand years ago, granted to nothing near the scale of modern European exploitation
Slave based economies existed before feudalism, yes. The advancement from slave-based economies like Rome to feudalism was a progressive one, and was largely based on changing productive modes.