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Comment by throwaway031123 | Hacker News Reader

The abolition of slavery in Africa is interesting to read about. It was mostly European colonial powers who were trying to end the practice of slavery in Africa, and they often faced a lot of resistance from African leaders.

Ethiopia is an interesting example - since it wasn't colonized in the 1800's, it didn't have colonial rulers who tried to end the practice, so it was one of, if not the, last polities on the continent to end slavery. The League of Nations kept pressuring it to end the institution, and it kept dragging its feet. Slavery was only abolished after Italy invaded and took over the country (Italy used the existence of slavery in Ethiopia as one of the pretexts for the invasion).

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Europe as a continent benefited the most from the slave trade. So much that the wealth they made powered their economies for the next 200 years. The trans-Atlantic slave trade, which saw over 12 million africans work for free as slaves, was run and controlled by the Spanish, French and British.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade

Wildly incorrect. The slave trade peaked around 11% of the UK economy: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-global-hi.... In the US slavery never accounted for much more than 5% of GDP.

Europe as a continent had already diverged from the rest of the world before the slave trade. The divergence of the UK from Asia began before 1500: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maddison_GDP_per_capita....

While the desire to pin European wealth to the slave trade is understandable, it’s self-evidently incorrect. For one thing Britain wouldn’t have ended the slave trade when it did if its economy was built on it. For another, European powers that never engaged in the slave trade or colonialism, namely Germany, ended up becoming wealthier than countries like Spain who did. Same is true for free states versus slave states in America. As to a third thing, the end of slavery wasn’t accompanied by major economic hardship in either the US or Britain. You can look at a graph of US GDP per capita and struggle to identify when the civil war happened if you don’t have axis labels.

> The slave trade peaked around 11% of the UK economy

As your own source states, focusing on this single number is overly reductive:

> Any indirect linkage effects are not included in the quantitative estimates presented here.

> The growth of economic activities directly associated with the Triangular Trade or the American plantation complex would in turn have contributed to the development of other parts of the economy, through backward and forward linkages to a host of other value-chains. For example, a growth in demand for maritime shipping associated with the Triangular Trade most certainly had effects upon the development of the financial, insurance, and shipbuilding industries. It has also been argued that these factors helped drive the development of docks in the ports of Europe.

> In addition, it has been suggested that this would include fundamental shifts in institutions and economic structures. The growth of the Atlantic trade may thus have had other important consequences, for example, through contributing to institutional change in Britain, as Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson have famously argued.

> Activities of this magnitude can hardly be dismissed as marginal to the British economy at the time.

--------

> European powers that never engaged in the slave trade or colonialism, namely Germany

What? Germany was absolutely involved in colonialism. Slavery perhaps not in an official state capacity given the lateness of its formation relative to the Trans-Atlantic trade, but people from the region certainly were.

> Same is true for free states versus slave states in America.

Again this is overly dismissive of the economic interplay between North and South. The Northern textile industry was reliant on cotton grown in the South, and the South provided an important outlet for Northern goods.

[1]

> As for the lack of a home market, southern consumers generated a significant demand for northern-made shoes, clothing, locomotives, steamboats, farm implements--to name just a few products--that encouraged such promoters as Gregg and De Bow to believe that a market for southern manufactures existed if it could only be exploited.

[1] Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 97

The error in the “indirect effect” line of reasoning is that it assumes that nobody would’ve grown cotton in the American south if slavery hadn’t existed. Of course they would have, it would just have been share croppers doing it instead. The north still would’ve gotten southern cotton, but maybe the supply would be somewhat lower and the products more expensive. British ships would still have been sailing around bringing that cotton to mills in Britain.

You have to look at the counter-factual scenario of what would have happened instead. And we kind of know what the counter-factual scenario looks like because European countries ended slavery and their economies didn’t collapse.

The “indirect effects” theory is so wrong that even Jacobin, who are actually socialists, wrote an article debunking it: https://jacobin.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-capi...

You’re correct, Germany did have a colonial empire before WWI, but only for about 30 years. It was inconsequential to Germany’s economic development.

The EIC was a major rival for talent to the British government. That alone should have given a fillip via competition.

That gdp graph doesn’t show what you seem to think it does. For one, you can’t separate the UK from Europe, since the UK being situated in Europe traded the refined goods from produced by the raw materials found in their colonies and produced by their slaves with the rest of Europe. So we should expect it’s trading partners GDP also rise along with it. Even if they didn’t directly participate in the slave trade at the time (Germany). OPs comment is not “self evidently incorrect” in the least bit.

> Wildly incorrect. The slave trade peaked around 11% of the UK economy: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-global-...

Thanks for the link, very interesting. Some quotes from it..

"By the end of the eighteenth century, the British part of the Triangular Trade alone incorporated economic activities equivalent to around 5% of the British gross domestic product. If we add the activities in the American plantation complex, as well as the industries in Britain directly dependent upon this (either for inputs of raw materials or for markets for output), the estimated figures show that economic activities equivalent to around 11% of British GDP were directly involved in or associated with the Triangular Trade and the American plantation complex. Activities of this magnitude can hardly be dismissed as marginal to the British economy at the time."

Note that this 11% is only at the end of the 18th century. Just a snapshot of a trade that started in the 15th century.

"The transatlantic slave trade did have intimate connections to several European economies, but the consequences have also been fiercely debated."

They say "fiercely debated", you say "wildly incorrect". Do you actually read the sources you link to?

"One important reason for this focus on Britain was no doubt the publication of Eric Williams’ much-cited book Capitalism and slavery, first published in 1944."

Someone actually wrote a whole book about it! That's how deep the subject is. I remember watching a 1 hour lecture on you tube, where this professor argued that the trans-Atlantic slave trade is actually what made Europe and economic powerhouse. Something about a combination of good timing and location. If you have any alternative theory of what powered Europe's economic growth in the 18th century, let me know. My take, it was not much different from what powered the roman empire and many other economic powerhouses going thousands of years back.

"The assumptions underlying such counterfactual models can be quite controversial. For instance, the American plantation complex might seem unimportant as a supplier of cotton and other plantation crops, if one assumes a very high elasticity of supply of these crops in other parts of the world, and declining costs of maritime transport. In his recent book Empire of cotton, Sven Beckert has essentially argued against making such an assumption. In his view, the coercion involved in the expansion of the American plantation complex was the key ‘that opened fresh lands and mobilized new labor, becoming the essential ingredient of the emerging empire of cotton – and thus an essential ingredient in forging industrial capitalism’."

Another book! This one is more about America though, and the influence of the cotton industry, powered by slaves. Not sure how those GDP calculations from the 1800s you quoted were arrived at, but I'm certain an "essential ingredient in forging industrial capitalism" is not 5%.

> I remember watching a 1 hour lecture on you tube, where this professor argued that the trans-Atlantic slave trade is actually what made Europe and economic powerhouse.

You can find one or two professors to stand behind literally any point. But that theory doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If the slave trade is “actually” what was responsible for European wealth, how did Britain end it almost overnight without any significant impact on its economy? It’s not like the slave trade was in a natural decline in 1807 when the British banned it. It had peaked just a couple of decades before.

> If you have any alternative theory of what powered Europe's economic growth in the 18th century, let me know

The rise of strong central governments that could protect trade routes, and the early part of the Industrial Revolution.

> You can find one or two professors to stand behind literally any point. But that theory doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Not just one or two, the article you linked to clearly states that it is hotly debated by economic and history experts. The professor is an expert on the topic, are you? One thing all experts agree on, is that Africa was, a very exploited continent. And many believe it still is. How else would the worlds richest continent in terms of natural resources also have the worlds poorest populations? Europe benefited from the African slave trade, you say "just a tiny bit", I say significantly, but on that we both agree.

> If the slave trade is “actually” what was responsible for European wealth, how did Britain end it almost overnight without any significant impact on its economy?

They ended it at the height of the British Empire. When they had colonized huge swathes of Africa. It did not impact Britain's economy since the direct exploitation of african peopls was replaced by the direct exploitation of africas natural resources. Colonialism is just another form of slavery.

> The rise of strong central governments that could protect trade routes, and the early part of the Industrial Revolution

That's right. And one of the most lucrative trade routes in human history that they protected, controlled and profited from was the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

"what powered Europe's economic growth in the 18th century, let me know"

The growth in 19th century is much more explosive, and I would say that the primary reason is widespread use of coal for energy. Not being dependent on the power of muscles (and wind) was a game changer for Europe. And absence of that capability put a hard limit on Roman economic power. You just don't gain much economic efficiency from burning wood and working people and animals to death.

Economic development in countries that were able to harness steam power was enormous regardless of their slavery laws (some notable industrial hotspots like Prussia never had slavery to begin with). Countries like Portugal and Spain, with their old colonial empires, were much more stagnant.

Generally, slavery only sort-of works in agriculture and possibly mining. Anything more value-added requires voluntary, educated workforce. Nazi and Soviet slave-powered industries were extremely inefficient, sabotage was a constant problem, even though punishments were heavy.

Rich nations are exactly like poor people. If you are lucky to grow up privileged, your path to success is very easy compared to someone who group up poor. Rich nations inherited the loot from slavery, and used it to power their innovation.

That is because Rich nations have the luxury to turn their attention and resources to the sciences and arts, once the basic necessities of life have been taken care of. Europe hardly made any progress during its so called "dark ages".

Yes, slavery as a mass industry became economically obsolete due to advances in science. That does not mean it was not very lucrative and beneficial to the those economies on the right side of it while it lasted. A study of human history is just one of the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer, until the next revolution comes about.

"Rich nations inherited the loot from slavery, and used it to power their innovation."

The correlation between contemporary richness and former slavery is pretty weak. Many innovative countries like Ireland, Finland, Estonia, Taiwan or South Korea used to be actually subjugated to bigger empires. Meanwhile, no one considers Portugal, a major global power during the slavery era, rich or innovative.

Even in the US, the Deep South was technologically backward, which was one of the reasons why they actually lost the Civil War. If you have servants working on you, what is your motivation to study, tinker and innovate? Similar countries of today (such as Saudi Arabia) mostly spend their own loot of slavery on conspicuous consumption.

Your interpretation of history is upside down. Rich nations existed before slavery, that is how they were able to afford slaves in the first place. On the other hand a lot of African tribal chiefs earned a lot of money by selling captives into slavery and yet had nothing to show for.

>> Europe hardly made any progress during its so called "dark ages".

I recommend you reading a history book or two before making such claims.

The Arab slave trade took even more slaves than that - mostly Black, but some 2 million Europeans too. How come they didn't benefit so much from it?

In fact, almost every region in the world practiced slavery at some point or another [1]. So how come the relatively small fraction of slaves (e.g. the US is only 12% Black) had such outsized economic benefits for the US and Europe, that didn't manifest in any other instance of slavery?

And the US also waged an expensive and bloody war to end slavery. Did we take into account how the lack of such a war would have helped their economy? Or are we only tallying the economic benefits of slavery, and ignoring its costs?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#History

The Arab slave trade took more slaves than that over the course of twelve centuries. The transatlantic slave trade only existed for a few hundred years. The event that led to the slow demise of Arabian slavery, the Zanj rebellion, occurred a thousand years before transatlantic slavery even existed.

In short, the Arabian slave trade did benefit, but it was on the way out by the time the Europeans got interested in colonial slave labor. Don't make the mistake of thinking everyone in the world got involved in the slave trade then got out of it at the same time.

> The event that led to the slow demise of Arabian slavery, the Zanj rebellion, occurred a thousand years before transatlantic slavery even existed.

Slow indeed:

It is estimated that, in the 17th and 18th centuries, 1.4 million slaves were compelled to make the trek through the Sahara [..] 1.2 million slaves are estimated to have been sent through the Sahara in the 19th century. In the 1830s, a period when slave trade flourished, Ghadames was handling 2,500 slaves a year. Even though the slave trade was officially abolished in Tripoli in 1853, in practice it continued until the 1890s. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_slave_trade

Robert Davis estimates that slave traders from Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli enslaved 1 million to 1.25 million Europeans in North Africa, from the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th (these numbers do not include the European people who were enslaved by Morocco and by other raiders and traders of the Mediterranean Sea coast). - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade

Being precise about these things gets difficult; arguably some Arab states are still practicing slavery, but with a veneer of indentured servitude. However, I'd like to point out that the Barbary pirates were not Arabs, and the Trans-Saharan slave trade article you reference covers a similarly vast time scale; if we look at the era during which transatlantic slavery markets operated the scale was at least one, possibly two orders of magnitude larger than Arabian imports of slave labor.

Nevertheless, "slow indeed" is correct, and the Zanj rebellion didn't have much of an effect on North African slave trading.

However, the original question was why Arabian slavery was not as economically potent for Arabs as transatlantic slavery was for European colonies. The answer I'm trying to give is twofold: 1: it was, just vastly earlier than European colonialism, and 2: by the time the transatlantic slave market was established, the Zanj rebellion and other events had had a deleterious effect on slaveowning culture in Arabia. The question as phrased assumes everyone was getting rich from slavery at the same time, which is not the case.

> The Arab slave trade took even more slaves than that ... How come they didn't benefit so much from it?

Microsoft sold mobile phones, just like Apple does. How come they didn't benefit so much from it?

> The kingdom’s state builders had already helped end Indian Ocean slavery, during which three million Africans were enslaved…

Did you look into that claim at all? Michael Twaddle's "The Ending of Slavery in Buganda" seems to be one of the central writings about the end of the slave trade there. It seems that the connection to the Indian Ocean slave trade was through trading with Zanzibar. British colonial administrator Frederick Lugard ended the slave trade with Zanzibar, and freed the slaves there. I've looked at other sources as well, but from everything I can find that seem to be the extent that Buganda "helped end" Indian Ocean Slavery (there British colonial administrator helped end it).

If you read historical research on the ending of slavery in Buganda, it's similar to what I said. It was pushed by the British, often against intense local opposition.

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