3071-The political economy of new slavery

Ivan Manokha 231
millions of peasants are subject to gross exploitation, so that we
should enjoy our coffee, cocoa or tea, our tobacco and cane sugar,
pineapple and other tropical fruits, our cotton, natural rubber and
forest products...We shall have to look back at the period of colonial
rule, and at the continuous interventions of imperial powers in the
Third World, to discover how this rift occurred and how it can be
healed.
1993, p. 11
The present structure of the world economy was established with
force, conquest and plunder, slave trade and colonization, and later the
preservation of the colonial structure of world trade after the colonies
became independent. The creation of the present economic system
started with the slave trade. Millions of Africans were captured and sold
to work largely on sugar and tobacco plantations to cater for the rising
demand for these two commodities in Europe. At the peak of the slave
trade in 1750 about 65,000 slaves were taken every year. This trade in
African slaves laid the foundations for British capital accumulation and
industrialization, which would later allow Britain to build its colonial
empire (Magdoff, 1969 and 1978; Blackburn, 1998). It constituted part
of the ‘triangular trade’ with British manufactured goods being exported
to West Africa and sold to African chiefs in exchange for slaves, who
would then be transported to Caribbean colonies of Britain, Spain and
France, to Brazil and southern states of North America and sold to work
on plantations. The products grown at these plantations such as tobacco,
sugar and cotton would then be exported to Europe:
The results both for Africa and for America south of what became
the United States were...disastrous. Africa lost the strongest and
healthiest of her young men and women. The harsh rule of the chiefs
was imposed with foreign guns upon the people who remained. Local
handicrafts were destroyed by the competition of cheaper factory
products.
Barratt Brown, 1993, p. 15
This laid foundations for the division of the world into poor and rich,
producers of manufactured goods and primary producers, developed
and underdeveloped. Later on slavery and plunder were followed by
colonization and the expansion of trade. As Britain attained industrial
superiority, virtually the entire world was opened up to provide markets
for her goods and raw materials for her industries.