Deutschland, der atlantische Sklavenhandel und die Plantagenwirtschaft der Neuen Welt

Abstract

Germany, the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Economy Based on Plantations of the New World (15th until 19th Century) In contrast with the widespread image of Germany as a country that was commercially backward in comparison with its Western neighbours, and hardly integrated with the Atlantic economy, German financiers and manufacturers were heavily involved with the development of the Atlantic plantation economy and with the slave trade. They not only oversaw slave ships under the Portuguese, French, Spanish, British, or Danish flag, but also ran plantations in the respective colonial empires. Even more important for the development of Central European economies was the high proportion of their products among the commodities exchanged for slaves, since the earliest phases of the trade. Many slavers leaving Europe had far more than half of their cargo made up of German textiles, brass and metalware. Lower labour costs in central European proto-industrial regions provided a key advantage against western European competitors. By the early 18th century, these regions entered into competition even with Indian calico producers. As German products were widely paid for with barter goods such as sugar, coffee, and tobacco, the same regions also became important markets for colonial goods. They stimulated the plantation economy both by the input of manufactures and by the absorption of its products and thus formed one of its integral elements, hitherto neglected by most scholarly works on the economic effects of the slave trade.