Jacques and Jennifer talk about slavery in the Americas - how the enslaving of millions of Africans and their transport to the Carribean and the early US has played into colonial practices and narratives to this day, and has become integral to the global political-economy of capitalism. Indeed, without the 'labour resource' of slaves, capitalism would probably not have been as 'successful' in the US as it has ... And the traces of slavery in Australia are discussed with more to come next week...

References:

A terrific book has been a major source of information for this and the following program:

French, Howard (2021 ) Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World (1471 to the Second World War) New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation

And those who prefer a more narrative approach to this issue can read Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea (2010) London: Fourth Estate (Collins); it depicts the last 30 years of the 1700s in Saint-Domingue, as it was to become Haiti thanks to the Toussaint Louverture rebellion. Many of the French colonists then moved to Louisiana just as it was to be sold to the growing US, where the cotton plantations took over the lead from the earlier sugar plantations in the West Indies... but always based on slave labour... A strong historical novel!