Reference no: EM133572922
Question: The author of, "Old World Background to European Colonial Slavery", Robin Blackburn is a British historian and professor who has written many books. He graduated from London School of Economics and Political Science with a degree in Sociology. Then went on to completing a graduate study at Oxford University. Along with teaching he also served as an editor for the New Life Review. Today he leads research at the New Schools for Social Research in New York. He has researched and wrote many pieces on Slavery, specifically its medieval roots in the New World.
Slavery has been dated back to the beginning of time. Through time slavery has been reconstructed and developed into the institution that is used through the New World Ideology. In the book, Robin Blackburn, discusses the origins of slavery, along with cycle that set it in stone. Blackburn believes the New World slavery was possible due to the "propensity for intolerance and persecution, territorial expansion, colonial settlement, arrogant impositions on subject peoples, and theological justification of slavery, racial exclusion, and sordid enterprise", that the pioneering countries led in the medieval kingdoms. As Europeans began their explorations and building more sugar plantations throughout the New World, a new market for merchants to sell sugar through Europe and export for worldwide trade shaped slavery. A demand for heavy manual labor and sugar rose quickly. Slaves were used as a solution. Prior to the New World most slaves served terms and were "ethnically diverse". When looked back at, New World slavery cannot be blamed only to one nation being responsible its mass spread and redefinition. Blackburn states, "Each stage of development was sponsored by new commercial forces- first Italian, then Dutch, then English-that commanded the necessary resources for constructing plantations and ensuring access to broader mar- ket". All these nations played a vital role in the trading of slaves and slave products. By the end of medieval times, slavery was at a rapid decline.