Week 15: “Industrialization and New Imperialism” – Atlantic World Chapter 14

Chapter 14 of The Atlantic World heavily focuses on the global economy and how it worked during the 18th and 19th centuries. It focuses on how the network was constructed by the usage of slavery (and indentured servitude to an extent), imports and exports of goods that might be region exclusive, discoveries and further development of new technologies, trade route establishments and growths, and ongoing growth in nations that benefit from said growth.

The Atlantic Slave Trade is one of those aspects of the Industrial and Imperialism growth that benefited the most during this era. The highest point of the Atlantic Slave Trade happened during the “1780s, [where] Atlantic elites were in control of their people” and used them to expand the benefits of other nations like the United States, Britain, Latin American nations, and other European Nations (Atlantic World, 452). Slaves worked in jobs that benefited the individual that was in charge of the product being made until an “odd factor” came into play. For the United States, the “odd factor” happened to be the American Civil War that pitted the North, the Union, and the South, the Confederates. Before the Civil War, in the United States, most of the work slaves did be conducted in the Southern States and the most popular product that slaves did was pick cotton. In Erin’s post about the Civil War, she mentions that cotton was a product that would be endangered if the slavery was abolished. Since cotton was the main product and slaves did most of the work to produce cotton, if slavery was abolished, then the entire economy of the South would be destroyed. This would result in not only the Southern economy be affected, but also the entire industrial world that has been established already.