Introduction or preface

Robin Blackburn examines the slave system in the two Americas - United States, Brazil and Cuba - which he judges as an essential element of capitalist modernity, capable of contributing to, or even explaining the industrial revolution. Instead, its abolition, according to the author, was due not to economic causes, but to internal or international crises, the struggles for independence, the wars and revolts of the slaves, rather than the humanitarian propaganda of the antislave movement. Often the battle for emancipation - in particular the Haiti revolution that broke out in 1791 - did not yield any immediate gains for the former slaves, but left as its heritage the defense of the universal rights of man.