奴隶制度和资本主义

奴隶制度与资本主义关系问题，是理解现代世界起源的关键之一，并尤其明显地体现为对美国历史的理解上。历史学界以往没有认识到这一问题：将美国资本主义历史描述成没有奴隶制度的历史，将奴隶制度描述成非资本主义的。20世纪30和40年代，詹姆斯和埃里克·威廉姆斯论证奴隶制度对资本主义的重要性。但他们的研究成果被学界忽略了。20世纪70和80年代，经济学家斯坦利· L．恩格尔曼和罗伯特·威廉·福格尔研究了美国奴隶制度的动态性、现代性、收益性和扩张性。英国、巴西、美国和德国形成了研究大西洋世界奴隶制度的历史学者群体。尽管研究视角不同，但他们都强调奴隶制度是美国资本主义的重要组成部分。当运用全球史视角理解这一问题时，我们就对奴隶制度在19世纪上半叶的美国、18世纪的奥斯曼帝国和19世纪40年代的西印度的向心性提出一种新理解，也可以理解这些地区在19世纪后半叶是如何克服对奴隶制度的依赖的。全球史视角使人们能以新的方式，理解奴隶制度如何成为工业革命的支配力量的。由此，欧洲工业化的能力最初完全依靠对西半球所侵占土地和所奴役劳力的控制。奴隶劳动是西方资本与国家的弱点，也是其长处。19世纪末叶，中亚、西非、印度、格鲁吉亚内陆和美国的农业生产者，被整合到全球性的棉花帝国里。棉花产业是全球性资本主义的路径。学界将处于全盛期的奴隶制度，看作西方世界经济的本质因素。

Slavery and Capitalsim

The relationship between slavery and capitalism is one of the keys to understand the origins of modern world .It espe-cially embodies in American history.Historical scholars didn’ t recognize this problem.They depicted the history of American capi-talism without slavery, and slavery as noncapitalist.In the 1930s and 1940s , C.L.R.James and Eric Williams argued for the cen-trality of slavery to capitalism.But their findings were largely ignored.In the 1970s and 1980s, two economists Stanley L.Engerman and Robert William Fogel argued for the dynamic nature, modernity, profitability and expansiveness of slavery.There are history scholars from England, Brazil, America and Germany who major in the study of slavery in the Atlantic world .Despite different per-spectives, they all emphasize that slavery was a key part of American capitalism.When we apply a global perspective, we develop a new appreciation for the centrality of slavery in the United States in the first half of 19th century, 18th century Ottoman Empire and 1840s western India.We can also understand how that dependence on slavery was eventually overcome later in the 19th century.A global perspective allows us to comprehend in new ways how slavery became central to Industrial Revolution .As a result, Europe’ s ability to industrialize rested at first entirely on the control of expropriated lands and enslaved labor in the Americas .Slave labor is as much a sign of the weakness as of the strength of Western capital and states.By the late 19th century, peasant producers in such as Central Asia, Western Africa, Indian and upcountry Georgia, in the United States, could be integrated into the global empire of cot-ton.Cotton industry was the path to global capitalism.Slavery in its heyday was seen as essential to the economy of the Western world.