The Black Ordeal of Slave Trading and Slavery in the French West Indies, 1625-1715 (3 volume set)

Along with reflections on the slavery-capitalism-racism causal chain, this book reveals the tight bond between the Black West Indies and Africa through analysis of socio-political conditions in Africa, and of the ethnic origins of diaspora Africans. The years from 1625 to 1715 are the time when the scaffolding of the plantation slave economy was erected. It triggered the dialectic between the slave mode of extracting surplus labour from captive Africans on the one side, and the profit exigencies of nascent capitalism, on the other. This dialectic made the installation of the capitalist mode of production in the western hemisphere a peculiarly racist phenomenon. This book seeks to show also that the lasting community of blacks which emerged in the French West Indies during those years was permanently conditioned by this dialectic. The interpretation consistently reflects the anti-racist, anti-imperialist demands of the Black Liberation movement. The author aims to demonstrate a need for a Third World perspective on these topics.