Curtin, the Plantation Complex the Term Paper

However, the population was not self-sustaining and therefore depended on a continual influx of new laborers (p. 2). The result was to dramatically alter the world's demographic features, and not only those of the Americas and Africa. The plantation complex was also an offshoot of feudalism; its structure resembled medieval feudal societies in which a land-owning master exerted authority over his subjects but who was at the same time subject to his own political master. Finally, Curtin shows how the creation of highly specialized goods transformed the global market system, encouraging or even forcing nations from all corners of the globe to participate in a massive network of trading.In the early days of the plantation complex, Europeans used silver mined in South America to purchase goods from India which were in turn used to purchase slaves in Africa; those slaves were imported as property to the plantations in the America to fuel the plantation economy. Curtin illustrates that ultimately the abolition of the slave trade was also linked to the "democratic revolutions" in France and the….....