I was listening to an episode of Behind the Bastards about the slave labor used by Volkswagen in the 1970s and 1980s and this fact came up. Here’s the relevant Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil
Excerpt:
Out of the 12 million Africans who were forcibly brought to the New World, approximately 5.5 million were brought to Brazil between 1540 and the 1860s.
No Europeans colonized any land in the New World for the sake of tourism. They all came to make money out of various forms of plantation economies. And the economic engine for plantations to be profitable is slavery.
That’s why all countries with plantation-sustaining climates on the American continent have sizeable black and mestizo populations: they were ALL part of the slave trade.
I’m broadly aware of that and I know some of the specifics of sugar cane plantations in Hawaii, for example. But I had no idea the sheer extent of it in Brazil.
The majority of slaves went to central and south America. Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands (along with Britain) were all involved in what was likely the most gruesome slave trade in human history. In Brazil’s case it was Portugal that purchased and moved those slaves over.
In the podcast I listened to covering modern times, it was Volkswagen doing it. The case literally came to trial THIS YEAR, 2025!
Not surprising since colonial violence is the foundation of capitalism.
I had no idea. I’m not even sure whether to call it a failure of us education system. We focus on our own country’s actions, which is probably appropriate, and there is mention of other countries, but we’re left with the impression the slave trade was predominantly us. Not to let our own history off the hook, but it would be better to understand the vast scale of slavery
Let’s also not forget many countries that today don’t have a visible black population were also very active in slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Argentines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Uruguayans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Chileans