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> What would be the causal link between the printing press and slavery Advertising, accountancy and international shipping, all enabled by Gutenbergs presses.

> What would be the causal link between the printing press and slavery Advertising, accountancy and international shipping, all enabled by Gutenbergs presses. Prior to that, slavery, which has been practised since ancient times, was a local phenomenon.

nkrisc 6y ago
If that's the argument then I think a better culprit is advances in seafaring technology enabling the transport of a slaves, not the Gutenberg press.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  You don't say why though. What printing did was enable capital markets and merchants to establish mercantile practices that could extend to an arbitrary N degrees of separation. That network expansion, more than any individual technological innovation, is responsible for the upscaling of all the enterprises which distinguish mass consumer society from any prior society. The Atlantic slave trade was one important step on this journey.
  - nkrisc 6y ago
    Slave trade existed long before the printing press. My argument is that advances in naval technology enabled the transport of larges amounts of slaves very long distances, which was otherwise not previously feasible. How many commercial and trade documents were printed with a press? Contracts, ledgers, etc. were still mostly handwritten.
    - wombatmobile 6y ago
      Iberian sailing innovations were clearly advantageous, enabling the Portuguese to venture south along the coast of West Africa and establish trade with Brazil. Once shipping had advanced to a point where commerce could be transacted over large distances and durations, amongst multitudes of parties from different demographic origins, the bottleneck for the expansion of international trade was exposed as finance and risk management. The full importance of financial risk management is revealed by Portugal's decline as a maritime power from the 16th century. British bond traders and insurers used increasingly sophisticated financial instruments to ensure (and insure) British commercial fleets ruled the waves for the next 300 years.
  - tremon 6y ago
    I don't think capital markets relied on the printing press. The Hanseatic league, arguably the first free-trade organisation, was established well before Gutenberg built his press (1150 vs 1450 AD, roughly). Do you have a reference for that? I'm curious to explore it. If you're referring to the availability of paper money, bank notes were already used in the 7th century AD in China and introduced in Europe by Marco Polo in the 13th century [1], and before that the Knights Templar issued hand-written notes to the same effect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote#European_explorers_and_merchants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote#European_explorers_an...
    - wombatmobile 6y ago
      Bond markets and insurance instruments arose to manage risk in the slave trade. The relevance of the printing press is only that printed forms were required for conducting commerce between parties that were introduced at arms length i.e. from outside networks of direct personal trust (one or two degrees of separation i.e. someone trusted could vouch for an associate to introduce that associate to a capital merchant, who could document the arrangement with a "hand-written note", with the full knowledge that he had the means to extract revenge in the breach because the parties were known to each other). With printed forms, the numerous detailed requirements stipulating the terms of guarantee could be mass produced in advance, thus enabling strangers to circumvent the need for personal assurances so they could operate in free and open markets, thus greatly expanding the pool of financiers, entrepreneurs, traders and customers. See How the shadow of slavery still hangs over global finance https://theconversation.com/how-the-shadow-of-slavery-still-hangs-over-global-finance-144826 https://theconversation.com/how-the-shadow-of-slavery-still-... America's First Bond Market Was Backed By Enslaved Human Beings https://www.forbes.com/sites/pedrodacosta/2019/09/01/americas-first-bond-market-was-backed-by-enslaved-human-beings/?sh=1c60ba1d1888 https://www.forbes.com/sites/pedrodacosta/2019/09/01/america... The hidden links between slavery and Wall Street https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247 THE ORIGINS OF FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT: HOW THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE CONTINUES TO INFLUENCE MODERN FINANCE https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23800/w23800.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23800/w238... This long article on the slave trade provides broad and detailed historical context for the evolution of the financial industry, without directly treating finance in depth. http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Atlantic_slave_trade http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Atlantic_slave_trade
mr_toad 6y ago
> Prior to that, slavery, which has been practised since ancient times, was a local phenomenon. Most of the slave trading cultures I’m aware of took their slaves from elsewhere. The Romans took most of their slaves from conquered peoples. The Vikings transported slaves all across Europe and the Mediterranean. The transportation of slaves from African to America probably has more to do with the development of better sailing technology than writing. Accountancy has also been around much longer than the printing press. The oldest known written records are in fact warehouse inventories.
eloff 6y ago
May as well blame the wheel. This is not a direct causal link.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  Did you know that one of the first things printed on a Gutenberg printing press was a treatise by Luca Pacioli, one of the fathers of accounting and a mentor of Leonardo da Vinci? [0] This study [1] examines the accounts of the Portuguese New Christian trader, Manoel Batista Peres. These private accounts, found in the Archivo General de la Nación in Lima, Peru, were associated with the trading of slaves on the Upper Guinea Coast in the early seventeenth century. The accounts take the double-entry format but, in the absence of a metallic currency, were kept in cloth money. Combining evidence from the accounts themselves, with the context in which Peres conducted his business, the study explores the reasons why he kept his accounts in this format. It shows how this system of accounting could be adapted to a non-monetised economy and contributes to the debate over the relationship between double-entry bookkeeping and the rise of capitalism. The number of slaves carried off from Africa to the Americas increased fivefold between 1630 and 1770 [2] Based on extensive archival research, this study [3] documents and analyses the accounting techniques that the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão applied to its slave trading operations during the second half of the eighteenth century. The surviving accounting records of this Portuguese chartered company reveal – in meticulous detail – the integral role that accounting technology played in enabling the slave trade to flourish. Slavery thrived under colonial rule. British and Dutch settlers relied on enslaved people to help establish farms and build the new towns and cities that would eventually become the United States. Enslaved people were brought to work on the cotton, sugar and tobacco plantations. The crops they grew were sent to Europe or to the northern colonies, to be turned into finished products. Those finished goods were used to fund trips to Africa to obtain more slaves who were then trafficked back to America. This triangular trading route was profitable for investors. To raise the money to start many future plantation owners turned to capital markets in London - selling debt that was used to purchase boats, goods and eventually people. [4] The common narrative is that today’s modern management techniques were developed in the factories in England and the industrialized North of the United States, not the plantations of the Caribbean and the American South. According to a new book by historian Caitlin Rosenthal, that narrative is wrong. Rosenthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and in her new book, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management,” she looks at the business side of slavery once it was well-established on plantations. Rosenthal argues that slaveholders in the American South and Caribbean were using advanced management and accounting techniques long before their northern counterparts. Techniques that are still used by businesses today. [5] [0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40698353?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40698353?seq=1 [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1032373213485933 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/103237321348593... [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40984784?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40984784?seq=1 [3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1032373217696512 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1032373217696512 [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247 [5] https://www.marketplace.org/2018/08/14/disturbing-parallels-between-modern-accounting-business-slavery/ https://www.marketplace.org/2018/08/14/disturbing-parallels-...

nkrisc 6y ago

If that's the argument then I think a better culprit is advances in seafaring technology enabling the transport of a slaves, not the Gutenberg press.

wombatmobile 6y ago
You don't say why though. What printing did was enable capital markets and merchants to establish mercantile practices that could extend to an arbitrary N degrees of separation. That network expansion, more than any individual technological innovation, is responsible for the upscaling of all the enterprises which distinguish mass consumer society from any prior society. The Atlantic slave trade was one important step on this journey.
- nkrisc 6y ago
  Slave trade existed long before the printing press. My argument is that advances in naval technology enabled the transport of larges amounts of slaves very long distances, which was otherwise not previously feasible. How many commercial and trade documents were printed with a press? Contracts, ledgers, etc. were still mostly handwritten.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    Iberian sailing innovations were clearly advantageous, enabling the Portuguese to venture south along the coast of West Africa and establish trade with Brazil. Once shipping had advanced to a point where commerce could be transacted over large distances and durations, amongst multitudes of parties from different demographic origins, the bottleneck for the expansion of international trade was exposed as finance and risk management. The full importance of financial risk management is revealed by Portugal's decline as a maritime power from the 16th century. British bond traders and insurers used increasingly sophisticated financial instruments to ensure (and insure) British commercial fleets ruled the waves for the next 300 years.
- tremon 6y ago
  I don't think capital markets relied on the printing press. The Hanseatic league, arguably the first free-trade organisation, was established well before Gutenberg built his press (1150 vs 1450 AD, roughly). Do you have a reference for that? I'm curious to explore it. If you're referring to the availability of paper money, bank notes were already used in the 7th century AD in China and introduced in Europe by Marco Polo in the 13th century [1], and before that the Knights Templar issued hand-written notes to the same effect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote#European_explorers_and_merchants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote#European_explorers_an...
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    Bond markets and insurance instruments arose to manage risk in the slave trade. The relevance of the printing press is only that printed forms were required for conducting commerce between parties that were introduced at arms length i.e. from outside networks of direct personal trust (one or two degrees of separation i.e. someone trusted could vouch for an associate to introduce that associate to a capital merchant, who could document the arrangement with a "hand-written note", with the full knowledge that he had the means to extract revenge in the breach because the parties were known to each other). With printed forms, the numerous detailed requirements stipulating the terms of guarantee could be mass produced in advance, thus enabling strangers to circumvent the need for personal assurances so they could operate in free and open markets, thus greatly expanding the pool of financiers, entrepreneurs, traders and customers. See How the shadow of slavery still hangs over global finance https://theconversation.com/how-the-shadow-of-slavery-still-hangs-over-global-finance-144826 https://theconversation.com/how-the-shadow-of-slavery-still-... America's First Bond Market Was Backed By Enslaved Human Beings https://www.forbes.com/sites/pedrodacosta/2019/09/01/americas-first-bond-market-was-backed-by-enslaved-human-beings/?sh=1c60ba1d1888 https://www.forbes.com/sites/pedrodacosta/2019/09/01/america... The hidden links between slavery and Wall Street https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247 THE ORIGINS OF FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT: HOW THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE CONTINUES TO INFLUENCE MODERN FINANCE https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23800/w23800.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23800/w238... This long article on the slave trade provides broad and detailed historical context for the evolution of the financial industry, without directly treating finance in depth. http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Atlantic_slave_trade http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Atlantic_slave_trade

mr_toad 6y ago

> Prior to that, slavery, which has been practised since ancient times, was a local phenomenon. Most of the slave trading cultures I’m aware of took their slaves from elsewhere. The Romans took most of their slaves from conquered peoples. The Vikings transported slaves all across Europe and the Mediterranean. The transportation of slaves from African to America probably has more to do with the development of better sailing technology than writing. Accountancy has also been around much longer than the printing press. The oldest known written records are in fact warehouse inventories.

eloff 6y ago

May as well blame the wheel. This is not a direct causal link.

wombatmobile 6y ago
Did you know that one of the first things printed on a Gutenberg printing press was a treatise by Luca Pacioli, one of the fathers of accounting and a mentor of Leonardo da Vinci? [0] This study [1] examines the accounts of the Portuguese New Christian trader, Manoel Batista Peres. These private accounts, found in the Archivo General de la Nación in Lima, Peru, were associated with the trading of slaves on the Upper Guinea Coast in the early seventeenth century. The accounts take the double-entry format but, in the absence of a metallic currency, were kept in cloth money. Combining evidence from the accounts themselves, with the context in which Peres conducted his business, the study explores the reasons why he kept his accounts in this format. It shows how this system of accounting could be adapted to a non-monetised economy and contributes to the debate over the relationship between double-entry bookkeeping and the rise of capitalism. The number of slaves carried off from Africa to the Americas increased fivefold between 1630 and 1770 [2] Based on extensive archival research, this study [3] documents and analyses the accounting techniques that the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão applied to its slave trading operations during the second half of the eighteenth century. The surviving accounting records of this Portuguese chartered company reveal – in meticulous detail – the integral role that accounting technology played in enabling the slave trade to flourish. Slavery thrived under colonial rule. British and Dutch settlers relied on enslaved people to help establish farms and build the new towns and cities that would eventually become the United States. Enslaved people were brought to work on the cotton, sugar and tobacco plantations. The crops they grew were sent to Europe or to the northern colonies, to be turned into finished products. Those finished goods were used to fund trips to Africa to obtain more slaves who were then trafficked back to America. This triangular trading route was profitable for investors. To raise the money to start many future plantation owners turned to capital markets in London - selling debt that was used to purchase boats, goods and eventually people. [4] The common narrative is that today’s modern management techniques were developed in the factories in England and the industrialized North of the United States, not the plantations of the Caribbean and the American South. According to a new book by historian Caitlin Rosenthal, that narrative is wrong. Rosenthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and in her new book, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management,” she looks at the business side of slavery once it was well-established on plantations. Rosenthal argues that slaveholders in the American South and Caribbean were using advanced management and accounting techniques long before their northern counterparts. Techniques that are still used by businesses today. [5] [0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40698353?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40698353?seq=1 [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1032373213485933 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/103237321348593... [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40984784?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40984784?seq=1 [3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1032373217696512 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1032373217696512 [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247 [5] https://www.marketplace.org/2018/08/14/disturbing-parallels-between-modern-accounting-business-slavery/ https://www.marketplace.org/2018/08/14/disturbing-parallels-...