Did the Black Death play a part in the creation of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade?

by [deleted]

With the incredible death toll from the Black Death, I understand this fundamentally changed the relation of labour, with labourers now able to claim higher wages as there were far fewer of them. I considered whether the trans Atlantic slave trade was a reaction in part to the pandemic, as it led to a demand for labour that wasn’t just cheap but free.

restricteddata

The Transatlantic Slave Trade started in the 16th century. The Black Death was in the 14th century. So that's a whopping 200 year separation, in which a number of other fundamental things occurred, including the rise of long sea travel, colonization, the beginnings of industrialization, and the discovery of the New World.

One can talk about the role of the Black Death in altering European political and economic relations, especially regard to labor, but making a 200 year leap to the Transatlantic Slave Trade is a bit too large to take very seriously — there are just too many other variables to take into account. And that's the "long view" version of your question — the short term version is just ahistorical (the Black Death had no direct role in something that happened 200 years later, almost by definition).