This article by Phillip Roscoe asserts that the transatlantic slave trade “pioneered a new kind of finance, secured on the bodies of the powerless. Today, the arcane products of high finance, targeting the poor and troubled as profit opportunities for the already-rich, still bear that deep unfairness.” The slaver’s banking system was based on the system of financialisation developed by Florentine banking dynasties of the 15th century which gave rise to money as we know it now. The “obscene novelty” of the slavers’ innovation was that this financial value was secured on human bodies.
Slave traders also pioneered the use of insurance as a means of guaranteeing the financial value of the their commodities. It was the infamous Zong Trial of 1783, when slavers tried to claim insurance on lost cargo of humans, which exposed the toxic relationship between finance and slavery. Contemporary finance is “still riddled with regimes of dominance and exploitation at work”. Read the full article here.
