Racist Regimes, Forced Labour and Death

This book compares the systems of exploitative race relations associated with two racist regimes – slavery in the British colonial Caribbean and forced labour in the Holocaust in Germany and the Nazi-occupied lands in Europe. Although each system was introduced by expansionist European powers, through racist enslavement, transportation, dehumanisation and the destruction of human life, the construction and operation of sugar plantations by African and Creole slave labour for the export of tropical products in the period 1650 to 1838 was different from the mass murder of Jewish and Gypsy civilians with the intention of creating a forced-labour regime and colonial-style ethnic cleansing during the Second World War. Though differentiated in time and place, the four principal common denominators that make feasible the detailed comparison of British Caribbean slavery and the Holocaust in Europe are racism, colonialism/occupation, slavery/forced labour, and death. Juxtaposition of these two companion studies will reveal comparisons and contrasts previously unexplored in the field of race relations under colonialism and the Holocaust. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of the social sciences and history, particularly those with an engagement with slavery and forced labour, the sociology of race and racism, and Holocaust studies. Colin Clarke is Emeritus Professor of Geography at Oxford University, UK and an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College; from 1998 to 2001 he was Head of Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment.