ABSTRACT
The position of Eastern Europe within the colonial global economy has barely received critical assessments, at least not within sociology. Often discussed in marginal terms, the region’s early histories of primitive accumulation and entanglements with the colonial global economy suggest that Eastern Europe has not always been secluded as commonly imagined. Relying on archival research – records, accounts, and juridical sources – mainly from both Poland and the Netherlands, this chapter identifies and discusses the “other” geographies within the global colonial narratives. Doing so enables a focus on the ways in which the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth contributed to, benefited from, and might have assisted in the maintenance of transatlantic slave trade established by its powerful imperial neighbours. The fundamental underpinning of this chapter signals an argument that the processes of colonial global economy and the benefits of “associated trades” were not only integral to the development of the West but also essential in the development of “other” European geographies that have been thought of as detached, non-complicit, and irrelevant to the transatlantic narratives of slavery and interloped empires. The focus here is channelled towards the benefits of “associated trades” that, when viewed through Charles Mills’ “racial contract” framework, offers an alternative lens that links Eastern Europe to the arrangements of the “racial contract”.
