From Africa to Amazon.com: Racialized Labor and Global Supply Chains

What can world-systems analysis of the role of Africa in the creation of the capitalist world-economy tell us about Amazon’s model of control of global supply chains in the 21st century? How did patterns established by European imperialism and enslavement of Africans create long-lasting continuities of racial capitalism and migration that are used by Amazon to profit in the contemporary era? We argue that the analyses of imperialism and racialized labor in Africa that underlay the creation of the capitalist world-system presented by Wallerstein, Rodney, and others, most notably Cedric Robinson, help us understand the continuity of racism and racialized labor over the longue durée. Our analysis of raw materialist lengthened global commodity chains reveals critical continuities and parallels in the central role of racialized exploitation of labor at crucial eras of the modern world-system, including to the enormous rise of Amazon and e-logistics in the contemporary United States.