1453: The Ottoman Turks successfully captured Constantinople, an event that significantly impacted European labor markets by diverting the flow of Black Sea …

1453: The Ottoman Turks successfully captured Constantinople, an event that significantly impacted European labor markets by diverting the flow of Black Sea and Balkan captives to Islamic territories. This conquest sharply reduced Europe’s supply of both sugar and the European captives previously used in its production. In response, European powers like the Portuguese intensified their importation of black African captives to fill the resulting labor void. By the late fifteenth century, this shift began to “blacken” slave populations in Mediterranean regions, including Sicily, Naples, and southern France.