The slave-trade and slavery were the economic basis of the French Revolution. "Sad irony of human history," comments Jaures. "The fortunes created at Bordeaux, at Nantes, by the slave-trade, gave to the bourgeoisie that pride which needed liberty and contributed to human emancipation." Nantes was the center of the slave-trade... . Nearly all the industries which developed in France during the eighteenth century had their origin in goods or commodities destined either for the coast of Guinea or for America ... upon the success or failure of the traffic everything else depended.

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making o…, loc. 603