Capitalism and Slavery

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Capitalism and Slavery is the published version of the doctoral dissertation of

Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 as a sort of moral pivot; but also directed against a historical school that saw the imperial constitutional history as a constant advance through legislation. It uses polemical asides for some personal attacks, notably on the Oxford historian Reginald Coupland. Seymour Drescher, a prominent critic among historians of some of the theses put forward in Capitalism and Slavery by Williams, wrote in 1987: "If one criterion of a classic is its ability to reorient our most basic way of viewing an object or a concept, Eric Williams's study supremely passes that test."[1]

The applicability of the economic arguments, and specially in the form of so-called Ragatz–Williams decline theory, is a contentious matter to this day for historians, when it is used for the period around the

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography evaluates Capitalism and Slavery as "perhaps the most influential book written in the twentieth century on the history of slavery".[2]

It was published in the United States in 1944, but major publishers refused to have it published in Britain, on grounds including that it undermined the humanitarian motivation for Britain's

Penguin Modern Classics in 2022,[4] becoming a best-seller.[5]

Williams as an Oxford undergraduate

In 1931 Williams came to the

St Catherine's Society, not then a college (until that year the Delegacy for Non-Collegiate Students).[2][6] He obtained a first-class degree in Modern History, but found social life largely unfriendly. He made a friend of a Thai student, interacted with his tutors, and attended the Indian Majlis, a student club.[7]

The Economic Aspect of the Abolition of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery

Williams wrote his Oxford D.Phil. dissertation under

Vincent Harlow, on a topic suggested by C. L. R. James. The tone of the dissertation is judged "deferential", in comparison with the 1944 published version.[8][9]

One of the D.Phil. examiners was Reginald Coupland, from 1920 second holder of the

Sydney Olivier.[14]

Williams had been made aware of the potential importance of Coupland to his academic career by Joseph Oliver Cutteridge, the ex-British Army officer who was director of education in Trinidad and Tobago. This was at the point in 1936 when Williams was given funding for his doctoral work; Cutteridge had contacted Coupland on his behalf, to use influence with

Claud Hollis, the Governor. Cutteridge had then advised "caution".[15]

The original dissertation was published in 2014.[16] Its argument has the same basic structure of a "decline" thesis, and the negation of good intentions of abolitionists as a historical factor. David Beck Ryden identifies the three faces of decline in the first half of the 19th century as: "falling sugar planting profits"; "decline of the relative importance of the West Indian trade" in the British economy; and "a rising anti-mercantilist tide".[17]

Howard University, and publication

Williams left the United Kingdom for the United States in 1939. After a period of unsuccessful job applications, he had been appointed assistant professor at

historically black college, in Washington D.C.[2] A close colleague there, who wrote a foreword to Williams's The Negro in the Caribbean (1942), was Alain LeRoy Locke. Others on the faculty were Ralph Bunche, E. Franklin Frazier, and Charles S. Johnson.[18] Williams was brought to Howard by Locke, supported by Bunche and Abram Lincoln Harris, and took on a teaching load in the Political Science department.[19]

Excerpts of his thesis were published in 1939 by The Keys, the journal of the London-based League of Coloured Peoples.[20] An attempt by Williams to have his dissertation published in the United Kingdom through Fredric Warburg failed: the undermining of the humanitarian motivation for the Abolition Act 1833 was found unacceptable, culturally speaking.[7] Publication of Capitalism and Slavery happened finally in the United States, in 1944. It appeared in a British edition in 1964, with an introduction by Denis William Brogan, summarising Williams's thesis in a phrase on abolition as a cutting of losses, and illustration of the workings of self-interest. Brogan had reviewed Capitalism and Slavery in The Times Literary Supplement, and accepted its general argument on the predominance of economic forces.[21][22]

Arguments and sources of Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery covers the economic history of sugar and slavery into the 19th century and discusses the decline of Caribbean sugar plantations from 1823 until the emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s. It also notes the British government's use of the equalisation of the sugar duties Acts in the 1840s, to reduce protectionism for sugar from the British West Indian colonies, and promote free trade in sugar from

Brazil, where it was cheaper.[23]

The work relied on economic reasoning going back to

client politics.[27][28]

In the American context, it had been argued by William Babcock Weeden (1834–1912), and in 1942 by Lorenzo Greene, that the slave trade was integral to the economic development of New England.[29] Williams argued that slavery played a major role in developing the British economy; the high profits from slavery, he wrote, helped finance the Industrial Revolution. British capital was gained from unpaid work.[30] The bibliography also cites The Black Jacobins by C. L. R. James for its priority in giving in 1938 a statement (in English) of the major thesis of Capitalism and Slavery; and a master's dissertation from that year by Wilson Williams at Howard University. Wilson Williams and Abram Harris are taken to be the sources of the work's interest in the commercial writer Malachy Postlethwayt.[31]

The book, besides dealing with a passage of economic history, was furthermore a frontal attack on the idea that moral and humanitarian motives were key in the victory of British abolitionism. It was also a critique of the idea common in the 1930s, and in particular advocated by Reginald Coupland, that the British Empire was essentially propelled by benevolent impulses. The centenary celebration of the 1833 Act that took place in the United Kingdom in 1933, in Kingston upon Hull, where William Wilberforce was born, was a public event in which Coupland made these ideas explicit, supported in The Times by G. M. Trevelyan.[32] Williams made a number of pointed critical remarks in this direction, including:

  • "Professor Coupland contends that behind the legal judgement lay the moral judgement, and that the
    Somersett case was the beginning of the end of slavery throughout the British Empire. This is merely poetic sentimentality translated into modern history."[33]

Williams rejected moralised explanation and argued that abolition was driven by diminishing returns, after a century of sugarcane raising had exhausted the soil of the islands.

Jamaica Christmas Rebellion of 1831, to bring the end of slavery in the 1830s.[35]

Periodisation of Capitalism and Slavery

The points raised required

periodisation, by calibration to a timeline. The D.Phil. dissertation limited itself to the period 1780–1833.[36]

In Chapter 4 of the book, "The West India Interest", an outline of a timeline is given, reflecting the difference of interests of planters and the sugar merchants:

Chapter 5, "British Industry and the Triangular Trade", in other words on the Atlantic slave trade as part of the triangular trade completed by sugar, begins on p. 98 with "Britain was accumulating great wealth from the triangular trade." It ends with a few pages of overview, arguing that the economic development already visible by 1783 was outgrowing the system dubbed mercantilism. The 1807 prohibition of the international slave trade, Williams argued, prevented French expansion of sugar plantations on other islands. British investment turned to Asia, where labour was plentiful and slavery was unnecessary.[30]

Dividing up the period c.1780 to 1832, by the end of the triangular trade in 1807, Williams wrote that "The abolitionists for a long time eschewed and repeatedly disowned any idea of emancipation."[37] He also presented economic data to show that the triangular trade alone had generated only minor profits compared to the sugar plantations. Then from 1823 the British Caribbean sugar industry went into terminal decline, and the British parliament no longer felt they needed to protect the economic interests of the West Indian sugar planters.[38]

Reception

The book was published in the United States in 1944. Early American reviews by historians ranged from enthusiasm, with Henry Steele Commager, to expressed reservations from Elizabeth Donnan and Frank Tannenbaum.[22] Ryden, writing in 2012 and relying on some citation analysis, spoke of three waves of interest in Capitalism and Slavery over the previous four decades and more, the first being associated with a largely critical review article of 1968 by Roger Anstey. The background was of consistent growth in attention.[39]

Writing in 1994 in A Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century World History, Tadman stated that:

"A revised version of the Williams thesis (of economic and class self-interest leading to abolition) seems to have much explanatory power. Rising urban interests perceived slavery as unprofitable, backward, and a threat to liberal (and middle-class) values."[40]

Hilary Beckles wrote in 2004 of "the fundamental academic respect that Capitalism and Slavery enjoys within the Caribbean", after noting the "persistent and penetrative criticisms".[41] Supporters cited were Sydney H. H. Carrington (1937–2018), an advocate of the decline thesis as originally stated, and Gordon Kenneth Lewis (1919–1991), whose view was that "it is testimony to the essential correctness of that thesis that the attempt of a later scholarship to impugn it has been unsuccessful."[42]

Billy Strachan, a leading Black civil rights activist and communist in Britain, credited the book with heavily influencing his world outlook.[43]

No major British publisher published the book until forty years after Williams's death, although he had sought to have it published; it had been refused on grounds including that it undermined the humanitarian motivation for Britain's

Penguin Modern Classics in 2022,[4][45] becoming a best-seller.[5]

Economic factors

Richard Pares, in an article written before Williams's book, had dismissed the influence of wealth generated from the West Indian plantations on the financing of the Industrial Revolution, stating that whatever substantial flow of investment from West Indian profits into industry there was had occurred after emancipation, not before.[46] Heuman states:

In Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams argued that the declining economies of the British West Indies led to the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery. More recent research has rejected this conclusion; it is now clear that the colonies of the British Caribbean profited considerably during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.[47]

Stanley Engerman finds that even without subtracting the associated costs of the slave trade or reinvestment of profits, the total profits from the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to less than 5% of the British economy during any year of the Industrial Revolution.[48] In support of the Williams thesis, Ryden (2009) presented evidence to show that by the early 19th century there was an emerging crisis of profitability.[49] David Richardson (1998) finds Williams's claims regarding the Industrial Revolution are exaggerated, for profits from the slave trade amounted to less than 1% of domestic investment in Britain. He finds also that the "terms of trade" (how much the ship owners paid for the slave cargo) moved heavily in favour of the Africans after about 1750.[50] Ward has argued that slavery remained profitable in the 1830s, because of innovations in agriculture.[51]

Abolitionist sentiment

In a major attack on the propositions brought forward by Williams, Seymour Drescher in Econocide (1977) argued that the United Kingdom's abolition of the slave trade in 1807 resulted not from the diminishing value of slavery for the nation, but instead from the moral outrage of the British public which could vote.[52] Geggus in 1981 gave details of the sugar industry of the British West Indies in the 1780s, casting some doubt on the method used by Drescher for capital valuation.[53]

Carrington in a reply from 1984 advocated for two "main theses" stated in Capitalism and Slavery, and subsequently attacked by "historians from the metropolises": "the rise of industrial capitalism in Britain led to the destruction of the slave trade and slavery itself", and "the slave trade and the sugar industry based on slavery led to the formation of capital in England which helped in financing the Industrial Revolution".[54] On the detail of Drescher's periodisation in arguing against the first of those theses, Carrington then says that Drescher is agreeing with what Ragatz had argued in 1928, namely that decline set in at peak prosperity for the planters, but was misplacing that peak by systematic neglect of the effects of the American Revolutionary War, and the slow subsequent recovery from those.[55]

Later developments

colonial expansion and domestic wage labour of the rising European powers. Noting that Williams provided both argument and illustration, while ignoring slavery in the United States, he considers the schematic ultimately "mechanical and unsatisfactory". He finds David Brion Davis fuller on abolitionist thought, and Eugene Genovese better on the resistance ideas of the enslaved people.[56]

Catherine Hall and the other authors of Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (2014) identified four key arguments of Capitalism and Slavery, and wrote of a schism between Anglo-American historians and those from the Caribbean on their status. The context is a series of projects run by University College London, with Web presence at www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs. The stated arguments are:[57]

  1. Slavery as key to the Industrial Revolution.
  2. Slave-produced wealth as integral to the British economy in the 18th century.
  3. Economic decline by 1783, or even 1763.
  4. The role of the West Indian planters changed from the leading economic edge, to behind the times.

These are all recognised as somewhat contentious, with #1 and #3 particularly so. All four are considered fundamental to the project work, and capable of being illuminated by the gathering of further data.[57]

Gareth Austin writing in the Cambridge History of Capitalism vol. II (2014) describes the rejection of Williams's thesis about the economic impact of slavery on the Industrial Revolution as revisionist interpretation. He goes on to describe a challenge to that interpretation by Joseph E. Inikori, based on whole-Atlantic trade and (for example) the hinterland trade of British cloth destined for West Africa. He footnotes a comment "One should distinguish the issue of causality of the industrial revolution from the fact that various specific industrial investments were indeed made with profits from slave ships or slave estates, as Williams documented."[58]

Notes

  1. JSTOR 2505121
    .
  2. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65183. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  3. ^
    OCLC 15723803
    .
  4. ^ a b Ferguson, Donna (23 January 2022). "Eighty years late: groundbreaking work on slave economy is finally published in UK". The Observer.
  5. ^ a b Barnett, David (2 March 2022). "Books: Eighty-year-old study of British slave trade is back in the bestsellers list". The Guardian.
  6. ^ "St Catherine's College". oac.web.ox.ac.uk.
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-820300-1
    .
  8. ISBN 978-0-920661-66-6
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-19-533944-4
    .
  10. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32585. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  11. ISBN 978-0-7456-5042-5
    .
  12. ISBN 978-1-137-54850-4
    .
  13. ISBN 978-1-4438-6999-7
    .
  14. ISBN 978-0-19-820300-1
    .
  15. ISBN 978-0-8139-3685-7
    .
  16. ISBN 978-1-4422-3140-5
    .
  17. JSTOR 43551697
    .
  18. ISBN 978-0-8078-2987-5
    .
  19. ISBN 978-1-5017-0187-0
    .
  20. ISBN 978-1-4742-6534-8
    .
  21. ^ Williams, Eric (1964). Capitalism and Slavery. London: André Deutsch. pp. vii–ix.
  22. ^
    JSTOR 2505121
    .
  23. ^ Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Deutsch, 1964).
  24. ISBN 978-0-8139-3685-7
    .
  25. ISBN 978-0-8223-7696-5
    .
  26. ISBN 978-0-19-533944-4
    .
  27. JSTOR 551034
  28. JSTOR 2223336
    .
  29. ISBN 978-0-521-45737-8
    .
  30. ^ a b c Solow, Barbara; Stanley L. Engerman, eds. (2004). British capitalism and Caribbean slavery: The legacy of Eric Williams. Cambridge University Press.
  31. ISBN 978-1-351-31742-9
    .
  32. ISBN 978-1-349-14876-9
    .
  33. ISBN 978-1-4696-1949-1
    .
  34. ISBN 978-1-4696-1949-1
    .
  35. ^ Williams, Capitalism and Slavery.
  36. JSTOR 2505121
    .
  37. ^ Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Deutsch, 1964), p. 182.
  38. ^ Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Deutsch, 1964).
  39. JSTOR 43551697
    .
  40. ISBN 978-0-631-18352-5
    .
  41. ^ Beckles, Hilary McD., "'The Williams Effect': Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery and the Growth of West Indian Political Economy", in Solow and Engerman (eds), British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 303.
  42. ISBN 978-0-521-53320-1
    .
  43. ISSN 2055-7035
    .
  44. ^ "Dr. Eric Williams' 'Capitalism and Slavery' finally published in UK eighty years later". The Caribbean Camera. 28 January 2022. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  45. ^ Olende, Ken (28 January 2022). "At last! Eric Williams' classic book Capitalism and Slavery republished". Socialist Worker (2790). Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  46. JSTOR 2590147
    .
  47. ^ Heuman, Gad, "The British West Indies" in Andrew Porter, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire – Vol. 3: The 19th Century (1999) 3:470.
  48. S2CID 154620412
    .
  49. ^ Ryden, David Beck, West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
  50. ^ Richardson, David, "The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1660–1807", in P. J. Marshall, ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II: The Eighteenth Century (1998), pp. 440–64.
  51. ^ Ward, J. R., "The British West Indies in the Age of Abolition", in P. J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II: The Eighteenth Century (1998), pp. 415–39.
  52. ^ Drescher, Seymour, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (1977).
  53. JSTOR 568291
  54. JSTOR 25675211
    .
  55. ^ Carrington, "'Econocide' — Myth or Reality?", Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 36 (1984), pp. 15–19.
  56. ISBN 978-0-86091-901-8
    .
  57. ^
    ISBN 978-1-107-04005-2
    .
  58. ISBN 978-1-316-02571-0
    .

Further reading
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Capitalism_and_Slavery&oldid=1215134145"