More on Slavery and the British Economy

More on Slavery and the British Economy.

This is an issue that is perhaps uniquely persistent. It emerged in the eighteenth century, then sort of disappeared until Eric Williams took it up in 1944 in his book Capitalism and Slavery. Various scholars attacked what became known as the Williams thesis, especially by Stanley Engerman and also David Eltis (we taught in the same department at Emory). 

The topic has roared back over the last few decades and, most recently, in recent book Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Eltis has given the book a scathing review, which is not surprising. Readers may also want to take a look at vol. 45, 4 issue of the journal Slavery & Abolition.

I find some of these debates frustrating. Some want to focus on just the slave trade, others on what some call the “plantation complex,” still others on the broader Atlantic economy. If it is just the trade, my answer is muted. It grows much stronger when we think about the entire system, and still stronger when we take into consideration the broader Atlantic economy.

Various mainstream economists have done some important work here. One might begin with the 2005 article “The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth” by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, in American Economic Review, vol. 95, no. 3, June 2005 (pp. 546–579) (FYI: two of the authors were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics.) This is basically where I am coming from.