Did Caribbean slavery make Britain rich? What were the legacies of slavery for Britain?
We will explore one of the most important controversies in the historiography of British slavery and abolition. Since Eric Williams’s book Capitalism and Slavery was published in 1944, historians have worked on trying to understand the relationship between the development of Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the institution of slavery. Today we will aim to come to a clearer understanding of how historians have researched and debated the impact and legacies of slavery on Britain.
Did the slave trade and Atlantic slavery help to trigger the Industrial Revolution? Williams argued that there was a link, but his arguments were criticised by Engerman, Eltis and others. Work by Price shows the significance of sugar to the British eighteenth-century economy, and Mintz, Drayton and Pomeranz have offered analysis of various connections between British economic development and slavery. A Zahedieh notes, the recent general consensus of historical opinion is that the British economy was heavily reliant on the colonial sector (especially the Caribbean) throughout the eighteenth century.
Some suggested reading/viewing:
Watch: ‘Towards a New Past: the Legacies of British Slave-ownership’: http://youtu.be/WtyATuC_fXw
Drayton, R. ‘The Collaboration of Labour: Slaves, Empires, and Globalizations in the Atlantic World, c. 1600-1850’, in A. Hopkins (ed), Globalization in World History (2002), 98-114. Blackboard
Eltis, D, and S. L. Engerman, ‘The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain’, in The Journal of Economic History, 60/1 (2000), pp. 123-144. JSTOR
Pomeranz, K. The Great Divergence (2000), (especially 285-97).
Price, J. ‘The Imperial Economy, 1700 – 1776, in P. Marshall (ed), Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century (1998), pp. 78-104.
Mintz, S. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1986).
Williams, E. Capitalism and Slavery (1944) (especially chapter 5): https://archive.org/details/capitalismandsla033027mbp
Zahedieh, N. ‘Economy’, in Armitage and Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World (2009).