“Liverpool’s slave trade was the centre of a global
commerce and an important factor in British
economic growth.” To what extent would you agree
with this opinion?
This essay will attempt to answer the question by approaching it in three
stages. Firstly it will assess the importance of Britain’s slave trade in the
context of global commerce, especially during the 18th century. Secondly
it will attempt to show the degree of significance - and the reason - for
Liverpool’s involvement as a British port, and thirdly, to find out whether
or not this had a bearing on Britain’s economy in general. In other words,
the essay will attempt to ascertain whether Britain’s slave trades “was
the centre of a global commerce”, and whether Liverpool was, in turn,
the central city for that particular trade.
From around 1600, Britain had colonized or conquered a network of
territories all over the world including parts of the Americas – According
to Professor Kenneth Morgan, “By 1797- 8, North America and the West
Indies received 57 per cent of British exports, and supplied 32 per cent of
imports”1. The 18th century saw Britain rise to an undisputed dominant
position among her rival European powers. Trade with these overseas
colonies was a driving force behind the Industrial Revolution, especially
throughout the 19th Century, in providing sources of raw materials and
markets for finished goods. The slave trade played a huge part: “By the
end of the 18th century, Britain had become the largest and most
accomplished slaving nation in the world”2. If it can be shown that the
city of Liverpool was central to this trade, and Britain’s economy
benefited from it, then the above statement will carry some validity.
The 18th Century saw Liverpool’s rise to the position of what was
sometimes referred to as “Britain’s second city” and dominance over the
British slave trade. The figures bear this out – in 1730, London and Bristol
held the monopoly on the Atlantic trade, with only 15 slave ships leaving
Liverpool in that year; in 1771 this figure had risen to 107, compared with
58 ships from London.3 Between 1750 and 1780, Liverpool merchants
financed around 75% of British slave voyages. 4 A contemporary visitor’s
account put it like this: “Liverpool being the port for shipping of the
manufactures of Manchester, Warrington and other manufacturing
towns in the neighborhood, being concerned largely in the West Indian
trade, in the Greenland fisheries and more largely in the infamous African
trade than any other place in England occasion a great forest of shipping
to be continually in port” At this time (by the 3rd quarter of the 18th
Century), no less than a third of this “forest” would have been slave
ships.
This heightened activity was due in part to Liverpool’s geographical
location – she was situated close to Britain’s main manufacturing areas in
the North and Northwest. The Lord Mayor of Liverpool, William Forwood,
claimed in 1881 “*Liverpool’s+ prosperity is entirely dependant on *it’s+
close proximity to the great manufacturing centres of Lancashire,
Yorkshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire”. But was this the entire reason
for Liverpool’s growing involvement in the slave trade a century before?
Daniel Mannix and Malcolm Cowley argue that not only “larger and
faster ships” were built on Merseyside, but also “the notorious parsimony
of Lancashire merchants” was the main advantage Liverpool had over
her rivals.7 P. E. H. Hair believes that Liverpool was favoured over other
European ports, mainly because of the quality of its shipping industry.
The slave trade needed, he writes, “private shippers of high efficiency” to
reduce economic factors such as “shipping and trading costs (including
high ship-depreciation and high mortality of crews and traders)”. These
factors appear to have combined, and there remains little doubt over
Liverpool’s becoming the biggest slave trading port in the world
throughout this century.
So was all this “an important factor” for the economic development of
the rest of Britain? In his 1944 book, Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams
was the first to put forward the idea of a link between the spoils of
Britain’s colonies and the start of industrialization, stating that the profits
from slavery were channeled into domestic industrial enterprises. These
profits, according to Williams, were the main source of capital
accumulation that funded the nascent Industrial Revolution. But Kenneth
Morgan argues against this. Annual profits from Britain’s slave trade were
on average less than 10%, this small profit being largely due to the
attendant risks. Also, between 1688 and 1800, writes Morgan, the British
national income from slave trade profits was small – almost always less
than 0.5% of the total. The plantation owners certainly made large profits
– the West Indies were the richest area in the British Empire – but it is
unclear exactly how much of this went into domestic industrial
development.
Joel Mokyr also refutes Williams’ claims. According to him, the slave
trade was highly profitable for those directly linked to it “and the towns
of Bristol and Liverpool Consequently grew”, but its effects on British
economic prosperity were “negligible”. Mokyr writes: “In the absence of
West Indian Slavery, Britain would have had to drink bitter tea, but it still
would have had an Industrial Revolution, if perhaps at a marginally
slower pace”. Sugar was one thing, but he doesn’t mention other luxuries
such as tobacco, coffee and cocoa. He goes on to state that it was slavery
in America, not the “18th Century triangular trade”, which had the real
impact on Britain’s economy after 1790, when the cotton industry
needed the raw materials from the southern states. This was especially
true in the following century, when the Industrial Revolution was in full
flow. The US-based cotton industry could supply its own labour force
“through the reproduction of its gender-balanced slave population”.
Another historian, Paul Mantoux, believes that Liverpool’s rapid
prosperity occurred before the rest of the country – around 1770,
Liverpool was famous in the world of trading – when towns such as
Manchester were nowhere near what they would later become, as British
cotton goods were still no match for those from India. Mantoux makes a
link between the slave trade and Liverpool’s wealth during this preindustrial time, implying that the slave trade was an important factor in
Liverpool’s economic growth, but not necessarily Britain’s.
But Mantoux acknowledges that Lancashire’s later development into
what he termed “the cradle of the factory system” owed everything to
the earlier success of Liverpool, and the establishment of her trade.In
Sinews of Empire, Michael Craton states that “the African and West
Indian trades never represented much more than a tenth of total British
trade”…”even the largest estimates of profits from slave trade and
plantations are insufficient to account fully for the industrial “take-off”
that occurred in the later 18th Century”. The tremendous growth of the
Lancashire cotton industries after 1800 meant that new markets were
soon needed, wider horizons than Africa and the West Indies. According
to Craton, the American “new south” revitalised slavery in America, and
“Liverpool gained greatly in importance even as the slave trade on which
it was founded was officially abolished”. The “respectability” of the
cotton industry was conveniently used to obscure Liverpool’s
disreputable past. But it was still slavery, not the slave trade, which
continued to be a main support for both Liverpool’s prosperity and
Lancashire’s industries. These two factors “provided such a large
component of Britain’s 19th Century *world+ supremacy”. So it would
appear that Eric Williams is in something of an isolated position – other
historians are able to provide evidence to the contrary. Liverpool
certainly became the hub of the 18th Century West Indian slave trade,
which was in turn “the centre of a global commerce”. But this had very
little bearing on Britain’s economy. Rather, Liverpool herself was the
main beneficiary, and it was the use of slaves in the 19th Century cotton
industry, which better fits the description of “an important factor in
British economic growth”.
Bibliography
Walvin, J : “Making the Black Atlantic – Britain and the African Diaspora”,
Cassell (2000)
Mannix, D. and Cowley, M : “Black Cargoes – A History of the Atlantic
Slave Trade 1518- 1865”, Penguin (1962)
Blackburn, R : “The Making of New World Slavery, From the Baroque to
the Modern 1492 – 1800”, Verso (1997)
Morgan, K : “The Birth of Industrial Britain – Economic Change 1750 –
1850”, Longman (1999)
Wilson, C. H : “England’s Apprenticeship”, Longman (1965)
Morgan, K : “Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy 1660 –
1800”, Cambridge University Press (2000)
Mokyr, J : “The British Industrial Revolution – an Economic Perspective”,
Westview Press (1993)
Rule, J : “The Vital Century – England’s Developing Economy 1714 –
1815”, Longman (1992)
Mantoux, P : “The Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century”,
Cape (1961) Craton, P : “Sinews of Empire”, Temple Smith
1974)