1
A Mechanism of Growth: Atlantic Slavery and British Industrialization
Ben Parten
10/31/2014
Dr. Rood
Atlantic World
Fall 2014
2
In How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney argues that European
exploitation of Africa has been the primary mechanism behind Europe’s economic development
and Africa’s corresponding economic stagnation. According to Rodney, when African slaves
were captured and sent to the Caribbean as chattel slaves, they were transformed into a form of
capital that was later reinvested into the European economy. Drawing heavily upon the work of
some of his fellow Caribbean scholars, most notably Eric Williams, Rodney asserts that it was
this inhuman process of capital accumulation that led to Europe’s capitalist expansion and the
eventual British Industrial Revolution. Using Rodney’s assertion as a point of departure, this
essay analyzes the scholarly discourse surrounding the complex relationship between Atlantic
slavery and British industrialization.
Any discussion about slavery and industrialization must begin with Eric Williams. His
book, Capitalism and Slavery, began the discussion, and it has since sparked further research and
criticism. The criticism derives generally from Williams’s approach. He makes his argument in
“broad, sweeping terms” which often obscures one from ascertaining exactly what his argument
is.1 As David Richardson notes, Williams did not “indicate clearly” whether he was arguing that
the profits of the slave trade alone or the entire slave based West Indian economy led to British
industrial development.2 Nevertheless, the “Williams thesis,” as equivocal as it may be, can be
understood as an argument that identifies “the profits of Britain’s ‘triangular trade’ with Africa
and the West Indies” as the “major impulse” behind the Industrial Revolution of the late
eighteenth century.3 Recent scholarship, however, suggests otherwise. Scholars like David Eltis
1
David Richardson, “The Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748-1776,” The Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 4 (April 1, 1987): 740, doi:10.2307/204652.
2
Ibid.
3
Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery : From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 / Robin
Blackburn (London : Verso, 2010., 2010), 517.
3
and Stanley Engerman argue that Williams overestimated the slave trade’s profitability and
subsequent industrial power. These scholars tend to feel that the slave system of the Atlantic was
a relatively minor piece of the economic pie that was the Industrial Revolution. While they
acknowledge that the Atlantic economy was a factor in industrialization, they are reluctant to
label it as “the” major factor or even “a” major factor behind industrial development. Instead,
these scholars identify the British domestic economy as the driving force behind industrialism.4
Thus, the central question is whether or not the slave based British Atlantic system was the
impetus for British industrial growth, or as Robbin Blackburn so metaphorically puts it:
Were the slave plantations mighty little tugboats, their engines racing, towing the ocean
liner of the British economy out into the open seas of industrial capital accumulation? Or,
alternatively, were they nothing more than jolly boats, tied to the stern of the new
steamship bobbing up and down in the wake?5
One aspect of the British Atlantic system that Williams highlights in Capitalism and
Slavery is how profits from the direct trade—the buying or selling of slaves on the slave
market—were reinvested into “banks, textile factories, or canals, all of which were important to
the process of industrialization.”6 Williams’s method of choice in assessing how profits of the
slave trade seeped back into the British economy was to trace the investments of particular
traders and to show the “presumed direct flow of funds” from individuals to industry.7 In doing
4
Stanley L. Engerman, “The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century: A Comment on
the Williams Thesis,” The Business History Review 46, no. 4 (December 1, 1972): 441, doi:10.2307/3113341.
5
Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, 511.
6
David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, “The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain,”
The Journal of Economic History 60, no. 1 (March 1, 2000): 125.
7
Engerman, “The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century,” 432.
4
so, Williams identified a multitude of different industries that were impacted by the influx of
slave trading profits.
For example, he points to Antony Bacon—one of the leading iron mongers of his time—
to show how profits of the slave trade wound up funding British industry. For one, Bacon’s
partner—Gilbert Francklyn—was a prosperous West Indian planter. Bacon himself, acquired
great wealth from supplying “able negroes for government contracts” in the Caribbean.8 Between
1768 and 1776, it is estimated that Bacon made 67,000 British pounds for this commercial
venture. In 1765, he set up a small iron works factory which expanded rapidly. Aided in part by
government artillery contracts during America’s War for Independence, his small iron works
factory went on to be just one part of his “mineral kingdom” that spread across Southern England
and Wales.9
Another example of how profits from the slave trade were reinvested into the British
economy was through the creation of banks. Williams points out that many of the eighteenth
century banks of Liverpool, Manchester, and London were established from money associated
with the slave trade. There is a natural progression, Williams argues, “from a tradesman to
merchant” and then “from merchant to banker.”10 However, in the 18th century, the term
merchant could not be disassociated from the West Indian slave trade. Then, according to
Williams, the merchant used his accrued wealth to establish his own bank. For example, prior to
1756, the two Barclay brothers—William and David—were actively involved with the slave
trade. In fact, David was one of the “most influential West Indian Merchants of his day.”11
8
Eric Eustace Williams, Capitalism & Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 103.
Ibid., 103.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
9
5
However, as Williams notes, David was “not merely a trader,” he was also the owner of a “great
Plantation” in Jamaica. Using their immense wealth, the two brothers married into prominent
banking families, and later went on to create the powerful Barclay’s Bank of England.12
However, Stanley Engerman recognizes this method as too simplistic to account for the
complex relationship between the slave trade, investment, and industrial growth. The problem
with the Williams approach, Engerman argues, is that while the individuals identified by
Williams were connected to the slave trade, it is possible that “only a small portion of their funds
derived from the slave trade.”13 In other words, there is no way of knowing how much of
Bacon’s “mineral kingdom” derived from his governmental artillery contracts in much the same
way that there is no way of knowing how much the Barclay’s financially benefitted from
marrying into two prosperous banking families.14 These former slave traders may have invested
some of their profits from slaving into other financial ventures, but there is no way of discerning
between that money and the money that derived from other places. Therefore, as Engerman
asserts, “direct linkages may establish a moral unworthiness of investors,” but it does not
establish a direct connection between the slave trade and industrial investment.15
Instead, Engerman proposes a new method to calculate the effect of the slave trade on
industrial investment. According to Engerman, a more efficient way would be to “ask an
aggregate question.”16 Essentially to what degree “was the overall level of investment in society
raised by the profits of the slave trade?”17 In this case, there is no need to focus on specific
12
Ibid.
Engerman, “The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century,” 433.
14
Williams, Capitalism & Slavery, 103.
15
Engerman, “The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century,” 433.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
13
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individuals as in the Williams methodology. While recognizing that his calculations are “crude”18
estimates, Engerman asserts that the profits of the slave trade increased the overall level of
British investment from 2.4 percent to 10.8 between 1688 and 1770.19 Using that percent
increase, Engerman gauges that profits from the slave trade contributed to 54 percent of
industrial investment in the year 1770. However, this calculation operates on the assumption that
no profits from the slave trade “flowed into” other areas like agricultural investment, the West
Indian plantation economy, or back into the slave trade itself.20 Taking those factors into account
along with Roger Antsey’s slave trade profit estimates, Engerman comes to the conclusion that
the slave trade contributed to only around 7 percent of total industrial investment. In sum, profits
from the slave trade were in fact invested into Industrial capital formation, but in comparison to
total investments, the slave trade was relatively inconsequential to British industrial investment.
However, as convincing as Engerman’s calculations may be, they are based solely on the
relationship between profits from the slave trade and industrial investment. His “crude”
calculations do not consider the larger, more indirect relationship between slavery and industry:
the economic impact of the slave based British plantation system.21 Williams’s original argument
asserts that the immense wealth generated by the production of staples like sugar “fertilized the
entire productive system of the country.”22 West Indian wealth did, after all, amount to “£50-60
18
Ibid., 435.
Ibid., 440. These are Engerman’s own calculations based on data provided by Phillip Curtain’s The Atlantic Slave
Trade: A Census (Madison, Wisc. 1969), Richard Bean’s “The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade” (PhD. Thesis,
University of Washington, 1971), Phyllis Dean and W.A. Cole’s British Economic Growth, 1688-1959 (Cambridge,
1969), and Roger Antsey’s “Volume and Profitability.”
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid., 435.
22
Williams, Capitalism & Slavery, 105.
19
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million in 1775” and close to “£70 million in 1800.”23 He goes on to state that “these sugar
colonies” made the West Indies the “hub of the British Empire,” and their existence was of
“immense importance” to Britain’s “grandeur and prosperity.”24 Thus, on the surface, the
financial relationship between the British plantation system and industrial development would
appear to be a causal one.
David Eltis and Stanley Engerman agree with Williams that the West Indian plantations
were valuable to the British industrial development, but they do not identify them as the sole
impetus for industrial growth. In fact, Eltis and Engerman downplay sugar production’s role in
industrial growth and identify Britain’s domestic economy as the most important component of
industrialization. According to Eltis and Engerman, sugar’s presumed “role as an ‘engine’ of
economic growth” is discredited when it is compared to other industries like cotton textiles,
wool, and iron ore. 25 Also, as Eltis and Engerman point out, the economic surge of the sugar
colonies after 1700 may appear to be “impressive,” but, when comparing the British plantation
system to other non-British plantation systems of the Atlantic, the causal relationship between
British slavery and industrialization becomes less clear.26
For example, Eltis and Engerman argue it was actually the French system that
experienced the most expeditious rate of increase during the seventeenth and early eighteenth
century. According to Eltis and Engerman, the French Atlantic plantations produced 17 percent
more sugar and 43 percent more crops by value than did British plantations in the years just prior
23
Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660-1800 / Prepared for the Economic
History Society by Kenneth Morgan, New Studies in Economic and Social History (Cambridge ; New York :
Cambridge University Press, c2000., 2000), 49.
24
Ibid.
25
Eltis and Engerman, “The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain,” 135.
26
Eltis and Engerman, “The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain,” 129.
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to the American Revolution.27 However, very few historians, if any at all, identify the French
Caribbean plantation economy as a driving force behind French industrialization. Likewise, the
Portuguese-Brazilian slave system compromised a much larger portion of the Portuguese
economy than did the produce of the British-Caribbean to the British Economy. Yet, the British
managed to develop an industrialized economy long before the Portuguese did. Therefore, when
comparing Great Britain to the other European imperial powers involved in Atlantic
colonization, it becomes clear that the overall productive size of a plantation system in relation to
a country’s national economy is not a simple direct correlation to industrial growth.
While the direct connection between plantation production and industrial growth has
been refuted by Eltis and Engerman, scholars like David Richardson, Joseph Inikori, and Ralph
Davis argue that the true value of the West Indian colonies lie in their strategic location, for the
colonies provided a “new and inexhaustible market” for British made products28 In fact, the
entire British Atlantic plantation system was designed so that the British colonies would only
export their raw materials to the mother country, and then use the profits from those exports to
import strictly British produced commodities. In other words, the British philosophy had “no
room for the open door.”29 British colonial prosperity was predicated on monopolizing colonial
trade which, as Williams phrases it, reduced the colonies to “a state of permanent vassalage.”30
As Davis points out, this restricted status of the colonies was reinforced by the British
Navigation Acts. Enacted in the early era of West Indian trade, these laws outlawed the colonial
use of foreign ships for exporting goods and restricted colonial trade from entering into the hands
27
Ibid., 130–131.
Williams, Capitalism & Slavery, 51.
29
Ibid., 55.
30
Ibid., 56.
28
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of foreign powers. On one hand, the acts kept all profits derived from the British Atlantic system
within the empire, strengthening the British economy from within. Over time, Davis argues the
laws “moulded the infant colonial trade” to establish the “required character” needed for the
British economy to become self-sufficient.31 On the other, the laws pushed other competing
powers like the Dutch out of the British Atlantic. Though the Dutch had their own colonies in the
new world, they primarily grew wealthy from supplying credit, transporting colonial goods, and
purchasing British raw materials. They were essentially reaping an economic reward from being
what would now be recognized as a middleman The Navigation laws prevented the Dutch and
other foreign empires from financially entering into the British Atlantic colonial system, making
the British empire all the more stronger.
As David Richardson and Ralph Davis note, the opening of the British Caribbean islands
as a market for British goods coincided with a distinct increase in British export power.
Richardson claims that the export share of industrial output rose from 7 or 8 percent to 16 or 17
percent by the end of the eighteenth century. 32 In the years between 1700 and 1774, Davis
calculates that the British export economy constituted a third of British manufacturing, and the
rate of British exports actually doubled within the period.33 However, this increase was
happening at a time when British exports to continental Europe were undergoing a period of
stagnation. British goods had “very nearly reached a saturation point in their European
markets.”34 According to Davis, British exports to Europe rose only slightly from £3,201,000
from 1699-1701 to £3,617,000 between 1772 and 1774. England’s rise in exports during this
31
Ralph Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700-1774,” The Economic History Review, New Series, 15, no. 2 (January 1,
1962): 297, doi:10.2307/2598999.
32
Richardson, “The Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748-1776,” 739.
33
Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, 159.
34
Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700-1774,” 295.
10
period is due in large part to its increased exportation of goods to the Atlantic. Whereas in the
period between 1699 and 1701, British exportation to Africa and the Americas accounted for
only £475,000, by 1772 and 1774 British exports to those markets rose to £3,681,000, overtaking
continental Europe as Britain’s primary market.35
Richardson attributes this increase in exportation to West Indian sugar production. He
refutes Eltis and Engerman’s assessment that the British plantation system had little correlation
to industrial expansion by arguing that sugar production played a role in establishing the West
Indies as a market for British goods. According to Richardson, changing patterns in English
dietary consumption that emphasized the use of sugar increased the overall revenue of West
Indian sugar plantations. As a result, the purchasing power of West Indian planters expanded,
making it easier for them to buy a larger number of British goods. For example, Richardson
notes that Caribbean sugar exportation to Great Britain rose from £1.5 million to £3.25 million
annually between 1750 and 1775. Accordingly, the exportation of British goods to the Caribbean
rose from £732 thousand between 1746 and 1750 to over £1.3 million between 1771 and 1775.36
This correlation indicates that the West Indian market for British made goods was expanding at
remarkable levels. However, the correlation leaves out the less profitable but equally as
important indirect exportation of British goods from the other English colonies. Instead of
dealing solely with merchants based out of England, Caribbean planters would often buy large
amounts of “foodstuffs, packaging, and building materials” from both Ireland and British North
America.37 Just as the profits of sugar production created a market for British exports in the
35
Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, 159. See table XII.I. Data comes from Ralph Davis’s “English and
Foreign Trade 1700-1774.”
36
Richardson, “The Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748-1776,” 762.
37
Ibid., 763.
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Caribbean, the revenues generated by this indirect trade increased the buying capacity for both
the Irish and the North American colonists, creating a stronger market in those respective areas.
In sum, the growth of sugar established the West Indies as a viable market for British goods
while also simultaneously fueling the economic and productive growth of other colonial markets.
However, as pivotal as sugar was in expanding foreign markets, Joseph Inikori argues
that the importance of sugar pales in comparison to the importance of British cotton textiles. In
fact, Inikori goes so far as to say that the “Industrial Revolution in England” was “little more
than a revolution in eighteenth century cotton textile production.”38 During the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, England primarily imported their cotton goods from India. Indian cotton’s
popularity grew as the English became enamored with its relative inexpensiveness and high
quality of both texture and color. It was especially popular in England’s lower classes since they
could not afford the expensive prices of English wools or silks. However, this marked shift in
preferences to Indian cotton diminished England’s market for domestically produced wools and
silks. As a result, in 1701, Parliament passed a protective law making it illegal for foreign made
silks and calicos (cotton fabrics) to be worn in England and Wales. Yet, the law did allow for
plain white calicoes to be brought in and printed in England where the fabrics would then be sold
within England or exported out of the country. In 1722, Parliament readjusted the standing law
and closed the “home market” to imported white calicoes, but left open the possibility of
exporting those fabrics.39
Inikori argues that the prohibition of foreign calicos from the domestic market allowed
the English to undergo a process of what would later come to be known as “import substitution
38
39
Joseph E Inikori, Slavery and the revolution in cotton textile production in England, 1992, 145–146.
Ibid., 155.
12
industrialization” which provided the necessary economic “foundation for the cotton textile
industry in England.”40 Import substitution industrialization, also known as ISI, is a process in
which countries cease importing items and replace those foreign goods with their own
domestically manufactured products. The British underwent a similar process when they began
producing their own cotton goods out of plain white calicoes instead of importing printed fabrics
from India. However, these cotton goods were designed specifically for foreign and colonial
consumption. As Inikori notes, it took some time for “English cottons to establish a reputation in
export markets,” but their popularity was aided and subsequently sustained by “the slave
economy of the Atlantic system.”41As slavery expanded on the New World plantations, the need
to clothe the slaves also expanded. Aided in large part by the Navigation acts, British planters
relied on the importation of these cheap English made cotton fabrics to clothe their slaves.
Inikori asserts that, in 1759, close to 50 percent of total cotton exports were sent to the
plantations that littered the British Atlantic.42 However, 1759 was a watershed year for cotton
exports to the Atlantic. In years prior, like 1750, cotton exports to the Atlantic only accounted for
19 percent of total cotton exports. Even ten years after the watershed year of 1759, well after the
trade had been established, cotton exports to the Caribbean amassed just under 30 percent of all
cotton exports.
While the exportation of cotton to the New World made up a relatively sizable market for
cotton exports, Inikori argues that the major market for English textiles laid in West Africa.
British manufacturing specialized in fabrics that imitated but in no way matched the quality of
Indian calicoes which were in such high demand in West Africa. Nevertheless, the British traded
40
Ibid., 154.
Ibid., 156–157.
42
Ibid., 158. See Table 2. Data comes from Wadsworth and Mann, 1931.
41
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their newly manufactured knockoff cottons in West Africa in exchange for African slaves that
were to be sent to the plantations of the British Atlantic. Inikori claims that in 1739, 82 percent
of all English cotton exportation was sent to West Africa. Similarly, in the years between 1750
and 1802, the African share of cotton exportation could be found anywhere between 50 and 94
percent of the total share.43 Inikori’s data suggests that it was, in fact, West Africa and not the
British Caribbean fueling British textile production. His data erodes the notion that the West
Indian plantation system was the only market spurning on further industrialization. Yet, even
though Inikori directs his scholarly attention away from the West Indies, it should be noted that
the creation of the African cotton market hinged on the Caribbean demand for African slaves. In
other words, even if the West African market was the larger market for English textiles, the
creation and continuation of the West African market was predicated on the slave system of the
British Caribbean.
In sum, Rodney’s arguments in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa stand as a strong
affirmation of Williams’s original argument put forth in Capitalism and Slavery. However,
Williams’s notion that Atlantic slavery “financed” the Industrial Revolution has since been
critiqued in a way that has created two separate oppositional positions.44 The first, held by
scholars like Eltis and Engerman, maintains that slavery—in terms of both industrial investment
and economic production—was relatively inconsequential. While they would agree that the West
Indian slave system was a factor in the buildup to the Industrial Revolution, they would refrain
from identifying slavery as the dominant or sole economic force behind industrial development.
The other, more nuanced, position holds that while the West Indian slave system was an
43
44
Inikori, Slavery and the revolution in cotton textile production in England, 158.
Williams, Capitalism & Slavery, 52.
14
important component to industrialization, its importance derived not from its overall productive
powers but from its role in providing the English export economy a market for British goods. It
is this second position—held by Richardson, Inikori, and Davis—that generally gets the most
scholarly traction, for it occupies an intellectual middle ground between Williams and scholars
like Eltis and Engerman. It is also the position that takes into consideration the British Atlantic’s
immense amount of trans-Atlantic interconnectedness and economic interdependency. To put it
in another way, this position—more so than the other two—accounts for the many different
moving parts and indirect factors associated with the slavery and the British Atlantic economy.
Therefore, to conclude, it is this position that most accurately assesses the complex relationship
between Atlantic Slavery and British Industrial growth.
15
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15, no. 2 (January 1, 1962): 285–303. doi:10.2307/2598999.
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Industrializing Britain.” The Journal of Economic History 60, no. 1 (March 1, 2000):
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