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Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution [pdf]

14 points by hunglee2 4y ago

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Classic text from 1944 on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_and_Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_and_Slavery > 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. > 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. I was thinking about this the other day when someone linked a weird defense of the roots of US capitalism in slavery, and attacking historians generally as being "too political", where they were trying to claim that yes okay the horrific slavery did actually happen, but you couldn't prove that slavery helped to establish captalism in the USA, because in theory, it wasn't necessary for capitalism and if you couldn't prove it then talking about it was just politics not history. Some short biographical sketches of some of these slave traders: https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/the-slave-trade-and-abolition/read-the-signs/ https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/t...
kwere 4y ago
slavery is a drag for any economy, slaves dont generate taxes, dont upskill themselves and dont build wealth. profits generated from their labour is directed towards a owner class that usually is against any technological progress than can undermine their wealth model. otherwise slaves are a security risk and need always to be controlled , wasting additional money on security (tangentially: now china spends more in internal security than in the military) and cant deployed on war and need duuring instable timese to be controlled more diverting meeded resources. basically slaves fuel a low skilled economy controlled by reactionary oligarchs that isnt competitive in the "game of nations", a reason why russia has been underdeveloped for most of its history and thats why most of african kingdoms couldnt modernize effectively [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wim0yAkEnOQ&ab_channel=Kraut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wim0yAkEnOQ&ab_channel=Kraut
jjk166 4y ago
The findings seem to suggest the opposite causal relationship. Places with higher wealth and more inudstrialization would have the capital and food production to support more people working on cash crop agriculture. The study finds that in places with high slavery investment wages were higher and worker welfare was increasing, while landowner profits were down due to reduced labor availability, suggesting quite strongly that the slavery was compensating for a pre-existing labor shortage. Further, while bad weather could by chance increase slave mortality on crossing, it seems reasonable to assume that wealthier and more technologically advanced areas would be employing better ships and utilizing more effective methods of ensuring their cargo reached their destinations, so crossing mortality can not be taken as an independent variable. As for the geographic connection, it hardly seems surprising that major port cities also became manufacturing centers.
- cafard 4y ago
  My recollection is that John Newton (a former slaver captain) said that mortality on Spanish and perhaps Portuguese ships was lower than on British ships in the slave trade.

14 points by hunglee2 4y ago

Classic text from 1944 on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_and_Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_and_Slavery > 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. > 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. I was thinking about this the other day when someone linked a weird defense of the roots of US capitalism in slavery, and attacking historians generally as being "too political", where they were trying to claim that yes okay the horrific slavery did actually happen, but you couldn't prove that slavery helped to establish captalism in the USA, because in theory, it wasn't necessary for capitalism and if you couldn't prove it then talking about it was just politics not history. Some short biographical sketches of some of these slave traders: https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/the-slave-trade-and-abolition/read-the-signs/ https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/t...

kwere 4y ago

slavery is a drag for any economy, slaves dont generate taxes, dont upskill themselves and dont build wealth. profits generated from their labour is directed towards a owner class that usually is against any technological progress than can undermine their wealth model. otherwise slaves are a security risk and need always to be controlled , wasting additional money on security (tangentially: now china spends more in internal security than in the military) and cant deployed on war and need duuring instable timese to be controlled more diverting meeded resources. basically slaves fuel a low skilled economy controlled by reactionary oligarchs that isnt competitive in the "game of nations", a reason why russia has been underdeveloped for most of its history and thats why most of african kingdoms couldnt modernize effectively [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wim0yAkEnOQ&ab_channel=Kraut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wim0yAkEnOQ&ab_channel=Kraut

jjk166 4y ago

The findings seem to suggest the opposite causal relationship. Places with higher wealth and more inudstrialization would have the capital and food production to support more people working on cash crop agriculture. The study finds that in places with high slavery investment wages were higher and worker welfare was increasing, while landowner profits were down due to reduced labor availability, suggesting quite strongly that the slavery was compensating for a pre-existing labor shortage. Further, while bad weather could by chance increase slave mortality on crossing, it seems reasonable to assume that wealthier and more technologically advanced areas would be employing better ships and utilizing more effective methods of ensuring their cargo reached their destinations, so crossing mortality can not be taken as an independent variable. As for the geographic connection, it hardly seems surprising that major port cities also became manufacturing centers.

cafard 4y ago
My recollection is that John Newton (a former slaver captain) said that mortality on Spanish and perhaps Portuguese ships was lower than on British ships in the slave trade.