Eighty-year-old study of British slave trade is back in the bestsellers list – Capitalism and Slavery, by the future first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago Eric Williams, argues that the abolition of slavery was motivated by economic, not moral, concerns

7 comments

  2. I wouldn’t think this as an all too controversial analysis. Economics is the driving force behind basically all of human history, concern for the effective management of limited resources is essentially the story of human civillisation.

    Does it matter though? Would contemporary injustice in Britain get more of a ‘free pass’ if they historically acted with conscience? I don’t think it should. Injustice is injustice, it is absolute and defined always in relation to a contemporary reality, and the past means nothing in and of itself. I also don’t think it says anything special about Britain either – indeed, the economic benefit from slavery to African elites saw them perpetuate it for centuries, preceeding and proceeding atlantic slavery. It seems to me that, the reality of economic interest underpinning organised human activity, is best taken as a warning to not tolerate a) elites monopolising influence, and b) inequality.

    I’m convinced that many things happen because of economics, even if just as a mild consistent pressure, and it underlies much of what we think of as unrelated realities and decisions. I saw a lecture a few years back delivered by a public health professional. He was utterly convinced, and I think he was right, that euthanasia will inevitably be accepted and legalised over time because of the economic pressures of keeping larger and larger numbrs of very sick people alive.

    My own thoughts – how about homosexuality? A certain level of homosexual predisposition in people, with environmental triggers of scarcity and a sense of over-population, triggering higher rates of homosexuality in people. What about shifting perceptions of a suitable age for children to breed with eachother/grown adults? The longer and more secure our lifespans, the more disgust we feel at child sex – the less so, the less digust.

  4. I’ve heard this. Anyone know if the people made to live and work as slaves managed to frustrate the system or was it simply advances in technology? Looks like there might be some modern day lessons there.

  5. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, tbh. It can be the moral thing to do (read: wins votes) and also financially, politically and socially beneficial to modernise your infrastructure.

  6. I wish it was due to moral concerns but when I read stuff like this I do have to wonder… Do the people who’s lives change for the better (in this case slaves becoming free) really care how it happened or what motivated those in power to make the change?

  7. Not sure that thesis holds up. The anti-slavery movement was certainly motivated by morality with church organisations or their supporters taking the lead in pressing for its abolition. The economic argument seems wrong too as UK governments spent untold millions employing the Royal Navy to suppress and finally eliminate the ‘Trade on the high seas. The Government also **compensated** slave owners for the ‘loss’ of their freed slaves to an amount which represented 5% of the then GDP.

    The other aspect is if Human Slavery was so “uneconomic” why did it continue for 30 plus more years in the US and was only stopped by their Civil War? A prime underlying cause of that War as pre-Confederacy states wished to *expand* slavery to other states and territories and to annexe Cuba and enslave people there. Had the Confederacy won US slavery would have just continued on and on. 🙁

    I’m no historian, but it doesn’t add up for me.

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