Revival of ‘minor factor’ school in discussions of slavery and the British economy

“Colonialism and the slave trade were, at best, minor factors in Britain’s prosperity and may have been net loss makers.” This according to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). In support, Kemi Badenoch, UK secretary of state for Business and Trade, said that “It would be wrong to attribute UK’s wealth and economic success to its colonial history or racial privilege”. Both the publication by the IEA and the retort by the secretary of state reminded me of the old anti-Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery days, more specifically of Seymour Drescher’s 1977 Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition, which we thought Caribbean economic historians had laid to rest.

In his classic analysis and refutation of Eric Williams’s 1944 thesis, Drescher argued that Britain’s abolition of the “slave trade” resulted not from the diminishing value of slavery but from the British public’s mobilisation against it. I know that scholars in the UK, and more recently Amina Taylor in her response in The Gleaner (May 25), have rubbished the ‘findings’ as, in Taylor’s terms, “a clumsy attempt at a rebuttal to those who have been using the actual data and statistics associated with slavery and colonialism to demand a new conversation about reparations and restorative justice.” But, at the risk of being accused by Caribbean economic historians of “flogging a dead horse” (with apologies to fellow animal lovers), I thought I would engage the assistance of a young economic historian, Dexnell Peters of the Department of History & Archaeology at The University of the West Indies, Mona, who grew up on the controversy, to rehearse the reasons that this ‘minor factor’ argument needs to be debunked – again.

First of all, I asked him to react to the resurrection of the view in Imperial Measurement: A Cost–Benefit Analysis of Western Colonialism by Kristian Niemietz out of the UK Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) that the net economic impact of Britain’s vast empire on Britain was negligible, even negative. I also asked whether the report sought to revive some older arguments, like those presented by Seymour Drescher. He agreed that Drescher’s ‘Econocide’ heavily attacked Williams on his reasons for the decline of chattel enslavement in the British context, and that, although mostly focussed on abolition, the book touched on aspects of the debates around the origins of the Industrial Revolution. Drescher highlighted the significance of cotton to the Industrial Revolution but said that “throughout most of the eighteenth century, cotton was not an exclusively slave-grown product, much less a monopoly of the British slave system”.

MORE SUBSTANTIAL

Peters, however, believes that perhaps even more substantial and relevant to the issue at hand would be the work of Stanley Engerman and David Eltis, who, in a journal article titled The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain, which diminished the contribution of chattel enslavement of Africans to the Industrial Revolution, raised the issue of prohibitive defensive costs for British colonies and emphasised that, if slavery were so crucial, then other European powers, particularly the French, should have seen earlier industrial development. These are all topics that have remained under heavy debate, says Peters, referencing in particular Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, who have presented a robust rebuttal to some of these ideas, drawing on a range of recent work.

Berg and Hudson make the very important point that “there have been few attempts to convey the fuller picture that could be provided by adding together profits from the slave trade, profits from plantations and profits from plantation trade”. They further emphasise that “few historians have attempted these measures in recent years despite the existence of better data than was available in the last century”. Peters also insists that, despite the existence of better data, opposing conclusions continue to be made. For example, projects like University College London’s Legacies of British Slavery have made very clear that slavery produced substantial wealth for Britain.

I also pushed him on the issue of whether the IEA and supporters appear to be trying to oppose Eric Williams’ theses, and asked him to rehearse those theses articulated back in 1944, especially for the benefit of history students who are required to study Williams’ work. His response was that Williams’ work is really concerned with the transatlantic trafficking in enslaved Africans, chattel enslavement, the Atlantic economy based on chattel enslavement, and how these contributed to significant British economic development. Essentially, Williams argued that capitalism and slavery provided the main streams of income that would have then been invested in the Industrial Revolution, for example.

INTERCONNECTED INDUSTRIES

Eric Williams, Peters reminded me, also explained that many other interconnected industries led to developments in other sectors, like banking and insurance, making it impossible to separate between domestic and overseas developments, as some try to do; and then, of course, as soon as labour became less profitable, or certainly there were more profitable avenues elsewhere, one then began to see the ‘legs’ of slavery being undermined increasingly by mature capitalism. In a nutshell, Peters insists, “there are contributions of slavery towards the industrial revolution; towards modern British economic development.”

These justifications for Britain’s rise to economic prominence have long been articulated by other prominent economic historians, for example, by my co-author of the book, Trading Souls: Europe’s Trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans, Hilary Beckles, who was primarily responsible for Chapter 9, ‘The Transatlantic Trade and Western Economic Development’. Beckles emphasised that the colonial markets in Africa, the Caribbean and America, stimulated the new industries that led the way in the Industrial Revolution, and gave Britain a flying start with respect to industrialisation. Eighteenth century commentators were also clear in their understanding that the markets, profits, and financial skills generated by the Atlantic trading complex had triggered an upsurge in economic activity, and sponsored Britain’s reputation as the leading global military and naval power in Africa and the Americas. The military and commercial confidence of Britain was based on its success in securing the ‘lion’s share’ of the 18th century trans-Atlantic trafficking in enslaved Africans and the Caribbean sugar market. These achievements and competencies provided the business class and the state with an effective global perspective on national development. Success was also symbolised in the fact that the financial centre of Europe shifted from Amsterdam to London.

In the end, Peters and others believe that the report seems clearly intended as a pushback against the wave of new research into legacies of enslavement, and agrees with Taylor in her response to this report in The Gleaner, that the IEA report seems to be an effort to stifle the new conversation emerging around the legacies of slavery and reparatory justice.

Send feedback to reparation.research@uwimona.edu.jm