Capitalism and Slavery

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Author(s):

Eric Williams

Label: The University of North Carolina Press
Publisher(s):

The University of North Carolina Press

Studio: The University of North Carolina Press
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
Binding: Paperback
List Price: $22.95
Our Price: $17.95
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide.

Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

Customer Reviews

Highly recommend this book

This book was somewhat difficult to read because it was published in England in the 1800's. The language was a little different than what we use today. Once I got use to the language and the difference in grammar it was a lot easier to read. This book is very informative. It can be technical but if your looking for a book that explains the economics of slavery this is the book for you. It focuses on the West Indies and Europe, especially Britain. There are better books for the slave trade in the colonies. I would recommmend this book to anybody who wants to learn about the effects of slavery on the economy.

Capitalism and Slavery is definitely food for the brain.

This is a very, very excellent piece of work. I read and studied this book when I was a teenager in high school in Trinidad. At that time I was required to study the book as part of our Caribbean History syllabus. That was over 13 years ago. So as an adult I decided to purchase the book and appreciate the information. And boy this was the best decision I ever made. I recommend people of all races and backgrounds to read this book. As the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Dr. Eric Williams has left us with a gift.

Capitalism and Slavery

The basic theory underlying Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery is that slavery in the colonies, particularly the West Indies so far as this analysis is concerned, brought about capitalism, and thereby led to its own decline.

The first five chapters of the book explain the nature of British economics prior to the American Revolution. Synthesizing information rather than expressing his own view, Williams discusses triangular trade among England, the African coast, and the slave-holding colonies. In essence, England exported goods and ships, Africa exported slaves, and the colonies exported slave-produced raw materials.

American independence destroyed the mercantilist scheme of triangular trading. The ex-colonies now had no incentive to trade with the West Indies at their monopoly prices, instead turning to French islands for their sugar, at considerably lower prices. Consequently, British businessmen were no longer interested in giving economic protection to the West Indies because doing so without mainland North America would cost them money. One basic tenet of Adam Smith's capitalism is that business should be efficient and profitable, and monopolies simply were neither. The laissez-faire approach, or Smith's "invisible hand," meant eliminating monopolies and letting economics take its course.

During this time the Industrial Revolution also occurred, generating new machinery, most notably Watt's steam engine, and simplifying the extraction of raw materials. Ironworks were now much more efficient, for example, as was the process of turning wool into useable cloth. These advantages put Great Britain in a position to economically dominate the world. During this time also Spanish colonies in South America began breaking away from Spain, opening up vast regions for British trade. Similarly, Asia became a possibility for a wide variety of goods, most notably, in the scope of Williams' book, East Indian sugar. All these opportunities and Britain's economic superiority culminated in the end of monopolistic practices.

Slavery had precipitated these developments by generating fantastic wealth through triangular trading; without slavery, that trade scheme would not have existed. Once these developments came to pass, however, slavery proved itself largely pass?. Without the monopoly on West Indian sugar, slave trading became substantially less profitable. At the same time, when the American mainland split from Great Britain, suddenly Britain was no longer dependent on slavery for economic success, but instead could be a global distributor for goods. Furthermore, abolitionists in England gave cry to the crime of slavery, since they were no longer directly dependent on it, and eventually Britain banned the slave trade.

Williams's analysis is interesting and well worth reading. That said, his assertion that slavery declined is only partly true; it was alive and well in the southern United States. Furthermore, while Williams claims slavery brought about triangular trading, which in turn brought about the Industrial Revolution, one wonders if slavery simply expedited the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, he focuses to a significant extent on British humanitarianism in ending slavery; cynically, one must consider the relevance of slavery to those humanitarians, and how many there were after the Industrial Revolution.

A wonderful thesis withstanding the tests of time

I recently read this book for graduate school and highly recommend it. This book was written in 1940 and while critics have been able to pick at a few details within the book, noone has every successfully disproven his entire thesis - that the rise of industrial capitalism would not have been possible without the existence profits derived from slavery and the slave trade. Williams does a splended job of illustrating how slavery influenced all facets of the triangular trade, which in turn shaped Britian into an economic power. It also brings put the economic reasons for the abolitionist movement (namely, that abolitionists were motivated by free-trade, no necessarily compassion in their opposition to the slave trade).This is a must-have book for anyone interested in a strictly economic look at slavery, it's rise, fall and demise.

Misunderstanding of Islamic slavery

The last two reviewers who seemed to criticize Williams for not discussing other forms of slavery miss the point. Williams was not engaged in some sort of West bashing but attempted to explain the significance of slavery in the development of the Caribbean. Insofar as Islam is concerned, the reviewers once again miss the essential point. Rather than investigate what Islam actually says about slavery they go with a knee-jerk assumption. Here is what Kecia Ali has written about slavery in Islamic society:

"The Qur'an, which Muslims believe to have been revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, makes numerous references to slaves and slavery (e.g., Q. 2.178; 16.75; 30.28). Like numerous passages in the Hebrew bible and the New Testament, the Qur'an assumes the permissibility of owning slaves, which was an established practice before its revelation. The Qur'an does not explicitly condemn slavery or attempt to abolish it. Nonetheless, it does provide a number of regulations designed to ameliorate the situation of slaves. It recommends freeing slaves, especially "believing" slaves (Q. 2.177). Manumission of a slave is required as expiation for certain misdeeds (Q. 4.92; 58.3) and another verse states that masters should allow slaves to purchase their own freedom (Q. 24.33).

The Qur'an also suggests certain means of integrating slaves, some of whom were enslaved after being captured in war, into the Muslim community. It allows slaves to marry (either other slaves or free persons; Q. 24.32; 2.221; 4.25) and prohibits owners from prostituting unwilling female slaves (Q. 24.33). Despite this protection against one form of sexual exploitation, female slaves do not have the right to grant or deny sexual access to themselves. Instead, the Qur'an permits men to have sexual access to "what their right hands possess," meaning female captives or slaves (Q. 23.5-6; 70.29-30). This was widely accepted and practiced among early Muslims; the Prophet Muhammad, for example, kept a slave-concubine (Mariya the Copt) who was given to him as a gift by the Roman governor of Alexandria.

Traditional Islamic law (fiqh) elaborates significantly on the Qur'anic material concerning slavery. The enslavement of war captives is regulated, along with the purchase and sale of slaves. While it is not permissible to enslave other Muslims, the jurists clarify that if a non-Muslim converts to Islam after enslavement, he or she remains a slave and may be lawfully purchased and sold like any other slave. (This rule closes a potential loophole allowing for slaves to gain their freedom by the simple fact of conversion.) The law also prescribes penalties for slave owners who maltreat or abuse their slaves; these penalties can include forced manumission of the slave without compensation to the owner.

Islamic law devotes special attention to regulating the practice of slave marriage and concubinage, in order to determine the paternity and/or ownership of children born to a female slave. A man cannot simultaneously own and be married to the same female slave. The male owner of a female slave can either marry her off to a different man, thus renouncing his own sexual access to her, or he may take her as his own concubine, using her sexually himself. Both situations have a specific effect on the status of any children she bears. When female slaves are married off, any children born from the marriage are slaves belonging to the mother's owner, though legal paternity is established for her husband. When a master takes his own female slave as a concubine, by contrast, any children she bears are free and legally the children of her owner, with the same status as any children born to him in a legal marriage to a free wife. The slave who bears her master's child becomes an umm walad (literally, mother of a child), gaining certain protections. Most importantly, she cannot be sold and she is automatically freed upon her master's death."

As for the Aztec, they had a system of slavery that also came with a bundle of rights, far different from the chattel slavery of the European variety.

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