Eighty years late: book on slave economy is finally published in UK(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
Eighty years late: book on slave economy is finally published in UK
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/23/eighty-years-late-groundbreaking-work-on-slave-economy-is-finally-published-in-uk
2 comments
There are three authors here: Eric Williams, who wrote the book; Donna Ferguson, the author of the linked-to piece; and Kehinde Andrews, who is one of several people quoted in the story.
I point this out because you quoted Andrews, and it took a re-reading me to realize you weren't quoting the first two authors.
Ferguson describes it as "It was all this wealth created by slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries that powered the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, Williams argued."
This is from the preface to the Williams's 1966 publication, at https://archive.org/details/capitalismslaver00will/page/n3/m... :
> The present study is an attempt to place in historical perspective the relationship between early capitalism as exemplified bv Great Britain, and the Negro slave trade, Negro slavery and the general colonial trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Every age rewrites history, but particularly ours, which has been forced by events to re-evaluate our conceptions of history and economic and political development. The progress of the Industrial Revolution has been treated more or less adequately in many books both learned and popular, and its lessons are fairly well established in the consciousness of the educated class in general and of those people in particular who are responsible for the creation and guidance of informed opinion. On the other hand, while material has been accumulated and books have been written about the period which preceded the Industrial Revolution, the world-wide and interrelated nature of the commerce of that period, its direct effect upon the development of the Industrial Revolution, and the heritage which it has left even upon the civilization of today have not anywhere been placed in compact and yet comprehensive perspective. This study is an attempt to do so, without, however, failing to give indications of the economic origin of well-known social, political, and even intellectual currents.
> The book, however, is not an essay in ideas or interpretation. It is strictly an economic study of the role of Negro slavery and the slave trade in providing the capital which financed the Industrial Revolution in England and of mature industrial capitalism in destroying the slave system. It is therefore first a study in English economic history and second in West Indian and Negro history. It is not a study of the institution of slavery but of the contribution of slavery to the development of British capitalism.
However, pointing out that a Dr. Pangloss can argue that $BAD_THING in history was essential, at it helped shape modern life, and therefore helps justify $BAD_THING, is to ignore that perhaps we don't live in the best of all possible worlds.
I point this out because you quoted Andrews, and it took a re-reading me to realize you weren't quoting the first two authors.
Ferguson describes it as "It was all this wealth created by slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries that powered the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, Williams argued."
This is from the preface to the Williams's 1966 publication, at https://archive.org/details/capitalismslaver00will/page/n3/m... :
> The present study is an attempt to place in historical perspective the relationship between early capitalism as exemplified bv Great Britain, and the Negro slave trade, Negro slavery and the general colonial trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Every age rewrites history, but particularly ours, which has been forced by events to re-evaluate our conceptions of history and economic and political development. The progress of the Industrial Revolution has been treated more or less adequately in many books both learned and popular, and its lessons are fairly well established in the consciousness of the educated class in general and of those people in particular who are responsible for the creation and guidance of informed opinion. On the other hand, while material has been accumulated and books have been written about the period which preceded the Industrial Revolution, the world-wide and interrelated nature of the commerce of that period, its direct effect upon the development of the Industrial Revolution, and the heritage which it has left even upon the civilization of today have not anywhere been placed in compact and yet comprehensive perspective. This study is an attempt to do so, without, however, failing to give indications of the economic origin of well-known social, political, and even intellectual currents.
> The book, however, is not an essay in ideas or interpretation. It is strictly an economic study of the role of Negro slavery and the slave trade in providing the capital which financed the Industrial Revolution in England and of mature industrial capitalism in destroying the slave system. It is therefore first a study in English economic history and second in West Indian and Negro history. It is not a study of the institution of slavery but of the contribution of slavery to the development of British capitalism.
However, pointing out that a Dr. Pangloss can argue that $BAD_THING in history was essential, at it helped shape modern life, and therefore helps justify $BAD_THING, is to ignore that perhaps we don't live in the best of all possible worlds.
I think the author doesn't even mean it and instead just wishes to convey a general sense that British economic success is inextricably linked to injustice.
By making this argument instead that the industrial revolution "would not have happened without" slavery allows the reader to infer that slavery was therefore justifiable on the basis that we wouldn't have modern medicine or modern food production techniques without it.