The Decline Thesis of British Slavery sinceEconocide

Abstract

Appearing in 1944, Capitalism and Slavery was a comprehensive attempt to explain the rise and fall of British colonial slavery in relation to the evolution of European world-capitalism.1 In dealing with the final stages of slavery, Eric Williams developed a two-pronged argument linking its demise to changes in the British imperial economy. The first prong related to changes in the structure of economic relationships between the metropolis and the colonies. Down to the American Revolutionary War, concluded Williams, British slavery, including the Atlantic slave trade, was a growing and complementary element of the imperial economy. The slave system provided an ever-increasing amount of tropical staples, a protected market for British manufactures, and a source of British metropolitan capital. In a number of ways, the slave economy thus helped to fuel the industrial revolution. Williams’ second prong related to political economy, to an economic ideology designated as mercantilism. It sustained the multiple linkages of the system by assuming the need for a protected imperial zone in which British manufactures, trade and maritime skills could develop.