9 - The Global Atlantic Production Driver and the Imperial Primitive Accumulation of British Capital

Summary

Chapter 9 is the first of two chapters that provides a non-Eurocentric explanation of the rise of modern industrial capitalism in Britain—focussing here on the ‘global-Atlantic production driver’. This chapter argues that the Atlantic production sites comprised an important source of British industrialization. While the empire, especially in the Caribbean, was particularly important, as was the post-imperial United States after 1793, nevertheless the role of Black slavery provided the lowest common denominator of the American/Caribbean contribution. But while there were important global causal factors, I also factor in the role of British developmental agency under conditions of global uneven and combined development into the explanation. For other great colonial powers such as France did not make the breakthrough into industrialization. The analysis of the American/Caribbean contribution unfolds in stages. First, I argue that slave-produced raw cotton in the Caribbean and subsequently in the United States was one vital input. I quantify the overall Caribbean contribution together with that made by imperial military spending as supplying between 38 and 51 per cent of British domestic investment. Finally, I consider the twin roles of slavery and imperial warfare in driving forward the British iron and steel industrialization.