4 - Slavery, Atlantic trade and capital accumulation

Summary

Another line of analysis in determining the contribution of transatlantic commerce to British economic growth emphasises the flow of capital from slavery and the Atlantic trading system into British industry. This linkage underpins many passages in Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery. A central concern is the argument that capital accumulation in Britain was boosted by the wealth produced by the Caribbean plantations, wealth based on the productivity of slaves and the profits of the sugar trade. This seems an obvious mode of enquiry, for the West Indian islands were the richest part of the first British Empire. It also seems reasonable to assume that entrepreneurs investing in the Caribbean, so far a distance from home, felt they could achieve better returns there than from channelling funds into domestic sectors of the British economy. The scale of West Indian wealth was recognised in the eighteenth century. Planters reckoned that the value of the British Caribbean islands amounted to £50–60 million in 1775 and to £70 million in 1789 (Drescher, 1977: 22–3). Contemporaries acknowledged the economic status of the West India plantocracy, notably the large numbers of absentees who lived in fine mansions with country estates rather than in the heat and dust of the Caribbean.