Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams, Penguin Modern Classics, paperback,
February 2022, £9
First published in the US in 1944 and later in England by Andre Deutsch in 1964, Capitalism and Slavery has not been easy to obtain in Britain until this new Penguin edition, although it has been continuously available and widely studied in Europe, West Africa, and the Americas.
It is not too far-fetched to suppose that the reason Eric William’s book has gained so little attention in Britain is because it concerns the history of the relationship of this country with the West Indies, or the Caribbean as it is more commonly referred to today. It is an economic study of the role of slavery and the slave trade in providing the capital which financed the industrial revolution in England and of mature industrial capital in destroying the slave system. In 1937, the radical publisher Frederic Warburg brought out George Padmore’s Africa and World Peace and CLR James’ World Revolution, 1917-1936 and the Rise and Fall of the Third International. But he could not bring himself to publish Williams’ argument that England abolished the slave trade principally for economic rather than moral, humanitarian reasons. ‘I could never publish such a book’ wrote Warburg in defence of one of the most treasured myths of British parliamentarianism, that it voted against slavery in the name of humanity.
The basic thesis of Williams’ book is that different modes of production prevail in different epochs. His study covers three historical periods: the first is the growth of colonialism; the second the long duration of mercantilism and the growth of wealth through the monopoly slave production; the third the transfer of the wealth accumulated by colonial ownership into capital for investment in industrial production in Britain. Williams tells this history using primary sources and quotations from the leading ideologues of each period and chronicles the financial and banking transactions of the time.
The first colonial period of the 17th century
The first period of colonial expansion followed the 1492 voyages of Chrisopher Columbus to the ‘New World’. In 1494 Spain and Portugal, the two dominant powers, divided up by papal decree the ‘new’ lands outside Europe along a meridian line running through South America: the lands west of the line went to Spain and east went to Portugal. This was rejected, of course, by an increasing number of European countries and the French king protested, ‘The sun shines for me as for others. I would very much like to see the clause in Adam’s will that excludes me from a share of the world.’ England predictably opposed the right of the Pope ‘to give and take kingdoms to whomsoever he pleased’ and pursued its own aggressive conquests of land and people.
This early European scramble for colonies was driven by mercantilist ideas of wealth which conceived riches in terms of money and loot to be returned to ‘the Mother Nation.’ Civilisations were destroyed, their artifacts and buildings were smashed and their lands robbed of precious metals and stones. At the same time the conquest of vast new areas of what was seen as ‘free’ land opened prospects of settlement for European populations. The British state viewed its new possessions as the opportunity for the dispersal of excess human labour power and pauperism out of the home country into new settlements, to ‘scratch the land’ for a living. But the central interest of the aristocratic colonial landlords of England was to secure a permanent stream of income and this could only be gained by producing and importing products on a large scale. New colonies allowed for the development of tropical crop cultivation, namely sugar, coffee, and cotton. This agriculture was most profitable when introduced on a large scale, that is on plantations, sold on monopoly terms and with the use of slave labour. Williams says, ‘The use of Negroes as slaves was not imposed by any racial doctrine in the formative years of the system. Negro slavery paid better than did the enslavement of Indians or the use of Irish or Scottish prisoners of war or the use of indentured servants who were a kind of white slaves for the duration of their contracts.’ And the slave system was tolerated, defended, and praised. It led to the growth of an extensive slave trade involving ship building and all the associated crafts involved in the growth of new ports. On the profits of West Indian plantations were based the fortunes of Bristol and Liverpool and, to some extent, Glasgow.
Colonial monopoly and slavery
For well over a hundred years the British slave trade grew and was supported financially, legally, and ideologically by the ruling class. A huge business interest grew into the ‘triangular trade’: slaves captured in West Africa were transported to the Caribbean and North America; the products of slave labour such as cotton, sugar and tobacco were transported to Britain; finished goods manufactured in Britain were then shipped to the colonies in Africa.
The life of Edward Colston (1636–1721), MP for Bristol (1710–1713), is representative of the flourishing slave traders. Colston’s wealth came from investments in slave trading. As an official of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, he was involved in the transportation of approximately 84,000 enslaved African men, women, and children, of whom 19,000 died on voyages from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas. On 7 June 2022 Colston’s statue in Bristol, which had long been the object of protest, was pulled down, graffitied, and rolled into Bristol Harbour during the demonstrations that followed the police murder of George Floyd in the US. Colston’s statue had been erected in 1895 to commemorate his philanthropy. He had supported and endowed schools, alms-houses, hospitals and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. Many of his charitable foundations continue to receive funding to this day, illustrating Williams’ point that money from the slave trade has become indistinguishable from ‘the commercial part of the kingdom’ and the entirety of British banking and investment.
Capitalism and Free Trade
Williams shows that two forces united to achieve the abolition of slavery by parliament in 1807 and the ending of the British slave trade in 1837. Firstly, plantation crop production had limits, namely soil exhaustion, and a resistant slave work force and over time return on investment depreciated. At the same time an anti-monopoly movement against the landlord class grew rapidly with the industrial revolution that was transforming Britain. The new capitalist class was rapidly developing steam and coal power which drove new machinery to the exponential productivity of manufactured goods. The masters of industrial production forced the English peasantry into the factory and waged work as a new class of proletarians. They demanded cheap food for the workers and free trade with the growing markets of the world. After the United States won independence from Britain in 1783, the mercantile system and the old regime came to be seen as a block on the new trading possibilities of import and export without restraint or monopoly. Advocates for free trade included the economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo and the philosopher David Hume, who ‘trusted that the good sense and honest feeling and the patriotism of the British people would never allow for the continuance of …monopoly.’ The hypocrisy of the English, banishing slavery where no longer convenient but trading freely with slaving companies where they chose, was notorious at the time. England’s treacherous conduct in international affairs led the French government to talk of ‘perfidious Albion’ as treaties over St Dominique (Haiti) and Cuba were repeatedly broken.
The anti-slavery movement in the 19th century grew with an almost religious fervour as a crusade fashionable among the middle class. William Wilberforce MP was the acknowledged national leader but he limited his intervention to the single cause of slavery in the British West Indies and had little to say about the use of slave labour in Brazil, Cuba, and the southern states of the US. Indeed, while virtually the whole of the ruling class supported emancipation in British colonies, ‘Free Trade’ imports and exports with slave-produced goods from all parts of the world increased. Indeed, a mighty trading boom extended to new corners of the globe following the War of Independence when Britain could no longer tax exports on North American products but was also no longer bound to trade with North America to the exclusion of the rest of the world.
The slaves themselves
One of the most significant challenges that Capitalism and Slavery made to the received history of slavery was to include the record of the slaves themselves in the advance towards abolition. The role of the enslaved as an active force that destroyed slavery in Jamaica and elsewhere in the West Indies was not acknowledged for decades, indeed, as Williams says, it was ‘studiously ignored’. He says, ‘The Maroons of Jamaica and the Bush Negroes of British Guiana were runaway slaves who had extracted treaties from the British government and lived independently in their mountain fastnesses or jungle retreats.’ The records show that the slaves understood well the tensions and splits between the colonists and the British government and demanded their own unconditional emancipation. Slave revolts were carefully planned and carried out on an increasing number of plantations so that, in the words of the governor of Barbados, ‘the public mind is ever tremblingly alive to the dangers of insurrection’. Williams cites the words of a perceptive Jamaican resident: ‘The slave himself has been taught that there is a third party, and that party is himself. He knows his strength and will assert his claim to freedom.’ Against the most brutal racist power and cruel punishments the slaves organised their resistance to colonial rule with determined courage.
Lessons from yesterday for today
The book’s author Eric Williams (1911-1981) led the movement that won majority rule in Trinidad and Tobago in 1956, became its first prime minister following independence from Britain in 1962, and declared the country a republic in 1976. Williams’ pioneering writing in Capitalism and Slavery teaches us not only about the past but gives us the tools with which to analyse the present. With the global economy of today, with its vast supply chains crossing continents dominated by increasingly fewer multinational corporations it is easy to lose sight of how commodities are produced. Whose labour power produces profits for the investors and where it is located are the most important factors to identify if we are to understand the mode of production that prevails today. Williams shows us that these are the most critical questions to ask of any social formation. A highly recommended read.
Susan Davidson
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 298 February/March 2024
