Capitalism and Slavery

In Williams’s own words, Capitalism and Slavery was “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”. Williams argues that from the time of the American War of Independence onwards the traditional role and privileged position of the British West Indies in the supply of tropical produce, and especially sugar, was being increasingly questioned in Britain. Equalization of the Sugar Duties was imperiously demanded by the new economic orthodoxy, and consequences at the level of an increase in slavery and the slave trade must be checked by methods appropriate to that sphere. The economic argument for taking a measure which might well be thought likely to restrict British West Indian production even more would therefore seem a strong one.