HIUS 4501 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Atlantic Slave Trade, Industrial Revolution
7 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
First thought slavery was abolished mainly because of humanitarian reasons led by abolitionists like william wilberforce: sir reginald coupland"s 1923 biography of wilberforce, never absolute, lots of critics. Then williams came along and flipped that on its head. Profits from the slave trade/new world plantations provided most of the capital that financed the english revolution: now been wholly discredited. Linked the rise of british abolitionism with an irreversible economic decline of the. British west indies, both as producers and purchasers of british goods. Presented a picture of inefficient slave labor, white population loss, chronic indebtedness, soil exhaustion, and plantation bankruptcies (page xiv) Uses tons of data, tables, statistics, etc. to destroy the believe that the british slave system was declining in value (xv) Slave system expanding, not declining (investment returns of 10%) Soil exhaustion: complaints of that came as early as the 1660"s and the erosion was never permanent.
