5.0 out of 5 stars Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution

D.A.M. · 16 July 2025

This book is an excellent read and well written. It’s content is clear and easy to understand. The information is gripping. Although I’m only a quarter way into the book, I am hooked as I anxiously wait to turn each page. This book gives a better understanding of the journey of slavery up to the modern day. Well done to the authors and I am looking forward to completing, reading this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Important

G. · 5 May 2024

"Bolo customer" has written a lengthy review but admits they have not actually read the book. They quote selectively to suggest that the authors themselves downplay the links between industrialisation and slavery. They criticise another review which states that the book argues that "slavery had a foundational role in Britain’s Industrial Revolution’.But they suggest that the authors only make a claim which "is much more modest: ‘that the role of slavery in the process of industrialization and economic transformation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been generally underestimated by historians.’ "I am actually currently reading the book. The authors (immediately after this sentence) go on to argue that,"The slave and plantation trades were the hub around which many other dynamic and innovatory sectors of the economy pivoted. Slavery, directly and indirectly, set in motion innovations in manufacturing, agriculture, wholesaling, retailing, shipping, banking, international trade, finance and investment, insurance as well as in the organisation and intensification of work, record keeping and the application of scientific and useful knowledge. Slavery certainly was formative in the timing and nature of Britain's industrial transition".Note the final sentence here, the authors are not only, not merely, suggesting that the importance of slavery in the history of industrialisation has been previously overlooked by historians. They are are also arguing that "Slavery certainly was formative in the timing and nature of Britain's industrial transition".So "Bolo customer" by quoting selectively is misleading. I have not yet completed the book but what I have read so far it is certainly an extremely interesting and important book. I would not be out off by such negative reviews,

5.0 out of 5 stars A short and challenging introduction

M.A.M. · 12 May 2024

The authors don't claim that there would have been no industrial revolution without slavery but they certainly present a mass of evidence to show how and why Britain's industrial revolution and imperialist policies were shaped by the economics of slavery and how the slave-owning class dominated British policy.I'm not a professional historian but the book is still accessible - if somewhat terse - and certainly will challenge the idea that Britain's leading role in the industrial revolution was simply the alchemy of good ideas and engineers, coal and luck - the material demands and rewards - in profits and goods - of slavery shaped how Britain's economy modernised - and how quickly it passed from the workshop of the world to the world's banker.The book isn't perfect: in something this short the drift into polemic in places gets in the way and one is also left with a sense that the authors feel there is good reason to challenge the academic consensus on slavery's limited role in Britain's economic history but don't - quite - have the evidence which leads you almost to feel they are under-selling their case.Recommended

3.0 out of 5 stars An attempt to promote an "original sin" story of capitalism

K.N. · 13 June 2025

This book is an attempt to rehabilitate the so-called “Williams Thesis”, which is the idea that Britain’s industrial revolution was, in large part, financed by profits from the slave trade. The idea was first formulated in the 1930s and 1940s by Eric Williams, the future Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, in his book "Capitalism and Slavery". The book title "Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution" is clearly a homage to Eric Williams.Until about 5 years ago, the debate about the merits or lack thereof of the Williams Thesis was a niche subject, only of interest to specialist Economic Historians. It was not something that would have received much coverage in a mainstream newspaper. But then in June 2020, a crowd of BLM-inspired protesters in Bristol toppled a statue of Edward Colston, and threw it into the harbour. One of the organisers of that protest later wrote an article for the Guardian explaining why they were doing this. Although he did not call it that, what he described what was quite clearly a variant of the Williams Thesis.The idea was subsequently picked up by dozens of local councils and cultural institutions all across the country. The Williams Thesis had gone mainstream. It had become fashionable. But is it true?Various Economic Historians have tried to test the Williams Thesis empirically, and they have not come up with much. They have generally found that the profits from the slave trade were simply not big enough to make more than a minor contribution to the financing of the industrial revolution. More, since the slave trade relied on extensive government support in the form of inflated military spending, it is, in fact, quite possible that, for Britain as a whole, it made no profit at all. (Although it obviously made some individual slave traders and plantation owners extremely rich.)Berg and Hudson, the authors of this book, are not saying that those previous studies were all wrong. Rather, their argument is that even if the direct contribution of the slave trade and slave labour to Britain’s economy was small, Britain nonetheless benefited in countless indirect ways. It just so happens that these cannot be quantified. Which is a little too convenient for the authors.Where they deal with empirical arguments at all, they use some creative accounting, for example redefining costs as benefits:“The ‘cost’ of colonial defence was […] largely offset by the […] stimulus it created for the economy, in the demand for munitions, ships, ships’ provisions and uniforms” (p. 44).In other words, the revenue from slavery is treated as a benefit, while the cost is… also treated as a benefit. The benefits are benefits, and the costs are also benefits. If we accept this logic, of course slavery must, by definition, have been profitable. This could not be otherwise. But by that logic, no government-sponsored project could ever be lossmaking.Their treatment of gross returns and net returns suffers from a similar problem:“Were the returns from the Caribbean colonies worth the high costs of their defence and administration? Adam Smith thought not, as did a number of economic historians of the 1960s and 1970s. But this misses the point because as long as high net private returns were made, the potential was there for the proceeds to flow into the industrializing economy” (p. 44).It does not “miss the point” at all. The argument of critics of the Williams Thesis is that those high net private returns were cancelled out by high net public losses. The former may well have flown into the industrialising economy, but at the same time, the latter must have flown out of the industrialising economy. If so, there would have no net inflow into the industrialising economy. This would mean that Britain would have industrialised at a similar pace if there had never been a slave trade. (Or no British involvement in it.)The book has its strengths. The authors clearly know their subject area very well. This book is a thoroughly researched piece of scholarly work, which draws on mountains of academic literature. Nonetheless, the authors' main objective is not to educate their readers about the slave trade, but to rehabilitate the Williams Thesis. They try too hard to prove a point which is very likely to be empirically false. And the whole book suffers as a result.I’m sure the authors would hate to be described as “Culture Warriors”. They would say that they are high-minded academics who are motivated by nothing but the pursuit of the truth, and that the Culture War is something grubby, low-brow and right-wing. But they are Culture Warriors. Every bit as much as any presenter on GB News or Talk TV. This book is very clearly intended to be an intervention in the Culture War – on the woke, progressive, anti-capitalist side. They want to promote the Williams Thesis, because it acts as a useful political narrative: an “original sin” story of capitalism, which also doubles up as an “original sin” story of the Western world. It is a tool to propagate an anti-Western, anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, Corbynite agenda. Pretending not to have political opinions or motivations is a tedious rhetorical trick.I'll give it three stars nonetheless, because I've learned things from the book that I did not previously know. That is more important than whether one agrees with the authors politically or not. But I would have preferred it if they had been more open and explicit about their political motivations, which they clearly have, even if they'll never admit it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommend

c. · 30 March 2025

This was a really well written and researched book that provided insight into lesser known elements of the Atlantic slave trade.

The connection between slavery, economic development, and the Industrial Revolution.

R.W.P.P.U.R. · 6 September 2025

This is a great book. It addresses the original argument of Eric Williams and provides the evidence to show that Williams was largely correct. The slave trade and slavery on plantations in the Americas helped finance British economic growth in the eighteenth century and thus contributed to the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. This book should be widely read because the content is important for the present.Robert Patch, Professor, the University of California, Riverside.