Capitalism and slavery, by Eric Williams
By Omer Freixahistorian
Who was Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago between 1956 and 1981, Eric Williams, raises in the preface of Capitalism and slavery that this work of his is a study of the contribution of slavery to British capitalist development. The historian did not lose sight that the sacrifice of millions of enslaved African people, mostly young and strong men who managed to survive the tortuous Atlantic journey, would not be in vain. The passage of millions of them from Africa implied a deep footprint in the American history that reaches the present.
In this process, according to Williams, among the mid -XVI and advanced the 19 The “primitive accumulation” was called. The above responds to the accumulated profits thanks to the cultivation of sugar, cotton and tobacco, above all, necessary for the gradual industrialization of the islands and that since approximately 1750 could talk about the takeoff of the industrial revolution in Great Britain. Without this trade and slavery that made it possible, the above would have been given, explains Williams. The development of Caribbean sugar plantations between 1650 and 1850 would be impossible without slavery. That is why British Antilles became, for the Empire, in the heart of their economy.
Chain effect
The commercial circuit was increasingly ambitious and, with it, more sadistic, considering the enslaved as mere merchandise. Reviewing the figures, the amount of “pieces of Indies” transported is enhanced. A single British company, between 1680 and 1686, brought an annual average of 5,000 enslaved. Almost a century later, in 1760, 146 ships departed from British ports towards Africa with capacity for 36,000 enslaved. In 1771 the number rose to 190 for 47,000 unfortunate people. Between 1680 and 1786 the importation of this labor was greater than two million individuals. With this trade, the origin of Liverpool is understood, a city that became the largest European boarding port in the triangular trade. By 1750, the Trinitarian intellectual indicates, there was no manufacturing or industrial city that did not have any degree of relationship with trafficking.
The emergence of capitalism was a violent process covered, to a large extent, in greed by enslaved African labor that inflated the pockets of traffickers at the expense of others. In addition, intercontinental trade grew thanks to this trafficking, the needs of the enslaved mass in America generated new demands in Europe, the shipyard industry grew and increased the power of the states that trafficked these “ebony pieces.” European capitalism matured thanks to this intense commercial flow, particularly the British, the focus cities of this triangular circuit (Africa-America-Europe) were developed and the bank was developed with impetus.
Among the cities, in addition to Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow stood out. Williams evokes in Capitalism and slavery to a contemporary who said regarding the aforementioned cities: “There is not a single brick in the city that is not mixed with the blood of a slave.” In the southwest of England, in Wiltshire, the most lavish mansion throughout the English West was built by the Beckford family, very active settlers in the Caribbean sugar business. There is no space here to mention each of the mansions and assets erected in the islands thanks to the sacrifice of enormous masses of enslaved on the other side of the Atlantic, but it is appropriate to point out that the ennoblement and access to the aristocracy of numerous families was due, To a large extent, to the accumulated Caribbean treasures or public office such as the London councilor. There were no lack of poor individuals who lived comfortably or in a non -negligible wealth due to the causal inheritance of some capital from the Caribbean.
Colophon
For a long time, while Britain kept the monopoly, sugar and western Antilles were the jewel of the crown. This began to change in the end of the 18th century, when cotton, capitalist industry par excellence according to Williams, began to be the king. At this time, in which the Laissez Fairethe abolition of slave trafficking (1807) was encouraged, slavery was repealed in all British domains (1833) and, in 1846, preference for sugar was eliminated. These three decisions, added to the pressures of the abolitionist movement, sentenced the transatlantic system with death. As the author of Capitalism and slavery, “The humanitarian were the spearhead of the attack that destroyed the Antilles system and that freed blacks.”
The curious thing was that those who built and supported that system proceeded to the opposite time later: their condemnation and disarticulation. As Williams states, “Blacks had been encouraged to freedom for the development of the same wealth that their work had created.” On the ashes of a complex that was already condemned to extinction, however, a new British nation, enriched after several generations of slave trade, industrialized and destined to have almost a century more of world hegemony. All this thanks, in part, to the exploitation of African human masses who have remained in the most absolute anonymity.
Illustration: 123rf
