[Marxism] Re British Emancipation

[ilyenkova@xxxxxxxxxxx]

In view of the Adam Hochschild's new work on British abolition it's
worth rehashing the classic Capitalism and Slavery, by Eric Williams.
After bursting on the scene of academic history in 1944, the book has
been disappeared from university reading lists. While praising Williams
for linking the development of capitalism and slavery, Robin Blackburn
argues in The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery that Williams got things
backwards by having slavery generate capitalism. When I read the book I
found it entirely compatible with the centrality of primitive
accumulation of capital as marx argued. Williams's thesis has also been
challenged by econometric historians who argue that the British
plantations were still profitable during the period of the abolition.
But bean counting in history is one thing; the perception and pressures
of material forces is another. And it's within that context that the
pleas of moralists like Wilberforce, Clarkson et.al acheive historical
effectivity. It's because Capitalism and Slavery bends the stick so far
in the direction of determination by the base that I'm posting this
summary of Williams's classic thesis.

For Williams, a mentor of C.L.R. James, the moral suasion cries of
Wilberforce, Clarkson et al fell on deaf ears  until the logic of the
cash nexus pushed Parliament to ban the slave-trade in 1807 (slavery in
the British colonies was banned in 1833). Williams connected British
abolition to the material interests of the emergent English industrial
bourgeoisie:

"the abolition of the slave-trade, then the abolition of  slavery, were
not merely the results of a rising standard of political ethics in
Britain but were a form of cutting of losses. The West Indies sugar
monopoly became intolerable to a booming industrial society, rightly
confident in its invulnerable competitive position in the early days of
the industrial revolution...the slave system was tolerated, defended and
praised as long as it was profitable. It was highly profitable and for a
long time. On the profits of the West Indies plantations were based the
fortune of Bristol and Liverpool and to some extent, of Glasgow. The
West Indian planter was the rival in ostentation of the East Indian
nabob.. It was in vain for moralists to point out that every brick of
the great warehouses of Bristol and Liverpool was cemented in Negro
blood.. But the voice of the moralists was seldom overheard amid the
chink of guineas (the very name recalls the triangular trade between
Britain, Africa and the transatlantic colonies)."

Choking off a huge chunk of the  British West Indian sugar market from
1783-89 the new North American republic turned to the more productive,
cheaper sugar of French Saint Domingue (Haiti), Cuba and Brazil:

"The superiority of the French sugar colonies was for the British
planters the chief among the many ills which flew out of the Pandora's
box that was the American Revoltion. Between 1783 and 1789 the progress
of the French sugar islands, of Saint Domingue especially, was the most
amazing phenomenon in colonial development. The fertility of the French
soil was decisive, French sugar cost one-fifth less than British, the
average yield in Saint Domingue and Jamaica was five to one...in 1775
Jamaica had 775 plantations; by 1791, out of every hundred, twenty three
had been sold for debt, twelve were in the hands of receivers, while
seven had been abandoned."

On the loss of British market leadership:

"French colonial exports, over eight million pounds, and imports over
four millions, employed 164,000 tons of shipping and 33,000 sailors;
British colonial exports, five million pounds, and imports, less than
two millions, employed 148,000 tons of shipping and 14,000 seamen. In
every respect the sugar colonies had become vastly more essential to
France than they were to England."

As import prices became prohibitive it became clear to the British
ruling class that the monopoly privileges granted its slaveholding
planters had to go:

"The West Indian monopoly was not only unsound in theory, it was
unprofitable in practice. In 1828 it was estimated that it cost the
British people annually more than one and a half million pounds. In 1844
it was costing the country 70,000 pounds a week and London 6,000 pounds.
England was paying for its sugar five millions more a year than the
Continent...Two-fifths of the price of every pound of sugar consumed in
England represented the cost of production, two-fifths went in revenue
to the government, one-fifth in tribute to the West Indian planter.."

Seeing that the age of the British sugar islands was over Pitt planned
to recapture the European market with the aid of sugar from India, and
to secure an international abolition of the slave-trade which would ruin
Saint Domingue. And if not international abolition, then British
abolition since the French were so dependent on British slave traders
that even a unilateral abolition by England would seriously dislocate
the economy of the French colonies. Pitt's plan foundered on the limits
of East Indian sugar production and the refusal  of the French, Dutch
and Spanish to abolish the slave trade.  Terrified of the results of the
French revolution the planters of Saint Domingue offered Pitt the island
in 1791. He accepted in 1793 and dispatched successive, unsuccesful
military expeditions to capture the island.

Williamst:

"This is of more than academic interest. Pitt could not have had Saint
Domingue and abolition as well. Without its 40,000 slave imports a year,
Saint Domingue might as well have been at the bottom of the sea. The
very acceptance of the island meant logically the end of Pitt's interest
in abolition. Naturally he did not say so. He had already committed
himself too far in the eyes of the public. He continued to speak in
favour of abolition, even while giving every practical encouragement to
the slave trade...Pitt's reasons were political and only secondarily
personal. He was interested in the sugar trade. Either he must ruin
Saint Domingue by flooding Europe with cheaper Indian sugar or by
abolishing the slave-trade; or he must get Saint Domingue for himself...
It would give Britain a monopoly of sugar, indigo, cotton and coffee...
But if Pitt captured Saint Domingue, the slave-trade must continue. When
Saint Domingue was lost to France, the slave-trade became merely a
humanitarian question... But the ruin of Saint Domingue did not mean the
salvation of the British West Indies. Two new enemies appeared on the
scene. Cuba forged ahead to fill the gap left in the world market by the
disappearance of Saint Domingue. Whilst, under the American flag, Cuban
and other neutral West Indian surpluses piled up in England.
Bankruptcies were the order of the day. Between 1799 and in 1807, 65
plantations in Jamaica were abandoned, 32 were sold for debts, and 1807
suits were pending against 115 others. Debt, disease and death were the
only topics of conversation in the island. A parliamentary committee set
up in 1807 discovered that the British West Indian planter was producing
at a loss. In 1800 his profit was 2 1/2 per cent, in 1807 nothing; in
1809, nothing. The committee attributed the main evil to the
unfavourable state of the foreign market. In 1806 the surplus of sugar
in England amounted to six thousand tons. Production had to be
curtailed. To restrict production, the slave-trade must be abolished."

Though not leaving much room for the effectivity of ideology, Williams
didn't dismiss the efforts of abolitonist moralists like Wilberforce
entirely. But his argument does insist that the political space for
philanthropic humanism can only make its appearance within determinate
material and historical contexts.

Bob M










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