by Gavin Wright (Stanford University)
This research was presented as the Tawney Lecture at the EHS Annual Conference in 2019.
It will also appear in the Economic History Review later this year.
Coloured lithograph of slaves picking cotton. Fort Sumter Museum Charleston. Available at Flickr.
My Tawney lecture reassessed the relationship between slavery and industrial capitalism in both Britain and the United States. The thesis expounded by Eric Williams held that slavery and the slave trade were vital for the expansion of British industry and commerce during the 18th century but were no longer needed by the 19th. My lecture confirmed both parts of the Williams thesis: the 18th-century Atlantic economy was dominated by sugar, which required slave labor; but after 1815, British manufactured goods found diverse new international markets that did not need captive colonial buyers, naval protection, or slavery. Long-distance trade became…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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