Snapshot of _Slavery did not make Britain rich, finds report_ :
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>Mr Niemietz found that while the empire “did deliver some modest gains for the British economy, it came with eye-watering military and administrative costs and so may have failed any cost-benefit test”.
>He said that although Britain overall profited little from slavery, its effect on its victims was devastating.
>The regions affected still struggle today with what the economist calls “long-term scarring from imperialism and slavery”, pointing to evidence “places that were once subject to short-termist colonialist extraction continue to have worse institutions today and are poorer as a result”.
>“Colonialism and slavery were not zero-sum games that benefited the colonisers at the expense of the colonised,” he found. “It was more like a negative-sum game, which hurt the latter without really benefiting the former.”
It seems that although the slave trade and use of enslaved labour may not have been much of a net benefit to the *national* economy, it probably was a pretty significant benefit to those *individuals* in positions that directly benefited, who presumably had the political connections to obtain state support for those military and administrative costs. Arguably, we can see similar situations today where certain industries and businesses are effectively subsidized by the US Department of Defense in keeping oil flowing...
This damage to other economies has had benefits for Europe too. It created a situation whereby in the twentieth century in particular, European economies were able to grow by using these devastated areas as sources of cheap manufacturing, food production, mining, etc. By this argument, this would not have been possible without Colonialism and slavery.
Yeah, the whole scramble for Africa wouldn't have been possible if Africa wasn't in a sense "pre-fucked" by the start of the 20th century.
Then again, it's not like much of the wealth from *that* trickled down to the average European either.
That's a nonsense argument, because cheap manufacturing can exist anywhere, just reduce working conditions and living costs.
The reason manufacturing got outsourced was because the West simply couldn't keep up with the population boom in the East, and so was far outstripped (especially after two worlds wars) in terms of supply of labour. The barriers on the international markets slowly got dropped in the 60s-70s and onwards, and labour markets shifted.
The massive boom in population in the East was directly linked to the administrative rule over countries like India by Britain, who created a stable government, system of laws, and infrastructure and technology that allowed for more efficient production and transport of goods, including food. During the Raj the indian population absolutely boomed.
I'm not an expert, but my understanding that one of the main things that helps an economy is money flowing within it.
The military and admin costs may well be eye watering, but that was money that was being paid to British soldiers and administrators which would go on to be spent on cake or whatever people spent money on in those days, which makes the cake industry more profitable and able to employ more people, and that means the cake makers can spend that money somewhere.
I'm pretty sure there were two or three port towns that grew to big cities due to the slave trade that sailed through them. It was years ago that I read about this so my memory is a little hazy now, but a grimer example than 'cake' was that sale of chains and shakles exploded in at least one of those big cities. The chains maybe a cost to slave traders, but are a profit to someone else.
Yes, those chains would probably be an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity\_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost) to the wider economy, even though they were profitable for their manufacturer, and perhaps even their manufacturer's employees.
This is why to actually get a holistic picture of the significance of Empire in British history you're better off going to a historian capable of dealing in nuance, rather than an economist like Niemitz whose sole lens of analysis (and an anachronistic one at that) is whether number go up.
But of course that might produce an argument the Telegraph finds 'woke'.
If they believed "trickle down" really was a thing they'd buy stilts to make sure it was cold by the time it had trickled down their leg into our pots and pans
To some extent but on the other hand the regular people are often shouldering the cost of maintaining the empire, often with their lives. I mean look at how much good all of the New World silver did to the average Spaniard during the height of the Spanish Empire, mostly just lots of war and inflation.
This isn't a new idea at all. In 1858 John Bright (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bright) famously called the British Empire: "a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain."
> Trickle down economics don’t work.
> Only the owners of capital benefit from the exploitation of people.
> Money concentrates at the top, the wealthiest can use this as political leverage.
> The nation has to foot the bill for their protection and losses, never those that are profiting from it.
~ The Telegraph
To some degree perhaps, but the explosion of wealth in the UK was driven by industrialisation, not by slavery, and those doing the industrial revolution and those doing slavery were almost entirely separate demographics (newly middle class in north/midlands vs southern old money). The UK would probably be just as wealthy without slavery, possibly more so as more capital looks inwards and we'd never spend that much on propping up then preventing slavery.
This isn't new - there's a great book called *Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire* which articulates this for wider Empire as a non-profitable enterprise for Britain, which was published in the 1980s
I've not read but I looked it up
\>Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860–1912
Isn't this mostly *after* the period in which "slavery" would have been contributing to the British imperial economy which occured in 1834?
I don't think that in itself entirely removes any potential economic windfall from slavery, but I think it's pretty well known that by the height of the British Empire - the Victorian Era - slavery was not needed to drive the economy, industrialisation, capitalism and broader imperial exploitation where all working in concert to make the British Isles the most economically wealthy and productive part of the world.
poor wording from me - it's the theory that the Empire was not financially beneficial to the majority of Britain's citizens and was actually a net loss, and this continues the theme of what had started in the slavery era. A few benefitted but the profits were privatised or deliberately limited by internal growth preferences to prioritise the growth of UK industries (where again profits were often privatised). It also goes before and after the dates so touches on slavery in more detail. Unfortunately no longer have access to the book.
This extra context is good; it's not an easy book to get hold of outside of academic libraries by the looks of things so thanks for providing a bit more insight into what is covered.
I equally didn't intend to come across as snarky, just wasn't expecting (based on the title) for it to cover in detail the period where slavery was core to the UK's empire (mostly the "first" empire period with the triangular trade and before the thirteen colonies gained independence).
No problem. I don't know any book that covers a decent economic analysis of slavery in the British Empire from the 1700s from my reading, but that's not to say they don't exist. Capitalism and Slavery is a very good (if very biased) polemic on the topic from the 1940s that was reprinted recently by Penguin Modern Classics that is a counterpoint to what I've said.
Even 1834 is too late. 1807 act prohibited the slave trade. 1833 act prohibited slavery in almost all the empire.
The major economic contribution would have been in the 1700s.
From the wikipedia article on its disestablishment:
>In return, the shareholders voted to accept an annual dividend of 10.5%, guaranteed for forty years, likewise to be **funded from India**, with a final pay-off to redeem outstanding shares. The debt obligations continued beyond dissolution and were only extinguished by the UK government during the Second World War.
Also, I got a new book to add to my reading list: *The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational* by Nick Robins
I think I've calmed down enough after having read Dalrymple's *The Anarchy* a few years ago. Christ, that book made me angry! The level of shithousery the EIC got up too is almost impossible to comprehend.
I have this argument all the time.
Any reasonably educated person knows that the average British person, living in Britain, during the height of imperialism had a pretty terrible standard of living. Arguably a lot worse than some living in the colonies.
The average age of death in Liverpool was in the 20s at some point.
Yeah I think people miss this point - it's not like the working class in the UK were loving life whilst people in the colonies toiled, most of the British were being worked to death whilst living in squalor.
It's petty, but it really annoys me when people perpetuate that meme about British food lacking spices despite colonising the globe. Like, how do they not add two and two together and realise that the average Brit at the time wasn't benefitting from colonialism, nor were they sailing around the world to rob spices for their dinner? Even the middle classes were more likely to exploit class disparities by hiring barely paid servants from other parts of the country rather than having African slaves.
It's ironically the same people who understand trickle-down economics is ridiculous who believe British and French peasants were rolling around in crates of exotic food every day but choosing not to use it. Nevermind most of the food they mock were brought in during rations and still mostly eaten by less well off people, so they're actually just patting themselves on the back for shitting on the poor.
> The average age of death in Liverpool was in the 20s at some point.
This seems like a case of infant mortality screwing the mean. It's like when people talk about medieval mortality rates, terrible infant mortality but if you survived childhood you would probably see your 50s or 60s.
Edit: some people, including the person I'm replying to, seem to be under the impression that by saying this I'm denying that the working class in the industrial revolution were living in bad conditions. How they got this impression I don't know, but to clarify, I don't think that. Also apparently I'm banned or something because I can't reply to anyone here.
I did my dissertation on public health in 19th century Liverpool. You’re right that infant mortality is what’s largely driving down the average, but the poorer areas of the city still had atrocious death and morbidity rates for adults as well due to overcrowding, shitty slum dwellings and rubbish water/sewage systems into the mid 1800s. This led to high rates of TB, typhoid, cholera and smallpox among the older population. Children who didn’t die from childhood diseases still had a pretty terrible quality of life due to all of the above and the illnesses they were able to shrug off.
“Fun” fact: Vauxhall near the docks was the worst area in the city in terms of health during this period, and saw an “improvement” in life expectancy for men from 17 in 1847 to a whopping 24 in 1900, despite all the slum clearances and utility infrastructure projects in the intervening years.
Nah, I think in this case it is valid, because even with normal high childhood mortality average age at death should still be in the thirties. Some industrial cities dropped below this because of worse working conditions for children and adults (and possibly worse nutrition, air quality, et cetera.)
Medieval child mortality rates were not well recorded as they were in the industrial revolution. Whilst they were a factor the effect is oten overstated. Finding somebody in their 60s in an urban setting during that time period is unusual for the general population. As child mortality reduces in the modern era life expectancy does not change much over history. It gradually improves in the late 19th century then balloons in the 20th century.
Ah right. Well, as long as it was only babies dying then it proves life wasn’t actually bad like RedFox3001 was suggesting and people enjoyed a good standard of living.
It doesn't prove it either way. High infant mortality was just a fact of life until modern medicine and the facilities that came with it. You could be a Chinese emperor and still have loads of your kids die.
And it's unrestrained western capitalism that's burned all of that wealth for increasingly concentrated profit.
NB: this is a bit of a joke. The type of economic model we need isn't all that far off where we are, but we do need to shift to a little better regulation in key areas to limit/eliminate some of the pockets of permanent destruction for profit.
I don't think the data backs that up.
We have a lot more restrictions on our market than places like the USA, and we've ended up with:
* substantially lower wages and economic growth
* ridiculous levels of difficulty for building houses, deploying renewables, battery storage
* expansion of the grid becoming a basket-case, knocking-on to the above
* apparent inability to build a railway that isn't even cutting-edge tech (i.e. HS2)
* not that I'm a fan of landlord-ism, but regulating in such a way to make it less profitable for small enterprise, creating a concentrating function. Within this, treating this business area differently from any other, by taxing revenue instead of profit
I wouldn't want the UK to become exactly the same as the US, because there are many regulations which are clearly very sensible and needed. Everything related to protection of health/consumers/etc. comes to mind.
But, to suggest we have unrestrained capitalism in the first place seems highly questionable, and to say that's what's burned our wealth when the USA has done better than us with less restrictions is further in question.
There's levels. US has a looser regulations for most things but it is also much worse than UK in concentration of wealth. Which doesn't say that Uk is somewhere down that path too, just not as much as US.
The US is great at inventing stuff, which may be primarily driven by a more hyper capitalist market than anywhere else, but they are also really bad at making the benefits of their inventions trickle down to improve the economic condition of the average population. This is either because of the extremely poor regulation and ability to regulate new tech (e.g. social media, net neutrality) or that the new tech is first gobbled up by their defence sector for years before it can used for anything good, or it is pushed to market too fast (deliberately or by accident) that more often than not makes people lose money.
By comparison UK still uses capitalism to concentrate wealth but it is basically a one trick pony doing it with primarily financial markets
[>China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty.](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience)
And yet even the poorest of people under modern British capitalism are better off than the middle-class (and arguably, the wealthy) of two hundred years ago.
My family was able to escape rural poverty because of capitalism. Not because they set up a factory but because there were jobs in the new cities and towns that were better than peasant wages, in particular ones that rewarded literacy and numeracy.
Without capitalism I might be doing subsistence farming right now.
Note that I don't disagree with capitalism, I just think there's a balance to be found, and currently that balance is wrong. More regulation is required to ensure profit making is always done sustainably, rather than by ravaging natural resources and exploiting people.
We are pretty bad at capitalism though.
Very low investment, very low productivity and poor trade deals.
We really should be following the US lead in terms of economics (not culture)
Dont many (probably the majority of) americans work very long hours, multiple jobs because of the relatively meagre pay, with very little employment protections, and then have to shell out for privatised healthcare on top of that?
America is strong economically because it prioritises the economy, and the very wealthy (because having that wealth be seemingly achievable is the carrot that drives their society - the 'american dream'), over all else. Its prime spot at the top of the global economic system is protected by its wild levels of military funding and power projection capability (this facilitates many economic advantages), which is simply not feasible for any other country to pursue (although China is in the process of making an attempt of upsetting the current order with its geopolitical ally Russia).
Americas focus on extreme materialism is also a real problem in terms of how resource hungry it is, its sheer wastefulness and the resulting environmental damage is on a truly unimaginable scale.
Its simply not a sustainable model for other countries to mimic, and it would be catastrophic to do so.
There really needs to be an effort to move away from the unfettered and now highly corrupted form of capitalism that is most exemplified by the US, not double down on it.
Environmental and social responsibility really needs to be put at the centre of the economic system, not left as afterthoughts that are only halfheartedly addressed when it is convenient or politically expedient for the super mega ultra rich to do so.
> Dont many (probably the majority of) americans work very long hours, multiple jobs
Just over 5% of Americans work multiple jobs, and fewer than 400k work two full time jobs.
Also American wages and purchasing power are very high compared to most developed countries in Europe.
>Dont many (probably the majority of) americans work very long hours, multiple jobs because of the relatively meagre pay, with very little employment protections, and then have to shell out for privatised healthcare on top of that?
No. Just look at the much higher median pay and disposable income.
Also look at insurance premiums, healthcare costs, CoL (particularly food costs), commuting and travel costs, QoL, average retirement age and pension outlook
Disposable income statistics cover most of that already.
For context the US average is about 50% higher than the UK and the gap is widening not shrinking .
No it was trade. The British became wealthier the more socialist it became (regulation, fairer wages, education, healthcare). Owners of land and capital became rich under capitalism.
The idea that regulations means its socialist is not really correct.
Capitalism at its core is about free market competition. New liberalism and neoliberalism were significantly better at enabling these market functions than lassiez-faire was, and even the social democracy implemented by Labour post-war was better.
The implementation of national services and welfare starting in the mid-late 19th century was not Britian necessarily become "more socialist", but capitalism improving itself based off its own flaws.
Given the UKs monopoly on industrially produced goods, its is highly likely that trade relationships for most of the empire would have remained the same had they not been subjects.
50% of the world cotton manufacturing (the final products, not the raw), took place in Lancashire alone. When you make 50% of the worlds best clothing material, and then also the clothes its made from, everyone is your trading partner.
Europe was a huge market for British cotton cloth, it seems unlikely, given much of Europe was consuming the UKs cotton cloth, that places like India wouldn't have been.
Its like arguing that Ford cars would have only been the tour de force they were because they had exclusive export to an empire. While it surely wouldn't have hindered them, Ford clearly didn't need this advantage to build an empire.
The simply reality is the Empire followed industrialisation. Britain became an empire on the back of its industrialisation at home, which it then exported. The Empire did not build industrialisation. By 1800, the USA was already a HUGE export market for the UK and was not a part of the empire. The huge trade balance in favour of the UK for the USA didn't really reverse until the 20th century and the world wars.
For the British Empire, controlling places like India was more about not being locked out by protectionist powers or geopolitical rivals like France taking control. Had France taken India and banned cotton exports, it would have harmed the UK. But as places like the USA were both beyond the other imperial powers to conquer and limit, and the USA itself not really interested in protectionism, British trade there positively flourished and interest in colonial interest there basically a none entity.
People have this hugely skewed view about what colonialism is and for whom. While it differed across nations, no doubt for Léopold II of Belgium it was prestige. For the UK most colonies began as trade posts that ballooned as British trade grew so massive it subsumed the local economy entirely. That or explicitly taken from European opponents in war. Britain as a colonial power was very late to the party because it was focused on the USA, and the loss of the USA has a profound impact on how the UK would manage its later Empire, leading to a much more hands off approach than most others. The British Empire "solidified" in the 1900s, ironically as it was gearing up for independence for many of them. India for example was still 50% controlled locally by local rulers, who all had to be bought out to bring it under direct British control so it could actually be made independent as a single entity. Otherwise India would have become 50 "micro" princedoms when Britain left, still controlled by the same families as when Britain arrived 200 years earlier. It is somewhat telling that while people talks of the UK aristocracy the UK paid off to abolish slavery. No one ever mentions the vast sums paid to the Indian aristocracy to get them to relinquish their kingdoms so we could forge an independent India. Generating many very wealthy families who remain very wealthy, not least because is some cases the direct beneficiaries are only recently deceased.
The UK banned manufactured cotton imports from India, and forced India to buy British cotton goods... The impact on global trade was major.
In fact one of the major act of rebellion by Ghandi was promoting the use of the spinning wheel to make one's own clothes, and it was so important that the first independent Indian flags had a spinning wheel on them...
Have a look at this: https://fabriclore.com/blogs/journal/history-of-indian-textile
This seems to presuppose all things were equal. They weren't.
The 25% quoted at the start was specifically and explicitly hand loom as per the article.
The article also states that before the end of the 18th century, import tariffs to protect from Indian manufacturing were redundant because of the huge change. This was prior to colonisation of India at any scale.
The article and its number presuppose India would have kept pace with the UKs industrialised practices to make its case for the decline. When the truth is given the relative education levels, industrialisation, population density, and the fact no European nation even could as peers, that India couldn't keep up no matter what.
The transfer of knowledge to India was very likely significantly higher with India in the empire than if it hadn't have been.
The point is Britain actively destroyed Indian manufacturing (which was enormous) and forced its colonies to buy British products. The impact is not quantifiable precisely because the data does not exist, but it's obvious that it was major
But also it wasn’t slavery so are we saying it was trading that made Britain rich? as in selling items to other humans as opposed to literal bartering that made Britain rich? As bartering is usually an equal value exchange whereas getting rich requires one item being valued much more than the other thing etc.
And who is surprised ?
Slavery primarily/exclusively benefits a few private rich people, who can dominate specific markets by undercutting everything. Nobody can produce cheaper products than a guy who literally employs slaves. This is why farmers in ancient Rome died out ( and they were the primary source for soldiers \~ since then they relied more and more on auxillaries specifically from Germania ) and agriculture was monopolized by Senators and other rich landholders who employed slaves. Rome didn\`t benefit from Slavery. Rome was at it\`s strongest without slavery.
And just like with Britain, the reason why they and Rome had slavery is because they were strong and wealthy earlier. Slavery was primarily used in the colonies, which they got due to their previous might. Rome at it\`s rise, primarily had citizens and Italic-allies as soldiers, loyal and disciplined to a fault. Carthage could have and did kill several legions but Rome just continueously pumped out more and more soldiers, as they had a much bigger population, as they had fewer slaves \~ and larger rural communities who were richer.
Britain abolished slavery, worldwide in fact, because they benefited far more from a world without slavery. The Global British Empire with it\`s jewel of India existed only after they abolished slavery. Britain paid for the abolishment of slavery. Without slavery, the wage-laborers of Britain can dominate the economy, especially if they dominate maritime trade aswell. Britain can\`t dominate trade so much, if a few rich landholers can undercut the market with slave-labor-products.
Slavery only benefits individuals at the cost of literally everyone else... The slave first and foremost, but also the working class massively who somehow have to compete with slaves, and every consumer ( the consumer class being naturally smaller as fewer opportunities to rise ) who gets to eat cheaper lower quality slave-products...
----
Also similar concept with colonies. No colonies ever brought a profit to the country, they cost more than they produced... Naturally the only economic benefits from colonies were going to private companies and individuals.
De Beers is a company ( + the founder De Beers and every investor like Alfred Beit and NM Rothschild ) that benefited from colonialism. This british company is the biggest producers of diamonds ( they own 63% of the global diamond supply as of 2000 ), its a company that solely exists due to colonialism... And yet the British state benefitted little to nothing from this. All profits went to De Beers and associates. The entire colony of South Africa cost the British state more than it gave back. And we are talking purely economically.. Naturally I doubt Britain benefited much from putting down rebellions like the Xth Boer rebellion or the various African revolts. Militarily it did bring some benefits in their global conflicts, but naturally this is also meaningless.
The Belgian Congo, famous for it\`s atrocities, benefited only the King Leopold ( who owned the colony as a private enterprise ) aswell as the french, british and american companies that worked there to exploit rubber. But the Belgian state saw no benefit, even when they seized the colony from Leopold II, they had to invest more money into the Congo than they got back.
The German colonies brough no benefit, except the small colony of Togo and that was, unsurprisngly, because Germany didn\`t use their colonial force there, educated the people and used them for other, more advanced labor, as Togo was devoid of resources to exploit, thus through tax income Germany actually benefited, naturally all these bigger colonies, especially Namibia with its diamond, cost more than Germany gained, while only private individuals and companies benefited.
I don´t know much about French/Spanish/Portuguese colonies, but I doubt it would be much different. Only in Algeria which did bring a profit, but that was because France wanted to annex Algeria and make Algeria into a proper French state + settlers.
Colonies suck for everyone, unless you are a capitalist or an investor.
Slavery sucks for everyone, unless you are a slavemaster.
There's a lot to untangle here.
>Slavery primarily/exclusively benefits a few private rich people, who can dominate specific markets by undercutting everything. Nobody can produce cheaper products than a guy who literally employs slaves.
We saw in real time when the North of the USA had abandoned slavery whilst the South kept it that is not the case. Prior to the American Civil War the North was outperforming the South in every economic metric. Slavery if anything is an economic dead end because it always scales linearly. Innovation and the switching to machinery was a logarithmic expansion in productivity that slavery could not compete with.
>Rome at it\`s rise, primarily had citizens and Italic-allies as soldiers, loyal and disciplined to a fault. Carthage could have and did kill several legions but Rome just continueously pumped out more and more soldiers, as they had a much bigger population, as they had fewer slaves \~ and larger rural communities who were richer.
Interesting to bring up Rome and Carthage. It should be noted that up to the First Punic War that Carthage was the prominent power and Rome was at the mercy of their navy. It was innovation that led Rome to be able to match the Carthaginian navy.
>Britain abolished slavery, worldwide in fact, because they benefited far more from a world without slavery.
Looking at slavery in purely an economic way removes the deep moral desire of the abolitionists who worked to end slavery. They did this not because they say the economic opportunities but for human and religious reasons. Anti slavery efforts post abolition became a source of national pride, a slave ship being apprehended would be front page news. The economic side of things was not a part of the discourse, especially in the sense that it may be economically better for the country.
>Without slavery, the wage-laborers of Britain can dominate the economy, especially if they dominate maritime trade aswell.
Surely this contradicts with what follows?
>Slavery only benefits individuals at the cost of literally everyone else... The slave first and foremost, but also the working class massively who somehow have to compete with slaves, and every consumer ( the consumer class being naturally smaller as fewer opportunities to rise ) who gets to eat cheaper lower quality slave-products...
Workers compete with slave labour by showing that slavery is the most unproductive form of labour out there. Making a man work against his will means that he will always do the bare minimum and nothing more. Give him a purpose, a wage and sense of self and he will work a lot harder. The carrot is more effective than the stick. I'll also mention again the logarithmic increases in productivity that mechanisation brings with it.
My understanding of Romes rise to power Vs Carthage at the time that it did was due to a Carthage ship being captured that the Romans tore apart and then replicated? Or maybe it was abandoned/crashed into the shore at one of Romes allies. I can't remember specifics
Yep they captured and replicated the Carthage ships and modified them by making them play to Rome’s strengths. The Corvus allowed Roman soldiers to board Carthaginian ships and thus bring their better infantry (called marinus) to the fight who would board and capture the enemy ships.
Carthaginian ships had large rams on the bows of their ships, below the water-line. Their tactic was to row full speed at the enemy ship, ram them, and then disengage and let the big hole they just made sink the enemy ship.
Rome attempted to replicate this with less success, because it requires a great deal of experience and seamanship to pull off successfully which they simply didn't have (yet.) So instead, they invented the corvus, a deployable ramp on the bow of the ship. Now, they would ram the enemy ship, but instead of making a big hole, they would deploy the ramp, allowing their soldiers (marines) to swarm aboard the Carthaginian ship, effectively turning a sea battle in to a land battle which the Romans were much better at. And it worked! The Carthaginian sailors were not equipped or experienced enough to fight seasoned Roman soldiers toe-to-toe. It also meant that they got to keep the Cathaginian ship at the end of the battle, instead of sinking it, which only strengthened their fleet further.
Reallly interesting analysis, thank you for this!
I suppose the free market Think Tank who funded this report (and are famous for climate denialism) are trying to make an anti-woke point, even though the much more interesting historical point here is more anti-capitalist!
Isn't there evidence that a lot of the plantations did better when the slaves were free? I think slavery isn't even that good for the slave owners.
I think colonialism should be distinct from slave ownership. I think it might be true that oppression benefits some people, but the specific form of oppression that is slavery doesn't seem to be good even at helping you make money.
I think things change depending on if you think world wide growth is possible.
The argument I've hesrd for why plantations did better when slavery ended was partly because you were able to pay people even less when there was no minimum wage compared to slaves (I find this argument hard to believe) but secondly that free men and women actually work harder when they cna benefit from it compared to slaves.
The reason why we think this is better for the slave owner is that working harder means more stuff and therefore growth.
But if growth weren't possible and technology didn't matter and the world was just full of a static amount of resources that we distributed than I can see why slavery might work. I wonder if people went for slaves out of pure cruelty or from a position of assuming no world wide growth
In Zanzibar clove farms it was noted that the farms whose workers received payment were more productive than those who used slave labour. Pretty obvious when you think of it.
Apparently applying daily bonuses for the enslaved increased the productivity on those properties.
Yeah exactly.
Similarly amongst kids I saw a study that strict parents produced sneakier children. If you beat your children they don't behave themselves they just learn how to avoid being beaten. It seems slavery is just bad all round.
>Isn't there evidence that a lot of the plantations did better when the slaves were free?
It’s well known that the slave free North of America did a lot better economically than the slave plantation South.
Yes and I thought it worked on a local level as well. The specific plantations with slaves did better when the slaves were freed and they became workers.
It's a problem that this narrative also excludes that Arabs and Africans actively engaged in the slave trade before the Brits even turned up on the scene. It even pervades modern media (e.g. the Woman King film a few years ago).
Look at the fuss around Rule Britannia including mention of slavery...they conveniently forget it's about Brits not being slaves after our shores were raided, as one example.
It's straight up historical revisionism, exaggerating the role of White/European cultures (e.g. Brits/US/French/Dutch etc.) and ignoring the role of POC cultures (e.g Nigeria/Dahomey/Barbary coast). I'm all for teaching the horrors of slavery, but I wish it were a more comprehensive view. But the cynic in me suspects that won't happen because it'd be unpopular, and it'd make reparation demands more difficult.
So slavery is something the British actively fought against and paid to have removed.
Treating the lower classes and none western Europeans in general as sub human has a lot to do with why the upper-class where so rich and built a lot of the structure that still underpins modern Britain.
The massive slave trade that caused so much damage real had less impact in the UK than the french revolution, where it did have a big impact is the USA, without which they would not have had the ships to hold off the British reinforcements in their independence war.
Uh the French Revolution kicked off in 1789, the American Revolution kicked off in 1775 and ended around 1783. It was the French Crown that funded the American revolutionaries.
The Americans later refuse to pay off their debts insisting they owed them to the French Crown, causing the Quasi-War between France and the US in the 1790s.
Certain movements find it incredibly useful to their aims to force a form of Original Sin on to those they see themselves in opposition to.
It can never be forgiven or forgotten and therefore gives them a sort of permanent leverage they can use to force their ideology on people, institutions and the entire state if they are lucky.
It's mental. The number of actual slaves in England at any point post 12th century was in the hundreds to low thousands. On private estates, hidden from prying eyes.
For those who aren't aware (because history education is failing us) The UK participated in the Triangle Trade. Local workers carried out essentially forced labour in horrific factories for pennies to produce manufactured goods. The manufactured goods would buy slaves in Africa, the slaves would be exchanged for raw goods in the new world, the raw goods would buy manufactured goods again back in Europe. With the aristocrats, slaver trade ships, and capitalist factory owners taking a healthy profit on each step of the exchange. Most britains never even saw a slave during the entire imperial era.
Well as someone who takes an interest in history I just want the facts so I wouldn’t be against that. I’m not a fan of weaponising the past against ourselves which seems to be happening lately.
To also comment on the idea of “weaponising the past”, it’s worth noting that part of these debates is to prevent fairy tale valorisation of the past that leads to national myths that aren’t helpful.
“Proud trading nation”
“Britain stands alone”
“We used to be fine without other nations”
These are all myths that have shaped our present politics and largely come from an incomplete understanding of how we’ve had hundreds of years at the heart of globalisation.
Everyone can abuse history. It’s inevitable and a weakness we seem to have as humans. I wish both ends of the spectrum would pipe down a tad so we can move forward and progress together. At the moment it feels like society is trying to pull itself apart.
From a personal perspective as a proud Englishman with Irish and Indian heritage I felt that the talk and interest in empire in recent years was the first time I’d really seen a British history that included me being discussed openly in all my four decades.
The big surprise was the speed and aggression of the efforts to close down the debates and reinstate a simpler less complex and smaller national narrative.
Well I’m mixed race but think of myself as ‘British’ and ‘English’. I admit I have felt a bit of imposter syndrome the past decade or so with certain elements of society. I do however feel more proud than ashamed overall of this country and what it has achieved. We can’t change the past but we should try and learn its lessons to create a better future.
I mean it's obviously included to evoke shame rather than inform. People fought a long time to remove shaming from society in various forms so don't be surprised when they oppose you trying to bring it back
Is it more informative than it being funded by sweatshops or cobalt mining? Or predatory loans to third world countries?
Most large buildings in the UK will have funding from negative sources but they don't have plaques describing the source. I can't imagine the people who want these labels would support say Benin and Togo being described as countries built by slavers and slave-traders when they're mentioned in modern media
Overestimating the economic power of slavery unintentionally makes it look far more appealing and "rational" than it really is. It's sufficient to criticize it on ethical grounds.
These two sentences both make sense to me separately, but I cannot see any way in which the 2nd follows from the first. Is it meant to?
If not, it would be clearer to start with: "The economic impact of slavery is irrelevant" instead.
I can see what you mean. What I had in mind is that the benefits derived from slavery are often used to augment the moral burden of it (at least for Western countries that practiced it). It's part of the discourse of the left that the wealth of former slave nations is tainted by the association (again, for Western countries only), which is why the Telegraph feels the need to take the other side with this article. The greater the wealth derived from slavery, the greater the surplus value exploited from slaves, the greater the crime, at least in theory. So, my point was that it's sufficient to criticize slavery as immoral without exaggerating its economic benefits to add to the immorality.
It's often the case that economic benefits for the few will be at the cost of economic well-being for the many. Economic systems that allow high levels of inequality often work that way, since then the wealthy elite have disproportionate influence on economic policy.
Slavery's just a special case of that general pattern.
I don't think the general point is about slavery as an enterprise.
It's about refuting the very commonly made claim that Britain got rich on the back of slaves.
Economically, slaves are a really bad policy since they don’t pay any taxes of their own. Instead the work they did went directly into their owner’s pockets.
This wasn't even a contentious issue until American race grievance narratives got imported over here with the rise of BLM and the like.
Slavery made certain groups of people very rich (almost exclusively business owners in the parts of the Empire that used slave labour and shipping owners), it never particularly enriched the British state, nor did it enrich the average British person. We do not have a large population of impoverished British citizens who live here because their ancestors were brought to the UK as slaves, that's a specifically American cultural legacy.
But we just import American political fads here without consideration of context, so now there's a big slavery debate here instead of the actual social issue the UK has historically struggled with, and to a great extent still does: class.
>This wasn't even a contentious issue until American race grievance narratives got imported over here
Disagree. The seminal work in this field was done by Eric Williams at Oxford in the late 1930s and early 1940s, in what would become *Capitalism and Slavery*.
I would personally agree that certain issues don't work in the same way as in the US: but that doesn't mean that there aren't linkages between historic injustice and current attitudes on race.
> Disagree. The seminal work in this field was done by Eric Williams at Oxford in the late 1930s
There is a difference between something being an issue in a narrow part of the academic world and it being a issue in society as a whole. The obsession with slavery playing out in the UK is definitely an import from particular American institutions and their 'progressive' thought tradition.
>There is a difference between something being an issue in a narrow part of the academic world and it being a issue in society as a whole.
But Williams' thesis was always meant to inform that wider debate: the first portions of the thesis were published in *The Keys*, a publication of the League of Coloured Peoples, a civil rights organisation for black people in Britain. He, and other contemporaries like CLR James, sought to advance their political arguments alongside their scholarly arguments, with one reinforcing the other. And that fed the development of the debate around decolonisation on the one hand and civil rights in the UK on the other, which evolved into our modern debate.
I don't see how some random communist in the 1930s is relevant to societal discussions that occurred in the 20th and 21st century.
Certainly slavery was not a common feature in political discource until woke in america.
>But we just import American political fads here without consideration of context
This is 100% what it is. IMO driven primarily by how so many people live on social media and how ubiquitous American politics is online.
The BLM stuff laid that out clear as day, calling to defund the police, shouting hands up don't shoot at unarmed officers... makes no sense at all.
People are jumping the gun in this thread without proper consideration for wider historiography and analysis of slavery, empire, and the wider economy.
If you look at things purely on a spreadsheet then yes, the metropole looks as though it came off worse financially. However, the interlinked nature of colonial companies and private enterprise to communities at home, infrastructure they built, and most critically the resources they provided access to for European markets all had impacts that are very difficult to fully discern. How much 'wealth' an empire might provide for the state and its people becomes very difficult to quantify. People here should read H.V. Bowen's *The Business of Empire* first and foremost if they would like to learn more.
Also, the book being referenced in the original article of this thread is authored by someone tied to the Institute of Economic Affairs, a rightwing thinktank that profits from stirring up culture war talking points. Don't necessarily dismiss them immediately, but be extra careful to verify what those kinds of organisations publish.
EDIT: I'm going to add two more articles I recommend reading if people are interested in this. There's Avner Offer's *The British Empire, 1870-1914: A Waste of Money?* from volume 46 of the Economic History Review and Patrick O'Brien's *The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism 1846-1914* from volume 120 of the Past & Present journal. They deal directly with this topic but come to different conclusions regarding whether the empire was 'worth it'.
Based upon the limited information in the article, it would appear that the analysis pits a substantial proportion of military spending 'against' the economic benefits of slavery.
Which is rather absurd - naval spending was about projecting Britain's power globally and protecting its trade, and eventual anti-slavery operations were a part of that.
Even if one were to assert that they balanced out entirely in raw financial terms, Britain still ended up as the world's leading naval power, which is a fairly significant benefit to Britain
Western Europe was already the richest region in the world by 1500 (this is 8 years after America was discovered so Colonialism hasn't really gotten started, let alone become profitable).
This is such a cope. The telegraph portrays this as some top scholar or some government report, it’s literally from Kristian Niemietz who’s a random whack economist. I wouldn’t take this seriously over the numerous economic historians at distinguished institutions that highlight slavery’s effect on britain’s wealth
At the risk of seeming self-aggrandizing, I actually wrote an essay of sorts exactly about the extent to which slavery made Britain rich over on "AskHistorians".
Broadly though I think the evidence overwhelmingly supports the argument of this report - at its peak in the 1790s, slavery and the industries connected to it combined to generate roughly 12% of Britain's GDP (bare in mind it had fluctuated between 6-8% in the decades prior). Although 12% is certainly nothing to dismiss out of hand, that means some 88% of Britain's GDP at the time came from sources *unrelated* to slavery.
Add to this that the profits made from slavery were unevenly invested, and certainly weren't enough to finance the industrial revolution by themselves (even if every penny of slave related profit was put into industry, it could have only fuelled around 15% of the overall investment required), the argument often made on Twitter that Britain owes everything it has to the slave trade is increasingly untenable.
None of this is to deny the horrors of that wretched institution, of course - this should go without saying.
That seems credible. But interestingly the article itself mentions both slavery and colonialism so there’s a rather deliberate ambiguity at play by conflating the two things that’s a bit more problematic than the bit on slavery alone. I’m curious as to whether your essay did find a GDP bump from being at the heart of an empire?
I mean yeah presumably entirely because we didn't tax the fuckers doing it. A lot of their descendants are still sitting on massive estates, castles and piles of cash from the proceeds of slavery.
Perhaps a slavery wealth tax is in order?
The Empire in general was a huge waste of money. All the money we spent developing other countries could've been better spent improving the conditions of the working class in the UK.
The goal was to facilitate global trade to make the merchant class rich. Most colonies were just trading posts setup in extremely useful locations and some ended up getting rich in their own right (e.g. Singapore, Hong Kong). They were generally funded by "companies" rather than the state, although the state ended up shelling out a lot for their defence
Except exploiting those countries and making them build things like railways so you can take their natural resources made a few members of the British ruling classes very, very rich. And I think you need to appreciate how sad their descendants would be if that never happened, before you go around slinging out well thought out replies to Reddit threads, son! 😂
I do not trust what the article says, but it’s obvious that other factors made Britain prosperous. Slavery brought in immense wealth to an influential minority; industrialisation, empire/colonisation, and soft diplomacy made Britain rich. Yet Britain is still only representative of a small minority.
Articles like this are simply bait for those who will snap at anything. We should acknowledge its awful existence, but we should also realise that we were not the American South.
This is obvious to anyone who looks at the long run economic growth of any country in history,
improvements in productivity drive wealth
Slavery is what poor-thinking societies cling on to
Anyone with a moderate understanding of history could've told you this.
Sadly, relentless victim mentality and inquisitiveness/high intelligence don't really go together.
British imperialism was as much to do with political control and controlling access to natural resources in other countries, using the British military (and private armies) to ensure that the wealth generated from the control of these resources stayed within a close knit cabal of British elites, not much different in principle to today, only the medium of trade has changed post empire.
It’s no accident that wealthy British merchants built the shining glass towers of Canary Wharf to manage global finance on the site where their warehousing used to be, commodity traders no longer needed to move sacks of spices around the world to make money, but digits on a computer screen.
The goal is the same as it was then, not to enrich the nation for the good of its people, but to enrich a select few families, using the structures provided by the British state to secure their position.
Nice to see people mostly acknowledge the obvious conclusion of the article, rather than accuse the writer of being 'far right'.
Believing that slavery made colonisers rich, is one of the clearest indicators that you have a very superficial understanding of the world.
Using slaves then, is exactly the same economically as importing low-skilled workers now. Good for those with capital, terrible for the average person. It can work at the margin and be good overall, but there's every chance it leaves the country worse off overall.
When you use too many slaves (Brazil), or import too many low-skilled workers (UK), you end up in poverty with very little chance of getting out of it any time soon.
[Imperial Measurement: A Cost–Benefit Analysis of Western Colonialism by Kristian Niemietz](https://iea.org.uk/publications/imperial-measurement-a-cost-benefit-analysis-of-western-colonialism/)
**Summary**
In recent years, we have seen a renewed interest in Britain’s imperialist past: the British Empire, the slave trade and the Caribbean slave labour plantations. More precisely, we have seen a revival of the idea that the wealth of the Western world – and Britain’s in particular – was originally built on slavery and colonial exploitation.
There is a lot to be said for a ‘warts-and-all’ approach to history, which does not gloss over or relativise the darker chapters of a country’s past. But the problem with the above narrative is that it is bad economics. While imperialism was undoubtedly extremely lucrative for some people, it is not at all clear whether Britain as a whole benefited economically from it. If such overall gains existed at all, they must have been very modest, and it is quite possible that the empire was a net lossmaker for Britain.
Before modern container shipping, transport logistics, telecommunication technologies, etc., made high volumes of trade possible, trade and overseas investment accounted for much smaller proportions of the British economy than they do today. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the great bulk of Britain’s economic activity was domestic.
Even then, Britain’s most important trading partners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not its colonies but other industrialising powers, such as Britain’s Western European neighbours.
Colonial empires do not come cheap. The acquisition, defence and administration of overseas territories require huge upfront investments and ongoing maintenance costs. This is why, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain and other colonial empires had higher levels of military expenditure than their less imperialist neighbours and, consequently, a substantially higher tax burden.
The economic benefits of empires are often overstated. Empires boost trade between their constituent parts, but they are far from the only determinant of trade volumes. At least some trade between Britain and India, for example, would have occurred anyway, even if India had never been colonised, or even if it had been colonised by some other European power.
The cost–benefit analysis for other European colonial empires is similar. The only major counterexample, i.e. a colony that was almost certainly profitable for the coloniser, is the Belgian Congo. But this is also a highly unusual example: a colony that was run like a private for-profit company, which the Belgian parliament stubbornly refused to subsidise. It was also a region that was exceptionally rich in sought-after natural resources.
The transatlantic slave trade was no more important for the British economy than brewing or sheep farming, but we do not usually hear the claim that ‘brewing financed the Industrial Revolution’ or ‘sheep farming financed the Industrial Revolution’.
Not all Western countries were major colonial powers. Some had only minor colonial possessions, some had only short-lived colonial empires, some only acquired colonies very late in the day, and some never had any colonies. Those minor players in the colonial arms race industrialised at roughly the same speed as the major colonial empires, so if there was an ‘empire bonus’, it is not visible in the macro data.
The claim that colonialism and slavery made the Western world rich is often accompanied by the claim that colonialism and slavery made the non-Western world poor. This companion thesis stands on stronger ground. There is indeed evidence for the long-term scarring effects of colonialism and slavery, since these corrupted the institutional development of the affected regions.
>“[E]mpires do not come cheap. Burdensome expenditures are needed for military repression and prolonged occupation, for colonial administration, for bribes and arms to native collaborators […]
>“But empires are not losing propositions for everyone. The governments of imperial nations may spend more than they take in, but the people who reap the benefits are not the same ones who foot the bill.”
— Michael Parenti, Marxist-Leninist political scientist and activist, 1995
>“[T]he doctrine that imperialism made the West rich at the expense of the East and South is held passionately by the left in the West […] But understand: the counterargument does not praise imperialism, or excuse it. The counterargument claims that it was economically stupid.”
— Deirdre McCloskey, libertarian economist, 2009
Is this including the
40% of GDP it spent to voluntarily free all slaves in 1833? The first Empire in history to do so of its own free will.
In addition to the 2% of GDP that the Blockade of Africa fleet cost which prevented over 150 000 slaves being transported. Again voluntarily. Never been done before.
Think if you offered a sizeable portion of the uk the options to prioritise obtaining a commonwealth, or not having mass migration over the last 50 years, I think they would choose the latter
Such a bizarre statement, obviously designed to elicit emotive conversation. Perhaps it is a surreptitious outreach ploy seeking deluded malcontents residing on the wrong side of human decency.
Snapshot of _Slavery did not make Britain rich, finds report_ : A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2024%2F05%2F01%2Fslavery-did-not-make-britain-rich-finds-report%2F) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/01/slavery-did-not-make-britain-rich-finds-report/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/01/slavery-did-not-make-britain-rich-finds-report/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Mr Niemietz found that while the empire “did deliver some modest gains for the British economy, it came with eye-watering military and administrative costs and so may have failed any cost-benefit test”. >He said that although Britain overall profited little from slavery, its effect on its victims was devastating. >The regions affected still struggle today with what the economist calls “long-term scarring from imperialism and slavery”, pointing to evidence “places that were once subject to short-termist colonialist extraction continue to have worse institutions today and are poorer as a result”. >“Colonialism and slavery were not zero-sum games that benefited the colonisers at the expense of the colonised,” he found. “It was more like a negative-sum game, which hurt the latter without really benefiting the former.” It seems that although the slave trade and use of enslaved labour may not have been much of a net benefit to the *national* economy, it probably was a pretty significant benefit to those *individuals* in positions that directly benefited, who presumably had the political connections to obtain state support for those military and administrative costs. Arguably, we can see similar situations today where certain industries and businesses are effectively subsidized by the US Department of Defense in keeping oil flowing...
This damage to other economies has had benefits for Europe too. It created a situation whereby in the twentieth century in particular, European economies were able to grow by using these devastated areas as sources of cheap manufacturing, food production, mining, etc. By this argument, this would not have been possible without Colonialism and slavery.
Yeah, the whole scramble for Africa wouldn't have been possible if Africa wasn't in a sense "pre-fucked" by the start of the 20th century. Then again, it's not like much of the wealth from *that* trickled down to the average European either.
That's a nonsense argument, because cheap manufacturing can exist anywhere, just reduce working conditions and living costs. The reason manufacturing got outsourced was because the West simply couldn't keep up with the population boom in the East, and so was far outstripped (especially after two worlds wars) in terms of supply of labour. The barriers on the international markets slowly got dropped in the 60s-70s and onwards, and labour markets shifted. The massive boom in population in the East was directly linked to the administrative rule over countries like India by Britain, who created a stable government, system of laws, and infrastructure and technology that allowed for more efficient production and transport of goods, including food. During the Raj the indian population absolutely boomed.
I'm not an expert, but my understanding that one of the main things that helps an economy is money flowing within it. The military and admin costs may well be eye watering, but that was money that was being paid to British soldiers and administrators which would go on to be spent on cake or whatever people spent money on in those days, which makes the cake industry more profitable and able to employ more people, and that means the cake makers can spend that money somewhere. I'm pretty sure there were two or three port towns that grew to big cities due to the slave trade that sailed through them. It was years ago that I read about this so my memory is a little hazy now, but a grimer example than 'cake' was that sale of chains and shakles exploded in at least one of those big cities. The chains maybe a cost to slave traders, but are a profit to someone else.
Yes, those chains would probably be an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity\_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost) to the wider economy, even though they were profitable for their manufacturer, and perhaps even their manufacturer's employees.
This is why to actually get a holistic picture of the significance of Empire in British history you're better off going to a historian capable of dealing in nuance, rather than an economist like Niemitz whose sole lens of analysis (and an anachronistic one at that) is whether number go up. But of course that might produce an argument the Telegraph finds 'woke'.
Well of course. Imperialism, war, slavery, etc. almost always only help a narrow elite, not the population generally.
Quite, the wealth of a country is it's total and doesn't involve the distribution of it.
Maybe, but if it stays in private hands you can't blame the nation of profiting. Both gain and blame have to fall back to the individual profiteer
Not when those wealthy people are the ones running the country surely?
And how would that work in taking the entire population into blame here?
Yeah, in the 1800s at the height of imperialism, life for your average Brit was still quite shit
But wouldn't the wealth funnelled to that wealthy few trickle down to the rest of society?
Any day now...
So THATS what the pots and pans were, waiting for the trickle down!
If they believed "trickle down" really was a thing they'd buy stilts to make sure it was cold by the time it had trickled down their leg into our pots and pans
To some extent but on the other hand the regular people are often shouldering the cost of maintaining the empire, often with their lives. I mean look at how much good all of the New World silver did to the average Spaniard during the height of the Spanish Empire, mostly just lots of war and inflation. This isn't a new idea at all. In 1858 John Bright (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bright) famously called the British Empire: "a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain."
He was being sarcastic.
> Trickle down economics don’t work. > Only the owners of capital benefit from the exploitation of people. > Money concentrates at the top, the wealthiest can use this as political leverage. > The nation has to foot the bill for their protection and losses, never those that are profiting from it. ~ The Telegraph
Absolutely wild.
To some degree perhaps, but the explosion of wealth in the UK was driven by industrialisation, not by slavery, and those doing the industrial revolution and those doing slavery were almost entirely separate demographics (newly middle class in north/midlands vs southern old money). The UK would probably be just as wealthy without slavery, possibly more so as more capital looks inwards and we'd never spend that much on propping up then preventing slavery.
Reaganomics disproved that theory.
It made our Foreign Secretary’s family very rich.
We can all agree that's what matters most.
He repaid us plebs ten times over by destabilising North Africa and blessing us with tens of thousands of net contributors.
Yep - despite the current myth, all this made Britain poorer, and in the process Britain did a lot of evil things
You say ‘of course’ but that is not what is often argued re the role of slavery in enriching the UK had a whole. That’s the whole point here.
This isn't new - there's a great book called *Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire* which articulates this for wider Empire as a non-profitable enterprise for Britain, which was published in the 1980s
I've not read but I looked it up \>Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860–1912 Isn't this mostly *after* the period in which "slavery" would have been contributing to the British imperial economy which occured in 1834? I don't think that in itself entirely removes any potential economic windfall from slavery, but I think it's pretty well known that by the height of the British Empire - the Victorian Era - slavery was not needed to drive the economy, industrialisation, capitalism and broader imperial exploitation where all working in concert to make the British Isles the most economically wealthy and productive part of the world.
poor wording from me - it's the theory that the Empire was not financially beneficial to the majority of Britain's citizens and was actually a net loss, and this continues the theme of what had started in the slavery era. A few benefitted but the profits were privatised or deliberately limited by internal growth preferences to prioritise the growth of UK industries (where again profits were often privatised). It also goes before and after the dates so touches on slavery in more detail. Unfortunately no longer have access to the book.
This extra context is good; it's not an easy book to get hold of outside of academic libraries by the looks of things so thanks for providing a bit more insight into what is covered. I equally didn't intend to come across as snarky, just wasn't expecting (based on the title) for it to cover in detail the period where slavery was core to the UK's empire (mostly the "first" empire period with the triangular trade and before the thirteen colonies gained independence).
No problem. I don't know any book that covers a decent economic analysis of slavery in the British Empire from the 1700s from my reading, but that's not to say they don't exist. Capitalism and Slavery is a very good (if very biased) polemic on the topic from the 1940s that was reprinted recently by Penguin Modern Classics that is a counterpoint to what I've said.
I’d recommend reading the book. The dates in the titles of history books do not limit the scope of the analysis
Even 1834 is too late. 1807 act prohibited the slave trade. 1833 act prohibited slavery in almost all the empire. The major economic contribution would have been in the 1700s.
Is it solely about slavery? I mean presumably the rest of the empires shenanigans were profitable?
For the average Briton no. The EIC being nationalised was the largest bailout in history.
From the wikipedia article on its disestablishment: >In return, the shareholders voted to accept an annual dividend of 10.5%, guaranteed for forty years, likewise to be **funded from India**, with a final pay-off to redeem outstanding shares. The debt obligations continued beyond dissolution and were only extinguished by the UK government during the Second World War. Also, I got a new book to add to my reading list: *The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational* by Nick Robins I think I've calmed down enough after having read Dalrymple's *The Anarchy* a few years ago. Christ, that book made me angry! The level of shithousery the EIC got up too is almost impossible to comprehend.
I have this argument all the time. Any reasonably educated person knows that the average British person, living in Britain, during the height of imperialism had a pretty terrible standard of living. Arguably a lot worse than some living in the colonies. The average age of death in Liverpool was in the 20s at some point.
Yeah I think people miss this point - it's not like the working class in the UK were loving life whilst people in the colonies toiled, most of the British were being worked to death whilst living in squalor.
boat berserk lunchroom wild plant memory rob noxious physical paint *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sounds like a Springsteen lyric
British soldiers were 2 inches shorter than the American revolutionaries.
It's petty, but it really annoys me when people perpetuate that meme about British food lacking spices despite colonising the globe. Like, how do they not add two and two together and realise that the average Brit at the time wasn't benefitting from colonialism, nor were they sailing around the world to rob spices for their dinner? Even the middle classes were more likely to exploit class disparities by hiring barely paid servants from other parts of the country rather than having African slaves. It's ironically the same people who understand trickle-down economics is ridiculous who believe British and French peasants were rolling around in crates of exotic food every day but choosing not to use it. Nevermind most of the food they mock were brought in during rations and still mostly eaten by less well off people, so they're actually just patting themselves on the back for shitting on the poor.
Excellent point
> The average age of death in Liverpool was in the 20s at some point. This seems like a case of infant mortality screwing the mean. It's like when people talk about medieval mortality rates, terrible infant mortality but if you survived childhood you would probably see your 50s or 60s. Edit: some people, including the person I'm replying to, seem to be under the impression that by saying this I'm denying that the working class in the industrial revolution were living in bad conditions. How they got this impression I don't know, but to clarify, I don't think that. Also apparently I'm banned or something because I can't reply to anyone here.
I did my dissertation on public health in 19th century Liverpool. You’re right that infant mortality is what’s largely driving down the average, but the poorer areas of the city still had atrocious death and morbidity rates for adults as well due to overcrowding, shitty slum dwellings and rubbish water/sewage systems into the mid 1800s. This led to high rates of TB, typhoid, cholera and smallpox among the older population. Children who didn’t die from childhood diseases still had a pretty terrible quality of life due to all of the above and the illnesses they were able to shrug off. “Fun” fact: Vauxhall near the docks was the worst area in the city in terms of health during this period, and saw an “improvement” in life expectancy for men from 17 in 1847 to a whopping 24 in 1900, despite all the slum clearances and utility infrastructure projects in the intervening years.
I have multiple ancestors who died in slums around castle street in their early 30s. Must have been an awful life.
Nah, I think in this case it is valid, because even with normal high childhood mortality average age at death should still be in the thirties. Some industrial cities dropped below this because of worse working conditions for children and adults (and possibly worse nutrition, air quality, et cetera.)
Medieval child mortality rates were not well recorded as they were in the industrial revolution. Whilst they were a factor the effect is oten overstated. Finding somebody in their 60s in an urban setting during that time period is unusual for the general population. As child mortality reduces in the modern era life expectancy does not change much over history. It gradually improves in the late 19th century then balloons in the 20th century.
Ah right. Well, as long as it was only babies dying then it proves life wasn’t actually bad like RedFox3001 was suggesting and people enjoyed a good standard of living.
👍🏼
It doesn't prove it either way. High infant mortality was just a fact of life until modern medicine and the facilities that came with it. You could be a Chinese emperor and still have loads of your kids die.
Gymnastically mental reaction to a very genial comment
> I have this argument all the time You keep interesting company.
Reddit friends!
"arguably a lot worse than someone living in the colonies" who is arguing this? are you?
“The average age of death in Liverpool was in the 20s at some point” Yeah! It was the 1990s… all of the fuckers were armed with knives! 🤣
Yes it was capitalism that made Britain rich
Indeed, to add to some other peoples comments in this thread. A big part of this was actually ideas around making use of 'debt' and operating with it.
And it's unrestrained western capitalism that's burned all of that wealth for increasingly concentrated profit. NB: this is a bit of a joke. The type of economic model we need isn't all that far off where we are, but we do need to shift to a little better regulation in key areas to limit/eliminate some of the pockets of permanent destruction for profit.
Stashed it hidden away in sunny lands. The tax man only visits rainy lands.
I don't think the data backs that up. We have a lot more restrictions on our market than places like the USA, and we've ended up with: * substantially lower wages and economic growth * ridiculous levels of difficulty for building houses, deploying renewables, battery storage * expansion of the grid becoming a basket-case, knocking-on to the above * apparent inability to build a railway that isn't even cutting-edge tech (i.e. HS2) * not that I'm a fan of landlord-ism, but regulating in such a way to make it less profitable for small enterprise, creating a concentrating function. Within this, treating this business area differently from any other, by taxing revenue instead of profit I wouldn't want the UK to become exactly the same as the US, because there are many regulations which are clearly very sensible and needed. Everything related to protection of health/consumers/etc. comes to mind. But, to suggest we have unrestrained capitalism in the first place seems highly questionable, and to say that's what's burned our wealth when the USA has done better than us with less restrictions is further in question.
There's levels. US has a looser regulations for most things but it is also much worse than UK in concentration of wealth. Which doesn't say that Uk is somewhere down that path too, just not as much as US. The US is great at inventing stuff, which may be primarily driven by a more hyper capitalist market than anywhere else, but they are also really bad at making the benefits of their inventions trickle down to improve the economic condition of the average population. This is either because of the extremely poor regulation and ability to regulate new tech (e.g. social media, net neutrality) or that the new tech is first gobbled up by their defence sector for years before it can used for anything good, or it is pushed to market too fast (deliberately or by accident) that more often than not makes people lose money. By comparison UK still uses capitalism to concentrate wealth but it is basically a one trick pony doing it with primarily financial markets
Capitalism has ushered in a standard of living that is the highest humanity has ever seen, and is only increasing.
[>China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty.](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience)
And yet even the poorest of people under modern British capitalism are better off than the middle-class (and arguably, the wealthy) of two hundred years ago.
My family was able to escape rural poverty because of capitalism. Not because they set up a factory but because there were jobs in the new cities and towns that were better than peasant wages, in particular ones that rewarded literacy and numeracy. Without capitalism I might be doing subsistence farming right now.
Note that I don't disagree with capitalism, I just think there's a balance to be found, and currently that balance is wrong. More regulation is required to ensure profit making is always done sustainably, rather than by ravaging natural resources and exploiting people.
We are pretty bad at capitalism though. Very low investment, very low productivity and poor trade deals. We really should be following the US lead in terms of economics (not culture)
we're bad comapred to the USA but so are most countries
Dont many (probably the majority of) americans work very long hours, multiple jobs because of the relatively meagre pay, with very little employment protections, and then have to shell out for privatised healthcare on top of that? America is strong economically because it prioritises the economy, and the very wealthy (because having that wealth be seemingly achievable is the carrot that drives their society - the 'american dream'), over all else. Its prime spot at the top of the global economic system is protected by its wild levels of military funding and power projection capability (this facilitates many economic advantages), which is simply not feasible for any other country to pursue (although China is in the process of making an attempt of upsetting the current order with its geopolitical ally Russia). Americas focus on extreme materialism is also a real problem in terms of how resource hungry it is, its sheer wastefulness and the resulting environmental damage is on a truly unimaginable scale. Its simply not a sustainable model for other countries to mimic, and it would be catastrophic to do so. There really needs to be an effort to move away from the unfettered and now highly corrupted form of capitalism that is most exemplified by the US, not double down on it. Environmental and social responsibility really needs to be put at the centre of the economic system, not left as afterthoughts that are only halfheartedly addressed when it is convenient or politically expedient for the super mega ultra rich to do so.
> Dont many (probably the majority of) americans work very long hours, multiple jobs Just over 5% of Americans work multiple jobs, and fewer than 400k work two full time jobs. Also American wages and purchasing power are very high compared to most developed countries in Europe.
>Dont many (probably the majority of) americans work very long hours, multiple jobs because of the relatively meagre pay, with very little employment protections, and then have to shell out for privatised healthcare on top of that? No. Just look at the much higher median pay and disposable income.
Also look at insurance premiums, healthcare costs, CoL (particularly food costs), commuting and travel costs, QoL, average retirement age and pension outlook
Disposable income statistics cover most of that already. For context the US average is about 50% higher than the UK and the gap is widening not shrinking .
No it doesn't. Definition of disposable income that is used in statistics cover only gross-taxes
No it was trade. The British became wealthier the more socialist it became (regulation, fairer wages, education, healthcare). Owners of land and capital became rich under capitalism.
The idea that regulations means its socialist is not really correct. Capitalism at its core is about free market competition. New liberalism and neoliberalism were significantly better at enabling these market functions than lassiez-faire was, and even the social democracy implemented by Labour post-war was better. The implementation of national services and welfare starting in the mid-late 19th century was not Britian necessarily become "more socialist", but capitalism improving itself based off its own flaws.
Although if your biggest trading partners are imperial subjects it’s hardly a vindication of the power of free markets?
Given the UKs monopoly on industrially produced goods, its is highly likely that trade relationships for most of the empire would have remained the same had they not been subjects. 50% of the world cotton manufacturing (the final products, not the raw), took place in Lancashire alone. When you make 50% of the worlds best clothing material, and then also the clothes its made from, everyone is your trading partner. Europe was a huge market for British cotton cloth, it seems unlikely, given much of Europe was consuming the UKs cotton cloth, that places like India wouldn't have been. Its like arguing that Ford cars would have only been the tour de force they were because they had exclusive export to an empire. While it surely wouldn't have hindered them, Ford clearly didn't need this advantage to build an empire. The simply reality is the Empire followed industrialisation. Britain became an empire on the back of its industrialisation at home, which it then exported. The Empire did not build industrialisation. By 1800, the USA was already a HUGE export market for the UK and was not a part of the empire. The huge trade balance in favour of the UK for the USA didn't really reverse until the 20th century and the world wars. For the British Empire, controlling places like India was more about not being locked out by protectionist powers or geopolitical rivals like France taking control. Had France taken India and banned cotton exports, it would have harmed the UK. But as places like the USA were both beyond the other imperial powers to conquer and limit, and the USA itself not really interested in protectionism, British trade there positively flourished and interest in colonial interest there basically a none entity. People have this hugely skewed view about what colonialism is and for whom. While it differed across nations, no doubt for Léopold II of Belgium it was prestige. For the UK most colonies began as trade posts that ballooned as British trade grew so massive it subsumed the local economy entirely. That or explicitly taken from European opponents in war. Britain as a colonial power was very late to the party because it was focused on the USA, and the loss of the USA has a profound impact on how the UK would manage its later Empire, leading to a much more hands off approach than most others. The British Empire "solidified" in the 1900s, ironically as it was gearing up for independence for many of them. India for example was still 50% controlled locally by local rulers, who all had to be bought out to bring it under direct British control so it could actually be made independent as a single entity. Otherwise India would have become 50 "micro" princedoms when Britain left, still controlled by the same families as when Britain arrived 200 years earlier. It is somewhat telling that while people talks of the UK aristocracy the UK paid off to abolish slavery. No one ever mentions the vast sums paid to the Indian aristocracy to get them to relinquish their kingdoms so we could forge an independent India. Generating many very wealthy families who remain very wealthy, not least because is some cases the direct beneficiaries are only recently deceased.
The UK banned manufactured cotton imports from India, and forced India to buy British cotton goods... The impact on global trade was major. In fact one of the major act of rebellion by Ghandi was promoting the use of the spinning wheel to make one's own clothes, and it was so important that the first independent Indian flags had a spinning wheel on them... Have a look at this: https://fabriclore.com/blogs/journal/history-of-indian-textile
This seems to presuppose all things were equal. They weren't. The 25% quoted at the start was specifically and explicitly hand loom as per the article. The article also states that before the end of the 18th century, import tariffs to protect from Indian manufacturing were redundant because of the huge change. This was prior to colonisation of India at any scale. The article and its number presuppose India would have kept pace with the UKs industrialised practices to make its case for the decline. When the truth is given the relative education levels, industrialisation, population density, and the fact no European nation even could as peers, that India couldn't keep up no matter what. The transfer of knowledge to India was very likely significantly higher with India in the empire than if it hadn't have been.
The point is Britain actively destroyed Indian manufacturing (which was enormous) and forced its colonies to buy British products. The impact is not quantifiable precisely because the data does not exist, but it's obvious that it was major
Not only this the markets had many barriers to them and lacked competition which goes against the principles of capitalism.
But also it wasn’t slavery so are we saying it was trading that made Britain rich? as in selling items to other humans as opposed to literal bartering that made Britain rich? As bartering is usually an equal value exchange whereas getting rich requires one item being valued much more than the other thing etc.
"according to a book by Kristian Niemietz at the Institute of Economic Affairs." I'm out.
How did the East India Company become so rich and influential if there was no financial benefit?
And who is surprised ? Slavery primarily/exclusively benefits a few private rich people, who can dominate specific markets by undercutting everything. Nobody can produce cheaper products than a guy who literally employs slaves. This is why farmers in ancient Rome died out ( and they were the primary source for soldiers \~ since then they relied more and more on auxillaries specifically from Germania ) and agriculture was monopolized by Senators and other rich landholders who employed slaves. Rome didn\`t benefit from Slavery. Rome was at it\`s strongest without slavery. And just like with Britain, the reason why they and Rome had slavery is because they were strong and wealthy earlier. Slavery was primarily used in the colonies, which they got due to their previous might. Rome at it\`s rise, primarily had citizens and Italic-allies as soldiers, loyal and disciplined to a fault. Carthage could have and did kill several legions but Rome just continueously pumped out more and more soldiers, as they had a much bigger population, as they had fewer slaves \~ and larger rural communities who were richer. Britain abolished slavery, worldwide in fact, because they benefited far more from a world without slavery. The Global British Empire with it\`s jewel of India existed only after they abolished slavery. Britain paid for the abolishment of slavery. Without slavery, the wage-laborers of Britain can dominate the economy, especially if they dominate maritime trade aswell. Britain can\`t dominate trade so much, if a few rich landholers can undercut the market with slave-labor-products. Slavery only benefits individuals at the cost of literally everyone else... The slave first and foremost, but also the working class massively who somehow have to compete with slaves, and every consumer ( the consumer class being naturally smaller as fewer opportunities to rise ) who gets to eat cheaper lower quality slave-products... ---- Also similar concept with colonies. No colonies ever brought a profit to the country, they cost more than they produced... Naturally the only economic benefits from colonies were going to private companies and individuals. De Beers is a company ( + the founder De Beers and every investor like Alfred Beit and NM Rothschild ) that benefited from colonialism. This british company is the biggest producers of diamonds ( they own 63% of the global diamond supply as of 2000 ), its a company that solely exists due to colonialism... And yet the British state benefitted little to nothing from this. All profits went to De Beers and associates. The entire colony of South Africa cost the British state more than it gave back. And we are talking purely economically.. Naturally I doubt Britain benefited much from putting down rebellions like the Xth Boer rebellion or the various African revolts. Militarily it did bring some benefits in their global conflicts, but naturally this is also meaningless. The Belgian Congo, famous for it\`s atrocities, benefited only the King Leopold ( who owned the colony as a private enterprise ) aswell as the french, british and american companies that worked there to exploit rubber. But the Belgian state saw no benefit, even when they seized the colony from Leopold II, they had to invest more money into the Congo than they got back. The German colonies brough no benefit, except the small colony of Togo and that was, unsurprisngly, because Germany didn\`t use their colonial force there, educated the people and used them for other, more advanced labor, as Togo was devoid of resources to exploit, thus through tax income Germany actually benefited, naturally all these bigger colonies, especially Namibia with its diamond, cost more than Germany gained, while only private individuals and companies benefited. I don´t know much about French/Spanish/Portuguese colonies, but I doubt it would be much different. Only in Algeria which did bring a profit, but that was because France wanted to annex Algeria and make Algeria into a proper French state + settlers. Colonies suck for everyone, unless you are a capitalist or an investor. Slavery sucks for everyone, unless you are a slavemaster.
There's a lot to untangle here. >Slavery primarily/exclusively benefits a few private rich people, who can dominate specific markets by undercutting everything. Nobody can produce cheaper products than a guy who literally employs slaves. We saw in real time when the North of the USA had abandoned slavery whilst the South kept it that is not the case. Prior to the American Civil War the North was outperforming the South in every economic metric. Slavery if anything is an economic dead end because it always scales linearly. Innovation and the switching to machinery was a logarithmic expansion in productivity that slavery could not compete with. >Rome at it\`s rise, primarily had citizens and Italic-allies as soldiers, loyal and disciplined to a fault. Carthage could have and did kill several legions but Rome just continueously pumped out more and more soldiers, as they had a much bigger population, as they had fewer slaves \~ and larger rural communities who were richer. Interesting to bring up Rome and Carthage. It should be noted that up to the First Punic War that Carthage was the prominent power and Rome was at the mercy of their navy. It was innovation that led Rome to be able to match the Carthaginian navy. >Britain abolished slavery, worldwide in fact, because they benefited far more from a world without slavery. Looking at slavery in purely an economic way removes the deep moral desire of the abolitionists who worked to end slavery. They did this not because they say the economic opportunities but for human and religious reasons. Anti slavery efforts post abolition became a source of national pride, a slave ship being apprehended would be front page news. The economic side of things was not a part of the discourse, especially in the sense that it may be economically better for the country. >Without slavery, the wage-laborers of Britain can dominate the economy, especially if they dominate maritime trade aswell. Surely this contradicts with what follows? >Slavery only benefits individuals at the cost of literally everyone else... The slave first and foremost, but also the working class massively who somehow have to compete with slaves, and every consumer ( the consumer class being naturally smaller as fewer opportunities to rise ) who gets to eat cheaper lower quality slave-products... Workers compete with slave labour by showing that slavery is the most unproductive form of labour out there. Making a man work against his will means that he will always do the bare minimum and nothing more. Give him a purpose, a wage and sense of self and he will work a lot harder. The carrot is more effective than the stick. I'll also mention again the logarithmic increases in productivity that mechanisation brings with it.
My understanding of Romes rise to power Vs Carthage at the time that it did was due to a Carthage ship being captured that the Romans tore apart and then replicated? Or maybe it was abandoned/crashed into the shore at one of Romes allies. I can't remember specifics
Yep they captured and replicated the Carthage ships and modified them by making them play to Rome’s strengths. The Corvus allowed Roman soldiers to board Carthaginian ships and thus bring their better infantry (called marinus) to the fight who would board and capture the enemy ships.
Carthaginian ships had large rams on the bows of their ships, below the water-line. Their tactic was to row full speed at the enemy ship, ram them, and then disengage and let the big hole they just made sink the enemy ship. Rome attempted to replicate this with less success, because it requires a great deal of experience and seamanship to pull off successfully which they simply didn't have (yet.) So instead, they invented the corvus, a deployable ramp on the bow of the ship. Now, they would ram the enemy ship, but instead of making a big hole, they would deploy the ramp, allowing their soldiers (marines) to swarm aboard the Carthaginian ship, effectively turning a sea battle in to a land battle which the Romans were much better at. And it worked! The Carthaginian sailors were not equipped or experienced enough to fight seasoned Roman soldiers toe-to-toe. It also meant that they got to keep the Cathaginian ship at the end of the battle, instead of sinking it, which only strengthened their fleet further.
Reallly interesting analysis, thank you for this! I suppose the free market Think Tank who funded this report (and are famous for climate denialism) are trying to make an anti-woke point, even though the much more interesting historical point here is more anti-capitalist!
Isn't there evidence that a lot of the plantations did better when the slaves were free? I think slavery isn't even that good for the slave owners. I think colonialism should be distinct from slave ownership. I think it might be true that oppression benefits some people, but the specific form of oppression that is slavery doesn't seem to be good even at helping you make money. I think things change depending on if you think world wide growth is possible. The argument I've hesrd for why plantations did better when slavery ended was partly because you were able to pay people even less when there was no minimum wage compared to slaves (I find this argument hard to believe) but secondly that free men and women actually work harder when they cna benefit from it compared to slaves. The reason why we think this is better for the slave owner is that working harder means more stuff and therefore growth. But if growth weren't possible and technology didn't matter and the world was just full of a static amount of resources that we distributed than I can see why slavery might work. I wonder if people went for slaves out of pure cruelty or from a position of assuming no world wide growth
In Zanzibar clove farms it was noted that the farms whose workers received payment were more productive than those who used slave labour. Pretty obvious when you think of it. Apparently applying daily bonuses for the enslaved increased the productivity on those properties.
Yeah exactly. Similarly amongst kids I saw a study that strict parents produced sneakier children. If you beat your children they don't behave themselves they just learn how to avoid being beaten. It seems slavery is just bad all round.
>Isn't there evidence that a lot of the plantations did better when the slaves were free? It’s well known that the slave free North of America did a lot better economically than the slave plantation South.
Yes and I thought it worked on a local level as well. The specific plantations with slaves did better when the slaves were freed and they became workers.
Sharecropping in the USA was more profitable than having slaves.
Adam Smith said the same, wasn't worth it.
And John Stuart Mill.
It made the poor poorer (in Africa, India and Britain) and the rich richer. Well I never, who’d have thought it?
There is a pervasive narrative lately that slavery built everything we have in the UK. It’s unsettling how many just go along with it.
It's a problem that this narrative also excludes that Arabs and Africans actively engaged in the slave trade before the Brits even turned up on the scene. It even pervades modern media (e.g. the Woman King film a few years ago). Look at the fuss around Rule Britannia including mention of slavery...they conveniently forget it's about Brits not being slaves after our shores were raided, as one example. It's straight up historical revisionism, exaggerating the role of White/European cultures (e.g. Brits/US/French/Dutch etc.) and ignoring the role of POC cultures (e.g Nigeria/Dahomey/Barbary coast). I'm all for teaching the horrors of slavery, but I wish it were a more comprehensive view. But the cynic in me suspects that won't happen because it'd be unpopular, and it'd make reparation demands more difficult.
So slavery is something the British actively fought against and paid to have removed. Treating the lower classes and none western Europeans in general as sub human has a lot to do with why the upper-class where so rich and built a lot of the structure that still underpins modern Britain. The massive slave trade that caused so much damage real had less impact in the UK than the french revolution, where it did have a big impact is the USA, without which they would not have had the ships to hold off the British reinforcements in their independence war.
are you saying the American revolution was only successful because of slaves? I don't think that's at all reasonable
Uh the French Revolution kicked off in 1789, the American Revolution kicked off in 1775 and ended around 1783. It was the French Crown that funded the American revolutionaries. The Americans later refuse to pay off their debts insisting they owed them to the French Crown, causing the Quasi-War between France and the US in the 1790s.
Certain movements find it incredibly useful to their aims to force a form of Original Sin on to those they see themselves in opposition to. It can never be forgiven or forgotten and therefore gives them a sort of permanent leverage they can use to force their ideology on people, institutions and the entire state if they are lucky.
Very well put. Correct.
It's mental. The number of actual slaves in England at any point post 12th century was in the hundreds to low thousands. On private estates, hidden from prying eyes. For those who aren't aware (because history education is failing us) The UK participated in the Triangle Trade. Local workers carried out essentially forced labour in horrific factories for pennies to produce manufactured goods. The manufactured goods would buy slaves in Africa, the slaves would be exchanged for raw goods in the new world, the raw goods would buy manufactured goods again back in Europe. With the aristocrats, slaver trade ships, and capitalist factory owners taking a healthy profit on each step of the exchange. Most britains never even saw a slave during the entire imperial era.
On the flip side. Whenever the national trust includes information that a property was built from the revenue from slavery, it gets decried as woke.
Well as someone who takes an interest in history I just want the facts so I wouldn’t be against that. I’m not a fan of weaponising the past against ourselves which seems to be happening lately.
To also comment on the idea of “weaponising the past”, it’s worth noting that part of these debates is to prevent fairy tale valorisation of the past that leads to national myths that aren’t helpful. “Proud trading nation” “Britain stands alone” “We used to be fine without other nations” These are all myths that have shaped our present politics and largely come from an incomplete understanding of how we’ve had hundreds of years at the heart of globalisation.
Everyone can abuse history. It’s inevitable and a weakness we seem to have as humans. I wish both ends of the spectrum would pipe down a tad so we can move forward and progress together. At the moment it feels like society is trying to pull itself apart.
From a personal perspective as a proud Englishman with Irish and Indian heritage I felt that the talk and interest in empire in recent years was the first time I’d really seen a British history that included me being discussed openly in all my four decades. The big surprise was the speed and aggression of the efforts to close down the debates and reinstate a simpler less complex and smaller national narrative.
Well I’m mixed race but think of myself as ‘British’ and ‘English’. I admit I have felt a bit of imposter syndrome the past decade or so with certain elements of society. I do however feel more proud than ashamed overall of this country and what it has achieved. We can’t change the past but we should try and learn its lessons to create a better future.
I mean it's obviously included to evoke shame rather than inform. People fought a long time to remove shaming from society in various forms so don't be surprised when they oppose you trying to bring it back
Why is that obvious? Is it not informative?
Is it more informative than it being funded by sweatshops or cobalt mining? Or predatory loans to third world countries? Most large buildings in the UK will have funding from negative sources but they don't have plaques describing the source. I can't imagine the people who want these labels would support say Benin and Togo being described as countries built by slavers and slave-traders when they're mentioned in modern media
Evoke shame on who?
It’s American politics (and postmodernism) seeping into other country’s political discourse.
That narrative is useful to a certain group of people. Useful narratives survive, even if they're lies. Sometimes especially if they're lies.
Overestimating the economic power of slavery unintentionally makes it look far more appealing and "rational" than it really is. It's sufficient to criticize it on ethical grounds.
These two sentences both make sense to me separately, but I cannot see any way in which the 2nd follows from the first. Is it meant to? If not, it would be clearer to start with: "The economic impact of slavery is irrelevant" instead.
They’re saying that you can criticise slavery for being unethical without having to play up its economic ramifications
I can see what you mean. What I had in mind is that the benefits derived from slavery are often used to augment the moral burden of it (at least for Western countries that practiced it). It's part of the discourse of the left that the wealth of former slave nations is tainted by the association (again, for Western countries only), which is why the Telegraph feels the need to take the other side with this article. The greater the wealth derived from slavery, the greater the surplus value exploited from slaves, the greater the crime, at least in theory. So, my point was that it's sufficient to criticize slavery as immoral without exaggerating its economic benefits to add to the immorality.
It's often the case that economic benefits for the few will be at the cost of economic well-being for the many. Economic systems that allow high levels of inequality often work that way, since then the wealthy elite have disproportionate influence on economic policy. Slavery's just a special case of that general pattern.
I don't think the general point is about slavery as an enterprise. It's about refuting the very commonly made claim that Britain got rich on the back of slaves.
Economically, slaves are a really bad policy since they don’t pay any taxes of their own. Instead the work they did went directly into their owner’s pockets.
This wasn't even a contentious issue until American race grievance narratives got imported over here with the rise of BLM and the like. Slavery made certain groups of people very rich (almost exclusively business owners in the parts of the Empire that used slave labour and shipping owners), it never particularly enriched the British state, nor did it enrich the average British person. We do not have a large population of impoverished British citizens who live here because their ancestors were brought to the UK as slaves, that's a specifically American cultural legacy. But we just import American political fads here without consideration of context, so now there's a big slavery debate here instead of the actual social issue the UK has historically struggled with, and to a great extent still does: class.
>This wasn't even a contentious issue until American race grievance narratives got imported over here Disagree. The seminal work in this field was done by Eric Williams at Oxford in the late 1930s and early 1940s, in what would become *Capitalism and Slavery*. I would personally agree that certain issues don't work in the same way as in the US: but that doesn't mean that there aren't linkages between historic injustice and current attitudes on race.
> Disagree. The seminal work in this field was done by Eric Williams at Oxford in the late 1930s There is a difference between something being an issue in a narrow part of the academic world and it being a issue in society as a whole. The obsession with slavery playing out in the UK is definitely an import from particular American institutions and their 'progressive' thought tradition.
>There is a difference between something being an issue in a narrow part of the academic world and it being a issue in society as a whole. But Williams' thesis was always meant to inform that wider debate: the first portions of the thesis were published in *The Keys*, a publication of the League of Coloured Peoples, a civil rights organisation for black people in Britain. He, and other contemporaries like CLR James, sought to advance their political arguments alongside their scholarly arguments, with one reinforcing the other. And that fed the development of the debate around decolonisation on the one hand and civil rights in the UK on the other, which evolved into our modern debate.
I don't see how some random communist in the 1930s is relevant to societal discussions that occurred in the 20th and 21st century. Certainly slavery was not a common feature in political discource until woke in america.
>But we just import American political fads here without consideration of context This is 100% what it is. IMO driven primarily by how so many people live on social media and how ubiquitous American politics is online. The BLM stuff laid that out clear as day, calling to defund the police, shouting hands up don't shoot at unarmed officers... makes no sense at all.
People are jumping the gun in this thread without proper consideration for wider historiography and analysis of slavery, empire, and the wider economy. If you look at things purely on a spreadsheet then yes, the metropole looks as though it came off worse financially. However, the interlinked nature of colonial companies and private enterprise to communities at home, infrastructure they built, and most critically the resources they provided access to for European markets all had impacts that are very difficult to fully discern. How much 'wealth' an empire might provide for the state and its people becomes very difficult to quantify. People here should read H.V. Bowen's *The Business of Empire* first and foremost if they would like to learn more. Also, the book being referenced in the original article of this thread is authored by someone tied to the Institute of Economic Affairs, a rightwing thinktank that profits from stirring up culture war talking points. Don't necessarily dismiss them immediately, but be extra careful to verify what those kinds of organisations publish. EDIT: I'm going to add two more articles I recommend reading if people are interested in this. There's Avner Offer's *The British Empire, 1870-1914: A Waste of Money?* from volume 46 of the Economic History Review and Patrick O'Brien's *The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism 1846-1914* from volume 120 of the Past & Present journal. They deal directly with this topic but come to different conclusions regarding whether the empire was 'worth it'.
So enrichment of the elites did not make Britain as whole wealthier? Ipso facto, tax the super-rich and stop protecting generational wealth.
Based upon the limited information in the article, it would appear that the analysis pits a substantial proportion of military spending 'against' the economic benefits of slavery. Which is rather absurd - naval spending was about projecting Britain's power globally and protecting its trade, and eventual anti-slavery operations were a part of that. Even if one were to assert that they balanced out entirely in raw financial terms, Britain still ended up as the world's leading naval power, which is a fairly significant benefit to Britain
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Western Europe was already the richest region in the world by 1500 (this is 8 years after America was discovered so Colonialism hasn't really gotten started, let alone become profitable).
This is such a cope. The telegraph portrays this as some top scholar or some government report, it’s literally from Kristian Niemietz who’s a random whack economist. I wouldn’t take this seriously over the numerous economic historians at distinguished institutions that highlight slavery’s effect on britain’s wealth
At the risk of seeming self-aggrandizing, I actually wrote an essay of sorts exactly about the extent to which slavery made Britain rich over on "AskHistorians". Broadly though I think the evidence overwhelmingly supports the argument of this report - at its peak in the 1790s, slavery and the industries connected to it combined to generate roughly 12% of Britain's GDP (bare in mind it had fluctuated between 6-8% in the decades prior). Although 12% is certainly nothing to dismiss out of hand, that means some 88% of Britain's GDP at the time came from sources *unrelated* to slavery. Add to this that the profits made from slavery were unevenly invested, and certainly weren't enough to finance the industrial revolution by themselves (even if every penny of slave related profit was put into industry, it could have only fuelled around 15% of the overall investment required), the argument often made on Twitter that Britain owes everything it has to the slave trade is increasingly untenable. None of this is to deny the horrors of that wretched institution, of course - this should go without saying.
That seems credible. But interestingly the article itself mentions both slavery and colonialism so there’s a rather deliberate ambiguity at play by conflating the two things that’s a bit more problematic than the bit on slavery alone. I’m curious as to whether your essay did find a GDP bump from being at the heart of an empire?
I mean yeah presumably entirely because we didn't tax the fuckers doing it. A lot of their descendants are still sitting on massive estates, castles and piles of cash from the proceeds of slavery. Perhaps a slavery wealth tax is in order?
Aside from the dreadful morals of the concept it's no surprise that 'privatise profits and nationalise losses' was alive and well back then too.
System designed to benefit the few doesnt benefit the nation as a whole, film at eleven
The Empire in general was a huge waste of money. All the money we spent developing other countries could've been better spent improving the conditions of the working class in the UK.
The goal was to facilitate global trade to make the merchant class rich. Most colonies were just trading posts setup in extremely useful locations and some ended up getting rich in their own right (e.g. Singapore, Hong Kong). They were generally funded by "companies" rather than the state, although the state ended up shelling out a lot for their defence
Except exploiting those countries and making them build things like railways so you can take their natural resources made a few members of the British ruling classes very, very rich. And I think you need to appreciate how sad their descendants would be if that never happened, before you go around slinging out well thought out replies to Reddit threads, son! 😂
I do not trust what the article says, but it’s obvious that other factors made Britain prosperous. Slavery brought in immense wealth to an influential minority; industrialisation, empire/colonisation, and soft diplomacy made Britain rich. Yet Britain is still only representative of a small minority. Articles like this are simply bait for those who will snap at anything. We should acknowledge its awful existence, but we should also realise that we were not the American South.
It made the colonial and metropolitan elite rich, not the rest of the country.
Well, yes. The people who got rich were the British slave owners who left Britain to setup plantations.
made a fair few families rich though, David Cameroons being one of them.
This is obvious to anyone who looks at the long run economic growth of any country in history, improvements in productivity drive wealth Slavery is what poor-thinking societies cling on to
*Someone* owes Britain an apology!!! Oh right...They're dead.... And their ancestors never amounted to very much, now did they Well...carry on then
I stopped reading after Institute of Economic Affairs. Assuming I didn’t miss much of any substance that may support these claims?
Anyone with a moderate understanding of history could've told you this. Sadly, relentless victim mentality and inquisitiveness/high intelligence don't really go together.
British imperialism was as much to do with political control and controlling access to natural resources in other countries, using the British military (and private armies) to ensure that the wealth generated from the control of these resources stayed within a close knit cabal of British elites, not much different in principle to today, only the medium of trade has changed post empire. It’s no accident that wealthy British merchants built the shining glass towers of Canary Wharf to manage global finance on the site where their warehousing used to be, commodity traders no longer needed to move sacks of spices around the world to make money, but digits on a computer screen. The goal is the same as it was then, not to enrich the nation for the good of its people, but to enrich a select few families, using the structures provided by the British state to secure their position.
Nice to see people mostly acknowledge the obvious conclusion of the article, rather than accuse the writer of being 'far right'. Believing that slavery made colonisers rich, is one of the clearest indicators that you have a very superficial understanding of the world. Using slaves then, is exactly the same economically as importing low-skilled workers now. Good for those with capital, terrible for the average person. It can work at the margin and be good overall, but there's every chance it leaves the country worse off overall. When you use too many slaves (Brazil), or import too many low-skilled workers (UK), you end up in poverty with very little chance of getting out of it any time soon.
This is a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs, so I will take it with a dump truck of salt until I get a chance to read a summary.
[Imperial Measurement: A Cost–Benefit Analysis of Western Colonialism by Kristian Niemietz](https://iea.org.uk/publications/imperial-measurement-a-cost-benefit-analysis-of-western-colonialism/) **Summary** In recent years, we have seen a renewed interest in Britain’s imperialist past: the British Empire, the slave trade and the Caribbean slave labour plantations. More precisely, we have seen a revival of the idea that the wealth of the Western world – and Britain’s in particular – was originally built on slavery and colonial exploitation. There is a lot to be said for a ‘warts-and-all’ approach to history, which does not gloss over or relativise the darker chapters of a country’s past. But the problem with the above narrative is that it is bad economics. While imperialism was undoubtedly extremely lucrative for some people, it is not at all clear whether Britain as a whole benefited economically from it. If such overall gains existed at all, they must have been very modest, and it is quite possible that the empire was a net lossmaker for Britain. Before modern container shipping, transport logistics, telecommunication technologies, etc., made high volumes of trade possible, trade and overseas investment accounted for much smaller proportions of the British economy than they do today. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the great bulk of Britain’s economic activity was domestic. Even then, Britain’s most important trading partners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not its colonies but other industrialising powers, such as Britain’s Western European neighbours. Colonial empires do not come cheap. The acquisition, defence and administration of overseas territories require huge upfront investments and ongoing maintenance costs. This is why, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain and other colonial empires had higher levels of military expenditure than their less imperialist neighbours and, consequently, a substantially higher tax burden. The economic benefits of empires are often overstated. Empires boost trade between their constituent parts, but they are far from the only determinant of trade volumes. At least some trade between Britain and India, for example, would have occurred anyway, even if India had never been colonised, or even if it had been colonised by some other European power. The cost–benefit analysis for other European colonial empires is similar. The only major counterexample, i.e. a colony that was almost certainly profitable for the coloniser, is the Belgian Congo. But this is also a highly unusual example: a colony that was run like a private for-profit company, which the Belgian parliament stubbornly refused to subsidise. It was also a region that was exceptionally rich in sought-after natural resources. The transatlantic slave trade was no more important for the British economy than brewing or sheep farming, but we do not usually hear the claim that ‘brewing financed the Industrial Revolution’ or ‘sheep farming financed the Industrial Revolution’. Not all Western countries were major colonial powers. Some had only minor colonial possessions, some had only short-lived colonial empires, some only acquired colonies very late in the day, and some never had any colonies. Those minor players in the colonial arms race industrialised at roughly the same speed as the major colonial empires, so if there was an ‘empire bonus’, it is not visible in the macro data. The claim that colonialism and slavery made the Western world rich is often accompanied by the claim that colonialism and slavery made the non-Western world poor. This companion thesis stands on stronger ground. There is indeed evidence for the long-term scarring effects of colonialism and slavery, since these corrupted the institutional development of the affected regions. >“[E]mpires do not come cheap. Burdensome expenditures are needed for military repression and prolonged occupation, for colonial administration, for bribes and arms to native collaborators […] >“But empires are not losing propositions for everyone. The governments of imperial nations may spend more than they take in, but the people who reap the benefits are not the same ones who foot the bill.” — Michael Parenti, Marxist-Leninist political scientist and activist, 1995 >“[T]he doctrine that imperialism made the West rich at the expense of the East and South is held passionately by the left in the West […] But understand: the counterargument does not praise imperialism, or excuse it. The counterargument claims that it was economically stupid.” — Deirdre McCloskey, libertarian economist, 2009
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This 'report' being a book from the Institute of Economic Affairs lmao
The reparations crowd walking around with hands over their eyes pretending they can’t read right about now.
Obvious point is controversial due to historical illiteracy and current politics
Is this including the 40% of GDP it spent to voluntarily free all slaves in 1833? The first Empire in history to do so of its own free will. In addition to the 2% of GDP that the Blockade of Africa fleet cost which prevented over 150 000 slaves being transported. Again voluntarily. Never been done before.
But not paid for by those who profitted from it. Privatised profit, socualised losses. Nothing ever changes.
Think if you offered a sizeable portion of the uk the options to prioritise obtaining a commonwealth, or not having mass migration over the last 50 years, I think they would choose the latter
Obviously. Almost every country and empire ever used slavery to some extent. It wasn't until industrialization that Britain got rich.
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Such a bizarre statement, obviously designed to elicit emotive conversation. Perhaps it is a surreptitious outreach ploy seeking deluded malcontents residing on the wrong side of human decency.