Slavery being economically inefficient makes a lot more sense when we stop viewing it from the perspective of the owner, and instead from the perspective of the market. The slave owner is functionally a self inserted middleman central planner, who makes their living not by generating value but through violence. They are a parasite who feeds off labor in the same way that a common thief does, they extract wealth without creating any. Compare this to the modern role of the manager, which actually serves a value generating purpose. Successful management and leadership optimizes and increases productivity through directing and organizing the groups below them. Slave owners redistribute value to themselves, skillful managers and business leaders create more value. Of course some slave owners were smarter than others and did do a management role as well but it's overall less efficient.
And the labor under them is inefficiently allocated too. The slave trade just does not distribute talent nearly as well as a labor market does. Slaves don't move to jobs where their particular skills are needed, they don't specialize nearly as much, and competing slave owners can not freely compete for skilled slaves at the same level as a free market. They also incentivize underinvestment in human capital, educating and training slaves too much increases the risk they can run away and get substantial work elsewhere. Not to mention that some amount of labor is "wasted" in the enforcement of slavery as well, labor that could have gone to actually doing something.
I don't think I find this as convincing as the conventional explanation, which is that unskilled, reluctant labor was ultimately not that useful in the context of modern factories. Chattel slavery isn't obsolete because slaves can't seek good culture fits on LinkedIn, it's obsolete because we have machines that do the things that slaves used to do except faster, more efficiently, and without a huge quantity of social[1], economic, and martial overhead.
This is similar to the reason oxen and feudalism aren't around anymore.
- ^
Slavery creates a ton of discontent, not just among slaves, but among free workers whose wages are undercut, among humanitarians, and among ordinary people who don't like being exposed to the risk of an attempted slave revolt just so someone else can make money.
It is true that industry allowed England and the northern USA to impose their will on agricultural slave societies. But it is also true that big plantations aren't efficient. Agricultural production increased after the abolition of slavery in both the Caribbean and the American South.
Do you have evidence for this? I thought it was fairly well-established that slavery had higher agricultural production than the systems that followed it. Production is the last thing I'd expect to increase with abolition because sharecroppers and other free people want to grow food, have free time, etc rather than spending 90 hours a week picking cotton in a gang labor system. ChatGPT agrees.
The clearest example is prewar Virginia where there was direction competition between free and slave labor. The free labor outcompeted slave labor at growing tobacco, which is why people expected slavery to die out on its own. Then the cotton boom caused Virginia plantations to switch to growing slaves.
You also make a theoretical argument. At most that suggests that the landowners should earn more. That is not the same as production. Moreover, free people put most of their surplus into growing the next generation of free people. Empirically, free populations expand much faster than slave populations.
I'm not sure "efficiency" is the right way to think about it. The realistic counterfactual was probably not the people who were slaves instead being immigrants with rights to their own person, but rather staying in Africa. And while it seems possible that slavery as it was practiced was economically harmful relative to that, I would be surprised if the analysis came out that way (unless you made your case by assigning economic value/disvalue to things that usually aren't measured in those terms, when people are analyzing economic impacts of things).
ETA: maybe not that surprised, on second thought. The slave trade was, as described in the post, pretty disruptive to the social fabric of the continent that bore the brunt of it; the effects there might have been quite large.
I'm not sure "efficiency" is the right way to think about it. The realistic counterfactual was probably not the people who were slaves instead being immigrants with rights to their own person, but rather staying in Africa
Now perhaps it's true that "not having the labor at all" is worse than "having the labor but in inefficient slavery", but that doesn't really mean much in terms of comparing it to modern day market systems, where we have the labor and (relatively more) free markets.
Or to go back to the middleman issue of slave owners.
It's beneficial for A and B to engage in mutual trade of goods and services. If A and B would not have traded unless C was involved, and C takes a 20% cut yet A and B still want to trade despite that, then C is probably an economic good. Introducing buyers to sellers (and vice versa) is a whole job in modern economies after all.
However if A and B were already going to trade, then C coming in and parasitizing 20% by threatening violence against the two participants is not an economic good. Introducing a violent parasite into a free trade hurts the value generated in trade. This is not exclusive to thieves or slave owners, it happens even with normal taxes. Now perhaps the thief, slave owner or government uses the money in some other manner to promote something society cares about more than economic efficiency, but it is not in question that the violent middleman is a drag on the economy.
Violent middlemen are parasites. Would one a priori think that your trip to the grocery store would be cheaper if on the way a highwayman held you up and charged you a "toll". No. They don't provide any value themselves, they extract from you. The same thing with slave owners, what value they might create in the role of manager or buyer/selling matching is incidental to the main point of highwayman style parasitism, and is beaten out by proper managers and matchers.
And this isn't even a modern idea. Adam Smith talked about the inefficiency of slavery himself.
Lest we forget, Smith openly condemned slavery on both moral and economic grounds. As an economist, he argued that slavery was inefficient and ineffective for society. He believed that when people are forced to work, and therefore cannot act upon their “own interest”, they have no incentive to innovate, improve or invest their skills and labour.
He believed that when people are forced to work, and therefore cannot act upon their “own interest”, they have no incentive to innovate, improve or invest their skills and labour.
This reminds me of a sad sort of counterexample. Edmond Albius was a slave who single handedly boosted vanilla farming by discovering a method to pollinate it when he was 12. He saw very little reward for it, though he was eventually freed when slavery was abolished. Sometimes people are just creative and inventive despite it being absolutely not in their interests to (and the recipients of their creativity not deserving it).
It's beneficial for A and B to engage in mutual trade of goods and services. If A and B would not have traded unless C was involved, and C takes a 20% cut yet A and B still want to trade despite that, then C is probably an economic good. Introducing buyers to sellers (and vice versa) is a whole job in modern economies after all.
I find the phrasing of C as an economic good a bit odd. I suspect economists would refer to C as and entrepreneur acting to move the allocation of resources towards equilibrium of some unmentioned economic good or resource. I think C would be better viewed as acting in some type of economic role rather than as some economic good. Is there something in your thinking I am missing that makes it better to describe C as an economic good that is somehow taking a 20% cut of the value of the exchange between A and B?
Ok yeah my bad, economic good is a term that already has a specific meaning and I meant it more as that C is a good thing for the overall economy lol. I mean it more like this:
A: Has a Pikachu card but wants a Charizard card.
B: Has a Charizard card but wants a Pikachu card.
Normally A and B would just trade each other, but what if they don't know the other exists or can't find each other? In comes our "matcher" C. Maybe A values the Charizard card as (Pikachu + $2) so he pays C a dollar to find a person willing to trade, they find B, a trade occurs and everyone's life is better for it. It is a good thing that C did the job of matching A and B together.
Matchmakers, brokers, marketplaces, etc are examples of matchers. A grocery store has an actual economic purpose that creates value instead of extraction.
1The claims in this post (which is basically a retelling of Clarkson's account) are far too bold for this limited body of sources to support them. It is based on just one autobiographical primary source and one non-scientific narrative history as secondary literature and they aren't even interrogated. There is no serious attempt at source criticism. Not for the important details, not for merely heroic claims like this:
"Thomas Clarkson is a hero for the ages. [...] Clarkson is the key figure in the abolitionist movement. His autobiographical accounts could be cut straight from the script of a fantasy role-playing video game. [...] More than once, he is almost murdered by thugs or an evil ship captain for his interference and has to make a heroic escape. [...] He occasionally detours on side quests to assist a poor, helpless sailor [...] He travels at breakneck speed through the nights, often braving severe weather or a perilous river-crossing. [...] He is a super-smart scholar [...]"
At no point are obvious questions asked: Is the stuff this guy claims really true? Can we corroborate that? Where are the receipts? What do other sources say about this?
It might very well be true, but the post doesn't show any interest in finding it out and instead presents almost everything Clarkson claims as a fact. Clarkson is not a neutral source. That doesn't make him unreliable per se, but he was a motivated actor on several levels and this demands a more careful consideration.
The more defensible title of this post would be "Surprising stuff I read about the slave trade."
This is an interesting critique, but I'm confused by your framing.
"Thomas Clarkson is a hero for the ages. [...] Clarkson is the key figure in the abolitionist movement. His autobiographical accounts could be cut straight from the script of a fantasy role-playing video game. [...] More than once, he is almost murdered by thugs or an evil ship captain for his interference and has to make a heroic escape. [...] He occasionally detours on side quests to assist a poor, helpless sailor [...] He travels at breakneck speed through the nights, often braving severe weather or a perilous river-crossing. [...] He is a super-smart scholar [...]"
At no point are obvious questions asked: Is the stuff this guy claims really true? Can we corroborate that? Where are the receipts? What do other sources say about this?
Of all the examples you could pick, this is one area where I feel very confident in the reliability of Clarkson's account. Sure, we can debate whether Clarkson was really the key figure in the movement, but I don't think he just made up these stories about his travels - that would be pretty bold. A lot of his claims can be directly cross-checked against the Parliamentary record, because his primary activity was collecting evidence for the Privy Council and House of Commons inquiries.
Hochschild and historians generally treat his book as a reliable source for the factual details. Just as The Media Very Rarely Lies, a respectable and highly scrutinized figure like Clarkson is rarely going to just fabricate specific factual details, especially given that at the time of writing, he still had a major battle to fight for the full abolition of slavery.
Moreover, he was under strong adversarial pressure from people who tried very hard to undermine him, even including some of his own side. As discussed in Bury the Chains, William Wilberforce's sons published a book attacking Clarkson's account for self-aggrandizement at the expense Wilberforce. Clarkson wrote another book defending himself and Wilberforce's sons eventually apologized and retracted some of their claims.
Having said that, I'm more sympathetic to your criticism with respect to points that are based on my own inferences and interpretation, particularly point 1 (The obstacle to abolition was not the economic system) and point 6 (The slave trade may actually have been bad for the economy).
As mentioned in other comments, I was well aware of the uncertainly around point 6, and I think the original post hedges appropriately to convey this. Point 1 is where you have the strongest case. I want to stand by my claim that the economic system was not initially the main obstacle to abolition and it did start out as a contest between two relatively narrow interest groups. But I admit that I don't feel confident claiming that the economic incentives did not eventually dominate the outcome, once the issue was much more broadly salient. I certainly would have to read more widely to solidify such an argument.
Hochschild and historians generally treat his book as a reliable source for the factual details.
Clarkson's book and the historiographical tradition it spawned are highly controversial among historians.
Anita Rupprecht puts it like this: "Clarkson's History established a heroic British narrative of humanitarian action that remained largely intact until the period of decolonisation in the middle of the last century. As is well known, Eric Williams's dismissal of that version of events set terms for a vigorous historiographical debate that still rages today."[1]
The story about the Zong Rupprecht analyzed in her article is particularly interesting, because Clarkson himself claims it was pivotal for mobilizing. She traces how this story is used for dramatic effect by later authors, among them your second source for this post, Hochschild ("David Hochschild’s recent populist abolition history, Bury the Chains, also refers to the event to help set a dramatic scene.") and also how Clarkson himself changed the story later on in other publications, where "he rewrites it to fit his purpose and the moment."
She analyzes him as a propagandist: "Given the moral, political and aesthetic issues at stake, one of the significant rhetorical strategies deployed by propagandists, as many critics have noted, was to write endlessly about how it was, in fact, impossible to represent the Middle Passage at all. [...] Perhaps the most famous illustration of the replacement of description by ‘unspeakability’ occurs in the introduction to Thomas Clarkson’s History. Clarkson had no personal experience of slavery but excelled in imaginatively evoking its barbarity in print. After celebrating the moral benefits that the abolition of the slave trade has delivered to the nation (rather than to the Africans) he takes his readers on a fictionalised ‘ethnographic tour’ to the coast of Africa."
Her verdict is quite strong: "Clarkson's sentimental appropriation of the Zong as both a true instance and an exemplary moment of generalised horror illustrates, of course, the power of propaganda as a form of mythologisation."
Christopher Leslie Brown has similar things to say in Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (which can be considered a modern definitive work): "Clarkson’s History would provide the framework in which, for more than a century, the origins of the British antislavery movement would be understood. [...] This interpretive framework, what might be thought of as the Clarkson thesis, with its reliance on narration rather than explanation, with its emphasis on providential mission rather than human calculation, comported nicely with how most in Britain, deep into the twentieth century, preferred to reflect on the nation’s slave trading and slaveholding past."[2]
Others, like Michael E. Jirik are merely unhappy about the central role in the story that historiographic tradition gave Clarkson: "The foundational role of Peckard and black abolitionism in Cambridge antislavery reveals how the university played a pivotal role in the fight against the slave trade and shifts focus from the singular figure of Clarkson to the evolution of antislavery at Cambridge. A sole focus on Clarkson overshadows the radicalism of black abolitionism and Peckard at the university. The story of antislavery at Cambridge begins not with Clarkson but instead with Peckard and the writings of Wheatley and Afro-British abolitionists such as Sancho and later Equiano."[3]
J. R. Oldfield has corrected a bunch of Clarkson's exaggerations and self-serving misrepresentations, namely his claim the Wedgwood cameos made cameos a general fashion in Britain or his claim to have organized a committe in Exeter, when actually someone else did that.[4]
Historians generally treat his book as a source and a source and its author need to be contextualized and corroborated. This is source criticism.
>>> Of all the examples you could pick, this is one area where I feel very confident in the reliability of Clarkson's account. <<<
What is the reason for this confidence? The more heroic side-tales are not part of the parliament records afaik, Clarkson himself has written his account twenty years after the events, he is in most cases the only known source for them happening and he burned almost all of his personal documents.
>>> Just as The Media Very Rarely Lies, a respectable and highly scrutinized figure like Clarkson is rarely going to just fabricate specific factual details <<<
That's not my experience. Like all others, the early modern period is chock full of people (even respectable and highly scrutinized figures) making all sorts of false and sometimes outrageous claims. A certain tendency to exaggeration and embellishment was not unusual in earlier times and not all of that even has to be intentional. Some tales grow over decades of retelling and false memories exist.
One example I like to give to students when familiarizing them with source criticism and how to evaluate witnesses is Ronald Reagan. On numerous occasions he talked about a specific incident that happened during World War II, even claimed he rewarded a Medal of Honor to someone for this, but it never actually happened.[5][6][7] It was a scene from the 1944 war movie Wing and a Prayer.
During my time at university senior citizens were allowed to fill up free spots in history lectures. When we talked about the bombings of Dresden, we also talked about how Nazi propaganda invented low-level strafing runs aimed at civilians by Allied airplanes. One of the senior citizens spoke up. He survived those very bombings as a child and he told us through tears that those strafing runs really happened and that we weren't even there, but he was; it was heartbreaking to listen to. But we know for a fact that those strafing runs did not happen and that furthermore they would have been impossible.[8]
Do I believe that Clarkson is a notorious liar and invented his account out of whole cloth? No, I don't think that. But I think it is possible, even likely, that some of it is embellished. Some of the historians I cited here have shown examples of him putting the narrative and its effect over the facts.
I think that he should be treated as the propagandist (a well-intentioned propagandist, with whose broader goal I very much sympathize) he was and that we should take his account with a much bigger grain of salt than this post does.
I think this post would have been better if it's framing wouldn't have simply taken his whole heroic narrative at face value and presented pretty much everything as a fact, starting with the title.
A framing more along the lines of "Clarkson was a pretty interesting historical figure who has carried out a successful campaign against one of the greatest evils of his time. Let's take a look at his account of how he did that, what he has to say for himself and what we maybe can learn from that" would have been much better in my opinion.
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Anita Rupprecht (2007) ‘A Very Uncommon Case’: Representations of the Zong and the British Campaign to Abolish the Slave Trade, The Journal of Legal History, 28:3, pp. 329-346.
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Christopher Leslie Brown (2006). Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. University of North Carolina Press, pp. 4-5.
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Michael E. Jirik (2020) Beyond Clarkson: Cambridge, Black Abolitionists, and the British anti-slave trade campaign, Slavery & Abolition, 41:4, pp. 748-771.
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J. R. Oldfield (1992) The London Committee and Mobilization of Public Opinion Against the Slave Trade, The Historical Journal, 35, 2, pp. 331 -343.
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4. The main argument against abolition was that if the British didn't do it, other countries would.
Suggest rephrase to "if the British didn't trade slaves". I read this as "if the British didn't do [abolition]" at first, and was confused.
Readers interested in this subject might also want to consult Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (2006) on the ethical, religious, and legal arguments surrounding abolition.
>The 1780s were not so different from today
another similarity: "bad for the economy" was used back then, too, to justify bad/evil.
I haven't looked into this very deeply, but I suspect that some of this information is historical propaganda. In particular, when I shallowly looked into the famous slave ship diagram some years ago, it didn't really add up, and I came away thinking it was likely propaganda from the abolitionists' side. (... but I investigated only briefly and don't remember the details, so take this with a lot of salt.) Some of the other things also have a propaganda vibe - e.g. the thing about slavery being bad for the economy, or about the sailors, or Clarkson giving an awfully heroic account of himself.
My impression is the opposite. All of the evidence was meticulously examined in the Commons at the time and the opposing side would have had very strong incentives to point out inconsistencies.
when I shallowly looked into the famous slave ship diagram some years ago, it didn't really add up
I'd be curious to know what you thought didn't add up. Clarkson address this point in quite a lot of detail, so I'm inclined to believe him:
"It must be obvious that it became the committee to select some one ship, which had been engaged in the Slave Trade, with her real dimensions, if they meant to make a fair representation of the manner of the transportation. When Captain Parrey, of the royal navy, returned from Liverpool, to which place Government had sent him, he brought with him the admeasurement of several vessels which had been so employed, and laid them on the table of the House of Commons. At the top of his list stood the ship Brookes. The committee, therefore, in choosing a vessel on this occasion, made use of the ship Brookes; and this they did, because they thought it less objectionable to take the first that came, than any other. The vessel, then, in the plate is the vessel now mentioned, and the following is her admeasurement as given in by Captain Parrey.
The committee, having proceeded thus far, thought that they should now allow certain dimensions for every man, woman, and child; and then see how many persons, upon such dimensions and upon the admeasurements just given, could be stowed in this vessel. They allowed, accordingly, to every man slave 6 ft. by 1 ft. 4in. for room, to every woman 5 ft. by 1 ft. 4 in., to every boy 5 ft. by 1 ft. 2 in., and to every girl 4 ft. 6 in. by 1 ft. They then stowed them, and found them as in the annexed plate, that is, they found, (deducting the women stowed in z of figures 6 and 7, which spaces, being half of the half-deck, were allowed by Sir William Dolben's last bill to the seamen,) that only 450 could be stowed in her; and the reader will find, if he should think it worthwhile to count the figures in the plate, that, on making the deduction mentioned, they will amount to this number.
The committee then thought it right to inquire how many slaves the act of Sir William Dolben allowed this vessel to carry, and they found the number to be 454; that is, they found it allowed her to carry four more than could be put in without trespassing upon the room allotted to the rest; for we see that the bodies of the slaves, except just at the head of the vessel, already touch each other, and that no deduction has been made for tubs or stanchions to support the platforms and decks.
Such was the picture which the committee were obliged to draw, if they regarded mathematical accuracy, of the room allotted to the slaves in this vessel. By this picture was exhibited the nature of the Elysium which Mr. Norris and others had invented for them during their transportation from their own country. By this picture were seen also the advantages of Sir William Dolben's bill; for many, on looking at the plate, considered the regulation itself as perfect barbarism. The advantages, however, obtained by it were considerable; for the Brookes was now restricted to 450 slaves, whereas it was proved that she carried 609 in a former voyage."
the thing about slavery being bad for the economy
Yes I think this is the most suspect claim because it is the hardest to prove, hence my hedging in the post.
about the sailors
Here again, I'm inclined to believe Clarkson due to the thoroughness of his evidence. He drew his figures of deaths directly from the muster rolls of ships. And his account of many individual cruelties is very persuasive and detailed.
Clarkson giving an awfully heroic account of himself
He has an entire short chapter addressing this point. It seems to me like he's giving an accurate history and Bury the Chains (Hochschild, 2005) does not seem to particularly doubt his reliability.
Because modern Westerners vehemently oppose slavery for reasons unrelated to economic efficiency, arguments about how economically inefficient slavery is seem like they would be prone to motivated reasoning. Not a lot of people say "bad thing I hate is economically efficient". In most places, even attempting to argue that slavery is economically efficient would get you in trouble. I certainly don't expect scientific journals to publish papers claiming that slavery is economically efficient, even if it is.
Kongo was a rapidly Christianizing kingdom in the early 1500s. King Afonso I (born Mvemba a Nzinga) led this push to integrate with the European system: exchanging embassies with Portugal, making Portuguese the language of the court, reorganizing the nobility around European titles, even sending his son to study in Rome (where he was made a bishop).
This is an excerpt from a letter he wrote on July 6, 1526 to João III of Portugal. Note that the most notable Portuguese slaving colony at the time was tiny São Tomé.
Sire, Your Highness should know that our Kingdom is being lost in such a manner that we must provide for it with the necessary remedy. This is caused by the excessive license that your factors and officials grant to the men and merchants who come to settle in these Kingdoms and set up shop with merchandise and many things that we have forbidden — which spread through our Kingdoms and Domains in such abundance that many vassals whom we held in our obedience now break away from it, because they obtain these things in greater plenty than we ourselves: the very things with which we formerly kept them contented and subject, under our vassalage and jurisdiction. This is a great harm, both to the service of God and to the security and peace of our Kingdoms and estate.
And we do not hold this harm to be as great as that which the said merchants do in carrying off, day after day, our natives — the sons of the land, the sons of our noblemen and vassals, and our own kinsmen. For the thieves and men of evil conscience seize them, in their craving for the goods and merchandise of that Kingdom, which they covet; they seize them and carry them off to be sold. So great, Sire, is this corruption and depravity that our land is being wholly depopulated — which Your Highness ought not to countenance, nor [hold] to be your service.
And to prevent this, we have no need of anything from those Kingdoms but priests, and a few persons to teach in the schools, and no merchandise whatsoever, save only wine and flour for the Holy Sacrament. Therefore we beg Your Highness to be pleased to help and favor us in this matter, by commanding your factors to send here neither merchants nor merchandise; for it is our will that in these Kingdoms there be no trade in slaves, nor any outlet for them. For the reasons aforesaid, we beg Your Highness once again to grant us this, since otherwise we can find no remedy for so manifest a harm. May Our Lord in His clemency keep Your Highness in His protection, and ever permit you to do the things of His holy service — whose hands I kiss many times over.
(Translated by Claude from the original Portuguese; I could only find excerpts in English)
From a quick look at the rest of his Wikipedia page, it looks like he was very happily slave trading (e.g., selling slaves captured in wars of expansion) and only started complaining when the Portuguese started enslaving his subjects in a way that violated the prior Portugal-Kongo arrangements.
He was definitely not arguing from a standpoint of moral aversion to slavery or the slave trade per se. It is simultaneously true that many African nations and cultures were proudly slaving/slave-trading, that this was a moral horror that cannot be excused, and that the effects of slave trading on a mass scale destabilized the course of African statecraft.
6. The slave trade may actually have been bad for the economy (at least after some date).
I'm very skeptical of this. Just because abolition was morally right doesn't make everything said by abolitionists true, and historical evidence of what actually happened post-abolition strongly suggests that the slave trade was good for the economy. It is historically well-established that Britain made a large economic sacrifice in at least three areas: to forego production downstream of slavery and the slave trade, to compensate slaveholders for emancipation, and to enforce abolition.
The abolitionists insisted that better treatment of slaves would allow their populations to increase naturally and make the slaves more productive.
There are two strong arguments against this. First, this would mean slaveholders pre-1807 were acting against their own interest in working slaves to death. Second, we have ground truth from the period between 1807 and emancipation in the 1830s. In "most sugar islands", conditions improved for the enslaved population, but it never increased naturally, while margins shrank.
The results [of ending the slave trade in the British West Indies] were real but limited. Mortality did decline, perhaps to 3–4% annually in sugar colonies. Birth rates inched up slightly. But the central finding from B.W. Higman's definitive demographic work is that natural decrease continued in most sugar colonies right through to emancipation. The enslaved population of Jamaica fell from roughly 330,000 around 1807 to about 310,000 at registration for emancipation. The pattern was similar in most sugar islands.
Ok, what about the second argument?
Moreover, the abolitionists insisted that more could be gained from regular trade with African merchants than by the slave trade.
We also have ground truth here, from the period between 1807 and the beginning of European colonization of Africa. Although palm oil exports from Africa increased, their economic value was still far below that of the slave trade, and enforcement to suppress the slave trade outweighed all British trade with West Africa, making the entire region a net loss for the UK due to abolition.
Claude analysis
This is a rich topic — the abolitionists promised that "legitimate commerce" would more than compensate for the slave trade, and the reality was considerably more complicated. [...]
The total value of "legitimate" British trade with West Africa was probably in the range of £500,000–£1 million per year (palm oil plus the smaller commodities), growing toward £1–1.5 million by the 1850s. Profits on individual palm oil voyages were modest and unreliable — the detailed account from the 1840s in the Cambridge journal shows a trader who brought 50 tons of gunpowder, 1,000 muskets, and 1,600 pieces of cloth to Bonny and received 480 tons of palm oil, expecting only about £800 profit on the whole venture, and that was contingent on favorable market conditions. By contrast, the slave-based sugar economy at its peak had generated several multiples of this figure. Even after 1807, the Caribbean plantation system continued to generate enormous revenues from sugar, coffee, and cotton produced by the existing enslaved population. [...] The "legitimate commerce" didn't come close to replacing slave-trade revenues for decades.
For many British merchants, the margins were thin and volatile; for African states that had built their political economies around the slave trade, the transition was what Hopkins and subsequent historians call a "crisis of adaptation" [...] The transition from selling slaves to selling palm oil didn't end slavery within Africa — in many cases it intensified it. If you could no longer export slaves profitably, the next best use of captive labor was to put it to work producing export commodities domestically. The price of slaves within Africa actually fell after 1807 (the export market was being suppressed), making slave labor cheaper for internal use. So the "legitimate commerce" that Clarkson, Wilberforce, and the other abolitionists praised as the moral alternative to the slave trade was, in practice, substantially produced by enslaved Africans working under African masters.
Interesting, thanks. That seems like compelling evidence that the slave populations declined after abolition of the trade.
Although palm oil exports from Africa increased, their economic value was still far below that of the slave trade
By contrast, the slave-based sugar economy at its peak had generated several multiples of this figure.
I'm not sure Claude is doing the right comparison here. I think the fair comparison with the palm oil exports is the direct value of the slave trade, not the whole slave-based economy. Although, as you point out, the slave-based economy may have suffered somewhat from the abolition, so we might want to add a bit on top of the direct value of the slave trade for a fair counterfactual comparison.
1The political parallel in the USA to what you are describing may be of some interested to you if you're not already looking or aware. Depending on who one speaks to or reads the US Civil War was either all about slavery or not really about it at all. I suspect those are the political endpoints and it's hard to claim that the war and the issue of slavery were somehow completely unrelated and completely independent of one another. But, I think it was from of the Confederate political discourse where a number of the Southern States held the position that if the secession had been about slavery they would have preferred giving up their slaves rather than go to war. Only 4 of the Southern States were large plantation states that depended on slaves for their agricultural production work -- and I think that was even more concentrated into a small number or plantation owners rather than a large portion of the State's population. Most of the other States, and slave owners, only had a few slaves that were largely more like household servants (and to some extent tenant farmers).
So the issue of slavery and abolition was similar in that it was about a small special interest group that was driving the the politics about preserving slavery rather than a large wide spread social institution (that probably is too strong as it was wide spread but the dependency on slavery was not).
I'm interested in another aspect of your research here. What was the position of the abolitions in the UK regarding indentured service? I don't know that history so don't even know if that had been abolished already but in the USA for a lot of the smaller slave owners their slaves were much more like indentured servants, could and did earn some money on the side (when the owner was not being a complete jerk about things) and some even bought their freedom that way. Now, some of the owners took actions to make that effectively impossible for the slave even to the extent of violating the laws governing slavery. But I've also heard some horror history that similar treatment occurred for some of the indentured servants in the UK where the family they were indentured to did similar things. So wondering if the abolitionist movement was fighting a similar battle there and if that the industry of indenture didn't have some similar political economic characteristics of concentrated special interests competing for political support?
Interesting, thanks. I hadn't previously heard of indentured servitude within Britain, I had only heard of it as a means of crossing the Atlantic, but Claude says that it did exist in certain forms within Britain.
I don't think either of the sources for this post ever mention indentured servitude as far as I can recall, so I don't think it was part of the abolitionist movement.
If you are interested in this subject, Levar Burton in Roots (1977) is a great series to watch. I think I watched it in 6th grade and then rewatched it in my 20's. It holds up to factual accounts and might be help you understand that what you are discovering isn't a revelation in the historical analysis.
It is also interesting that a lot of arguments (1780 or today) centered upon self-interest (their own country, profitability, etc) as opposed to something more fundamentally human focused such as "against the will of the other humans". I would think we are much better nowadays, but more could be done to have a better balance.
1. The obstacle to abolition was not the economic system, but an industry lobby.
I had always imagined the British abolitionist movement to be a broad battle between an unstoppable moral imperative and an immovable economic incentive. But in practice it started as more of a knife fight between a cabal of moral pioneers and a special interest group representing industry merchants.
The government and the political parties did not come in with any great agenda. MPs were mostly prizes in a furious contest between the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and a coalition of business interests:
"The merchants and planters availed themselves [...] to wait upon members of parliament by deputation, in order to solicit their attendance in their favour, and to renew their injurious paragraphs in the public papers."[1]
"The committee for the abolition, when the work was finished, printed it at their own expense [...] sent it to every individual member of that House."
However, the public was heavily activated in favor of the abolition, which forced the issue to parliamentary attention.
"The committee, also, in this interval, brought out their famous print of the plan and section of a slave-ship [...] As this print seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it, and as it was therefore very instrumental, in consequence of the wide circulation given it, in serving the cause of the injured Africans [...]"
But the abolitionist cabal quickly expanded from an esoteric group of Quakers and other oddballs to an elite coalition including many famous figures such as William Pitt the Younger and the Marquis de Lafayette:
"He [Lafayette] hoped the day was near at hand, when two great nations, which had been hitherto distinguished only for their hostility, one toward the other, would unite in so sublime a measure [...]"
"The cause is so lovely that even ambition, abstractedly considered, is too impure to take it under its protection, and not to sully it."
Part of the explanation for the relatively narrow interests involved in the fight might be that the direct benefits of the trade were quite small and accrued mainly to the merchants themselves.
"[...] the Slave Trade composed but a thirtieth part of the export trade of Liverpool, and that of the trade of Bristol it constituted a still less proportion."
However it should be noted that the system of slavery in general was an instrumental part of a much larger slice of British GDP (maybe something like 10%, but historians differ on the question).
2. The slave trade was truly terrible for sailors.
"[...] instead of the Slave Trade being a nursery for British seamen, it was their grave. It appeared that more seamen died in that trade in one year than in the whole remaining trade of the country in two. Out of 910 sailors in it, 216 died in the year [...]"
While a lot of this was from disease, for some reason the captains in slave trade vessels seemed to be unusually and exceptionally cruel and brutal.
"The captain, without any inquiry, beat him severely, and ordered his hands to be made fast to some bolts on the starboard side of the ship and under the half deck, and then flogged him himself [...]
The pain had now become so very severe, that Green cried out, and entreated the captain of the Alfred, who was standing by, to pity his hard case, and to intercede for him. But the latter replied, that he would have served me in the same manner. Unable to find a friend here, he called upon the chief mate; but this only made matters worse, for the captain then ordered the latter to flog him also; which he did for some time, using however only the lashes of the instrument. Green then called in his distress upon the second mate to speak for him; but the second mate was immediately ordered to perform the same cruel office, and was made to persevere in it till the lashes were all worn into threads. But the barbarity did not close here [...]"
This horrible passage goes on for a while and Green ends up dying. Clarkson puts this unusual behavior towards their own race down to the evil nature of the trade degrading men's characters.
"Men in their first voyages usually disliked the traffic; and if they were happy enough then to abandon it, they usually escaped the disease of a hardened heart. But if they went a second and a third time, their disposition became gradually changed. It was impossible for them to be accustomed to carry away men and women by force, to keep them in chains, to see their tears, to hear their mournful lamentations, to behold the dead and the dying, to be obliged to keep up a system of severity amidst all this affliction [...] without losing their finer feelings, [...] Now, if we consider that persons could not easily become captains [...] till they had been two or three voyages in this employ, we shall see the reason why it would be almost a miracle, if they, who were thus employed in it, were not rather to become monsters, than to continue to be men."
3. The slave trade made Africa scary and violent.
"[...] they came within a certain distance of a village. They then concealed themselves under the bushes [...] during day-light; but at night they went up to it armed; and seized all the inhabitants, who had not time to make their escape. They obtained forty-five persons in this manner. In the second they were out eight or nine days [...] They seized men, women, and children, as they could find them in the huts. They then bound their arms, and drove them before them to the canoes."
This is very un-surprising in retrospect, but I hadn't previously thought much about the invidious effects of slavery on the lands where those slaves came from. African powers would fight wars against each other in order to obtain slaves to sell to the European captains.
"The natives never went any distance from home without arms; and when Captain Wilson asked them the reason of it, they pointed to a slave-ship then lying within sight."
4. The main argument against abolition was that even if the British abolished the slave trade, other countries would continue.
"The next objection to the abolition was, that if we were to relinquish the Slave Trade, our rivals, the French, would take it up; so that, while we should suffer by the measure, the evil would still go on."
"[...] as England had done nothing, after having had it so long under consideration, it was fair to presume that she judged it impolitic to abandon the Slave Trade; but if France were to give it up, and England to continue it, how would humanity be the gainer?"
Interestingly, in the early debates, no one ever suggests the idea of imposing the abolition upon other European powers. Instead, advocates for abolition appealed to the overwhelming ethical principle.
"This was, indeed, a very weak argument; and, if it would defend the continuance of the Slave Trade, might equally be urged in favour of robbery, murder, and every species of wickedness."
5. The early abolitionists explicitly distanced themselves from emancipation.
While in many ways the abolitionists stuck to their principles and refused to stoop to the level of the slave traders, they made a decisive call very early on to utter no mention of the abolition of slavery itself until after the trade had been abolished, even though they surely had this in mind from the very beginning.
"It was again insisted upon that emancipation was the real object of the former; so that thousands of slaves would be let loose in the islands [...]"
"[...] emancipation was now stated to be the object of the friends of the negroes. This charge I repelled, by addressing myself to Monsieur Beauvet. I explained to him the views of the different societies, which had taken up the cause of the Africans [...]"
6. The slave trade may actually have been bad for the economy (at least after some date).
Much of the early debates focused on the extent to which the slave trade was needed to maintain the slave populations of the British colonies. The abolitionists insisted that better treatment of slaves would allow their populations to increase naturally and make the slaves more productive.
"[Richard Phillips] put into my hands several documents concerning estates in the West Indies, which he had mostly from the proprietors themselves, where the slaves by mild and prudent usage had so increased in population, as to supersede the necessity of the Slave Trade."
"He believed [...] that the planters would be great gainers by those wholesome regulations, which they would be obliged to make, if the Slave Trade were abolished."
Moreover, the abolitionists insisted that more could be gained from regular trade with African merchants than by the slave trade.
"They were perhaps not aware that a fair and honourable trade might be substituted in the natural productions of Africa, so that our connexion with that continent in the way of commercial advantage need not be lost."
"I wished the council to see more of my African productions and manufactures, that they might really know what Africa was capable of affording, instead of the Slave Trade; and that they might make a proper estimate of the genius and talents of the natives."
7. The 1780s were not so different from today
I find myself shockingly compelled by some arguments on the opposing side. In particular, the point that the trade would continue unaffected through the merchants of other countries is hard to definitively refute. It's amazing how effectively motivated arguments can throw doubt and uncertainty on a question that from another vantage point feels so over-determined. It's easy to imagine how people like myself, in those circumstances could end up on the wrong side of history, even in such a monstrous case.
On the other hand, those who favor abolition do so in terms that feel just as vigorous and vehement as any advocate for justice today. The main change might be the superior eloquence of politicians at that time:
"Never, never, will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name; till we have released ourselves from the load of guilt under which we at present labour; and till we have extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarcely believe had been suffered to exist so long, a disgrace and a dishonour to our country."
8. Thomas Clarkson is a hero for the ages
Clarkson is the key figure in the abolitionist movement. His autobiographical accounts could be cut straight from the script of a fantasy role-playing video game. He travelled around Britain on his horse to collect evidence and witnesses in favor of the abolition in a perfect adventure story.
Many times, he enters an unfamiliar city armed only with a couple of letters of introduction to sympathetic supporters of the cause. He then has to befriend local people and persuade them to tell him about the horrors of the slave trade. In most places, he quickly becomes notorious among slave merchants, who obstruct and intimidate his investigations. More than once, he is almost murdered by thugs or an evil ship captain for his interference and has to make a heroic escape.
He occasionally detours on side quests to assist a poor, helpless sailor who has been abused by his captain and has no other recourse. He travels at breakneck speed through the nights, often braving severe weather or a perilous river-crossing.
"I was absent only three weeks. I had travelled a thousand miles in this time, had conversed with seventeen persons, and had prevailed upon three to be examined."
He is a super-smart scholar, winning the prestigious Latin essay competition at Cambridge University two years in a row. He befriends many famous figures of the age and rubs shoulders with the leaders of the French Revolution in Paris during 1789.
And he takes ideas seriously. No one told him he should take up the cause of abolition. He derived it from the empty string.
"On returning however to London, the subject of it almost wholly engrossed my thoughts. I became at times very seriously affected while upon the road. I stopped my horse occasionally, and dismounted and walked. I frequently tried to persuade myself in these intervals that the contents of my Essay could not be true. The more, however, I reflected upon them, or rather upon the authorities on which they were founded, the more I gave them credit. Coming in sight of Wades Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end. Agitated in this manner, I reached home. This was in the summer of 1785.
In the course of the autumn of the same year I experienced similar impressions. I walked frequently into the woods, that I might think on the subject in solitude, and find relief to my mind there. But there the question still recurred, 'Are these things true?' Still the answer followed as instantaneously 'They are.' Still the result accompanied it, 'Then surely some person should interfere.'"
Sources:
All quotations are taken from Clarkson (1808).