Book Condition: Very Good with VG DJ. Signs of Shelfwear, previous owner's inscription on Flyleaf. Slight browning to inside edges of DJ and Page Edges, otherwise tight, clear, clean text inside. Includes index and Bibliography: p. 262-[270]. 1972 3rd impression. Capitalism and Slavery is one of the most important history books that has ever been written. It is also one of the few history books that is still being read, after seventy years, with sincere respect. The first and most important work by the late Trinidadian scholar and statesman, Eric Eustace Williams, the book documents the historical shift of Britain?s political economy from monopolistic commercial mercantilism based on tropical, Caribbean islands with black-plantation slavery to laissez faire commercial capitalism based on white free-labor factories in temperate, Continental regions. In doing so, it challenges one-hundred years of British imperial historiography by making the controversial argument that the causes of abolition and emancipation were economic, not humanitarian. Although too cynical in its conclusions, and slightly contrived in its teleology, Capitalism and Slavery is one of the most effective, creative, powerful, and influential history books that has ever been written. Capitalism and Slavery represents a dramatic departure from traditional, British imperial historiography as it had been written since the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. For inspiration, Williams has cited, among others, the oeuvre of Lowell Ragatz, an influential American historian of the British Caribbean, as well as the work of Frank Pitman. He has recommended Paul Mantoux and John Clapham for the subject of British capitalism, and the Caribbean historian C.L.R. James for its relationship to slavery. As a foil, Williams has singled out the work of the British scholar of African history, Reginald Coupland. Coupland, says Williams, ?represents the sentimental conception of history,? and ? his works help us to understand what the abolition movement was not.? In general, Williams supports economic materialism, aligning himself against those who situate moral causality, ideological humanitarianism, and poetic sentimentalism at the center of the abolition movement. In a chapter entitled ?The ?Saints? and Slavery,? Williams goes so far as to call English abolitionists hypocrites and the ?unconscious mouthpieces? of the ?new industrial interest.? Williams places the year 1783 at the halfway point of Capitalism and Slavery. Like many historians before him, he has identified the American Revolution as the turning point of his analysis. Prior to 1783, ?all classes of English society,? with the exception of a few voices of Cassandra, ?supported the slave trade.? The country was under the thumb of the West Indian Interest, a ?solid phalanx? of slave society composed of the landed aristocracy, the commercial bourgeoisie, the ecclesiastical authorities, and the political elite. Profits from the slave trade and the Caribbean plantation complex penetrated all aspects of English society, and protectionist legislation and military force were marshalled to ensure that capital accumulated by England remained in the British economy. Politicians had vested financial interests in the slave trade, its Caribbean commodities, and its many ancillary industries, including, but not limited to, shipbuilding, dock building, sail making, cask making, rope making, gun making, coal mining, distilling, refining, iron smelting, weaving, banking, licensing, insurance providing, investing and underwriting, and manufacturing. These politicians passed high import duties and embargos on foreign products, banned colonial trade with foreign nations, and demanded that all aspects of overseas trade be nationalized: performed with English ships, English crews, and English victuals, supplies, and naval stores. As Williams describes, this was the economic ?infrastructure of mercantilist England,? and it was far more impo
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