Editing Eric Williams (section)

===Academic contributions===
Williams specialised in the study of [[slavery]]. Many Western academics focused on his chapter on the abolition of the [[Atlantic slave trade|slave trade]], but that is just a small part of his work. In his 1944 book, ''[[Capitalism and Slavery]]'', Williams argued that the [[Government of the United Kingdom|British government]]'s passage of the [[Slave Trade Act 1807|Slave Trade Act]] in 1807 was motivated primarily by economic concerns rather than by [[Humanitarianism|humanitarian ones]]. Williams also argued that by extension, so was the emancipation of the slaves and the [[blockade of Africa]], and that as industrial capitalism and wage labour began to expand, eliminating the competition from wage-free slavery became economically advantageous.

Williams' impact on that field of study has proved of lasting significance. As Barbara Solow and [[Stanley Engerman]] put it in the preface to a compilation of essays on Williams that was based on a commemorative symposium held in Italy in 1984, Williams "defined the study of Caribbean history, and its writing affected the course of Caribbean history.... Scholars may disagree on his ideas, but they remain the starting point of discussion.... Any conference on British capitalism and Caribbean slavery is a conference on Eric Williams."

In an open letter to Solow, [[Yale University|Yale]] Professor of History [[David Brion Davis]] refers to Williams' thesis of the declining economic viability of slave labor as "undermined by a vast mountain of empirical evidence and has been repudiated by the world’s leading authorities on New World slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and the [[Abolitionism in the United Kingdom|British abolition movement]]".<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/01/12/british-slave-trade/|title=The British & the Slave Trade|first1=David Brion|last1=Davis|author2=Barbara L.Solow|date=18 November 2017|magazine=The New York Review of Books|access-date=15 June 2017|archive-date=28 September 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170928010056/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/01/12/british-slave-trade/|url-status=live}}</ref> A major work which was written to refute Eric Williams' thesis was [[Seymour Drescher]]'s ''Econocide'', which argued that when the slave trade was abolished in 1807, Britain's sugar economy was thriving. However, other historians have noted that Drescher ended his study of the economic history of the British West Indies in 1822, and did not address the decline of the British sugar industry (something which was highlighted by Williams) which began in the mid-1820s, and continued until the passage of the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833|Slavery Abolition Act]] in 1833.<ref>Seymour Drescher, ''Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition'' (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).</ref> The majority of Eric William's thesis, which addressed the decline of the sugar industry in the 1820s, the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, and the sugar equalisation acts of the 1840s, has continued to influence the historiography of the 19th-century West Indies and it's connection to the wider [[Atlantic Ocean|Atlantic]] world as a whole.<ref>Silvia Federici, ''Caliban and the Witch'' (2004), p. 103.</ref><ref>David Geggus, ''The British Government and the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt, 1791–1793'', The English Historical Review Vol. 96, No. 379 (Apr. 1981), pp. 285–305, at p. 287. Published by: Oxford University Press {{JSTOR|568291}}</ref>

In addition to ''Capitalism and Slavery'', Williams produced a number of other scholarly works focused on the Caribbean. Of particular significance are two published long after he had abandoned his academic career for public life: ''British Historians and the West Indies'' and ''From [[Christopher Columbus|Columbus]] to [[Fidel Castro|Castro]]''. The former, based on research done in the 1940s and initially presented at a symposium at [[Clark Atlanta University]], sought to challenge established British historiography on the West Indies. Williams was particularly scathing in his criticism of the work of Scottish historian [[Thomas Carlyle]]. The latter work is a general history of the Caribbean from the 15th to the mid-20th centuries. The work appeared at the same time as a similarly titled book (''De Cristóbal Colón a Fidel Castro'') by another Caribbean scholar-statesman, [[Juan Bosch (politician)|Juan Bosch]] of the [[Dominican Republic]].

Williams sent one of 73 [[Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages]] to [[NASA]] for the historic first lunar landing in 1969. The message still rests on the lunar surface today. He wrote, in part: "It is our earnest hope for mankind that while we gain the moon, we shall not lose the world."<ref>{{cite web| title=Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages| url=https://history.nasa.gov/ap11-35ann/goodwill/Apollo_11_material.pdf| publisher=[[NASA]]| access-date=30 June 2012| date=13 July 1969| archive-date=3 September 2019| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190903191836/https://www.history.nasa.gov/ap11-35ann/goodwill/Apollo_11_material.pdf| url-status=live}}</ref>