Editing Atlantic slave trade (section)

===Effects on the British economy===
{{Further|Historiography of the British Empire#Slavery}}
[[File:Joseph Cross, The Impolicy of Slavery, 1823 Cornell CUL PJM 1039 01.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|This map argues that import prohibitions and high duties on sugar were artificially inflating prices and inhibiting manufacturing in England. 1823]]

Historian [[Eric Williams]] in 1994 argued that the profits that Britain received from its sugar colonies, or from the slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean, contributed to the financing of Britain's industrial revolution. However, he says that by the time of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and the emancipation of the slaves in 1833, the sugar plantations of the British West Indies had lost their profitability, and it was in Britain's economic interest to emancipate the slaves.{{sfn|Williams|2021|pp=100–107, 167–170}}

Other researchers and historians have strongly contested what has come to be referred to as the "Williams thesis" in academia. David Richardson has concluded that the profits from the slave trade amounted to less than 1% of domestic investment in Britain.<ref>David Richardson, "The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1660–1807," in P. J. Marshall, ed. ''The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II: The Eighteenth Century'' (1998), pp. 440–464.</ref> Economic historian [[Stanley Engerman]] finds that even without subtracting the associated costs of the slave trade (e.g., shipping costs, slave mortality, mortality of British people in Africa, defense costs) or reinvestment of profits back into the slave trade, the total profits from the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to less than 5% of the [[Economic history of the United Kingdom|British economy]] during any year of the [[Industrial Revolution]].<ref name="The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century">{{cite journal |first=Stanley L. |last=Engerman |title=The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century |journal=The Business History Review |jstor=3113341 |volume=46 |issue=4 |pages=430–443 |year=1972 |doi=10.2307/3113341 |s2cid=154620412}}</ref>

Engerman's 5% figure gives as much as possible in terms of benefit of the doubt to the Williams argument, not solely because it does not take into account the associated costs of the slave trade to Britain, but also because it carries the full-employment assumption from economics and holds the gross value of slave trade profits as a direct contribution to Britain's national income.<ref name="The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century"/> Historian [[Richard Pares]], in an article written before Williams' book, dismisses the influence of wealth generated from the West Indian plantations upon the financing of the Industrial Revolution, stating that whatever substantial flow of investment from West Indian profits into industry there occurred after emancipation, not before. However, each of these works focus primarily on the slave trade or the Industrial Revolution, and not the main body of the Williams thesis, which was on sugar and slavery itself. Therefore, they do not refute the main body of the Williams thesis.<ref name="The Economic Factors in the History of the Empire">{{cite journal |first=Richard |last=Pares |title=The Economic Factors in the History of the Empire |journal=The Economic History Review |jstor=2590147 |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=119–144 |year=1937 |doi=10.2307/2590147}}</ref>{{sfn|Williams|2021|pp=1–21}}

[[Seymour Drescher]] and Robert Anstey argue the slave trade remained profitable until the end, and that moralistic reform, not economic incentive, was primarily responsible for abolition. They say slavery remained profitable in the 1830s because of innovations in agriculture. However, Drescher's ''Econocide'' wraps up its study in 1823, and does not address the majority of the Williams thesis, which covers the decline of the sugar plantations after 1823, the emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s, and the subsequent abolition of sugar duties in the 1840s. These arguments do not refute the main body of the Williams thesis, which presents economic data to show that the slave trade was minor compared to the wealth generated by sugar and slavery itself in the British Caribbean.<ref>{{cite book |first=J. R. |last=Ward |chapter=The British West Indies in the Age of Abolition |editor-first=P. J. |editor-last=Marshall |title=The Oxford History of the British Empire |volume=II: The Eighteenth Century |date=1998 |pages=415–439}}</ref>{{sfn|Williams|2021|pp=1–21}}<ref>{{cite book |first=Seymour |last=Drescher |title=Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |date=2010 |page=}}</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}}

[[Karl Marx]], in his influential economic history of capitalism, ''[[Das Kapital]]'', wrote that "...{{nbsp}}the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production". He argued that the slave trade was part of what he termed the "primitive accumulation" of capital, the 'non-capitalist' accumulation of wealth that preceded and created the financial conditions for Britain's industrialisation.<ref>{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |chapter=Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm |title=Capital |title-link=Das Kapital |volume=One |access-date=21 February 2014 |quote=the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |archive-date=19 March 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200319174100/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm |url-status=live}}</ref>