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Slavery and Anglo-American capitalism revisited, Gavin Wright's Tawney lecture at the end of #EHS2019 @EcHistSoc @QUCEHBelfast ehsthelongrun.net/2019/03/20/sla…
C18th Atlantic economy was dominated by sugar, which in turn was dominated by slavery; the slave trade was central to the process, because it would have been all but impossible to attract a free labour force to the brutal & deadly conditions that prevailed in sugar cultivation
Between 1776 US Revolution & end of Napoleonic Wars in 1815, demands of industrial capitalism changed in fundamental ways: expansion of new export markets in non-slave areas; streamlined channels for migration of free labour; & shift of primary raw material from sugar to cotton
Unlike sugar, cotton was not confined to unhealthy locations, did not require large fixed capital investment & would have spread rapidly through the American South, with or without slavery; early cotton suppliers used slave labour because of pre-existing slave populations
Southern slavery was highly profitable to the owners & the slave economy experienced considerable growth in antebellum period; but the southern regional economy seemed increasingly out of step with the US mainstream, its centrality for national prosperity diminishing over time
On balance, the persistence of slavery actually reduced the growth of cotton supply compared with a free labour alternative; this is most clearly demonstrated by the expansion of production after the Civil War & emancipation, & the return of world cotton prices to pre-war levels
Gavin Wright concludes his Tawney lecture on slavery and Anglo-American capitalism revisited @EcHistSoc #EHS2019 
