The Economics

 

While we do not want to move away from the human story and reduce this to money, we wanted to give a brief insight for (budding) economic historians how TTEA was integral to macroeconomics and funded empires, built new countries, etc. We also wanted to give a brief look at how enslavement went beyond the plantation. William Wells Brown and the Crafts allow us to do this well. And we also want to show how microeconomics in the West Indies and Southern US states used people who were enslaved.

 

So much has been said about the economics to do with TTEA and Empire, we wanted to offer an insight into it also in PNS.

 

The excellent Slavery’s Capitalism captures the importance of enslavement to 18th and 19th Century transatlantic economies well:

 

An enormous river of credit flowed from the plantation headquarters. Slaves were purchased on credit and then further collateralized in pursuit of additional financing. At the same time, the agricultural commodities that slaves produced - or were anticipated to produce in a coming season - underwrote local, regional, and international networks of credit, fostered unprecedented schemes, and undergirded Anglo-American investment banking in the 19th Century.[1]

 

Mercantilism

 

England and later Britain was at war, either hot or cold, with many European (Catholic) countries from the 1500’s onwards. Its economics followed this also. Mercantilism was a way to protect England’s economy and to ‘do battle’ with its competitors; France and Spain mostly, but there were others.

 

Mercantilism promotes protectionism, to increase exports and decrease imports.[2] Free Trade was to come later as economic thought, but in the early days of empire, Mercantilism held that the country was paramount before private capitalists.

 

In simple terms, if you are buying more from me than you are selling to me, I will have more money.

 

How does this affect the British Empire?

 

Britain and other European powers used their empires to power their economies. Mercantile economic thought meant that Britain could import from places it controlled, not from its enemies (or their colonies) so it did not have to import from its adversaries.

 

Eric Williams writes in Capitalism and Slavery of the combining of warfare and economic warfare.

 

England’s victory over Holland left her face-to-face with France. Anglo-French warfare, colonial and commercial, is a dominant theme in the history of the eighteenth century. It was a conflict of rival mercantilisms. The struggle was fought out in the Caribbean, Africa, Canada and on the banks of the Mississippi.[3]

 

 

The colonies were tightly controlled, and they could not open into much trade from countries other than the mother country. Not only were colonies the battlegrounds of these colonial battles, their economies, their environments, and their people were cannon fodder in this incessant war. Money and geopolitical power were all focused on the governing power.

 

Colonies allowed Britain to import goods, such as sugar, coffee, indigo, cotton etc and then turn those raw materials into manufactured goods which were then re-exported to Britain’s continental neighbours (economic adversaries). Inikori chooses a small-time scale to show how important colonial goods were to England’s export. Between 1699 and 1772 England’s domestic exports declined from £2,114,000 a year to £1,769,000. During the same period, re-exports grew from £1,243,000 to £3,223,000, which helped to increase total exports from £3,357,000 to £4,992,000, an increase of 48.7% instead of a 16.3% decline that would have occurred without re-exports.[4] In this time period a great deal of Britain’s economy was reliant on its colonies and therefore reliant on the subjugation of Indigenous peoples and enslavement.  

 

Within the Northeast

 

In 2007 John Charlton's Hidden Chains brought to the region's attention not only the abolitionist involvement but also those who were complicit in enslavement. Many are discussed in PNS. (PROVIDE LINKS)

 

These people show another side of enslavement as economic practice - that of diversifying investments.

 

Diversifying investments makes sound economic sense. Instead of gambling all one's money in one business, it is safer to put that money into several different businesses to ensure that if one or more were to fail there is some chance that some investments will succeed. (Like backing more than one horse in a race.)

 

Northeast investors, rich from all the industries known to the northeast, used TTEA to diversify their investments. This again shows that TTEA was the business of the whole of Britain not just its well-known centres of Liverpool, Bristol, etc.

 

For example, Joseph Lamb was a Newcastle coal merchant but was also a mortgagee in plantations in Jamaica. Lamb was tied in his plantation investments to the Graham Clarke family (INSET LINKS) and was mayor of Newcastle while making a claim for compensation after the end of legal enslavement.[5]

 

Lord Powlett, once an MP for Durham County (1815-1831) and son of William Harry Vane, 1st Duke of Cleveland married into the Lowther family who enslaved people in Barbados. The Slavery Compensation Database notes, ‘The main source of wealth was clearly rentals and profits from landed estates in Britain.’[6]

 

Clearly it was a place to invest for those who had little interest other than making money. Absentee owners had to employ overseers to manage the actual estate, while profiting from the work of those they enslaved. It also shows how normalised it was to invest in plantations. It took no skill or knowledge to do so, and chances of a healthy return were high.[7]

 

 

Finance

To see how else the enslaved were used to raise money, not just work, please have a look at our William Wells Brown page (insert link).

 

Enslaved people were used as collateral for loans, mortgages etc as well as their labour being taken for free.

 

Bonnie Martin in her chapter in Slavery’s Capitalism states, ‘it was ordinary southerners, not international bankers, who made the most of this fiscal strategy. Local planters, small farmers, and ordinary craftsmen mortgaged their slaves and other property to each other. And they raised a large amount of capital locally. As neighbours borrowed from neighbours, they spun nets of local credit that helped to circulate resources and encourage economic development in their communities.’[8] She also shows that mortgages held against enslaved people rather than goods or land were more profitable[9] This mortgaging of people also speaks to our page on Robert Wright.

 

[1]  Beckert, S. and Rockman, S. (2018) Slavery’s capitalism: A new history of American economic development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. P16

[2] In our time - mercantilism - BBC sounds (no date) BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001k0zv (Accessed: 18 August 2023).

 

[3] Williams, E.E. (2022) Capitalism and slavery. London: Penguin Books. Pg 37

[4] Inikori, J.E. (2002) Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: a study in International Trade and Economic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P 208-209

[5] Charlton, J. (2008) Hidden chains: The Slavery Business and Northeast England. Newcastle upon Tyne: Tyne Bridge Publishing. P142 and P144.

Also see Joseph Lamb (no date) Summary of Individual | Legacies of British Slavery. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/42836 (Accessed: 06 May 2024).

[6] Lord William Powlett [Poulett] (no date) Summary of Individual | Legacies of British Slavery. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/41159 (Accessed: 07 May 2024).

[7] Although it must also be noted that some absentee owners had investments linked to enslavement, such as shipping, sugar, rum etc, which would have brought them into contact and presumably some knowledge of plantation investment.

[8] Beckert, S. and Rockman, S. (2018) Slavery’s capitalism: A new history of American economic development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Accessed via audiobook. Note - this comprehensive look at economics of enslavement in the USA (although some aspects of West Indies TTEA are included) is free with an Audible account.

[9] This is from Table 4.3 in the accompanying pdf with the audiobook.