Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The English Economy in the Longue Durée
- Chapter 3 A Historiography of the First Industrial Revolution
- Chapter 4 Slave-Based Commodity Production and the Growth of Atlantic Commerce
- Chapter 5 Britain and the Supply of African Slave Labor to the Americas
- Chapter 6 The Atlantic Slave Economy and English Shipping
- Chapter 7 The Atlantic Slave Economy and the Development of Financial Institutions
- Chapter 8 African-Produced Raw Materials and Industrial Production in England
- Chapter 9 Atlantic Markets and the Development of the Major Manufacturing Sectors in England's Industrialization
- Chapter 10 Conclusion
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The English Economy in the Longue Durée
- Chapter 3 A Historiography of the First Industrial Revolution
- Chapter 4 Slave-Based Commodity Production and the Growth of Atlantic Commerce
- Chapter 5 Britain and the Supply of African Slave Labor to the Americas
- Chapter 6 The Atlantic Slave Economy and English Shipping
- Chapter 7 The Atlantic Slave Economy and the Development of Financial Institutions
- Chapter 8 African-Produced Raw Materials and Industrial Production in England
- Chapter 9 Atlantic Markets and the Development of the Major Manufacturing Sectors in England's Industrialization
- Chapter 10 Conclusion
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE PROBLEM
IN THE LATE 1930s AND EARLY 1940s the contribution of African people to the economic development of parts of Western Europe featured in the work of four scholars of African descent in the Americas. In a book published in 1938, C. L. R. James made some brief remarks on the link between French industrial progress in the eighteenth century and the French American colony of Saint Domingo, modern Haiti:
In 1789 the French West Indian colony of San Domingo supplied two-thirds of the overseas trade of France and was the greatest individual market for the European slave-trade. It was an integral part of the economic life of the age, the greatest colony of the world, the pride of France, and the envy of every other imperialist nation. The whole structure rested on the labour of half-a-million [African] slaves.
He asserted that virtually all the industries that developed in France in the eighteenth century originated from the production of manufactures for the slave trade in Western Africa or for export to the French American colonies: “The capital from the slave trade fertilized them … ”
Limited to a few pages, James did not pursue the subject in any detail. That was not the objective of his study. His book was intended to demonstrate that enslaved Africans in the Americas did not accept slavery passively. Confronted with all the instruments of physical and psychological violence at the disposal of the slaveholding class, they employed their mental and physical energy to resist slavery.
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- Africans and the Industrial Revolution in EnglandA Study in International Trade and Economic Development, pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002