The Slave Trade and Britain’s Industrial Revolution

Historians are divided over whether the income derived from slave labour contributed to the Industrial Revolution. An early version of theory argued that the profits generated by the use of slave labour were used to finance the development of British industry. The theory was subsequently rejected because the total amounts thus generated amounted to a modest share of Britain’s GDP, and because the amounts required to set up a business in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution could typically be financed out of income from operations. A later version emphasised the importance of cotton produced using slave labour. Abundant supplies of cotton produced at more or less constant prices supported the rapid expansion of Britain’s textile industry, which accounted for a large share of industrial value added and was a major employer of labour. However, as one historian recently noted, ‘If merely engaging in violent enslavement were enough to generate an industrial revolution, then Spain and Portugal would have become world industrial leaders centuries before’ (G. Wright, ‘Slavery and Anglo-American Capitalism Revisited,’ p. 6.).