The Sugar Industry and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1775-1810

Book excerpt: Selwyn Carrington analyzes the complex state of the British West Indian economy at the end of the 18th century, crucial years for the Caribbean colonies and the slave trade. Drawing on a wealth of primary materials, from plantation records and estate day-books to correspondence among plantation owners, merchants, and overseers, his book presents a detailed portrait of an economic system in decline for 30 years prior to the British abolition of the slave trade. Carrington explores planter flight, lack of investment in t he older sugar islands, and failed attempts to rationalize sugar production and to reduce sugar imports to England. He marshals an abundance of statistical evidence to trace other factors in the shift from one slave system to another -- such as trade relations, debt crises, hired labor, management techniques, and local and foreign sugar markets -- and their impact on the slave trade, slavery, and the British West Indian economy. He concludes that with the arrival of what Eric Williams called "mature capitalism, " the sugar colonies once at the core of the Atlantic economy became irrelevant to the new economic life, and their labor system, in the eyes of British policy makers and political commentators, became a millstone to be cast off. Utilizing primary material and statistical data never before presented, Carrington provides a rich source for those interested in the Caribbean economy between the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. His study will also add a meticulous and insightful chapter to the history of the Atlantic slave trade and its demise.