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‘Capitalism and Slavery’, and dismantling the accepted narratives of history
“When British capitalism depended on the West Indies,” Eric Williams wrote in 1938, “they ignored slavery or defended it. When British capitalism found the West Indian monopoly a nuisance, they destroyed West Indian slavery.”
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The enduring importance of Eric Williams’ “Capitalism and Slavery”
First published in 1944, ‘Capitalism and Slavery’ is an investigation of the notorious relationship between the Atlantic slave trade and the emergence of European industrial capitalism from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.
