The Mighty Experiment:

Free Labor versus Slavery

in British Emancipation

SEYMOUR DRESCHER

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Mighty Experiment
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The Mighty Experiment
Free Labor versus Slavery
in British Emancipation

SEYMOUR DRESCHER

1
2002
1
Oxford New York
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Copyright 䉷2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Drescher, Seymour.
The mighty experiment : free labor versus slavery in British emancipation / Seymour
Drescher.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509346-1
1. Antislavery movements—Great Britain. 2. Slavery—Economic aspects—
Great Britain. 3. Slaves—Emancipation—Economic aspects—Great Britain.
4. Social sciences and history—Great Britain. I. Title.
HT1163 .D76 2002
326'.0942—dc21 2001036288

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
 

T he progress of this book has benefited immensely from the

generous support of friends and colleagues. The project ger-
minated in the wake of an international conference held at the University
of Pittsburgh on postslavery societies in the New World. The results ap-
peared in The Meaning of Freedom: Economics, Politics and Culture after
Slavery (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), co-edited with Frank
McGlynn.
At subsequent stages I rehearsed basic themes at the KITLV/Royal
Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology, in Leiden; the University of
East Anglia; Charleston College, South Carolina; the St. Augustine, Trin-
idad, campus of the University of the West Indies; the Center for the
Study of Freedom in Washington University, St. Louis; the Institute of
Commonwealth Studies of the University of London; and the Gilder Lehr-
man Center at Yale University.
The Working Class History Seminar of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social
History afforded a rigorous examination of my argument. I am especially
indebted to the suggestions of the late Michael Jimenez, Maurine Green-
wald, Richard Oestreicher, Markus Rediker, and the late Steven Sapolsky.
The University Center for International Studies, under the direction of
Burkart Holzner, allowed me to extend two sabbaticals with Research
Fellowships.
The sheer critical mass of researchers in the history of Atlantic slavery
and abolition is of immeasurable aid to anyone working in this field of
scholarship. I owe particular debts to some of its outstanding scholars:
David Brion Davis, David Eltis, Pieter Emmer, Van Beck Hall, Gad Heu-
man, Gert Oostindie, and Howard Temperly. Over the course of several
years Richard Blackett converted many joint underground ventures to
the British Library newspaper collection at Colindale into delightful ex-
 cursions, even when the Northern Line halted for bomb scares. My
thanks to Erica Williams Connell for providing me with sites to examine
the historiography of slavery and abolition.
This is my first book in almost forty years that will not be read by my
graduate advisor and dear friend, the late George L. Mosse.
I owe special recognition to those who made their way through suc-
cessive versions of the manuscript. In addition to the anonymous readers
from Oxford University Press, William A. Green responded to the penul-
timate draft with one of the longest and most thoughtful commentaries
I have been privileged to receive. The ubiquitous Stanley L. Engerman,
as always, was a permanent presence in and beyond our mutual ventures
including the Historical Guide to World Slavery (Oxford University Press,
1998), and along with Robert L. Paquette, Slavery (Oxford University
Press, 2001).
Graduate students Jennifer Belden England, Gabriele Gottlieb and Del-
marshae Sledge helped with research, typing and indexing.
Rasheed Clark ably moved the manuscript through its various phases.
My daughter, Karen, fortuitously returned to Pittsburgh in time to speed
the final copy to Oxford University Press and into the capable hands of
editors Susan Ferber and Jennifer R. Kowing.
My deepest dept remains to Ruth Drescher, my partner of forty-seven
years. I am grateful for every chance to bear witness to that debt.

vi 
 For Avshalom Samuel Drescher
May he become a bearer of peace
in deed as well as in name
I cannot deny to myself, that the happiness of the descendants
of those for whom I now propose to legislate—that generations
yet unborn are to be affected for good or evil by the course
which this House may think proper to adopt. Nor can I conceal
from myself, or from this House, the immense influence on the
population of foreign countries which must arise from the result
of this mighty experiment which we now propose to make. On
that may depend the welfare of millions of men in a state of
slavery in colonies not belonging to Great Britain.
—From the speech of Colonial Secretary Stanley to the House
of Commons, introducing the Ministerial Proposition for the
Emancipation of Slaves, Tuesday, May 14, 1833
 

Introduction 3
1. Modern Slavery and Modern Freedom 9
2. The Free Labor Ideology: Adam Smith 19
3. From Production to Reproduction: The Population Principle 34
4. Adam Smith’s Epigone and the Retreat from the Free
Labor Ideology 54
5. Heredity, Environment, and Change 73
6. Sierra Leone and Haiti: Emancipation as an
Experimental Science 88
7. Experimental Alternatives to Slavery, 1791–1833 106
8. The Mighty Experiment 121
9. Expanding the Experiment 144
10. The Experiment Eroded 158
11. The Experiment in Crisis: Sugar, Slaves, and Cotton 179
12. An Experiment Abandoned 202
13. Some Lessons 231
Notes 239
Selected Bibliography 287
Index 299
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The Mighty Experiment
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 

T he reasons for the demise of the Atlantic slave system have

been a source of endless debate. The process entailed the
dismantling of one of the most dynamic institutions in the European
world economy after three centuries of continuous growth. As late as
the mid-eighteenth century it seemed unlikely, to those with long histor-
ical or broad geographical perspectives, like Adam Smith, that slavery
would ever be abolished throughout the world.
Atlantic slavery was not just a legal system of domination fostered
throughout the European settler colonies in the Americas. It was also a
vast economic complex, involving the interaction of societies and govern-
ments from Scandinavia to southeastern Africa, from present-day Argen-
tina and Chile to Canada. Between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth
century, participants in the Atlantic slave trade included traders, princes,
merchants, and planters from Massachusetts to Mozambique.1
By the end of the nineteenth century, however, both the transatlantic
slave trade and chattel slavery in the Americas had been abolished. In a
series of dramatic initiatives from the 1770s to the 1880s, national slave
systems were challenged, constricted, and terminated. By 1890 the spread
of Western civilization and the dismantling of chattel slavery in Africa
and Asia seemed to be inseparable processes. The abolition of Atlantic
slavery was also linked to the ending of serfdom in Europe and attacks
on other forms of coerced labor as systems of quasi slavery. In retrospect,
these complex transformations suggest that the long nineteenth century
was an age of emancipation on a global scale.
Because of its pioneering and dominant role in both industrialization
and abolitionism, Great Britain has been of special interest to historians
of these subjects. Britain was the site of the earliest and most sustained
mass movement to abolish the slave trade within its own jurisdiction.
Once the end of the British transatlantic trade seemed assured in 1807,

3
 the scope of the movement’s ambitions quickly assumed global dimen-
sions. Britain became the first metropolitan polity to definitively legislate
emancipation within its own plantation complex in the West Indies and
Mauritius. The simultaneous emancipation of nearly 800,000 slaves be-
tween 1833 and 1838 stimulated subsequent abolitionist initiatives in
continental Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. In 1840, British ab-
olitionists hosted the first international convention to extend the abolition
of slavery throughout the world.
Britain’s leadership also engendered an element of national trium-
phalism in British historiography. For almost a century and a half after
the publication of Thomas Clarkson’s first history of the abolition of the
British slave trade in 1808, histories of British antislavery were Whiggish
narratives focused on two overlapping groups—the activists who inspired
the movement and the political leaders who implemented it. The moral
and heroic dimension of the process held center stage for historians,
social thinkers, and political orators alike.
About half a century ago, other aspects of the abolitionist process
began to receive increasing scholarly attention. Inspired by Marxist, an-
ticolonialist, feminist, and social scientific perspectives, more systematic
studies of economic development, slave resistance, and mass abolitionism
produced new interpretations of the ending of the slave trade.2 There
were also profound shifts in the frames of reference used by historians
of slavery and abolition. One major interpretative theme focused on the
concurrent or closely overlapping rise of political abolitionism and the
acceleration of economic growth in Great Britain. This became a part of
the more general question about the relationship between the rise and
fall of Atlantic slavery and the rise of capitalism in modern Europe, Af-
rica, and the Americas.
The first attempt to systematically relate the abolitionist process to
structural changes in the British economy was made by Eric Williams in
Capitalism and Slavery in 1944. Others extended his economically based
thesis to the various slave systems in the Caribbean, the United States,
Brazil, and Africa. The demise of plantation slavery could thus be read
as a sequence of case studies that illustrated its fundamental weakness
within the major economic developments of Atlantic societies. Other
scholarly perspectives challenged this equation. In United States histori-
ography, the case for the profitability, viability, and competitiveness of
Southern slavery until Civil War–imposed emancipation was grounded in
rigorous and elaborate economic analyses. Scholars soon arrived at sim-
ilar conclusions about in other major areas of the slave plantation and
slave trade systems during the age of emancipation—the Spanish Carib-
bean and Brazil. As David Eltis, a scholar of the Atlantic slave trade,
concludes, economic “natural-limits” of slavery were nowhere in sight
during the abolitionist process. In short, during the era of coincident

4   

abolitionist assaults and the acceleration of Euro-American industriali-
zation, the slave system’s potential for expansion remained unabated.3
This perspective on Atlantic slavery implies the existence of a funda-
mental tension between, rather than a harmonization of, economic and
noneconomic pressures in the abolition process. Paradoxically but un-
derstandably, this new frame of reference intensified the search for alter-
native causal connections between the evidence of increasing intolerance
for slavery in the century after 1780 and its obvious compatibility with
continued economic growth. The tension was made more conceptually
acute by the fact that general theories of economic development, whether
non-Marxist or Marxist, tend to emphasize the long-term linkage of eco-
nomic stages with emancipation as part of a millennium-long revolution.
The classic Enlightenment paradigm, derived from its concept of hu-
man progress, was based on the decline of slavery and serfdom in western
Europe. Its master narrative entailed a shift from medieval servitude to
modern, free, contractual bargaining. This revolution was, by most reck-
onings, beneficial to European landowners, capitalists, and workers over
the long run. Because of the economic superiority of hired over servile
labor, the new, more “flexible” system of “free” labor was essential for
Western expansion and development.4
Although much scholarship has focused on the economic realities of
British slavery and on the role of political economy in antislavery policy
and ideology after 1750, the debate over the ending of British slavery
during the age of emancipation was embedded in a broader cultural his-
tory.5 During the seventeenth century and for most of the eighteenth,
British colonial slavery and the transatlantic slave trade were regarded
as integral elements in a dominant worldview that linked domestic im-
provement to overseas expansion. The slave-driven cultivation of the New
World was assessed as an invaluable element of national and imperial
power.
At the end of the eighteenth century, when slavery was first massively
challenged on moral grounds, both opponents and defenders seized the
opportunity to bring rational empirical arguments and scientific princi-
ples to the issue. For the better part of a century, from the 1760s to the
1860s, this self-consciously scientific discourse remained the preserve of
a small number of articulate and highly visible groups: abolitionist elites,
the “slave interest,” pamphleteers, members of Parliament, colonial bu-
reaucrats, and political economists. They largely drew on the same
sources. For statistics they had endless series of governmental
publications on population, migration, capital, labor, production, and
trade, all related to the zones of slavery and free labor. For expert testi-
mony they had the equally interminable series of witnesses who spoke
before generations of official investigation committees, which resulted in
multivolume series of the Parliamentary Papers.

 5
 The resulting mountains of figures and the arguments about them
rarely attracted or distracted the attention of the hundreds of thousands
of slaves overseas or abolitionists at home. They were, however, vital to
the debate. Interest in the fate of British plantation slavery extended far
beyond the confines of the British Empire. The decisions of the world’s
most advanced industrial nation and its greatest naval power were of
extraordinary concern to other imperial systems and to masters, slaves,
and abolitionists throughout the world. Official British antislavery became
proactively global in scope, in tandem with the expanding ambitions of
its abolitionist movement. Successive generations of British ministers
were acutely aware that Britain’s exposed forward position converted its
initiatives into object lessons for all other imperial governments and slave
societies.
The rise in the cultural status of science during the eighteenth century
also afforded many opportunities to bring new methods and findings to
bear on the increasingly politicized discussion of slavery. Politicians who
felt increasingly at home with scientific metaphors consciously applied
them in debates to contradict the polemical rhetoric of both antislavery
advocates and their opponents. Scientifically grounded arguments might
cut through the intractable divide between those who appealed to moral
and political discourses. If emerging truths of economics, demography,
or race, along with the prestige of deductive reasoning or experimental
methodology, could uncover more objective “common ground” between
otherwise bitterly divided protagonists, resolutions to the problems of
slavery might be found in consensual, rational arrangements. The alter-
native appeared to be a resort to dangerous and potentially explosive
appeals to raw political power and even violence. The rational analysis
of slavery and freedom offered a possible path to a more controlled and
less destructive outcome. It promised to lower the stakes set by polari-
zation within the political elite and to diminish the unpredictable pulsa-
tions of popular mobilization, both slave and free, in England, in its im-
perial extensions, and even in its foreign relations. At bottom, then, the
quest for a scientific understanding of slavery and its alternatives was a
quest for the minimization of irrationality and the maximization of or-
derly discussion of social change.
This book traces the intrusion of social science into the politics of
slavery. I am less interested in how the problems of slavery influenced
the development of the social sciences than in the appeal to the authority
of those sciences by those attempting to understand and influence larger
issues of public policy. Three areas of social science were thrust to the
center of the discussion, more than occasionally against the will of their
professed practitioners. Political economy was the most popular source
of authority. It directly provoked and answered questions about the rel-
ative superiority of free versus slave labor. Demography also raised ques-
tions about the reproductive performance of slaves and nonslaves and the

6   

role of population pressure in transitions from slavery to freedom. Finally,
racial and epidemiological science called attention to biological aspects
of race-based slavery.
The classic works of Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, and their
nineteenth-century commentators constituted the most important
sources of scientific authority for politicians and polemicists in their long
disputes over slavery and emancipation (chapters 2–4). Changing ideas
about the sources and significance of human diversity and differential
development offered new perspectives on the consequences of freedom
(chapter 5). The dramatic appearance of alternatives to the economies of
plantation slavery, shortly after the emergence of abolitionism, suggested
that they could be used as case studies within an experimental frame of
reference (chapters 6 and 7).
By 1833 British legislators had come to the point of treating the end
of slavery in their colonies as an unprecedented experiment in human
development. It was the supreme test of controlled social change (chap-
ter 8). The transformation was to simultaneously test modern scientific
theory and antislavery’s ambition to transform the world. During the
second third of the nineteenth century, the British tropics served as the
world’s most important laboratory of freedom (chapters 9–12). Other
tropical areas across the globe were also scrutinized for the light they
would throw on the relative performance of slave and free labor. Poli-
ticians and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic felt free to register
interim assessments. Not surprisingly, those with the most intense in-
terest in the effects of policy decisions were usually boldest about draw-
ing conclusions from general scientific principles and linking them to
empirical evidence.
It must be emphasized that neither the pace nor the outcome of the
process of emancipation was driven by this intense quest for scientific
validation. All of the major changes in the status of British slavery came
in response to popular mobilizations from without: the first regulation of
slaves carried on British ships (1788), the first successful parliamentary
motion to gradually abolish the slave trade (1792), the abolition of the
British slave trade (1807), the condemnation of the slave trade by the
Congress of Vienna (1815), the first successful motion for gradual eman-
cipation of British colonial slaves (1823), British emancipation (1833),
and the abolition of postemancipation Negro apprenticeship in the col-
onies (1838). It was always mass abolitionism that thrust slavery on the
political agenda. Elite scientific discourse followed the petition returns
before 1838, and discussions of emancipation of slavery followed the
crisis of sugar returns and the rhythms of parliamentary debates after-
ward. Scientific analysis was driven by the political agenda and not vice
versa.
Ultimately, the successive endings of slavery within the orbit of West-
ern domination and culture led to the gradual diminution of political

 7
 appeals to science in relation to the question of slavery. However, the
extended experiment left in its wake conceptual issues that have contin-
ued to affect debates over the application of scientific approaches and
methods to the histories of slavery and abolition, long after the legal
systems that sanctioned chattel slavery have vanished.

8   

 1
  
 

U ntil the late eighteenth century, slavery was deemed ac-

ceptable wherever Europeans dominated in the world be-
yond Europe. However, the relatively effortless extension of the institution
during the three centuries after 1450 depended on the continual con-
striction of its legitimacy within early modern Europe itself. Especially in
terms of northwestern European self-identity, the historical shift of the
social order and social values to libertarian norms began in medieval
Europe, long before the creation of northern European slave plantations
in the Americas. The most striking aspect of early modern Atlantic his-
tory was the fact that for three centuries two sharply different systems
of freedom and unfreedom developed on the shores of the Atlantic. By
1750, in the northeastern quadrant of the Atlantic, the elements of co-
ercion had been in decline for centuries. If free labor in its contemporary
form did not yet exist, the concept of the freeman and the legal nexus
for viewing labor as a contracted obligation, independent of the person
of the laborer, were firmly embedded in law and practice. A freeman was
not permanently bound to labor for others, although many workers might
still be penally liable for breaches of contract until late into the nine-
teenth century. Property rights in labor were vested in individuals rather
than in groups or political rulers.1
In European-dominated portions of the Americas, Europeans retained
this individualistic nexus for themselves while creating new systems of
chattel slavery. Drawing on the legal traditions of Mediterranean slave
law and the slave networks of sub-Saharan Africa, western Europeans
created a coercive institution of systematic economic exploitation previ-
ously unmatched in human history. By 1750 there seemed to be a sharp
dichotomy between a smaller zone of freedom and various zones of un-

9
 freedom throughout the globe. This dichotomy could be ethnic and per-
sonal, as well as geographic. A descendant of European freemen clearly
did not lose his or her status as a free person by voyaging or being born
“beyond the line” in the European-controlled areas of the world. A de-
scendant of African slaves did not unequivocally gain status as a freeman
on touching European soil, despite the fact that for three centuries before
abolitionism “England was too pure for a slave to breathe.”2 In every
European society where individual freedom had become the norm before
New World colonization, the sharpness of the division posed some legal
and moral questions about the boundaries of enslavement.
It was also within the orbit of western European societies that an
antislavery movement emerged. It went beyond the principle that it was
wrong to enslave or own members of one’s own community. It embraced
as an appropriate and urgent policy goal the end of commerce and of
property rights in persons. Until the emergence of that movement, Eur-
opeans casually extended the medieval Mediterranean slave codes into
the Atlantic world beyond Europe and into the Indian Ocean. Neverthe-
less, the ideology required to set antislavery in motion was already in
place long before the emergence of the philosophers, political economists,
and religious groups who were to be identified as the cultural pioneers
of antislavery. The achievement of the eighteenth-century abolitionists
did not lie in any rapid revaluation of slavery’s significance to the wealth
or power of Europeans. Instead they mobilized western Europe’s preex-
isting normative and legal tradition to demoralize the entire transatlantic
slave system.3
As early as the sixteenth century, when Iberian merchants, explorers,
and conquerors transferred plantation slavery from the Mediterranean to
the New World, the French legal philosopher Jean Bodin was confidently
characterizing slavery as a condition that had long since been superseded
in his own country. Bodin anticipated a major argument of eighteenth-
century writers—that the disappearance of slavery was evidence of mod-
ern superiority over the ancients. On the eve of France’s own expansion
into the Atlantic slave system, Bodin historicized and condemned slavery
as unprogressive. From his “free soil” perspective, he also posited an an-
tithesis between slavery and freedom in economic terms. Was slavery, he
asked, “natural and profitable to a common weal, or contrary unto nature
and unprofitable?” Bodin’s answer was both unclassical and unambigu-
ous: slavery was unnatural and unprofitable.4
Bodin was not a protoabolitionist visionary, nor was he prophetically
decrying a societal consensus that regarded slavery as normative. He
claimed no originality whatever in his assessment of slavery as an out-
moded institution. His readers were merely referred to their own legal
tradition. The academic, Aristotelian rationale for slavery was simply dis-
missed. During the following century, even European philosophers like
Hugo Grotius, who accepted the theoretical legitimacy of slavery, took

10   

note of the institution’s absence in western Europe and understood it as
a form of historical progress.
It was not just the European legal tradition that was hostile to slavery.
The Dutch are traditionally recognized as having developed the most ad-
vanced capitalist economy of the early seventeenth century, the “first
modern economy.” At the outset of their major venture into the Atlantic
economy, there was evidence that Dutch writers distrusted slavery as a
means of European colonization. William Usselincx, a Dutch entrepre-
neur, argued that free European settlements would provide better markets
for the metropolis than would slave colonies. In the spirit of Bodin, he
assumed that free laborers would also prove more productive than slaves.
Early Dutch experience in the Atlantic slave system, however, rapidly
reversed this initial assessment. Within a few decades the Dutch West
India Company had seized much of Portugal’s Brazilian plantation com-
plex and its West African slaving business. Moral hesitation at home was
soon dismissed by the first Dutch governor of Brazil as a “futile scruple.”
Soon, ample clerical sanction for its slave system was available.5
The same pattern emerged in English and French overseas coloniza-
tion, which rapidly followed on the heels of the Dutch example. Early
smatterings of hostility toward overseas slavery were brushed aside, en-
suring the rapid expansion of tropical production for European con-
sumption. Some planters initially tried various alternatives to African la-
bor. In the British and French Caribbean, indentured European servants
were the first resort of European capitalists.6
Northwestern Europeans continued to evince occasional misgivings
about the morality or practice of slavery. Just a century after Bodin’s
condemnation there was a flurry of similar protests. In 1688, a Penn-
sylvania settler’s petition requested the prohibition of slavery in the new
Quaker colony. A year later, John Locke’s widely read Two Treatises on
Government dismissed slavery as beneath the possibility of defense by an
Englishman. In 1686, an Afro-European, Lourenço da Silva de Mendouça,
succeeded in getting the papal bureaucracy to consider a sweeping con-
demnation of the slave trade as a violation of human rights.7 As with
Bodin’s antislavery pronouncements, these statements had no immediate
impact on the development of the Atlantic economy. The Germantown
Pennsylvania petition was ignored. John Locke himself invested in the
Royal African Company. The curial condemnation remained buried in the
papal archives.
Throughout the Atlantic empires, apologies for slavery and the slave
trade were firmly grounded in appeals to economic necessity, supple-
mented by the rationale of salvaging savage souls. The economic dimen-
sion seemed to be the more unproblematic of the two. The evidence seems
overwhelming, however, that the Atlantic slave system, even as it dem-
onstrated its economic advantages, was never incorporated into an over-
arching concept of European, much less human, progress. The slave trade

     11

 might be credited with saving a remnant of Africans otherwise lost to
idolatry and superstition, but the same apologists paid homage to a pop-
ular aversion in Europe to property and trade in persons:

Many are prepossessed against the Trade, thinking it a barbarous,

inhuman, and unlawful Traffic for a Christian Country to Trade in Blacks;
to which I would beg leave to observe that though the odious Appel-
lation of Slaves is annexed to this trade, it being called by some the
Slave-Trade, yet . . . I cannot but think their Condition is much bettered
to what it was in their own Country. . . . Christian Merchants saving
many Africans from “inhuman Sacrifices . . . Torture and Barbarity,
their transplantation must certainly be a Melioration of their Condi-
tions.8

Such references to popular odium, whether parenthetical or central,

illustrate the consensual limits of enslavability in the early modern At-
lantic. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, few Europeans
had the temerity to assert that slavery would be a desirable innovation
for their own people or for Europeans in general, either at home or
abroad. None suggested that shipping Europeans as chattel slaves to till
the fertile fields of undeveloped America would constitute a desirable
development for Europe, America, Christendom, or civilization.
Liberty, therefore, remained hegemonic in northwestern Europe.
When, for example, the French government sought to enable slaveholders
to bring slaves to the metropolis in violation of France’s free soil princi-
ples, masters had to register their slaves on arrival as temporary residents.
Later, slaves had to be placed in “depots,” in French ports of entry, for
the duration of their master’s stay. Violations of such rules of sojourn
were to be punished by liberation of the imported slaves. The theoretically
absolute monarchs of France had enormous difficulty in ensuring that
this privilege of ownership was enforced by the metropolitan royal courts
or in stemming the flow of blacks from the slave colonies.9
For early modern western Europe as a whole, slavery was never, as
it had been in the Roman Empire or within the Mediterranean world of
Islam, a ubiquitous and normative institution. In England, in particular,
the domestic legal ideology was stridently libertarian throughout the
entire period of officially encouraged slave-colony growth, roughly be-
tween the eras of the English and French revolutions. Long before the
mid-eighteenth century, every student of law on either side of the Brit-
ish Atlantic was presented with a host of philosophical objections to
servility and enjoined to favor liberty. During the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, the English legal tradition concerning the terms of la-
bor was less affected by the expansion of colonial slavery than by the
pressures of the rapidly developing metropolitan economy. Conceptually,
as well as legally, the operative distinction in northwestern Europe be-
tween slavery and freedom was geographical and racial, and it re-

12   

mained so. When the boundary began to be attacked in the eighteenth
century, it was generally, as it had been in medieval legal development,
in favor of liberty.
Limitations on metropolitan enslavement did not, of course, imply an
absence of coerced labor in England. A powerful legal tradition in England
held that the consensual manual laborer, although a freeborn English-
man, was not “free” in the modern sense. The law gave employers the
right to invoke criminal penalties for violations of contract. It empowered
and enjoined magistrates to force the unemployed poor to work. Even
amid the growing assumptions of an individualistic market society, fresh
statutes were enacted during the eighteenth century to make breaches
of labor contracts punishable by physical constraint. Far into the era of
British abolitionism, English farm laborers who abandoned their obliga-
tions were imprisoned for such violations of their contractual agree-
ments.
Despite various changes in the relationship, both liberating and co-
ercive, between Anglo-American laborers and their employers, “the con-
ceptual and experiential location of [labor] service and slavery in sepa-
rate, even opposite categories worked quite effectively during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”10 Thus the rise of antislavery
cannot be measurably correlated with some systemic change in the met-
ropolitan terms of labor around 1750. The evidence of continuity of
attitudes toward the legal coercion of metropolitan labor actually argues
against a direct causal connection between capitalist, legal relations
among Europeans and attitudes toward European property in African
slaves. Neither in the zones of overwhelmingly contractual labor, in En-
gland and New England, nor in those areas containing large slave pop-
ulations did the geographical spread and economic intensification of mar-
ket activity lead to the disappearance of legal coercion. On the contrary,
penal restrictions on free labor continued to apply and to be fully enforced
in precisely that area of the Anglo-American world where the abolitionist
movement first developed a popular mass base.
For example, neither the rise of antislavery nor the intensification of
market activity led directly to the abandonment of coercive restrictions
to enforce labor contracts. On the contrary, the expanding market for
labor in England stimulated Parliament to supplement the old Tudor re-
strictions with new statutes to cover increasingly commercial sectors of
the economy. Although certain forms of discipline and authority were
removed from the masters and allowance for private, violent correction
of workers diminished, penal punishment for laborers’ contract violations
did not. In this respect it is important to note that the “liberation” of
labor from penal restriction in Britain came long after the mobilization
of elite and mass opinion against slavery. The evidence challenges an-
other common assumption—that the rise of abolitionism was tied to a
dramatic change in metropolitan master-worker relationships. However,

     13

 the maintenance of metropolitan mechanisms of coercion within the
boundaries of “contract” and the weakening of coercion outside the con-
tractual relationship did accentuate the difference between free and slave
labor.11
The Atlantic slave economies of the eighteenth-century were therefore
not so significant to the evolution of European labor relations as some
historians have retrospectively concluded. Their separation could be as-
sumed before the last third of the eighteenth century. There was also a
general consensus, on both sides of the Atlantic, that the New World
plantation complex was quite valuable to the inhabitants of the Old.
There was also general agreement throughout Europe that bound labor,
in one form or another, was more productive in the New World than in
the Old. In most transatlantic colonies, the initial issue for landowners
was not choosing between free and slave labor but having some form of
bound labor or no labor at all.
Northwestern Europeans thought primarily in terms of varieties of
bound labor. By the mid-seventeenth century, there were independently
developed markets in both European indentured servants and African
slaves. Their origin, destination, and volume—but not their juridical
status—were regulated by a competitive market. Even overseas, inden-
tured Europeans retained bundles of rights and mechanisms of protection
and publicity that were not available to most African laborers. Thus,
despite some differences between hired laborers in Britain and indentured
European laborers in British America, western Europeans were neither
reduced to nor progressively degraded toward the level of chattels. On
the contrary, the distinctions between slaves and European servants be-
came more carefully articulated as time went by. Planters might have
been quite willing to see fellow Europeans transported by force to the
colonies and reduced to longer terms of servile status. But even where
demands for labor were most intense, metropolitan norms were never
sufficiently altered to accommodate the permanent bondage of Europe-
ans. In the clash of colonial economic needs with metropolitan social
and legal norms, there were dominant metropolitan limits for the treat-
ment of metropolitans and their descendants. These norms constrained
planters’ options everywhere in the Americas.12
On the eve of the age of revolution, freedom, not slavery, was the
world’s “peculiar institution.” For practitioners of political arithmetic
such as Arthur Young, nineteen out of twenty inhabitants of the planet
were not free and lived in zones of bondage. His contemporary Adam
Smith, who was to become a revered authority for abolitionists and po-
litical economists alike in the century after American independence, es-
timated the same empirical proportions between global freedom and un-
freedom. For Smith this meant that it was doubtful whether slavery would
cease to be part of the human condition for ages to come, if ever. In the

14   

New World, especially, alternative forms of European, Indian, and African
bondage had fluctuated in importance over two centuries, but by the mid-
eighteenth century it was abundantly clear to most observers that the
most successful mode of tropical and semitropical production for the
North Atlantic market was through the labor of enslaved Africans. For
a century the relative value of each slave to the metropolis could be
calibrated as greater than that of nonslave laborers anywhere in the
temperate colonial zone.13
In such a context, the general question of free versus slave labor played
little part in discussions of the varieties of overseas labor. Forms of labor
varied with region, climate, density of settlement, and commercial prod-
uct. Assiduous research has uncovered occasional remarks about the
inefficiency of slaves ever since classical antiquity, but “the rare calcu-
lations by ancient writers are simply pathetic in their incompetence.”14
Over the centuries, there were occasional affirmations that a free laborer
worked more efficiently than a slave, but the geographical separation of
the dominant forms of labor in the Atlantic world seemed to obviate any
systematic discussion of the inherent merits of one or another type of
labor.
Whereas the link between manual labor and servility had weakened
at an excruciatingly slow and uneven pace in Europe, it had received a
new impetus in the plantation Americas.15 The fact that African labor
had discouraged or displaced both European and native labor in certain
regions by 1750 seemed to suggest slavery’s inherent appropriateness for
certain areas and crops. As late as the mid-eighteenth century, the de-
cision to legalize slave labor in Georgia, after an initial attempt to settle
the colony exclusively with European labor, was thought to demonstrate
the futility of restricting the choice of labor in American settlements.
Most writers gave no more thought to comparing the alternatives of free
and slave labor in Kingston, Jamaica, than they would have considered
asking whether it was better to grow apples or oranges in Kingston-upon-
Hull, England. In this conceptually segmented context, there was little
stimulus for arguing in terms of the abstract superiority of slave, bonded,
or waged labor. Nor was there any glorification of slavery either in the
narrow terms of its link to the technologically sophisticated sugar agro-
factories or in the broader terms of a contribution to Western or Euro-
pean civilization. Intermittent moral disparagement of slave labor led to
no serious consideration of dismantling the system.
The mid-eighteenth century witnessed the introduction of one novelty
in this respect, what historians have come to call the free labor ideology.
It entailed an assertion of free labor superiority, but it was unclear
whether this was meant to imply a universal superiority. At the core of
this concept was an explicit appreciation of the value of labor in general
and of free labor in particular. Occasionally, the geographically nuanced

     15

 spectra of degrees of unfreedom in labor, as natural responses to varia-
tions in climate, crop, and population density, were waved aside in the
interest of an abstract comparison of the two extremities of labor coer-
cion.16
During the late seventeenth century, before slavery was under any
political challenge, some English writers already envisioned economic be-
havior in terms of the insatiability of human wants and aspirations,
clearly anticipating the basis for optimistic views about the superiority of
voluntary labor. Nothing in their reasoning, however, induced the late
seventeenth-century political arithmeticians to advocate restricting colo-
nial settlement to free labor or to warn against the retarding effects of
the burgeoning slave system.17
How, then, did the development of early economic theory actually
impinge on the emergence of abolitionism in the last quarter of the eigh-
teenth century, or vice versa? One postulated difference between the end
of the seventeenth century and the end of the eighteenth is that laissez-
faire attitudes were rejected in the 1690s by industrialists, landowners,
and politicians in favor of an emphasis on protective mercantilism in
overseas trade and constrictions on labor mobility at home. As Thomas
Holt concludes, there was a tension, not easily overcome, between those
who made money and those responsible for social control. Given the dom-
inant mercantilist concern, with low costs and high exports; low wages;
draconian vagrancy laws; and low-cost, high-output labor, African slaves
in the late 1600s provided the bonus of diminishing pressure on the
metropolitan labor market, thereby decreasing employers’ competition for
wage labor.18
In any event, during the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century,
protoeconomists posited no radical opposition between free and slave la-
bor. Malachy Postlethwayt, Arthur Young, and James Steuart, Adam
Smith’s most immediate Scottish predecessor in political economy, all
demonstrated that acknowledging free labor superiority at home did not
require advocating it abroad. Postlethwayt was quite willing to press the
case for the maximum expansion of the African slave trade. As late as
1772 Young, ever the political arithmetician, quantitatively demonstrated
the relative advantage to Britain of deploying capital to buy Africans for
the staple plantation complex instead of encouraging free farmers and
tradesmen in the northern continental colonies.19
Five years earlier, Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Econ-
omy offered a more theoretical rationale for both forms of labor, industry
(free labor) and labor (servile). Each had its appropriate sphere. Steuart’s
terminology showed that labor still implied servility and unfreedom; in-
dustry evoked voluntary, self-motivated work. Under slavery, a master
could dictate even the motions of his workers. Under liberty “every head
is at work, and every hand is improving in dexterity.” Did this mean that
“industry” was generally superior to “labor”? On the contrary, what mat-

16   

tered was the nature of the work. If some were slaves to others, free
laborers were slaves to their wants. Both forms of work occurred within
a model of constraint. The free worker was assigned a mind but not an
inherent economic edge: where hands were needed, slaves were prefera-
ble; where heads were appropriate, the advantage lay with liberty. Both
large-scale manufacturing and agriculture could take advantage of the
“simplicity of slavery.” Steuart found the most obvious evidence of slave
labor’s superiority in the West Indies: “Could the sugar islands be culti-
vated to any advantage, by hired labor?”20
For Steuart, what really limited an employer’s access to the potential
benefits of slavery everywhere was not the superior industry of freemen
but the political barrier—the “spirit of the times.” The nature of labor
maintenance in the sugar islands, as well as the nature of slave produc-
tion, reinforced the Caribbean slaveholders’ advantage. Moreover, the
planters’ opportunity to purchase slave laborers from Africa gave them
an additional edge: “ ‘Were not the expenses of rearing children supposed
to be great, would slaves ever be imported? Certainly not.’ ” As long as
Africa remained what Steuart called the “warren” of New World labor,
planters could shift some of the costs of reproduction and the risks of a
high rate of child mortality from Caribbean plantations to African vil-
lages. In Europe, massive recourse to slavery was not a political or moral
option. Elsewhere, it was maintained (for non-Europeans only) without
wounding the metropolitan “spirit of the times.” Overall, New World
bondage had been “very luckily, if not politically,” established to promote
the economic well-being of the metropolis. Slavery was properly deployed
in simple and laborious operations, where hands, not heads, were wanted.
Indeed, since slavery discouraged invention and industry, were any colony
to begin to rival the industry of the mother country, one needed only to
allow the unrestricted introduction of slaves, whose “natural effect”
would undercut the competitive economic development of complex in-
dustries. Where both forms were permitted, the nature of production and
reproduction determined the choice between “slavish” and industrial la-
bor.21
One may note that for Steuart, as for most of his predecessors, eco-
nomic considerations were the least problematic aspect of the proper
choice of laborers. The significant constraint on the purchase of labor
was noneconomic in character—the “spirit of the times.” The analysis
of economic superiority or inferiority involved an easily distinguishable
set of variables. Steuart was merely stating long-standing observations
in more analytically abstract terms. Viewed in the long term, the most
striking aspect of his economic vision was its fundamental continuity
with older views of British society and its transatlantic plantation system
from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century.22 This held for
both the economic relationship of the metropolis to the periphery and
the legal status of labor on both sides of the Atlantic.

     17

 For most contemporaries, then, geographical or climatic distinctions
still trumped economic generalizations. If coerced labor seemed to answer
the needs of British society abroad, it did not at home. Within the me-
tropolis, the inferiority of servile labor was a truism long before the emer-
gence of either abolitionism or classical economics. Everyday experience
in England substantiated the perception that noncontractual, coerced la-
bor was woefully inefficient. For two centuries before the 1780s, ambi-
tious local social experiments had been launched under the statutory
auspices of the Poor Laws. The great workhouse movements of the early
and mid-eighteenth century produced incorporated or contracted work-
houses in at least a third of all English parishes. The limits of the system
soon became clear.23 Coerced labor could not simultaneously offer both
improved welfare and efficient production. When abolitionism later sharp-
ened the issue of free versus slave labor performance, free labor superi-
ority could be espoused as an experiential truth: “The fruitlessness of
compulsive labor” was proved every day, “in every workhouse in the king-
dom. There is in proof too, the felon in the hulks, who produce not a
fourth part of the ballast which is raised in adjourning barges, where
men are working on their own account.”24 Editorials and newspaper let-
ters would echo this refrain through a century of discussions of peniten-
tiary systems at home and convict systems overseas.
Arthur Young heartily joined the chorus of those who excoriated the
residues of “personal service” in western Europe as cruel and counter-
productive. The “last remnant in England,” six days of highway repair
duty, was “done so miserably” and with so much time lost that a private
man with a work team could do the job for one-tenth of the cost of
“parish work.” Casting his eye eastward, Young was still more scornful
in describing the demoralization and outright waste wrought under the
even greater burdens of wageless work (corvées) in France and Germany.
“We may guess,” he sneered patriotically, “what would be the counte-
nance of an English farmer if his landlord demanded all his teams in the
middle of feed time.” The “absolute slavery” further east, in Denmark,
Germany, Poland, and Russia, was worse still. The result could only be a
“very miserable agriculture . . . with all the oppression and cruelty arising
from the spirit of slavery.”25 Yet, when looking westward two years ear-
lier, Young’s attitude toward slavery also swerved by 180⬚. He advised his
fellow Britons to expand their tropical slave populations across the At-
lantic with all deliberate speed. The French, he thought, had wisely held
on to the most lucrative secure part of their possessions in the Caribbean
when they lost the Seven Years’ War. British America’s successful war of
independence only reinforced Young’s prerevolutionary advice.26 With
the peace of 1783, on the very eve of the age of abolitionism, the British
West Indies had become not a jewel in the imperial crown “but now
virtually the crown itself.”27

18   

 2
   :
 

F or James Steuart and Arthur Young, the geographic sepa-

ration between freedom and slavery remained clear and non-
problematic in 1770. By the last third of the eighteenth century, however,
the two “zones” had begun to impinge on each other. An increasing
stream of black slaves from the periphery to Europe generated continuous
friction over the metropolitan status of colonists’ claims to their property
in persons. European juridicial systems faced a choice. In the 1770s,
some, like those in England and Scotland, nullified slave laws within their
jurisdictions. Those in France and the Netherlands temporarily allowed
properly registered slaves to be warehoused in Europe for reexport abroad
within a given time period. In all the systems of northwestern Europe,
the desire to hold the “line” still predominated.1
When slaves were not stimulating juridical controversy by their anom-
alous presence in Europe, their periodic revolts and conspiracies aroused
anxiety about the security of the vast investment of transatlantic prop-
erty in persons. Still more significant than slave revolts before the revo-
lution of 1791 in Saint Dominigue (present-day Haiti) was the maturation
of transatlantic colonies of predominantly European settlers, especially
in British North America. The rapid extension of Europe’s commercial
and free labor societies increasingly generated discussions of the effects
of free and slave labor in the New World. In the two decades before the
American Revolution, even Virginia planters attempted to restrict the
slave trade to their colony, aiming to preserve its racial balance. Some
also wanted to capture more of the European movement of arts and
artisans from their rapidly improving neighbors to the north.2

19
 From his own perspective slightly to the north, Benjamin Franklin
identified the psychological and demographic depletion wrought by slav-
ery in the British Caribbean:

The Negroes brought into the English Sugar Islands have greatly di-
minished the Whites there; the Poor are by this means deprived of
Employment, while a few Families acquire vast Estates. . . . The slaves
being worked too hard, and ill fed . . . the Deaths among them are more
than the Births; so that a continual Supply is needed from Africa. The
Northern Colonies having few Slaves increase in Whites. Slaves also
perjorate the Families that use them; the white Children become proud,
disgusted with Labour, and being educated in Idleness, are rendered
unfit to get a Living by Industry.3

Franklin, like James Steuart, inferred different social outcomes from the
use of slaves versus free laborers, but Franklin drew a very different de-
velopmental lesson for North America and his fellow Americans.
Across the Atlantic, British philosophers were beginning to use slavery
as a way of distinguishing themselves from both their European prede-
cessors and their non-European contemporaries. “Moderns” embraced
the notion that their societies were dedicated to expanding their collective
wealth through trade and industry and to legitimizing the material as-
pirations of ordinary people. As in Franklin’s moral economy, idleness
was linked to psychological apathy, physical enfeeblement, and sterility.
Industry promoted productivity and reproductivity. Both the classical and
the Caribbean worlds, distinguished by dependence on slavery, were tar-
nished by demographic, technological, and intellectual stagnation.4
The emergent naturalistic approach to science began to be systemat-
ically applied to the examination of slavery. Those seeking to create sci-
ences in the realms of economics, demography, and anthropology sub-
stituted formal theories and universal truths for the ad hoc maxims of
the past. Economics was the first of the new human sciences to address
itself directly to the problem of slavery. Apart from all moral considera-
tions, the New World variant of the institution posed an interesting co-
nundrum for those formulating fundamental guidelines for political econ-
omy. No system of labor other than slavery seemed to match the output
or exports per worker achieved by seventeenth-century Barbados or
eighteenth-century Jamaica and St. Domingue. Slavery was to continue
its striking performance into mid-nineteenth-century Cuba and the
American South.5

I
The most distinguished metropolitan exponent of the new view of the
economics of slavery was Adam Smith. His An Inquiry into the Nature and

20   

Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was to furnish a dis-
tinctive economic argument to the British abolitionist movement when it
emerged a decade after the book’s publication. For Smith, wealth and
liberty (“opulence and freedom”) were humanity’s two greatest blessings.6
Civil freedom, conceived as available to all rather than to a narrow elite,
was modernity’s greatest historical achievement. Freedom’s extension
was the primary moral and political goal of human progress. As the
institution that created the greatest formal obstacles to such expansion,
slavery could be seen as a supreme violation of the values of individual
autonomy and social justice. Individual autonomy was the premise of
autonomous economic activity. The property of every man in his own
labor was “the most sacred and inviolable foundation of all property.”
Only when one could sell (and refuse to sell) one’s own labor in the
market, and not be bound to offer oneself to an employer, was a laborer
finally free not to be identified with one’s work and with the servility
traditionally attached to it.7
It could now be argued that quite apart from arguments or sentiments
based on morality, sacrality, or inviolability, the principle of labor freedom
served to maximize economic utility for all. The modern world was a
world of commerce. It created a network of interdependence that rested
on the joint voluntary labor of a great multitude of workmen. The open-
ing theme of Wealth of Nations was labor. In its productivity, its division,
and its maintenance lay the chief source of societal improvement. The
optimum source of labor was itself the free action of the laborer. Ample
rewards for voluntary labor increased the productivity, the diligence, and
the needs of the beings whose satisfaction and freedom, as both workers
and consumers, were the true aim of an “opulent and free” society.8
In such a world slavery was not only morally objectionable but also,
a priori, economically defective. Freedom for laborers was as beneficial
for the masters as for the workers. Smith thus encapsulated this argu-
ment:

The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the
work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance,
is in the end, the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property,
can have no other interest but to eat as much and to labour as little
as possible. Whatever work he does beyond the what is sufficient to
purchase his own maintenance can be squeezed out of him by violence
only, and not by any interest of his own.9

From the master’s perspective, the costs (the “wear and tear”) entailed
in maintaining and reproducing labor were at the expense of employers
of both freemen and slaves. Free workers, however, cost their masters less
because the poor were generally more frugal and efficient in maintaining
themselves than were slaveholders in maintaining their slaves. Smith’s

    21

 dual thesis became a central article of abolitionist faith, ordaining and
forecasting the ultimate triumph of voluntary labor.
No subsequent formulation proved to be so straightforward or so com-
pelling to antislavery advocates during generations of political struggle
against the Atlantic slave trade and Caribbean slavery. The whole record
of historical experience was used to bear witness to the proposition that
slave labor was “in the end the dearest of any.” Smith’s initial demon-
stration was similarly historical. For Smith and for many other
eighteenth-century philosophers, the trend toward freedom, long estab-
lished in the English legal tradition, was equally discernible from the
history of European labor systems. Adam Smith and his compatriot John
Millar discerned a Western linear trend toward decreasingly coercive sys-
tems of human relations. They linked this transformation to successive
stages of production, from ancient classical slavery through medieval
serfdom to contemporary forms of smallholding, sharecropping, and
hired wage labor. Each successive labor system was economically more
efficient than its predecessors. Each system increased the wealth and well-
being of its landholders, its capitalists, and its workers, in a benign cycle
of rising consumption.10
This interlocking sequence of relations of production and expanding
welfare was also pictured as conforming to the fundamental principles of
human psychology. Coerced labor was more reluctant and hence more
expensive, less efficient, and less inventive than free labor. Smith’s
achievement in this regard was the integration of a commonplace claim
into a general analysis of economic growth. The modern, more optimal,
and more natural relationship of free labor to free capital, Smith argued,
had been experimentally worked out in Europe over the course of a mil-
lennium through the mutual education of self-interested laborers and
masters. The economic advantage of the West in general and of Great
Britain in particular arose in large part from the fact that they were more
committed to (and less inhibited from acting on) the individualistic desire
for improvement and advancement than were peoples of other contem-
porary regions. Like the famous “invisible hand” of free trade, the free
labor advantage in Western development had been barely visible in the
short term. In retrospect it was clear, and clearly desirable, to its bene-
ficiaries.11
Smith also drew on contemporary evidence to illustrate the compar-
ative superiority of free over servile labor in cost and in productivity. He
called attention to mining practices in an area of Europe that contained
adjacent examples of free and coerced labor. Free labor mines in the
Habsburg empire were compared to the slave labor systems used in the
Ottoman dominions just to their south. The example served to contrast
free workers’ greater inventiveness in developing labor-saving devices
with the absence of such innovation in the slave mines under Turkish

22   

control. Smith offered a second transatlantic example drawn from British
North American towns. The citizens of Boston, New York, and Philadel-
phia preferred hiring free European servants to purchasing African slaves,
despite the fact that the wages of free workers were extraordinarily high
in the American colonies.12

II
If the western European sequence argued in favor of the superiority of
wage labor, the reverse seemed to have been the case across the ocean.
In the plantations, slavery had superseded earlier forms of labor from
Brazil to Carolina. More than a decade before writing Wealth of Nations,
Smith had himself concluded that bondage was the prevailing form of
labor in the world, and he anticipated that slavery was unlikely to dis-
appear for ages to come, if ever.13 Smith did not repeat this prediction in
1776. Instead he offered general reasons for the seemingly ubiquitous
preference for slaves, despite their relative inefficiency when compared
with freemen. The first was a general psychological human trait, the
pleasure derived from dominating another person. This constant, of
course, could not alone explain the varying modes of labor in the Atlantic
world. Even as a characteristic of Europeans in particular, it was not very
useful in showing why the same western European employers of labor
had gone in opposite directions, choosing one form of labor in Europe
and another in the lowlands of the Americas.14 In fact, on neither side
of the Atlantic did Smith think that the pleasures of power had taken
precedence over the acquisitive instinct. He explained the planters’ choice
of labor in the Caribbean in terms of profit, not pride or prejudice. Sugar
was so valuable a product in Europe that the planter could afford the
service of slaves. Indeed, sugar’s profitability, slavery included, was as-
sumed to be greater than that offered by any other agricultural business
in the Atlantic world. In a book replete with policy assessments, Wealth
of Nations never directly suggested that West Indian planters would ac-
tually increase their higher profit margins still further by emancipating
their labor force.15
Employers of bound labor did pay a price for their choice. According
to Smith, proprietors who used servile labor were subject to significant
inefficiencies on the managerial side of their operations. With their
status-induced habits of conspicuous consumption and their prideful in-
attention to the productive side of their wealth, great lords were con-
temptuous of the cost-accounting mentality required of successful petty
proprietors. The inefficiencies of large-scale supervision added to the de-
fects of unmotivated, coerced labor. Smith illustrated the relative effi-
ciency of such great landowners with examples drawn from European

    23

 agriculture, citing examples of past and present great landowners and
their serfs. Poorly motivated grandees compounded the defects of poorly
motivated labor.16
Not all of Smith’s pronouncements on slave production, however, were
consistent with his general and universal affirmation of slavery’s high
cost. Referring to the Pennsylvania Quakers’ recent manumission of their
slaves, Smith ironically observed that one could be sure that the Quakers,
unlike slaveholders to the south, could not have possessed many slaves.
Theoretically, those who owned the greatest number of slaves would ben-
efit most from emancipation, which would increase the productivity of
their workers and lower their managerial costs. Those who offered the
greatest freedom to the greatest number would gain the most. In his
ironic commentary on the Quakers, however, Smith seemed to be arguing
against the universality of the free labor principle. A marginal group of
slaveowners, residing outside the British plantation zone, could, he
seemed to imply, more easily afford any losses entailed in their actions.
Manumission was treated as a sacrifice, not a gain. In a scientific analysis
of slavery so heavily grounded in individual motivation, it was not evi-
dent from Smith’s presentation what motives had prevailed: the desire to
surrender domination, the will to maximize material benefits; or some
other motive. Neither altruistic feelings toward slaves nor hostility toward
blacks was mentioned as a possible noneconomic influence on the Quak-
ers’ decision in favor of emancipation. And regardless of the Quakers’
motives, Smith clearly did not expect Virginians or West Indians to be
persuaded to imitate them. He was quite explicit that degrees of agricul-
tural profitability accounted for both the decision to use slaves and the
proportion of slave to free labor within each region of British America.17
Smith’s observations about managerial efficiency in relation to Euro-
pean bondsmen also raised difficulties when applied to the transatlantic
world. Smith assumed that nine-tenths of the world’s labor was done
under conditions of bondage. In 1775 Britain’s tobacco, sugar, and rice
colonies accounted for at least half of its transatlantic colonial population
and a still greater share of the value of British trade with the Americas.
Smith’s generic model seemed less appropriate to the New World masters
than to their Old World counterparts. From their very first appearance
in Wealth of Nations, planters in the Americas were not considered to be
analogous to European possessors of serfs. They were cast as rational
economic actors whose behavior was explicable in market terms. West
Indian slaves were correspondingly viewed as factors of cash crop pro-
duction rather than as sources for the passive extraction of rents or res-
ervoirs of military manpower, to be tapped in regional power struggles.
Smith was unexceptional in regarding the majority of American plant-
ers as farming capitalists rather than as manorial lords. His general the-
ory, that great lords traded the potential efficiency and profit of their
servile labor for social status and political power, was invariably linked to

24   

his Old World observations. It certainly did not fit his characterizations
of American slave owners. Despite the notorious phenomenon of absen-
teeism in the Caribbean colonies, Smith assumed that what planters val-
ued most from their estates was maximum income cum expatriation, not
living nobly on their domains. In the British sugar colonies, even political
power flowed from the barrel of rum and the cask of sugar via the pocket
boroughs of Britain. Ambitious West Indian planters, like their East In-
dian counterparts, gained access to imperial power by purchasing seats
in the British Parliament. There was actually less of a territorial-
aristocratic ethos among planters in the eighteenth-century Caribbean
than among the nobility of the British and French metropolises, not to
mention the great nobles of East Elbia. European gentleman farmers,
noted Smith, were more likely to confuse rent with profits than were
North American and West Indian planters, who thought more naturally
in terms of profit than of rent.18
Wealth of Nations was suitably subtle in applying the evidence of Eu-
ropean free labor patterns to the Americas. If, in general, “slave cultiva-
tion was not so advantageous as by free tenants,” the Anglo-American
plantation zone (harboring 90 percent of the empires’ slaves in 1775)
clearly offered the paradox of combining the dearest labor and greatest
profitability. The price of agricultural products for export in the planta-
tions from Maryland to Tobago apparently enabled slave owners to sus-
tain rates of economic growth and even increased population growth of
slaves unmatched in the contemporary free labor zones of Europe. Smith
noted that the British West Indian sugar plantations were so profitable
that their returns from rum exports, a byproduct of sugar production,
paid for the entire overhead expenses of a sugar plantation. As far as
Smith was concerned, this was an achievement without parallel in
eighteen-century British imperial agriculture. The paradox was inescap-
able. The most inefficient type of labor system underlay the most profit-
able and dynamic agricultural activity in the British Empire.19
From the managerial perspective, Smith nowhere portrayed planters
as sacrificing higher potential profits in favor of the pleasures of dominion
and status. The spirit of capitalism, not of manorialism, informed the
planters in British America and the slave interest in Britain. Smith did
attribute some of the extraordinary profits of British West Indians to
sugar’s protected status in the imperial market.20 However, even in his
extensive general attack on mercantilism, Smith paid far more attention
to Old World monopolies and to the trade distortions created by the Corn
Laws than to the effects of the Navigation Acts on sugar, rice, and to-
bacco. Compared to British East Asian trade, the British Atlantic system
was an area of relative internal freedom bounded by imperial preferences,
and the British slave trade was one of the more internationally compet-
itive activities in the British economy for a whole century before its ab-
olition.

    25

 If some of the most important plantation crops were among the com-
modities protected in the imperium, the same was true of products pro-
duced within Britain itself. The movement of coal was still inhibited, as
was the exportation of wood and machinery. British overseas shipping
was heavily protected. There were tariffs on extraimperial timber and on
other strategic commodities. The most important element in the protec-
tive system was domestic crops, under the protective umbrella of the
metropolitan Corn Laws.21 Slave-grown crops were certainly not targets
of hostility on grounds that they contradicted the general principles of
British political economy.
The economic performance of the British sugar plantation complex
was most often judged in comparison with other transatlantic systems,
particularly the French. Smith did not challenge the general climatolog-
ical rationale for the utility of African slaves in tropical areas: “In all
European colonies the culture of the sugar-cane is carried on by negro
slaves. The constitution of those born in the temperate climate of Europe
could not, it is supposed support the labour of digging the ground under
the burning sun of the West Indies.”22
What remained to be accounted for was the fact that the French sugar
colonies dominated the continental European sugar market and had done
so for almost two generations before the appearance of Wealth of
Nations.23 It is interesting that Smith chose to account for the French
colonial advantage in terms of the treatment of its slaves, not of France’s
commercial policies toward its sugar colonies. French slaves were so well
managed that “the slave was rendered not only more faithful, but more
intelligent, and therefore, upon a double account, more useful.” The
thrust of Smith’s argument at this point cut right against his earlier
dramatic contrast in Wealth of Nations between the work done by freemen
and by slaves. The gap between free and slave labor, generally juxtaposed
elsewhere by reference to European and North American examples, was
differently nuanced in reference to the Caribbean: “In the French colonies
the slave approaches more to the condition of a free servant and may
possess some degree of integrity and attachment to his master’s interest,
virtues which frequently belong to free servants, but which can never
belong to a slave, who is treated as slaves commonly are in countries
where the master is perfectly free and secure.”24 In other words, and
again, free labor was less dear and much more effective than slavery,
except in certain parts of the New World. At least in the French case,
with the largest and most successful colonial empire in the Caribbean,
the margin of slave inefficiency was so narrow that the output of its
laborers was almost indistinguishable from that of free laborers. In his
acknowledgment of comparative French success, Smith seemed to un-
dercut the whole cluster of reasons for explaining why slavery was sup-
posedly detrimental to the interests of the slaveholder—slaves’ motiva-
tion, comparative profitability, and planters’ security.25

26   

 At this juncture, Smith avoided comparing either European slaves or
free laborers with their most successful New World slave counterparts.
Was the management of slaves on the French West Indian plantations
superior to that in the mines of the Ottoman or Habsburg empires? Was
it comparable to the wage labor agriculture of western Europe in general
or of Britain in particular? In his account of the French achievement,
Smith made little appeal to the supposedly superior soil of the French
colonies, a popular way of explaining French sugar’s competitive edge in
metropolitan Europe. What was most apparent from his analysis of the
French Caribbean was that slave management could offset the slaves’
motivation and alienation. One conclusion was inescapable. Having for-
mulated a general rule of relative slave inefficiency, Wealth of Nations
allowed for a wide range of performance in the plantation Americas, both
in the nature of work required for various staple crops and in the man-
agement of slaves.

III
Thus far I have focused on the tension between Smith’s general principle
of free labor superiority and some of his specific illustrations. There is
another aspect of the argument, however, in which the silences in Wealth
of Nations seem more significant than the discussions. In dealing with
slavery in the Americas, Smith spoke of only two types of laborers—
freemen and slaves. The word indenture appears only once in the entire
book, and never in any relation to labor. Smith also seems to have been
completely uninterested in the economic role of criminals transported to
North America as coerced laborers. Convict laborers, like indentured ser-
vants, are virtually absent from his great work. Nor did he offer any
discussion on debt peonage or other instances of bound labor among
Native Americans in the New World.26 These forms of labor would receive
equally short shrift in subsequent political debates about British slavery
before emancipation. During the first fifty years of the age of abolition,
1788–1838, European freemen and Caribbean slaves would dominate the
discussion in a stark juxtaposition. Little was made of the fact that during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans had developed a
broadly held assumption that something about plantation cultivation
made the choice of coerced labor a rational economic response to New
World conditions. The “peculiar” nature of the work and the fact that
and Europeans could not be enslaved offered incentives for developing a
new form of slave labor: “Wherever the law allows it and the nature of
the work can afford it,” wrote Smith, the hirer of labor “will generally
prefer the services of the slaves to that of freemen.”27
What was it, then, about the nature of work in the sugar colonies
that made masters especially receptive to African slaves? Wealth of Nations

    27

 briefly alluded to the common climatic rationale for the use of African
labor in the tropics—a debilitating climate for Europeans. Even if Africans
could better endure tropical labor, however, why as slaves? Smith did not
pursue that question, but the first sentence of his first chapter implicitly
answered it: “The greatest improvement in the productive powers of la-
bour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity and judgement with
which it is anywhere directed or applied, seem to have been the effects
of the division of labor.”28
In Wealth of Nations, the division, not the motives of labor, was given
pride of place as the major cause of improvement in the production of
wealth. The division of labor entailed focusing productive activity on in-
numerable, exchangeable products. Each activity constituted only a min-
uscule part of a long chain of production that led to consumption. Such
a division stimulated technological innovation by rewarding even discreet
minor improvements in the production processes and in the distribution
of goods. The division of labor fostered an intensification of individual
dependency on others to accommodate the needs of “the most common
artificer or day-laborer.”29 Interdependency was the motor of economic
growth.
What if this analysis of the engine of growth were rigorously applied
to plantation slavery in Wealth of Nations? The sugar plantation was, after
all, one of the most extreme examples of the division of labor in the early
modern Atlantic economy. It depended entirely for its existence on some
of the lengthiest chains of credit, transportation, and labor recruitment
in the Western world. A large proportion of a plantation’s foodstuffs,
technology, and means of distribution came from complementary net-
works of labor and capital located thousands of miles apart. The staple
products of the plantation complex were, in turn, reprocessed and redis-
tributed along equally lengthy and complex paths to North Atlantic, Af-
rican, and even Asian consumers and producers.
In his first chapter, Smith also noted that the growth-producing po-
tential of the division of labor applied least well to contemporary agri-
cultural and rural laborers, where the “nature of agriculture does not
admit of so many subdivisions of labor.” Nor was “the labour of the rich
country always more productive than that of the poor.” The serf-grown
corn of Poland was no more expensive than the produce of the share-
cropper in France or the agricultural wage laborer in England, despite
the fact that English technology was generally superior to France’s, and
France’s to Poland’s.30
In these passages Smith did not compare the relative productivity of
slaves in America to agricultural free laborers in Europe or in any other
part of the world. Yet slave plantations seemed to bridge the “productivity
gap” between industry and agriculture as well as or better than any other
organization of labor in the world of Adam Smith. American planters
were themselves creators of an unprecedented concentration of labor,

28   

quite analogous to industrial-style labor discipline within the terms out-
lined in the opening chapter of Wealth of Nations. Whereas many Euro-
pean lords did not set exact hours of daily labor, strictly supervise the
quality of field work, or minutely penalize inadequate yields, American
plantation production demonstrated great intensity of supervised labor
in the system of planting and harvesting.31
In Wealth of Nations there was no juxtaposition of plantation slaves
with Smith’s less-than-flattering early characterization of the European
agricultural laborer—his “habit of sauntering and of indolent careless
applications.” Such habits, “naturally, or rather necessarily acquired by
every country workman, renders him almost always slothful and lazy,
and incapable of any vigorous application even on the most pressing
occasions.”32 Nor was the productivity of European farms compared to
the harsh driving system in the plantation Americas, with its gang labor,
its whips, and its minute distribution of tasks by age and gender. If the
conditions of European agricultural laborers prevented them from achiev-
ing the productivity gains available to employers of concentrated labor
in European industry, how well were these or similar impediments over-
come in the cane, rice, tobacco, and cotton fields? Neither the negative
nor the positive incentives to labor within the plantation complex were
brought into view in Smith’s assessments of European labor, agricultural
or industrial, servile or hired.
The striking conformity of plantation agriculture in the Americas to
Smith’s division of labor may have lain well beyond his consciousness
when he composed his overview of the motor of wealth. The plantation
system was, after all, a minor source of examples throughout the book.
Although empirical knowledge about the workings of the plantation sys-
tem were probably available to Smith only at an anecdotal level, it is
quite clear that he was sufficiently impressed by the prosperity of the
sugar colonies to compare them to the precious vineyards of Europe.33
There might have been another, more philosophical or strategic reason
that the plantation played no role in the opening chapter of Wealth of
Nations. In his overview on the causes of wealth, it no more occurred to
Smith to mention the slave plantation than to allude to the dulling of
European minds by the extreme division of labor in factories.34 The open-
ing argument for the productivity gains accruing from the division of
labor was at the same time an explicit justification for the unequal dis-
tribution of European wealth and capital that accompanied it. At the
climax of chapter one, the efficiency, welfare, and justice arguments
wrought by the divisions of both wealth and labor converge when Smith
addresses the implicit question—why should one not favor a poorer but
materially more equal society?
“Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great,”
the accommodation of “the very meanest person in a civilized society”
appears “extremely simple.” And yet, “it may be true, perhaps, that the

    29

 accommodation of a European prince does not always so much exceed
that of an industrious and frugal peasant as the accommodation of the
latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the
lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.”35
With due acknowledgment to all his qualifiers (“may,” “perhaps,” and
“many”) this sentence was Smith’s condensed judgment in favor of mod-
ern, Western economic development. To have compared, at that rhetor-
ical moment, the material accommodation of a slave in the Americas
with either the “meanest person in a civilized society” or with “many an
African prince” might well have provoked some unease in a European
reader. In 1770 the export economies of the Caribbean region probably
had a higher per capita income than Britain, itself the richest of the
Atlantic’s imperial powers. Even closer to Smith’s home, if the “accom-
modation” of the industrious European peasant exceeded that of an Af-
rican prince, by how much more did the accommodation of a servile
Scottish collier exceed that of the most frugal Scottish peasant and Af-
rican king alike?36
In emphasizing free labor’s productivity and material well-being, Smith
was well served by reserving his remarks on the conditions of slave con-
sumption to a distant point in the book.37 In the introductory remarks,
bondage and material deprivation were distanced from the ultima ratio of
Western civilization. The plantation Americas could invite disturbing
questions about an alternative historical convergence of the division of
labor with opulence if not freedom.
As far as the economics of slavery was concerned, the most significant
and important omission from Wealth of Nations was the most peculiar
component of New World slavery. The first major element of comparison
was the relative efficiency of slaves’ and free laborers’ motivation. The
second concerned the relative costs of “wear and tear,” that is, the re-
production of the “race of the journeymen and servants”:

The fund destined for replacing or repairing, if I may say so, the wear
and tear of the slave, is commonly managed by a negligent master or
careless overseer. That destined for performing the same office with
regard to the free man is managed by the free man himself. The dis-
orders which generally prevail in the economy of the rich, naturally
introduce themselves into the management of the former: The strict
frugality and parsimonious attention of the poor as naturally establish
themselves in that of the latter. Under such different management, the
same purpose must require very different degrees of experience to ex-
ecute it. It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and
nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the
end than that performed by slaves.38

Wealth of Nations simply did not address the potential economic impact
of the transatlantic slave trade (or its potential ending) on the planters’

30   

wear, tear, and reproduction costs. As James Steuart claimed, the pro-
portion of prime, able-bodied workers generated by the African slave trade
decisively lowered the planters’ costs of “replacing and repairing” the
labor force by natural reproduction. In a free labor system, the long, risky
years of child rearing had to be financed out of the masters’ wages or
with the tax support of the whole local community. The slave trade,
managed not by a negligent overseer but by enterprising merchants and
investors in British and other North Atlantic ports, was an internationally
competitive mechanism for the stealing, buying, transporting, and selling
of an exogenous labor force. Its “product” needed only three years rather
than up to five times that long to become fully effective.
Wealth of Nations thus made scant effort to demonstrate the systematic
superiority of free over slave labor in the plantation complex. Smith’s
scattered remarks were ambivalent or even contradictory in their impli-
cations. In the entire corpus of his works there was nothing ever ap-
proaching a cost analysis of colonial slavery. His generic affirmations
about the economics of slave labor were not specifically related to his
own empirical observations.
Smith neither explicitly nor implicitly asked whether well-managed
slaves on sugar plantations, fed by an efficient slave trade and operated
by gang labor, were, in the present and foreseeable future, cheaper than
laborers who had to be attracted, transported, and retained by contract.
In 1776 it was little noted or thereafter recalled that Wealth of Nations,
in its very last word on slavery, reckoned West Indian slaves to be as well
fed as the lower ranks of freemen in England. It was, Smith believed, like
many West Indian propagandists to come, in the masters’ interest that
their slaves “be fed well and kept in good heart, in the same manner as
it is in their interest that his working cattle should be so.” The British
taxpayer of 1776 could therefore rest assured that the fiscal benefit de-
rived from taxing consumable commodities was, pace slavery, “as great
in America as in any part of the British empire.” Given their profit-
maximizing mentality, Anglo-American slave merchants and planters did
not appear to have been at all disturbed by the appearance of Smith’s
work or by its potential impact on British policy before the rise of political
abolitionism in 1787. Thereafter, the slave interest occasionally appealed
to both Smith’s authority and his general principles in order to defend
their own trade.39
Wealth of Nations did leave three important legacies to subsequent
discussions of slavery and emancipation. First, as a prestigious founding
document of one of the first social sciences, it clearly reinforced the ax-
iom of coerced labor’s inefficiency relative to free labor, other things being
equal. From the perspective of his economic theory, proprietors of human
beings were, in the long run, inconsistent with their self-interest. Slaves
were costly to work and costly to maintain. Slaveholding undermined the
self-motivation of workers, both as producers and as consumers. Argu-

    31

 ments for justifying slavery by its utility for owners were also theoretically
challenged by their inefficiency relative to employers of freemen and by
history itself—“the experience of all ages and nations.” Abolitionists
could hardly have ordered a stronger single statement from the first new
human science.
Smith’s second legacy was the sharpness of his condemnation of slav-
ery as an economic institution. Many of his other contemporaries, like
Steuart, were ambivalent, to say the least, in their attitude toward slavery,
especially when they measured its performance in the world beyond Eu-
rope.40 Smiths’s work unambiguously suggests that modern commerce
had helped to liberate common workers in the West from their stigma of
servility. The commercialization of the world expanded the realm of op-
ulence and liberty. Smith’s earlier work on morality had already decisively
rejected the doctrine of virtue linked to classical systems of slavery, add-
ing his own pointed stigmatization of European slave traders as the moral
inferiors of their African victims.41 His political economy was founded on
the same premise. The right to one’s labor was “sacred and inviolable.”
Human beings could not be subsumed as productive means to others’
ends. In this “human science,” humans, as it were, dealt with commod-
ities and services (including their own labor). They were not themselves
commodities.
Smith’s third legacy was a categorical bifurcation of labor relations in
the Americas. His foundational work spoke of only two types of laborers
in the Americas—freemen and slaves. The western European sequence
of the historical movement from ancient slavery to modern wage labor
was paradigmatic of free labor’s historical superiority.
Wealth of Nations offered a bonus to abolitionists, but it was not a
priceless gift. If one were less inclined to read the work single-mindedly,
it was not difficult to discover serious, implicit reservations to its general
pronouncement of free labor superiority. Significantly, almost all of these
reservations appeared in descriptions of the Atlantic plantation system.
The analytical price for Smith’s triple legacy was thus the marginalization
and simplification of New World coerced labor. Wealth of Nations re-
mained silent about the existence of convict and indentured labor in the
Americas. It remained silent about the counterparadigmatic sequence of
New World labor systems in the Caribbean. It made no effort whatever
to factor the transatlantic coerced migration into the analysis, or to ac-
count for the preponderance of enslaved Africans over European laborers
of all kinds during the previous two centuries.
References to New World plantations were, of course, scattered
throughout the work. They were sometimes accompanied by particular
explanations for their slave labor-based successes and occasionally their
extraordinary successes. In reality, even this vigorous critic of slavery did
not, indeed could not, escape the Enlightenment’s ambivalence toward
the economic performance of slavery. During the 1760s, between the

32   

publications of Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, Smith
had pronounced slavery to be both deeply immoral and almost immortal.
A decade after Wealth of Nations, it was still impossible to forecast the
significance of Smith’s scientific authority to the coalescing abolitionist
movement. That movement first pounced on and then virtually aban-
doned the bold affirmation of the inferiority of slave labor in Wealth of
Nations. In retrospect, it is easy to see that the affirmation was not a
rational empirical statement at all but a nonrational credo, uttered sotto
voce: “The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that
the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance,
is in the end the dearest of any.” For abolitionists to convert this bold yet
cautious belief into manifest destiny would require all the subtlety they
could muster.42

    33

 3
  
: 
 

I n 1788 abolitionism burst into British politics on a wave of

popular petitions. In their preliminary tracts, abolitionist writ-
ers did not hesitate to invoke Adam Smith’s principle of the superiority
of free labor. James Ramsay, the first polemicist against Caribbean slavery
in the 1780s, casually invoked the free labor ideology against the West
India interest. Humanity could anticipate emancipation without qualms
because “he who can procure a freeman to work for him, will never
employ a slave.” By a reckoning that was to be commonplace during the
age of abolition, a free laborer doubled the output of a slave. Moreover,
when a freeman died, his place was supplied by “natural” generation,
not at “enormous expense” from the slave market. Thomas Clarkson, the
abolitionist movement’s first national canvasser, boasted that sugar was
already being raised by freemen in Cochin, China, at one-seventh the cost
of British Caribbean production.1
Defenders of the slave interest immediately replied that the amount of
labor extracted from exploited and insecure freemen in Europe must be
far greater than that being extracted from slaves, so West Indian slaves
must be as well off materially as free English industrial or agricultural
laborers. Moreover, free blacks in the Caribbean notoriously refused to
work in the cane fields. Ramsay’s reply anticipated the later abolitionist
response. Whether or not a European peasant reaped more of the neces-
sities of life from his labor than a Caribbean slave, the free laborer’s
reward came from the “charms of liberty itself.” Freedom softened his
toil while it doubled his exertions. After work it secured for him his time,
his family, and immunity from arbitrary cruelty. The putative attraction

34
of lower costs of reproduction and security became articles of abolitionist
faith.2 West Indian free blacks did not work in the fields and frequently
remained idle because planters demeaned labor. Slavery degraded labor,
not the reverse. In a slave-tainted environment, what free persons would
“subject themselves to the driver’s lash, who are not absolutely forced to
submit to such degradation?” The West Indian system’s peculiar defect
was “its utter forgetfulness of mind” and motive. It reduced humans to
the “vilest of brute species.” If slavery polluted labor, every step toward
freedom would restore the innate pride, intelligence, and energy of labor.3
Paradoxically, however, the entire issue of free versus slave labor
dropped far down on the list of favored abolitionist arguments, both
within and outside Parliament, for an entire generation. In preparation
for their second mass petition campaign in 1791–1792, the Abolition
Society’s preeminent propaganda document, Abstract of the Evidence . . .
before the House of Commons (1791), allotted only 3 percent of its space
to all economic matters. The society’s itinerant agents were warned to
completely avoid policy arguments, including any economic dimension.
The wording of the subsequent public petitions reflected the society’s
priorities: less than 4 percent of the surviving texts referred to the infe-
riority of slave labor in the appeals to Parliament.4
Why this reticence to invoke Adam Smith’s powerful authority? One
answer might be found in the fact that Abolitionists, shortly after forming
their movement, decided to attack the African slave trade rather than
West Indian slavery itself. There were constitutional reasons for attempt-
ing to curtail the flow of potential property rather than to attack the
well-entrenched system of invested capital and interests in the plantation
system itself.5
Nevertheless, for powerful economic reasons the West Indies seemed
too formidable to attack directly during the generation after the publi-
cation of Wealth of Nations. As table 3.1 shows, the British sugar islands
continued to be dynamic and increasingly valuable elements in the world
market and in Britain’s imperial political economy in the decades after
1776. Between 1770 and 1787, the British West Indies continued to ac-
count for about 35 percent of the North Atlantic’s sugar. By 1805–1806,
that share had dramatically risen to 55 percent. The slave islands had
increased their output of sugar by more than 250 percent between 1784–
1786 and 1804–1806, taking advantage of the shortfall in production
created by the slave revolutions in the French West Indies. Other exports
from the Caribbean to Britain had also increased. British imports of coffee
rose more than 1750 percent. The islands’ share of total British trade
rose from about one-sixth around 1790 to about one-fifth in 1805. In the
midst of a war of survival against revolutionary and Napoleonic France,
the British West Indies remained Britain’s most stable trading partner.6
Confronted by these trends, abolitionists very rapidly shifted their pol-
icy arguments from production to reproduction and from economics to

    35

 Table 3.1
Shares of Sugar Exports to the North Atlantic 1770–1806 (percent)

c. 1770 c. 1787 c. 1806

French West Indies 39.6 43.3 9.8

British West Indies 34.8 36.7 55.0a
Dutch West Indies 7.5 4.3 1.1
Spanish West Indies 3.9 6.3 11.9
Danish and Swedish West Indies 3.2 2.7 2.5
Brazil 10.8 6.6 15.0
Louisiana — — 0.7
British East India — — 2.3
French East India — — 0.4
Dutch East Indies 0.1 0.1 0.9
Spanish Phillipines — — 0.3
Other Asia — — 1.0
a Including British conquests 1796–1806.
Source: Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), Tables 11 and 17.

demography. Until the mid-eighteenth century, population dynamics did

not impinge on discussions of New World slavery. No articulated demo-
graphic dividing line ran between the zones of slavery and freedom. Al-
though there was a growing disposition to accept the idea that population
expanded to the limits permitted by a land’s fertility and degree of de-
velopment, Benjamin Franklin was typical in beginning his discussion of
the population growth with an observation that generalizations drawn
from Old World and fully settled societies did not apply to new and “un-
settled” ones, such as North America. When Franklin thus contrasted
the more reproductive and preponderantly white North America with the
less vital Caribbean (where both white and black reproduction were vi-
tiated by slavery), both the slave Caribbean and nonslave Europe were
being contrasted to a North America that doubled its population every
generation.7 Indeed, as long as one did not separate the shares of growth
due to migration from that due to reproduction, the West Indian slave
population was increasing more rapidly than that of Britain itself up to
1807 (see figure 3.1).
The lack of a clear boundary between fast-growing free societies and
stagnating slavery was due to a lack of certainty about whether Europe’s
own population had grown significantly over the long run. For most of
the eighteenth century, Europe’s demographic performance was more sig-
nificant in a comparison between antiquity and modernity than one be-
tween Europe and the Americas. Slavery was an important element in
the debate over the relative superiority of “ancients” and “moderns.” A
long discussion unfolded between those, like Baron Montesquieu and Rob-
ert Wallace, who believed that Europe’s population had been greater in

36   

Figure 3.1 Population growth in Great Britain and the British West Indies, 1600–
1840 (semilog scale)

Source: Barry Higman, “Slavery and the Development of Demographic Theory in the Age of the
Industrial Revolution,” in Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846, James Walvin, ed. (London: Mac-
millan, 1982), 43, 166.

the past and those, like David Hume, who believed that modern European
society contained a larger and growing number of inhabitants. New
World slavery was occasionally invoked in this discussion by both sides
to demonstrate the propensity of slavery to discourage or to enhance the
natural rate of growth. The debate remained inconclusive as long as
there was empirical uncertainty about both the absolute numbers of in-
habitants and rates of growth in precensus, eighteenth-century Europe.
In Britain itself, writers were equally uncertain about whether or not
the population of their island had increased or decreased during the cen-
tury since the English revolution. Lines of division on this question were
not parallel to those that were taking shape over slavery. Dr. Price, a
vigorous supporter of American liberty in the late 1770s and of political
abolitionism a decade later, was at the forefront of those who argued for
a stagnation or decline in Britain’s metropolitan population during the
eighteenth century. There is no evidence that Price saw any important
connection between the population-of-England debate and the problem
of slavery.8 By the eve of the age of abolition in the 1780s, however,
rising taxes from the Poor Law, meant that the reproduction rates of free
but poor Britons were even more likely to be the focus of public discussion
than the slaves in British America. Probably the most influential attack
on relief to able-bodied English laborers before the politicization of British

    37

 antislavery was Joseph Townsend’s Dissertation on the Poor Laws. Town-
send argued that the Poor Laws system led to overpopulation among the
laborers, eventually causing “more to die from want, than if poverty had
been left to find its proper channel.” By contrast Townsend lavishly ap-
proved of slavery in Spanish America: “The treatment of the Negroes in
the Spanish settlements is so humane, so wise, so just, and so perfectly
agreeable to the principles of political economy that I rejoice in . . . giving
to their government the praise which is so peculiarly its due . . . it was a
perfection more beneficial to the whole community than if all the slaves
were indiscriminately restored to freedom.”9
The earlier dissociation between the subjects of population and slavery
may also be seen in the writings of the eighteenth-century political econ-
omist James Steuart. Steuart, like Franklin, believed that humanity gen-
erally was prodigal, multiplying (where abundance permitted) up to the
limits of subsistence. For Steuart, slave “labor” and free “industry” were
“equally compatible with great multiplication.” The West Indies “multi-
plied” their numbers as much as any other place, only by a different
combination of migration and reproduction. In Steuart’s appraisal,
“slaves’ private masters” could take better care of their charges than any
statesman could take care of industrious freemen. Therefore, in the col-
onies slavery had “the effect of advancing agriculture.” Steuart concluded
that “slavery has been very luckily, if not politically established to advance
agriculture abroad and invention and industry in the mother-country.”10
This conclusion clearly differs from that of Adam Smith. Both writers
agreed that “every species of animal naturally multiplies in proportion
to their means of subsistence.” For Smith, however, liberal rewards to
labor encouraged their propagation, as well as their industry, “which, like
every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement
it receives.” Slave labor was not only the dearest of all but also the most
expensive to reproduce.11 Yet, Smith never addressed the population dy-
namics of the Atlantic economy as a whole. He referred obliquely to the
mass migration of Africans, which formed the starting point for Steuart’s
remarks about New World slavery. For Steuart, the slave colonies were
analogous to the industrial and urban sectors of Europe, illustrating the
same general phenomenon of excess deaths over births as did the colonial
agrofactories.
In terms of sustained Atlantic growth, the major question was how
the Afro-American system of coerced migration affected the population
of Africa over the long term. Smith did not directly address that question,
assigning the uncivilized state of Africa’s interior to its lack of commu-
nications and its relative lack of trade. For Franklin and Steuart, the role
of Africa was clearly more central. The slave population of the Americas,
however high its short-term rate of mortality, was a net addition to the
New World population of African descent. For those interested solely in

38   

the question of population dynamics, Africa was not a problem area or
of particular interest.

I
At the very beginning of popular antislavery mobilization in Britain, Tho-
mas Cooper, a pioneer political abolitionist in Manchester, undertook to
publicize a demographic argument for the abolition of the slave trade.
He attempted to calculate the exact mortality and the consequent pop-
ulation deficit in Africa caused by the transatlantic slave trade over more
than two centuries. As far as can be determined, it was the most elaborate
statistical calculation yet attempted on the subject. Late in 1787, Cooper
published a series of Letters on the African Slave Trade. He concluded that
an “unexaggerated computation will turn out that the infernal voracity
of European avarice has been glutted with the MURDER of ONE HUNDRED
and EIGHTY MILLIONS of our FELLOW CREATURES!”12 He also anticipated that
the “astonished reader” might be skeptical of his Letters about a popu-
lation loss that (according to Arthur Young) would have amounted to
nearly one-fifth of the human race in 1787. Cooper therefore published
a statistical Supplement to the Letters on the Slave Trade: On the Numbers
Sacrificed in Support of the African Slave Trade from Its Commencement to
the Present Time. The first abolitionist mobilization thus became the oc-
casion for a major step forward in quantitative history, anticipating an
analogous role for the historiography of Atlantic slavery two centuries
later.13
The Supplement offered its readers more than fifty pages of calculations
and inferences. In good scientific tradition, Cooper noted that his original
total of 180 million victims was probably conservatively understated by
almost one-third. Cooper’s methodology, not dissimilar from that used two
centuries later, began with a census of the black population of the Amer-
icas, region by region. Once this was assessed for all regions from the
Chesapeake Bay to the Rio de la Plata, Cooper calculated the annual
average net excess of slaves’ deaths over births from those areas where
published figures were available. He then extrapolated this derived aver-
age mortality to the much larger area where such data were unavailable
to him. To this he added an estimated average annual mortality for the
transatlantic voyage itself. The two averages gave him an estimate for the
total number of slaves annually exported from Africa to supply New
World demand. To this subtotal, Cooper then added an estimated annual
percentage for collateral losses in Africa, entailed in the process of en-
slaving and moving captives from their point of capture to their embar-
kation on the coast. For the previous generation alone, Cooper estimated
a grand total of 510,000 human beings lost each year to Africa.

    39

 Cooper then considered the probable principal objection to his large
figure. Could Africa possibly have sustained the loss of half a million of
its people per year for more than two centuries? In reply he calculated
the probable population of the area at risk for slave raiding in Africa—
the catchment basin of enslavement for the transatlantic trade. Cooper
began this second set of calculations by assuming that the African pop-
ulation density per square mile was about one-third as great as that of
Great Britain. Since the area from “Benguela” in the South to sub-
Saharan “Negroland” in the North included about 3 million square miles,
Cooper estimated that a population of 54 million lay within this vast
region. Could such a stock sustain an annual loss of half a million people
without occasioning an unsustainable diminution of its population?14
Anticipating cliometricians by almost two centuries, Cooper turned for
assistance to Henry Clarke (1743–1818), a teacher of mathematics and
experimental philosophy in Manchester’s College of Arts and Sciences.
After comparing the ratios of births and deaths to inhabitants from
twenty-two cities and villages in Great Britain and Europe, Clarke con-
cluded that for every forty-eight European inhabitants “there will be an
annual increase or addition of one to the original number of the stock.”
By analogy, Cooper reasoned that the African “slave trade reservoir,” with
its 54 million people, could produce about 1.25 million infants per year.
Based on European infant survival rates to youth and to maturity, he
inferred that the region could effectively supply 625,000, human beings
annually for export. In Europe, a similar population of 54 million could
effectively supply America with 1 million migrants per year. Indeed, ar-
gued Cooper, in more “prolific” and tropical Africa, the proportion of
births to deaths was “at the very least, double” that of any European-
based estimate. Thus, claimed Cooper, his original conclusion of 180 mil-
lion had been modest. Africa could continue to supply an annual disap-
pearance of 500,000 people “four times over were it necessary, without
a diminution of the existing stock.”15 Given such mathematical leeway
by Henry Clarke, Cooper concluded that the “received opinion” of
100,000 Africans annually exported was an underestimation of reality
by at least 150 percent. A migration of a quarter million per year was a
more plausible number. On reconsideration, far from retreating, Cooper
raised his scientific estimate of the total loss of Africans in the transat-
lantic slave trade to 250 million, or nearly one-third of the world’s esti-
mated population in 1787.
After reassuring his readers that a migration of 500,000 slaves a year
for a total of 250 million was well within Africa’s demographic capacity,
Cooper became uneasy about the message of elasticity and resilience. It
diminished the sense that Africa had been demographically scarred by
centuries of the slave trade. There had to have been, he concluded, a
“defalcation of the sum of terrestrial happiness.” What the trade in slaves
alone had been unable to accomplish, “intestine wars” had completed.

40   

Cooper warned, “I think upon the whole, that the continent is now less
populous than in the years 15 [sic] or 1600.” For all of the continent’s
robust fecundity, the abolitionist wanted to leave his readers mindful of
the strong probability of long-term African depopulation.16
Cooper’s conclusion hinted at why abolitionists dropped this sophisti-
cated, if expansive, line of social science enumeration for the next gen-
eration. It was literally too clever by half—or more. In exponentially ex-
panding the numbers of enslaved Africans over three centuries, Cooper
reinforced the image of tropical superfecundity. Africa remained the very
model of tropical exuberance, that inexhaustible reservoir of population
envisioned by Franklin and Steuart. By Cooper’s own count, a population
one-third as great as Europe’s had sustained losses almost twice the size
of Europe’s current population, all with little diminution of its capacity.
Even more disturbingly, perhaps, Cooper had increased his numbers
largely by emphasizing the losses inflicted by Africans on Africans in
Africa. To that extent, he inadvertently diminished Britain’s dominant
role in and Western responsibility for the horrors of the transatlantic
trade. From the outset of the political debate, antiabolitionists tried to
make the most of the “Africanness” of the Atlantic slave trade. Cooper’s
figures were superceded as the British government gathered official, and
lower, annual transatlantic estimates shortly after Cooper’s hypothetical
slave trade census.
It is ironic that one of the first political economists to have his writings
involved in the debates over slavery at the parliamentary level was a
writer who tried his best to say as little as possible about New World
slavery. He explicitly denied that his writings had any relevance to the
debate on the transatlantic slave trade. When he published his first Essay
on the Principle of Population in 1798, Thomas Malthus was most con-
cerned with Europe’s teeming poor. He sided with those who held that
Europe was more populous than it had been two millennia before, al-
though its rate of increase was only about one-twelfth as rapid as that
of free European populations settled in the New World. Malthus paid no
attention whatever to the slave populations of the Americas, although
they, too, had increased more rapidly than the populations of civilized
Europe. New World slaves literally did not count, either in the original
essay or in the second, published in 1802. The author’s thesis was that
the greatest obstacle to any extraordinary improvement in society (the
pressure of population) was of a nature that one could never hope to
overcome. His emphasis was on the futility of anticipating rapid popu-
lation growth in any society but those with exceptional and thinly peo-
pled frontiers.
Malthus’s essay of 1802, however, clearly asserted that slavery was
generally unfavorable to propagation. The very need for migration, for a
slave trade, indicated some systemic defect in the tropical Americas. Mal-
thus invoked an analogy between slaves and domestic animals, agreeing

    41

 with David Hume (and indirectly with Steuart) that the slave trade in-
dicated the disinterest of masters in the alternative of breeding. Slavery
as such, however, was not determinative of the population dynamics of
any country. With or without slavery “the population of these countries
will always be in proportion to its food production” except for “excep-
tional and excessive” causes. At the supply end of the slave trade, Africa
was only a “normal” illustration of Malthus’s general scientific principle,
and the forced exportation of thousands of its inhabitants every year
actually corroborated that principle. Malthus agreed with Franklin’s equi-
librium and Steuart’s “warren” theories for Africa. Its population, despite
large-scale and constant emigration, “is continually pressing against the
limits of the means of subsistence.” In a generally low-level equilibrium
of scarcity, war, and famine, punctuated by episodes of extreme misery,
slavery was only of marginal significance. If Africans were encouraged
to breed in less densely populated areas on the continent, the effects
would only be yet more wars, more slave exportations, more misery, and
little net growth of population. Given its political, moral, and climatic
conditions, there was every chance that more untransported Africans
would only increase the number of children and the level of misery,
without increasing the population level.
In 1802, as in his first essay, Malthus had no interest in slavery as a
transatlantic phenomenon. For his purposes, the low-density frontiers of
the Americas were frontiers for Europeans and their descendants. The
1802 essay mentioned the West Indies in passing, and only in connection
with its vast economic significance and great profits: “The East and West
Indies are indeed so great an object, and afford employment with high
profits to so great a capital, that it is impossible they should not draw
capital from other [metropolitan] employments.”17
During the parliamentary debates over the abolition of the British
slave trade in 1806–1807, Malthus was finally pulled into discussing the
implications of his population principle for the question of abolition. In
print, antiabolitionists claimed that Malthus’s argument supported their
position—that the African slave trade was not especially deleterious to
Africa. Given the continent’s population pressure, the slave trade was of
net material benefit to Africans in both hemispheres. Malthus’s author-
ity was similarly invoked in Parliament. During the climactic slave trade
debate of February 23, 1807, in the House of Commons, George Hib-
bert, a leading representative of the West India interest, politely allowed
that Mr. Malthus’s sentiments on the slave trade were not directly ap-
parent in his essay, “but from what I read in his book, I gather no hopes
of accomplishing a salutary revolution in the state of society in Africa
by the operation of this bill.” Shortly before the debates, Malthus had
taken the precaution of composing a long endnote to his reprinted sec-
ond essay. Written just as the last sheet of an appendix was at the prin-
ters, the note was Malthus’s response to hearing (“with some surprise”)

42   

that his principle of population was being used by opponents of aboli-
tion. With this passage in hand, he rushed over to William Wilberforce’s
house just before the debates of 1807, arriving in time “to rescue my
character from the imputations of being a friend of the slave trade.”18
Malthus was indeed fortunate to have his friend Wilberforce attend the
debate that evening. Parliament’s most prominent abolitionist went to
enjoy the double triumph of a twenty-year crusade and a standing ova-
tion from members of the House. After Hibbert’s speech, Wilberforce im-
mediately leaped to his friend’s defense and delivered Malthus’s preemp-
tive protest.19
Only under this extreme duress had Malthus overcome the reticence
of a social scientist to intervene directly in a parliamentary debate over
the slave trade. In that fortunate footnote, however, Malthus still con-
ceded that if the abolitionists had argued that the slave trade’s mortality
“was likely to unpeople Africa . . . some comfort might, indeed, be drawn”
from his principle of population. However, since the “necessity of aboli-
tion had never been urged on the ground of these apprehensions,” Mal-
thus concluded that the antiabolitionists’ use of his passages on Africa
was irrelevant to the debate.
The appendix of 1806 steered clear of Africa. It carefully noted that
the West India Islands fit into Malthus’s category of “exceptional” areas.
Negative population growth was, according to the principle of population,
ipso facto evidence of an “excessive and unusual” degree of vice and mis-
ery.” Indeed, Malthus excessively repeated the phrase “excessive and un-
usual”—three times in a single paragraph. The West Indian deficit “in-
controvertibly proves that the condition of the slaves in the West Indies,
taken altogether is the most wretched.”20
Malthus accepted the West Indian claim that the demographic deficit
of the slaves’ excessive deaths over births might be due to the sexual
imbalance of males to females in the slave trade. This, however, merely
demonstrated the cruelty of the system. In itself, of course, this was a
rationale for gender-balanced migrations of all kinds, not an argument
against the slave trade in particular. All migration streams to the Amer-
icas were dominated by adult males. The excess of African males in the
eighteenth-century Caribbean was less than those of males from England,
Ireland, or France.21 To make a special case against the slave trade, Mal-
thus had to go outside his model and make a distinction between coerced
and uncoerced migrations. When antiabolitionists contended that Euro-
pean towns showed the same pattern of immigration and excess of deaths
over births, Malthus disputed the analogy. He did so on grounds not of
measured results but of intention and choice.22 If European migrants
chose to expose themselves to the pollution of their environment and
morals, “no hardship is suffered that can reasonably be complained of.”
In the presence of choice among inhabitants of European cities, the “nat-
ural” model reasserted its claims. For adults in Europe, their migratory

    43

 sex ratios being equal, it was evidently every man for himself (“he has
nobody to blame but himself ”), morally speaking. (Women never entered
the discussion.) Adult suicide rates were potentially a truer indicator of
misery. One cannot be surprised, Malthus grimly concluded, that slaves
“are in general so willing to welcome that death which so many meet
within the prime of life.”23 Malthus oddly added another, curiously con-
tradictory argument. In European cities, the weight of excess mortality
“falls principally upon children.” Since they had never reached the age
of reason, they also could “not reasonably object.” Malthus did not, how-
ever, similarly write off the very high rates of child mortality in the West
Indies as equally reasonable, “natural” phenomena.
For Malthus, the entire line of argument about sex ratios, mortality
rates, and suicides appears to have been a defensive afterthought rather
than a new line of scientific investigation. His endnote remained an un-
revised observation through six further editions of the Essays on Popula-
tion and all of his other publications on political economy. It is hardly
accidental that the population principle was the Whig Edinburgh Review’s
prime example of unwelcome but necessary “hard truths” in political
economy.24 On the problem of slavery, Malthus certainly remained the
very model of scientific minimalism during the three tumultuous decades
following the publication of the 1806 footnote.
Malthus’s famous endnote may have spared him from a moment of
embarrassment in Parliament, but it was of scant use to abolitionists. It
granted anti-abolitionists one major point of contention during the de-
bates over the slave trade. If Africa suffered no depletion of population
from forced mass migration and if the West Indies were economically
valuable, cutting off the slave trade would not appreciably improve Africa
and might positively undercut the West Indian labor force. Until the ab-
olition of the British slave trade in 1807, the most important strategic
value of demographic data for abolitionists actually lay in the fact that
population growth was not dependent on the end of slavery. Africa’s
resiliency was reinforced by North America’s fecundity. Slavery was
therefore not inherently in opposition to the law of “natural increase” or
to the “principle of population.” Malthus’s appendix did imply that if
West Indian slaves were left in their demographic context of ample soil
and low density, they would, by procreation alone, move toward a positive
rate of natural reproduction.
West India’s trajectory toward natural fecundity, and its convergence
with the universal population norm, had been a standard abolitionist
argument from the beginning. Wilberforce used it in his first unsuccessful
motion for immediate abolition eight years before Malthus’s first essay.
Wilberforce presented optimistic evidence of changing rates in the de-
crease of the West Indian slave population over the past century. The
annual demographic deficit of Jamaica had fallen from 3.5 percent in
1698–1730 to 2.5 percent in 1730–1755; then to 1.75 percent in 1755–

44   

1768; and finally to 1 percent, “at the utmost,” in 1768–1788. Wilber-
force thus assured members of Parliament that even as he spoke, in 1791,
Parliament was legislating for a slave system already almost at a net
natural increase. Whatever imbalance remained could no longer “coun-
teract the natural course of population.”25
Prime Minister William Pitt made the same point in even greater de-
tail, citing the population returns from various West Indian plantations.
In the twenty years before 1788, the excess of deaths over births appeared
to be 1 percent per year lower than in the previous period, and still lower
than in the same period twice removed. The decelerating rate of decrease
already made it an open question of whether Jamaica, the largest colony,
had not already reached natural equilibrium. Pitt astutely disaggregated
the death rates of Creoles from Africans (including Africans who died in
the initial “seasoning”). On these grounds, he predicted that the remain-
ing deficit of 1 percent per year would immediately cease when impor-
tation stopped. The deficit alone furnished the rationale for the contin-
uance of the slave trade. Abolition would restore the sexual balance. The
West Indies would revert to the “natural order” of population and civi-
lization. Pitt’s conclusions were repeated almost verbatim by Lord Gren-
ville when he launched the Lord’s debate on the second reading of the
Slave Trade Abolition Bill in 1807.26
Parliamentary abolitionists thus preferred to use arguments that pro-
jected the West Indies as optimistically converging toward a natural de-
mographic performance rather than as a Malthusian, slave-cursed excep-
tion.27 They were hardly prepared to adopt the premise that the
institution of slavery was so hopeless as a promoter of natural propa-
gation that the slaves’ emancipation or a continued slave trade were the
only alternatives. Until the British slave trade ended, ministerial support-
ers of abolition, from Pitt in 1791 to Lords Grenville and Howick in 1807,
were at pains to argue that Britain’s valuable colonies would not be in-
jured by cutting off the annual inflow of Africans. Howick, opening the
Second Reading of the abolition bill in the House of Commons, updated
Pitt’s demographic argument. The rapid increase of slaves in the United
States now added powerful evidence to the argument that slaves could
propagate splendidly under conditions of enslavement. Two successive
census returns now demonstrated the extraordinary reproductive capac-
ity of American slaves. Howick enthusiastically anticipated another dou-
bling of the U.S. slave population in twenty years. This natural rate of
population growth of slaves neatly paralleled Malthus’s observations
about the growth of Europe’s descendants in North America. Howick
even made generous allowance for the slave interest’s assertions about
the negative effects of the slaves’ sexual promiscuity and imbalance. He
carefully noted the roster of islands that already exhibited an excess of
births over deaths (Dominica, Bermuda, and the Bahamas) and a sharp
diminution of African imports (Barbados and Montserrat).28

    45

 When opponents of abolition continued to insist that many planta-
tions were still in demographic deficit, Grenville also insisted that natural
reproduction could already supply older areas. The needs of the frontier
were ruled out of political consideration. Planters cultivating in the
“new” zones of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana had begun their expan-
sion after the House of Commons gave notice of the proximate termi-
nation of the slave trade by its resolution in favor of abolition in 1792.
The very potential of the underdeveloped colonies was turned against
them. Expansion to slavery’s “natural limits” by slaves’ migration was
simply too vertiginous an alternative to contemplate. Grenville not only
acknowledged but also threatened that the peopling of Jamaica and Trin-
idad would require “two or three centuries.” He merely echoed Wilber-
force’s warning to the public at large that it would take more than an-
other 200 years just to fill Jamaica alone. 29
Both sides of the debate recognized that British slavery had reached
a turning point in 1807. Could natural (i.e., market-driven) economic
expansion be allowed to proceed as freely as it had in the previous cen-
tury, in tandem with the rapidly expanding metropolitan economy? The
abolitionists could focus exclusively on what Wilberforce called the
“grand allegation of the West Indians, that the stock of slaves cannot be
kept up without importations.”30
Both sides focused their scientific analysis on this narrow question. It
was the antiabolitionists who argued for unavoidable and continuing
Caribbean exceptionality. The actual state of the population, given the
projected age and sex ratios, habits and sexual mores of the slaves, en-
sured that at present they could not multiply by natural means. Pitt had
analytically separated Africans and Creoles in order to narrow the birth-
death gap. The West Indian spokesman William Young widened it again
by distinguishing between plantation and nonplantation mortality. West
Indians also insisted on further disaggregation because of wide variations
in the distribution of slaves by age and sex in various islands. Whereas
Pitt had reckoned an overall annual deficit of 1 percent and decreasing,
they calculated an annual depletion rate on plantations as 2.5 times
greater. As defeat became certain in 1807, another West Indian was re-
duced to pleading only for allowing the trade to continue for unforesee-
able localized calamities, such as hurricanes or war-induced food short-
ages. Last-minute West Indian pleas for a “safety-valve” slave trade were
denounced as tendentious nitpicking over human flesh, tarnishing the
discussion of a grand principle.31
Until 1807 it was therefore the abolitionists who most strongly ob-
jected to linking slavery to net natural excesses of deaths over births.
They preferred to stress the role of planters’ indifference toward slave life
under the special conditions of the slave trade. Rather than emphasizing
demographic variables affecting fertility, such as sex ratios, or the Carib-
bean disease environment, they concentrated on underfeeding, overwork,

46   

and racial degradation, as well as on selling, whipping, and sexual vio-
lence. Abolitionists were not particularly happy with Malthus’s link be-
tween slavery and population in Africa. They were instead eager to point
to the fecundity of Negro slaves even in climates far removed from Af-
rican conditions. The central premise of the abolitionist position until
1807 was that termination of the slave trade would produce a rapid
reversal of British planters’ attitudes and slave numbers. Planters would
then be prepared to acquiesce in a rapid amelioration of slavery and a
gradual transition to freedom. Slave trade abolition was presented as a
return to a natural demographic condition. Once the artificial effect of
the slave trade was removed, constraints on population growth would
quickly disappear.32

II
As soon as the Atlantic slave trade was ended, however, the positions of
abolitionists and antiabolitionists were quickly inverted. With the second
and third British metropolitan censuses, in 1811 and 1821, the strong
positive rates of metropolitan demographic expansion were clear. Britain’s
population was growing rapidly, for some too rapidly, although still far
less spectacularly than in the United States. In the West Indies the sag-
ging population trend also became clearer (see figure 3.1). Within a de-
cade after the abolition of the slave trade, a new and more systematic
system of slave registration replaced the older, more irregular colonial
census. With the ending of the Atlantic slave trade and increasingly ef-
fective constraints on British intercolonial slave movements, the annual
figures for slave populations could now be traced area by area and year
to year. It became possible to obtain more detailed accounts of slavery
than existed for many free populations. Slave registration data in the West
Indies were also inexorably matched against the U.S. census.33 Conse-
quently, the debate over emancipation was even more frequently formu-
lated around statistical-demographic arguments than the previous de-
bates over abolition of the slave trade.
Until 1807 abolitionists emphasized the demographic distance between
the slave trade and slavery. No further legislative action was needed be-
yond slave trade prohibition. The registration figures, however, revealed
that with few exceptions colonial slave populations began to decline al-
most immediately after imports ended in 1808. Most continued down-
ward for the next generation. West Indian spokesmen had predicted the
decline, but the steadily declining population nevertheless became a
prized abolitionist weapon.
When British abolitionists launched their attack on slavery itself in
1823, they were prepared to give a new twist to the demographic argu-
ment that Wilberforce had developed against the slave trade twenty years

    47

 before. Before 1807 he had noted that U.S. slaves shared the North Amer-
ican propensity to double every twenty-five years. Slaves could display
enviable reproductive dynamism. They increased rapidly even in northern
America, stereotypically in a climate “not well suited to the negro con-
stitution.” After 1823 the abolitionists targeted the “inherent evil” of the
West Indian system. The planters, spurred by falling prices for sugar and
diminished profits, were obviously overworking, underfeeding, and ne-
glecting their laborers. Whereas the American slave population doubled
every thirty years, the West Indies was being drained by hard labor. Had
Jamaica followed the American model since the beginning of the British
antislavery movement, admonished the abolitionists, its current popula-
tion of 345,000 slaves should have been almost 900,000 by 1820. The
slaves in the West Indies, if merely treated as well as those in the United
States, could increase to almost a million and a half. But at West Indian
rates they would sink to a mere half-million laborers, still depreciating at
their current annual 1 percent deficit.34
Whatever this argument’s implications for discussions of slavery in
North America, its stark contrast with the West Indies supplied a fine
weapon with which to attack the entire West Indian slave system. Tho-
mas Babington Macaulay had dramatized the argument to the abolitionist
public a year before emancipation: “Why is all America teeming with life,
and why are the West Indies becoming desolate? . . . In the worst gov-
erned state of Europe—in the worst managed condition of society—the
people still increase. Look, for instance at the miserable population of
Ireland—at the oppressed serfs of Russia—look even at the slave-
population of America.”35 Slave trade abolition had made Malthus safe
for antislavery.
A year before the impassioned Macauley, Thomas Fowell Buxton, par-
liamentary leader of the abolitionists, more coolly offered to waive any
appeal in the House of Commons to moral sentiments. He relinquished
all appeals to the abuses that had been the staple of antislavery propa-
ganda for more than four decades, the ordinary fare of his own speeches.
Population science alone would carry the day. Buxton magnanimously
conceded that there was “considerable difficulty in arriving at the truth
with respect to the real condition of the Negro in the West Indies.” One
group of witnesses argued that they were in a state of happiness. Another
group maintained that even in the “present state of improvement that
they were in the lowest state of moral debasement and physical wretch-
edness.”36
Given the conflicting testimony, Buxton concluded, nothing would be
more desirable than an objective test of the whole matter. Fortunately,
“there is such a test—the rate at which that population (the Negroes of
the West Indies) has increased or decreased. It is a doctrine admitted by
all parties that, under all circumstances, except those of extreme misery,
population must increase. Such is the law of nature, and it is conformable

48   

to the experience of all mankind.” Here was a test, not applicable to the
West Indies alone, but one of “invariable reference.” Buxton confidently
appealed “to reason alone. I will attempt no excitement . . . I will refer
myself to no popular impressions. On facts, and on facts only, I rely.” The
fact was that in less than a generation since the abolition of the slave
trade in 1807, “100,000, that is to say, a seventh part of the slave-
population of the West Indies, has been destroyed.” The West Indian slave
system was a collective death trap—what would later be called genocide.
“Were there no other prospect of the extinction of slavery,” nor any other
argument for immediate abolition, “it would be found in the rapid ex-
tinction of the Negro race.”37 Buxton’s argument was testimony to the
growing authority of Malthus’s principle of population. It was simulta-
neously playing a powerful role in discussions of the reform of English
Poor Laws. By 1831, the theory had become so deeply embedded in British
political discourse that Buxton could momentarily discard antislavery’s
whole arsenal of petitions and atrocity stories in the House of Commons.
The slave interest could defend itself only through a complex set of
counter-arguments. The U.S. slave figures, emphasizing Caribbean pop-
ulation pathology, could, of course, be used to compare American slavery
with British freedom at home, as well as with British slavery overseas.
The antiabolitionist Alexander Barklay observed that the population of
Britain, a century before, had been slightly under 7 million. Had it in-
creased at the rate of American slaves (28 percent every decade), “there
should have been in 1820, a population exceeding eighty-five millions.”
To use the abolitionists’ own words, “A system of government which
destroys the lives, or prevents the existence of upwards of 71 millions in
1821 and in one island, in the course of one century, must be desperately
wicked.”38
Most West Indian rebuttals did not involve such global extrapolations
of the rights of the unborn. They focused instead on key variables that
might explain the poor overall demographic performance of Caribbean
slaves relative to other populations. First, planters’ early defenses had
focused on the “vices of the Negroes,” that is cultural characteristics
retained from their African tradition, which severely limited fertility or
survival rates. This argument was quite vulnerable to comparisons with
blacks in both Africa and the United States. If self-limiting cultural traits
were unalterably African, why was Africa able to cover population deficits
throughout most of the Americas and keep its own continent stocked
with people?
A second and more persistently cited West Indian argument for the
enduring deficit was the imbalance between males and females previously
transported in the Atlantic slave trade. Before the abolition of that trade,
the imbalance had offered ammunition to both slave traders and aboli-
tionists. To the former it explained much of the reproductive deficit. To
the latter it explained why both sexual balance and reproductive amelio-

    49

 ration would rapidly ensue after abolition. The planters’ forecast of con-
tinuing deficit after abolition proved to be more correct, but the aboli-
tionists were able to turn this fact on their opponents. They argued that
a steadily narrowing and sometimes reversed sex ratio had not turned
the tide toward natural growth. It must therefore have been of lesser
significance all along.
In 1814, the initial West Indian registration figures already showed a
slight surplus of women (300,100) over men (295,900). By 1831, argued
Buxton, the subsequent population decrease could not lie “in any dispro-
portion between the sexes.” The West Indies countered that such appeals
to global figures concealed multiple trends in the slave population, which
became apparent if one disaggregated the data into a number of varia-
bles. Buxton’s data did not “distinguish the country of the slaves, their
ages, their origins.” At the time of abolition in 1808, noted the planters,
the Afro-Caribbean population was proportionally more adult and more
male. If one considered the Creole population alone, “the [West Indian
slave] population would stand the test of comparison with that of any
other part of the world.” So Jamaica, with one-third of its population
African-born, still registered a deficit, whereas Barbados, having had a
small African-born population even before abolition, steadily increased.
In Demerara, the sex ratio at the time of the slave trade abolition had
been worse than Jamaica’s. But if one examined the Demeraran Creole
birthrate alone, its population had increased almost 9 percent after 1828,
and its rate of increase was better than that of contemporary England.39
The abolitionists were happy to disaggregate the registration totals,
but along other lines. These showed that it was not slavery that caused
the West Indian deficit but slavery combined with the cultivation of sugar.
This compound variable had the wonderful benefit of enabling British
abolitionists to disqualify the dynamic demographic performance of U.S.
slaves as irrelevant to the Caribbean sugar colonies. If the “universal law
of nature” increased population except in some British slave colonies, it
was because “the law of nature yields to the cultivation of sugar in the
sugar colonies.” Other conditions were insignificant. Climate, soil, war,
vice, misery, and even flogging were “too feeble to stem the current of
nature. But put slaves into the cultivation of sugar and the current is
immediately stopped.”40 The great deficit was to serve the government
well after it finally decided on emancipation. When Colonial Secretary
Edward Stanley introduced the emancipation bill in 1833, he emphasized
the high mortality of working slaves in sugar, principally in the prime
labor group between 30 and 40 years of age.
Antiabolitionists made much of the fact that if all sugar colonies were
considered, the correlation between sugar and the demographic deficit
was marginal. The main thrust of their rebuttal, however, was directed
at the abolitionists’ use of island-wide numbers. Demerara was a case in
point. Its sugar production had risen by 23 percent during a period in

50   

which its population fell by 7 percent. The West Indians attributed the
increase in sugar production to a shift of slaves from cotton and coffee
production, not to an increase in labor per slave: “The labour of the
Negro, in late years, has not been greater than it was in former years.”
One could divide the mortality figures into age deciles, then analyze the
mortality rates for each decile: “The greatest mortality had taken place
in that portion of the population [for whom] . . . the least labour was
required and . . . the lowest mortality occurred at that period in life when
the most labour might naturally be expected.”41 If comparative analysis
could encompass Demerarans of different age cohorts, it could equally
juxtapose Caribbean slaves to free European workers.
In 1833, Patrick Stewart, a West Indian member of Parliament (MP),
could invoke both the life tables of free Europe and the recently published
Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Factory Bill. The
report had special force since the Factory Bill’s supporters were relying
heavily on the rhetoric of antislavery in their own appeal for public sup-
port. Numerically, a slave child’s chances of survival to adulthood was
more than twice as good on the plantations of Demerara as in the textile
factory towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Stewart claimed that the com-
parison held for all the other slave colonies. Between the ages of 20 and
40, the most intense years for manual labor, there were, again, more
deaths per 10,000 in London, Preston, Leeds, and so on, than in Demer-
ara. On a national as opposed to a select urban level, 1 person in 37 died
each year in Demerara compared with 1 in 60 in England and Wales,
obviously to the advantage of the metropolis. But the advantage dropped
somewhat in relation to Sweden (1:48) and again disappeared entirely
when compared to many large continental European cities. (1:24 in Am-
sterdam; 1:25 in Rome; 1:32 in Paris).42
Stewart’s target was not mortality rates per se but the abolitionists’
claim that the forced cultivation of sugar, more than any other single
factor, accounted for the ever-decreasing population of the British slave
colonies. Abolitionists made little reference to Barbados, for obvious rea-
sons. The rising slave population in sugar-growing Barbados implied that
demographic deficits might tend to disappear even in sugar colonies once
the African-born population became less significant. Before 1807 Bar-
bados had been the primary basis for Wilberforce’s own assurance that
an “American” population profile would appear in the British Caribbean
after slave trade abolition. In 1812, a committee of the Barbados Agri-
cultural Society, although confusing some of the terms developed by Mal-
thus, noted that Barbados was especially conducive to the health of Ne-
groes. Plantations of decreasing population were quite rare in that colony.
By the 1820s, however, chafing under restrictions on movements to low-
density colonies, Barbadian planters invoked the population principle out-
lined by Malthus. Planters requested a more open policy for slave exports.
They argued that the slaves themselves would benefit by escaping the

    51

 serious population pressure in Britain’s oldest Caribbean colony. The Brit-
ish Privy Council refused to loosen intracolonial restrictions. It countered
with another variant of Malthus’s argument. The island’s population had
not yet reached that density that rendered removal essential for the
slaves’ welfare. Yet Barbados could also be used against Trinidad. Trini-
dad’s decreasing slave population suggested to the Privy Council that the
Barbadian method of ensuring their slaves’ food supply was preferable to
Trinidad’s. In the public discussion of emancipation, however, small Bar-
bados could only be of secondary significance. The largest colony, Ja-
maica, and frontier Demerara and Trinidad predominated as the patho-
logical counterexamples of the population theory.43
Before 1807, to clinch the case for British political action against the
slave trade, abolitionists predicted that under “natural” limits and without
legislation, the slave trade would last for a century or more. On the other
hand, its abolition, as in the United States of America would encourage
natural reproduction and a natural end to slavery.44 Twenty years later,
despite slave trade abolition, British abolitionists again urged political ac-
tion on the grounds that the natural end of slavery was still no closer
than centuries away. It was now the turn of the opposition to appeal for
patience, to await the proximate arrival of a natural population equilib-
rium, which would permit a subsequent voluntary and nearly cost-free
transition to free labor by slave owners themselves.
Under pressure to act quickly in the spring of 1833, the government
also alluded to the ever-widening disparity between Britain’s declining
slave populations and rising per capita production in the sugar colonies.
How could planters humanely request awaiting a Malthusian solution to
slavery when any rational calculation looked to such a natural end “not
for ten or twenty or thirty years but to some period no one can say how
remote.” How could planters ask the metropolis to await a “disposition
to laborious industry sufficient to qualify them [slaves] for the privileges
of free men. . . . Do men ever show a disposition to labour until popula-
tion presses upon food? And when would that happen, if ever, in the
slave colonies?”45 Ministers also rejected the Barbadian example. Demo-
graphically, even Barbados’s density of 500 people per square mile had
not been sufficient to induce large-scale manumission.
The government hastily brushed aside the complex statistical calcu-
lations of the West Indians, often far more elaborate than the global
figures of the abolitionists. A basic abolitionist advantage was recognized
by the slave interests years before the passage of emancipation. William
Burnley acknowledged that of all cognitive arguments about slavery, the
theory of population was the most difficult to satisfactorily resolve. There
were so “many anomalies at every step” that no prudent man could reach
decisive closure based on them. The United States could be posited as
proof of the superiority of American slavery over British slavery, but what
about the fact that American slaves also increased faster than the Amer-

52   

ican free population of color? Burnley wearily noted the permanent dis-
advantage of the slave interest. For all their statistical skills, the planters
were invariably driven from position to position—from the vices-of-
Negroes defense to the ratio-of-males-to-females defense to the difficulties-
of-tropical procreation and high-child-mortality defenses. The nub was
that there were always so many anomalies to general arguments. In the
cognitive field, a stalemate always became a victory for the abolitionists.
For the West Indies, “a drawn battle must always be defeat, to their
adversaries victory.”46
Yet there was a deeper reason for the outcome. As the battle over the
emancipation bill reached its final stages in the spring of 1833, it was
clear to all sides that the opposition had presented some of the most
sophisticated demographic arguments that the legislature had ever wit-
nessed. Patrick Stewart’s comparative analysis of life expectancies in the
plantation Caribbean and textile Britain struck a chord in the press. It
reduced their reflexive confidence in Buxton’s slow-death-for-slavery the-
sis. In response, a few MPs, like Joseph Hume, demanded postponement
until other aspects of the population question could be assessed.47 The
parliamentary majority, however, refused to halt the emancipation jug-
gernaut. It is important to note that emancipation had made no headway
during the two years when the depopulation argument was widely ac-
cepted and that immediate emancipation was approved just as the power
of the central Buxtonian thesis was under effective attack. The reality of
the situation was that references to the reproductive deficit of the slave
population played almost no role during the tumultuous elections to the
first Reform Parliament in December 1832 or in the language of aboli-
tionist petitions in the spring of 1833. Abolitionists simply had the
stronger popular divisions. By early 1833, an overwhelming majority of
those Britons who documented their opinions believed that British slavery,
unlike other institutions, was intolerable and unredeemable. The archive
of atrocities proved, after all, to be more indispensable than the popula-
tion figures. Planters’ attempts to explain the declining rate in the slave
population had the inherent defect of reciting mind-numbing numbers
in a political firestorm. To otherwise unaffected audiences, a lecture on
the cognitive complexities and anomalies of colonial population growth
might have constituted a convincing argument. At the climax of a fifty-
year crusade, however, news of rising slave resistance, campaign pledges
of immediate emancipation, and record numbers of petitions and rallies
swept aside other considerations.48 For the planters and their represen-
tatives, economics, not demography, offered the best hope of constraining
the surge toward emancipation.

    53

 4
  ’   
   
  

O n the eve of emancipation in the early 1830s, abolitionists

had found a plausible, if contested, premise for radical
change in the British colonial system. In the early 1800s, the population
principle had done service as a conceptual foundation for the abolition
of the British slave trade. By the 1820s, often employing contradictory
premises, abolitionists again found it immensely useful as a basis for de-
manding some alternative to a tangibly shrinking labor force in the Ca-
ribbean. Yet one could only go so far with the population principle. One
could grant the need to alleviate a contraction of labor in the sugar
colonies, but how could one be assured that a radical shift from slave to
free labor would not make things worse rather than better? To achieve
conviction on this point, abolitionists had to return to the principle of
free labor superiority. Held in abeyance while the African slave trade re-
mained the focus of political debate from the late 1780s until after Wa-
terloo, the free labor ideology experienced a sharp revival as abolitionists
began their mass campaigns for emancipation in the 1820s. It was high
time to update Adam Smith’s invaluable legacy with a fresh appeal to
the political economists.
The most remarkable single fact about this search was the reluctance
of Smith’s heirs to renew his legacy. At the time of the great mass petition
against the slave trade, Smith’s colleague John Millar had added his name
to the thousands who signed the abolitionist petition from Glasgow. But
the Glasgow petition, like almost all others, eschewed political economy
and confined itself to an appeal to humanity. Neither then, nor at any
point thereafter did Millar inject his earlier historical critique of slave

54
labor into the question of the British slave trade or slavery. In this respect
he was a true harbinger of political economy for the next forty years.
The major theoreticians of classical economics in the early nineteenth
century, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and James Mill, remained al-
most completely silent on the issue of free versus slave labor as the po-
litical debates over the abolition of the slave trade reached a peak of
intensity.1 Ricardo never deployed his “wages fund” theory to soften
planters’ intransigence toward emancipation by arguing that colonial
wages would inevitably trend downward toward the cost of reproduction,
thus ensuring slaveholders against losses from competition. Malthus
never extolled the potential savings of free labor in the Caribbean, even
to deflect charges that his population theory abetted the slave trade by
predicting that Africans would not benefit from its demise. At the fringe
of political economy, Jeremy Bentham behaved as cautiously as the econ-
omists. He subscribed to Smith’s general assessment of free versus slave
labor. He was equally certain, however, that emancipation would be un-
profitable to the slave owners. Despite his considerable personal debt to
William Wilberforce, Bentham offered no public support to the abolition-
ist campaign for gradual abolition in the 1820s.2 Political economy’s sec-
ond generation did not elaborate on Smith’s potentially potent thesis.
Still more striking was the reluctance of the third generation, led by
John R. McCulloch (1789–1864), to align itself with the free labor ide-
ology. From the early 1820s to the late 1840s, McCulloch’s publications
constituted the most authoritative pronouncements of politicoeconomic
orthodoxy. His edition of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, in 1828, superceded
all existing editions. That same year he became the first economist to
occupy the Chair of Political Economy at the newly opened University of
London. He held that chair as the emancipation debate was approaching
its climax in the early 1830s. Between 1818 and 1828, McCulloch wrote
on both economics in general and the West Indies in particular for the
Edinburgh Review, the leading Whig journal, which also opened its pages
to antislavery leaders. McCulloch’s most famous theoretical work, The
Principles of Political Economy, was published in 1825, just after the first
popular campaign for West Indian emancipation. Its 400 pages contained
not one reference to colonial slavery.
His second major work, A Dictionary of Commerce, was published just
as antislavery agitation was building to its crescendo in 1832. The entry
on “Slavery and the Slave Trade” condemned the slave trade for inflicting
injury on both Africa and America, but it was totally silent on matters
of economics. In every article that touched on the economic performance
of slavery in the Americas, however (“Havannah,” “Port-au-Prince,” and
“Sugar”), his statistics supported the superiority of slave labor. East In-
dia’s free labor potential for cultivating sugar was dismissed in compari-
son with Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil. On this issue, the Dictionary of Com-
merce offered no reinforcement to Adam Smith.3 At the height of the

 ’     55

 antislavery agitation and depression in the sugar colonies, McCulloch
advocated free trade, not free labor, as the means of relieving West Indian
distress. He never made the antislavery honor roll of political economists
who supported the application of free labor to the problem of slavery.4
When other British economists tried their hands at comparative eval-
uations of free and slave labor, the result was usually not encouraging
for the supporters of antislavery. In 1824, John Rooke, another political
economist writing at the beginning of the mass political campaign for
emancipation, hoped that abolition might be gradual and progressive, as
“population naturally and progressively advances to the means of sub-
sistence.” Given the downward population trend in British West Indies in
the 1820s, abolitionists could have regarded the analysis only as an in-
definite postponement of their own impatient hopes. Rooke considered
the “natural value” of one year’s labor in England to be “adequate to no
more than the maintenance of the [English] labourer and his family,”
while “admitting the Negro to be worth £50 more than our English la-
bourers.” So, only when slaves reached their “natural value” (i.e., sub-
sistence) over the long run could the planters “purchase free labour at
as low or even lower price, without advancing a sum of money” currently
paid for their slave labor. Even at that distant period, thought Rooke, the
Caribbean free laborer would be dearer than “is ever paid for labour in
our agricultural districts at home, where a portion of the real wages of
what we call free labour is paid as relief to pauperism, a system of slavery
more lasting in its effects than that of the West Indies.” Rooke’s opposi-
tion to “Utopian” schemes, for West Indian slave liberation precluded
immediate or even proximate reform legislation. Like the West Indian
antiabolitionists, his analysis led to the conclusion that in certain respects
laborers at home were worse off than slaves overseas.5
On the eve of emancipation in 1833, public agitation was at its peak
and abolitionists hungered for scientific affirmation. Mountifort Longfield,
in his inaugural lecture at another Chair of Political Economy, in Trinity
College, Dublin, responded to the challenge by cautioning his audience
that the question of emancipation was too complicated and too agitated
“to be a fit subject for a professor’s chair.” To the very end of the massive
popular agitation against postemancipation “apprenticeship” in 1838, the
British political economists disappointed the desires of militant abolition-
ists. Economic opinion was at best evasive rather than comforting on the
subject of free labor superiority.6
The tension between free labor and free trade was made more explicit
when classical economics was applied “beyond the line”—to overseas
frontier areas. Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862), a young statisti-
cian, began to argue for a separate field of colonial economics just before
the final mass petitioning campaigns for emancipation got underway.
Wakefield was primarily interested in colonization by European settlers
in the temperate zone, rather than in non-European labor in the plan-

56   

tation Americas. However, the similarities between the slave frontier and
other low-density settlements in the Americas drew Wakefield into a com-
parison of free and slave labor. Referring to North America, he explicitly
rejected the Smithian proposition that slave labor production was inferior
to that of free labor. Many travelers compared the North of the United
States to the slave South in terms of their respective rates of economic
and population growth. For them, the material prosperity of the North
and its facility for providing relatively high levels of wages and employ-
ment were the decisive markers of economic progress. Wakefield, how-
ever, compared the agricultural prosperity of the American South to that
of Canada and New England. If slave labor were “less profitable than free
labor,” he concluded, “the American people might give ample wages to
50,000 free emigrants each year. . . .” In America, slavery was a response
of the civilized “against the barbarizing tendency of dispersion.”7
To the commonplace argument that inefficient slave labor exhausted
the soil, Wakefield countered that all frontiersmen exhausted the soil,
including frugal and free New Englanders and Canadians. In this respect
Wakefield anticipated Lord Durham’s official and more devastating criti-
cism, ten years later, of Canada’s relatively unenterprising farmers and
ill-cultivated land. But Wakefield himself focused specifically on the slave
South’s performance as a capitalist institution. He agreed with Smith on
the relatively high cost of slaves, including their purchase price, main-
tenance, mortality, and supervision; their dislike of labor discipline; and
their indifference to the master’s interest. He had no quarrel with the
assumption that the employment of slaves was generally less profitable
than that of freemen in areas of high population density. However, given
the cost of land in America and in other low-density overseas areas, “no
capital can depend on a permanent supply of labor.” Therefore, no large-
scale capitalist would undertake a “mode of culture which requires the
employment of many hands in one field.” Slavery was the capitalists’
rational response to the frontier. So powerful was the “lure” of dispersion
that Wakefield expected the Southern slave frontier in the United States
to continue to expand more rapidly than its Northern counterpart. The
northward thrust of slaveholders into Missouri before 1820 seemed to
verify slavery’s expansive potential, absent political constraints. For cap-
italism at the frontier, the problem of dispersion was greater than the
problem of slavery.8
Wakefield thus took full advantage of the conceptual potential of the
opening argument of Wealth of Nations, which was overlooked by Smith
himself. Since gang organization allowed for a higher division of labor, it
was optimal for both the development of cash crop agriculture and for
the spread of civilization. Easy access to cheap land, on the contrary,
produced diffusion, isolation, and reversion to semibarbarism. Wakefield
found this condition in all temperate frontier settlements, from French
Canada to Argentina to Australia. Despite the potentially lower profitabil-

 ’     57

 ity of slave labor, capital could not depend on a permanent supply of free
labor. Coerced labor was thus continually reproduced on the frontier as
part of the civilizing, as well as the capitalist, process. Only by closing
off or otherwise artificially raising the price of land could a society avoid
the unpalatable choice between slavery and barbarism. In other words,
only through the artificial elimination of free soil could wage labor com-
pete with slaves. Free soil, like free trade, discouraged free labor.
The many editions of Wealth of Nations during the period when eman-
cipation was a matter of extensive political debate offered British econ-
omists opportunities to reaffirm or revise Smith’s general statement fa-
voring free labor superiority. Wakefield’s own edition of Wealth of Nations,
published a few months after British emancipation, was quite critical of
Smith but wary of alienating an audience in the full flush of national
pride and anxiety for the success of its major venture. For Wakefield,
Smith’s chief error was in having relied too heavily on the economic
significance of the laborer’s motivation, instead of focusing on the capi-
talists’ organization of labor. The principle of “combined” (i.e., concen-
trated) labor rendered the productivity of laborers in both plantation
America and industrial Manchester more efficient than that of small-
holding peasants in the fields of Ireland or France. In America, Wakefield
insisted, slavery combined a “monstrous evil” with a great advantage in
the “combination of labor.” In “cheap land” frontiers, slavery would con-
tinue to expand as rapidly as free labor. The principle of “co-operation”
(division of labor) sufficed to explain the general origins of overseas slav-
ery, its gradual abolition in some countries, and its steady progress in
others. Regarding British emancipation, Wakefield stressed its exception-
ality. Slavery was still expanding in many areas where land was fertile,
abundant, and cheap. He predicted a sharp fall in British sugar produc-
tion by free labor if land remained easily accessible to the ex-slaves—
“and we shall have substituted eight hundred thousand savages for the
same number of slaves.” Slavery might be evil, but freedom still threat-
ened both sugar and civilization.9
Wakefield’s argument against free labor superiority was relatively un-
concerned with the motivations of wage laborers or of free peasants. On
the contrary, he admitted, even insisted on the fact that a more highly
paid Englishman worked twice as hard and for far more hours per week
than did a low-paid Portuguese worker. Wakefield identified the same
“industrious” gap between the English and the Irish and between the
northern and southern French that others did between free and slave
labor. Only restricted access to land could easily overcome this productiv-
ity differential.10
Popular versions of the new political economy were more divided.
They all affirmed the general superiority of free labor and preached the
dangers and disadvantages of rapid emancipation. Before the mass agi-
tation of the early 1830s, however, the preferred social science road to

58   

emancipation was almost invariably imperceptible gradualism, as had oc-
curred in medieval Europe. Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Political Econ-
omy was a good example of the genre. On the subject of fixed capital,
the “questioner” asks whether “the poor Africans in the West Indies”
should be described as “capital.” The teacher answers that they fit the
designation, as did “slaves of every other description,” including the peas-
antry of Poland and Russia. Britons, it is emphasized, had been similarly
viewed until experience proved that free and independent laborers were
more industrious and better cultivators. In the same analogy, however,
important changes of status had to be introduced with caution, although
gradual, progressive improvement was invariably conducive to “the hap-
piness of mankind.” Violent and sudden changes were dangerous, and
strong medicines were worse than the disease. The contrary position was
also published. Harriet Martineau’s antislavery Tale of Demera was the
story of a plantation heir who was returning home to England, convinced
that free labor was both cheaper and more humane than slavery. It was
frequently cited in antislavery literature. But economists who were so
convinced turned out to be as rare in reality as the convert to free labor
in the Caribbean.11 The rarity of contemporary British economists as
antislavery authorities meant that abolitionists had to look further afield
in their search for scientific validation.

I
From distant Russia, however, a political economist quickly ascended the
abolitionist honor role in support of free labor. H. F. von Storch even had
a kind of authority that no British economist could match: he wrote from
the bastion of European servitude in Europe. Still better, Storch was no
Russian radical. He had impeccable credentials as the most conservative
of political economists. By no stretch of the West Indian or any Tory
imagination could he be portrayed as tainted by contact with British
popular radicalism or evangelical enthusiasm, much less by French rev-
olutionary élan. In 1815 Storch published his major work in St. Peters-
burg, the capital of autocratic Russia. His Cours d’economie politique was
humbly addressed and dedicated to two members of the royal Romanov
family, the Grand Dukes Nicholas (the future tzar) and Michael. For
Storch, “man,” by definition, was “a free being,” driven by his own will.
As “soon as he is forced to act according to another’s will the latter
becomes the principle of action and the acting being is therefore only a
machine.” Ironically, entrepreneurs could be counted among the few free
“workers” in Russia. Since so many of Russia’s laborers were coerced and
since they accounted so overwhelmingly for the national wealth, the Rus-
sian economist felt impelled to discuss the effects of unfree labor far more
extensively than any of his Western counterparts.12

 ’     59

 For Storch, the general history of labor was exemplified through the
progressive stages of western European history, as outlined by the En-
lightenment tradition. Eastern Europe lagged largely because its bound
labor retarded progress. Slavery and other forms of servitude would
slowly disappear in imitation of the earlier western patterns. Storch fol-
lowed Smith (with some additional acknowledgment to Bentham) in de-
scribing the deleterious effects of slavery. The institution led to unpro-
ductive service and to the sloppy use of labor power. Indeed, Smith had
actually understated the case against servile labor. The work of one free
man was equal to that of five or ten slaves. A bondsman’s concern for
subsistence took priority over any production for surplus. Labor efficiency
was axiomatically irrational for slaves. Habits of idleness were systemi-
cally encouraged. The costs of subsistence and reproduction were, as
Smith premised, most efficiently provided for by workers left to them-
selves.13 The cost of a slave’s consumption was further raised by his or
her theft. A slave, without hope, was a temperamental machine that was
difficult to operate. Storch allowed for only one important exception: self-
employed slaves might achieve an equivalence of productivity with free
labor. The greatest differential in the rate or quality of output was
therefore not between the slave and wage labor but between hourly and
task laborers.14
As with Smith, Storch’s only fear for free laborers lay in their tendency
to overwork. The power of the whip could never match the impulse of a
free worker to better his condition. In terms borrowed from Bentham,
Storch noted that the free worker had two stimuli, pleasure and pain; the
slave had only pain. Neither in quantity nor innovation could free labor’s
output be equaled by slaves. On all of these grounds Storch unequivocally
reiterated Smith’s conclusion that slavery was the inferior form of labor
at all times.15
Storch was equally clear about the management side of the question.
Employers of free labor were careful and parsimonious. Rich administra-
tors of coerced labor were too wasteful, and poor ones were too stinting.
Great slave proprietors, usually idle heirs and rentiers, displayed all of the
flaws delineated by their Western landed counterparts. Storch acknowl-
edged that free labor areas might supply the capital, skills, and technology
to contemporary slave economies. The latter, however, could never hope
to attain the wealth or civilization of the free nations with whom they
traded. With Russia in mind, but drawing on all European history, Storch
concluded that “the epoque of the entire abolition of slavery in Europe
was the dawn of all the greatest discoveries which honor the human
spirit, which ennoble the existence of man and which make it milder and
more agreeable.”16 Emancipation was, in short, the pivot of human pro-
gress.
From his own Russian perspective, Storch formulated a far more em-
pirical and detailed case for the inferiority of slave labor than had any

60   

of his predecessors in the West. At least so it seemed until one read the
fine print. In a footnote to the passage where he began his contrast be-
tween lazy slave owners and efficient managers of free labor, Storch
added one qualifying note. He really meant, he said, absentees and ren-
tiers, not those who actually devoted themselves exclusively to the culture
of their own estates. The latter were really entrepreneurs. Moreover, this
small qualification for the Russian case was actually the general rule in
the American colonies: “There even the planter is a true head of an
enterprise, he studies the crop he wants to raise, he makes it his sole
trade and he sees in it only a way of increasing his wealth.” Thus Storch
quietly returned to Smith’s differentiation between rent-seeking European
landlords and profit-seeking American planters. The transatlantic plant-
ers’ only drawback in the colonies was their single-minded focus on the
production of raw materials. Like the free worker, the free master’s sole
vice was ironically his tendency to overwork.17
Storch’s endorsement of free labor was far more unequivocal than
Smith’s, and his deference to American exceptionalism was greater still.
Storch’s principal evidence for the productivity gap between free and slave
labor economies was the quantitative comparison between the progress
of the United States and Ireland, on the one hand, and of Russia, Poland,
Hungary, Denmark “and everywhere that slavery persists,” on the other
hand. His empirical indicators of economic progress were the rates of
increase of exports and the ratio of exports to population.18
Storch was probably the first (and last) major nineteenth-century po-
litical economist to offer Ireland in evidence for the superiority of free
labor. Ireland was quickly to become emblematic of economic and social
failure. In any event, Storch relied most heavily on a comparison between
the United States and Russia. With a population seven and a half times
that of the United States, Russia’s exports in 1800 were merely six-tenths
as great as those of the new nation. By per capita criteria, the figures
were quite conclusively in favor of America’s relative superiority. In play-
ing his export-led trump card, however, Storch neglected to mention that
a large proportion, probably more than half, of American overseas ex-
ports was ascribable to slave labor. United States export figures would be
similarly used by antebellum Southern supporters of U.S. slavery to dem-
onstrate the disproportionate contribution of slaves to American pros-
perity.
In using Russian and American trade statistics to compare freedom
and slavery, Storch was comparing two export sectors heavily dependent
on coerced labor. However enthusiastically British antislavery writers in-
voked his name, they never elaborated his specific arguments in favor of
free labor, not to speak of his honoring American slaveholding capitalists
as paragons of productivity. Even more than with Smith, it was best to
offer the Russian’s general pronouncements rather than his empirical
arguments. Storch inadvertently demonstrated the conceptual difficulties

 ’     61

 that plagued political economy in its attempts to incorporate disparate
geographical frames of reference. For the Russian economist, America
was still beyond the line, a place where slave agriculture worked quite
well.
Methodologically, Storch illustrated how crucial was the choice of
“representative” areas in making comparisons. Given his export-oriented
criterion of economic superiority, Storch’s omissions were even more sig-
nificant than his mislabeling of America. Had he compared either Russia
or the United States to the world’s most heavily enslaved area in 1800,
he might have concluded that Caribbean exports per capita made that
most enslaved area on the face of the earth more dynamic than both
Russia and America. In terms of per capita income, as well as of per
capita exports there was no “gap” between Europe and the Caribbean,
and one did not appear until well after the end of the transatlantic slave
trade and British slavery.19 Storch’s use of Ireland, Russia, and the United
States in 1800, like Smith’s selections of Antilles and eastern Europe a
generation before, had crucial implications for the validity of his theo-
retical assumptions.

II
If British abolitionists could find some solace for the silences of their own
compatriots from an economist of despotic Russia, even more might be
hoped from their more proximate neighbor across the channel. By the
1770s many French philosophes, like their Scottish counterparts, pro-
nounced in favor of free over servile labor. At least some articles of the
great Encyclopédie, and the writings of the physiocrats questioned the
utility of slavery. A.J.R. Turgot, Smith’s closest intellectual counterpart
and a reforming minister under Louis XVI, briefly attempted to abolish
compulsory labor service in France, although he had reservations about
the applicability of the free labor principle to the slave colonies.20
Antislavery intially was given a enormous boost by the coming of the
French Revolution. In 1788 the Société des Amis des Noirs was founded
in Paris as a counterpart to the London Abolition Society. The greatest
thrust toward emancipation in the French overseas empire, however,
came from the slaves themselves, above all in the great sugar colony of
St. Domingue. The most successful uprising in the history of slavery in
1791 eventually induced the revolutionary government in 1794 to declare
slavery abolished throughout the colonies under French control. In 1802,
a few years after Napoleon seized power in France, slavery was reintrod-
uced in the overseas colonies. The only exception was St. Domingue,
where a second successful uprising led to the confirmation of both free-
dom and independence in the renamed nation of Haiti.21 Despite the
inauguration of a second slavery in the French Empire, the enlighten-

62   

ment and revolutionary traditions had left a residue of antislavery, which
British abolitionists continually sought to tap until France’s second eman-
cipation in 1848.
In the realm of political economy, abolitionists looked to Adam Smith’s
most prominent French disciple, Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832). Say’s
antislavery credentials were impeccable. A “mild revolutionary” and the
most famous popularizer of Smithian political economy in France, Say
became codirector of a liberal review, Decade philosophique, during the
summer of 1794, shortly before the fall of Robespierre. Say publicized
the views of Henri Grégoire, one of the most outspoken French Catholic
voices in favor of religious emancipation and racial egalitarianism. Fol-
lowing the initiative of Grégoire, Say led a brief revival of the Amis des
Noirs, which had been decimated and disbanded during the Terror.22
With Napoleon’s consolidation of authoritarian power at home and over-
seas, Say retreated from politics and published his most famous work on
political economy, Traité d’économie politique (Treatise on Political Economy)
in 1803. The book was destined to go through many editions, including
English and German translations, until Say’s death in 1832. Even in its
first edition, as French troops were battling to reimpose slavery in the
colonies, Say sprinkled his political economy with moral sentiments, such
as the final sentence of the section “On the Profits of the Slave”: “How
long,” he asked his readers, “will books on Political Economy have to
contain chapters such as this one?”23
Yet Say’s Traité, which should have been made in heaven for antislav-
ery, turned out to be so disconcerting to British abolitionists that it be-
came the subject of special damage-control efforts at the beginning of
their emancipation campaign two decades after its publication. Like
Storch, Say addressed the issue of slave versus free labor head on. His
Traité was the first cost accounting of slavery offered by a nineteenth-
century political economist. Even while Napoleon was waging a full-scale
war of atrocity against ex-slaves in St. Domingue, Say began with a cat-
egorical statement about the relation of slavery to staple production: “I
do not at all doubt that slavery considerably increases it [production], or
at least that, in the labor of the slave, the excess of production over
consumption is greater than the production of the free man.” The slave,
and not the free laborer, worked for an unlimited need, the master’s cu-
pidity, and the latter’s urge to better his condition. Slaves labored without
any of the free laborer’s conflicting aspirations to comfort, leisure, or
dissipation. A planter supplied by the slave trade needed only a sufficient
number to keep his labor force in being. He incurred no further overhead
costs, or need, to expand by natural reproduction. Say simply disposed of
Smith’s “wear and tear” problem of replenishment by factoring in the
transatlantic slave trade.24
Say’s cost-benefit analysis even stressed the range of planters’ behav-
ior. Some masters were credited with treating their slaves with “the

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 greatest humanity.” He included in his calculation an “average” capital
outlay, the costs of capital (interest), and the annual maintenance costs
to the slave owner (500 francs a year). By comparison, even the most
unskilled free laborer in the colonies, “whose capacity is no greater than
that of the Negro slave,” cost the planter between 5 and 7 francs or more,
a day to hire. At 6 francs per day for 300 working days, a free laborer
cost the planter 1800 francs per year. Say’s tally awarded a substantial
advantage to the overseas user of slave labor.
Say also underlined the European-colonial difference in his analysis.
Workers’ consumption costs in France were only slightly below their in-
come. A free worker in the Antilles, because of the relative lack of com-
petition, could save 800 francs a year. He or she could therefore accu-
mulate, at the expense of an employer, more than one and a half times
the cost of maintaining a slave. Even presupposing that the slave only
worked at the level of intensity of the most unskilled labor (which Say
assumed to be a lower bound assumption), a plantation slave generally
produced more surplus value for the owner than the free laborer’s min-
imal wage demands.25
Planters’ behavior and economic accounting reinforced Say’s conclu-
sion. He could only express surprise that any of his eminent predecessors,
including Turgot, Steuart, and Smith himself, had concluded that free
labor was less expensive than slavery. Say may not have been aware of
Turgot’s own colonial caveat on this question, but he certainly did not
grasp Steuart’s position on slaves’ productivity in the sugar colonies
(Say’s German translator more accurately noted Steuart’s position—that
slaves actually made cheaper laborers). Say was most unequivocal in his
challenge to Smith, the founder of their new discipline. By way of re-
buttal, Say listed all of Smith’s assumptions: that a free man works harder
and consumes more parsimoniously on his own account; that a slave
works less and consumes more than he might as a free man; that a slave
has no interest in combining intelligence and attention to ensure optimal
efficiency or innovation; that slaves had abbreviated lives and required
rapid replacement; that managers could not oversee the work of a worker
as efficiently as a free worker himself.26
Say replied that planters had very active overseers; that if they erred
in any direction it was in the overuse rather than the underuse of their
slaves; that if the unskilled slave did not exercise ingenuity in improve-
ments and productivity, his manual labor was sufficient to his task; that
innovation and improvement could be the task and preoccupation of the
head of the enterprise; that carefully selected slaves could be rewarded
for requisite managerial tasks and skills; that if bad judgment sometimes
caused the premature death of a slave, the planters generally understood
their own interests well enough to keep mortality well within the bounds
of profitability; that slaveholders extracted more labor from slaves than
the latter would generally offer on their own initiative. As for the planters,

64   

Say noted that they could easily foresee the need for replacement (Smith’s
“wear and tear”) and then calculate that need into the overhead expenses
of the plantation, just as they did for any other capital outlay, incorpo-
rating both interest and depreciation costs into the purchase price. No
planter in the Americas could have ordered a more satisfactory emen-
dation of Wealth of Nations.27
Say agreed with Smith and Storch that American plantations were
not seigneurial domains, passively milked by a leisure class. Plantations
were true capitalist enterprises and their directors were chefs d’entreprises.
The latter understood their production processes, their competitive situ-
ation, and their accounting requirements. Say therefore concluded that
New World planters, like other businessmen, were generally as good
judges of their own economic interests as were metropolitan capitalists.
They were also as concerned as European industrialists with the micro-
management of their means of production.
Smith had assumed that owners of vast agricultural holdings were
generally unconcerned with their own economic interests, or preferred
greater power to greater profits. Say’s perception was not so different from
Smith’s, or Storch’s, on American exceptionalism, but he placed the
transatlantic islands at the center, not the periphery of his analysis. New
World slave owners were almost exclusively dominated by their economic
prospects. Echoing Smith’s finding of high Caribbean profits, Say was
certain that a French sugar planter recouped his purchase price in six
years. By comparison, the annual net profit of a farm in France was no
more than 3 to 4 percent of its purchase price, with a correspondingly
extensive recuperation time.
Say also made full use of Smith’s observation that a sugar plantation’s
byproducts alone paid for the annual operating expenses of the whole
enterprise. It was, Say analogized, as though farmers in Europe could pay
for their overhead expenses through the sale of their straw alone. With
regard to sugar’s byproducts, he asked, rhetorically, how many other
products so exceeded their cost of production? Say concluded that Smith
might have espoused an opinion “inspired by humanity and justified by
reasoning.” For Say, the question of humanity could always be raised,
but not by evading the economics of sugar production. In the end, his
own humanitarianism was also stated as a cost-accounting question: was
18 percent profit per year worth the most infamous trade ever known?28
It should be stressed that in 1803 Say was making his case on the
basis of prerevolutionary data from the French and British colonies. He
apparently still considered the figures empirically relevant, as did official
French statistical summaries of empirical value. One should also note
that Say was not at all pleased by the extraordinarily high profits he
calculated for the planters—and for purely economic reasons. Excessive
profits were not evidence of economic equilibrium. He used the high
profits as decisive evidence of the planters’ economic rationality rather

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 than as an argument for the rationality of the French colonial system.
In fact, he felt that too much of the benefit from this ruthlessly efficient
labor system had been pocketed by the colonial interest in general. Excess
profits were evidence of the distortions engendered by mercantilism.
The fault, however, lay with unfree trade, not unfree labor. Like Smith,
Say ascribed some of the excess French Caribbean profits to certain mer-
cantilist aspects of prerevolutionary French colonial policy. A principled
free trader, Say looked forward to the opening of new tropical markets
in Asia and of free trade in tropical produce between Africa and Europe.
Any geographical expansion of tropical production anywhere would ul-
timately drive down sugar prices, be a benefit to the metropolitan con-
sumer, and increase the happiness of Africa. On the issue of free trade
as opposed to free labor, Say happily deferred to Wealth of Nations. Over
the very long term, he even looked forward to the end of monoculture
in the colonies and to their evolution into true settler colonies in the
Greek or North American sense.29
If Say did not pull his theoretical punches even at the moment of
Napoleon’s restoration of slavery, there was little likelihood that he would
be less rigorous after the restoration of the Bourbons. The second edition
of Say’s Traité d’économie politique was published in 1814, just as Napo-
leon’s continental empire was collapsing and France’s overseas empire
was partially restored. Peace opened Haiti to French control, if France
could reconquer it. Say’s colonial chapter and his conclusions about free
and slave labor had potentially important implications for French imperial
policy. His calculation of colonial profits and his insistence on the plant-
ers’ rationality were repeated word for word. He again welcomed freer
tropical trade and increased sugar competition from Afro-Asia, with the
observation that the English were already beginning to import some
Asian sugar. Africa’s potential competition was also noted with satisfac-
tion.30
By the third edition of the Traité, in 1817, Haiti was clearly lost to
France as a sugar, or any other, colony. The French slave trade had been
declared illegal, and France’s prospects for reviving it, de facto, on its old
scale were also diminishing. Say’s empirical calculations and conclusions
in opposition to Smith remained intact. However, he began for the first
time to edge away from his previously exclusive focus on the efficiency
of slave labor, repeating Smithian considerations of the longer term ben-
efits of free labor. He also now appended two new afterthoughts to his
cost accounting. Say allowed that depriving labor of all incentives to
inventiveness came at a cost to the whole economy over time. In other
words, nonplantation economic expansion was hindered by the inactivity
of the slaves’ minds and the masters’ control. If this had little relevance
to tropical islands already entirely given over to plantation agriculture, it
would have greater bearing on the progress of the arts and industry in
the large, new mainland nations, such as Brazil and the United States.

66   

For the first time in his chapter on slavery Say included a comparison of
the U.S. South and North in terms of slavery’s developmental liabilities.
Say made much of the fact that the cotton planters of Carolina and
Georgia did not work up their own cotton. They sent their produce over-
land to New York for processing even during the Anglo-American War
of 1812. Say threw in another sharp moral consideration: “Thus are
punished [with retardation in nonstaple production] countries which per-
mit some men to squeeze forced labor by violence from their fellow be-
ings.”31
Perhaps not coincidentally, Say’s readership had begun to expand after
the defeat of Napoleon. He was increasingly recognized in Britain as the
mainland’s leading political economist. The fourth edition of the Traité,
in 1821, was translated into English just as British abolitionists were
shifting attention from the African slave trade to colonial slavery. Say’s
addenda on general economic progress for continental and diversified
economies such as America and Brazil did not diminish the weight of his
conclusions for sugar islands. He retained his original calculations and
conclusions word for word, much to the outspoken annoyance of his
English translator. The latter took very firm exception to Say’s line of
reasoning on the labor superiority question. The translator sharply
faulted the Traité for its failure to incorporate the cost of slaves’ tools and
clothing and for making insufficient allowance for “the probable increase
of agricultural production which free Negro labour might afford.” The
translator was particularly upset by Say’s continued use of Smith’s pas-
sage on the high profits of the sugar colonies. Say was also admonished,
in a footnote, for insufficient recognition of the dissimilarity between Eu-
rope and the West Indies, the very charge usually leveled by planters
against abolitionists.
By way of compensation for Say’s stubborn statistics, his fourth edition
(1821) pushed the brake-on-progress theme even more strongly than in
1817. Slavery now retarded the managerial and technological ingenuity
of the planter, as well as of the society as a whole. Labor was dishonored
and caste barriers created. Here the translator was disturbed that Say
had gone too far in his condemnation. The translator objected to Say’s
use of Southern cotton shipments to New York during the War of 1812
as an example of planters’ retardation. That, perhaps, was hitting a bit
too close to the British imperial belt. After all, the same policy of ex-
porting, processing, and reimporting cotton was becoming the trade pat-
tern between Britain and India, “where labour is free and most abun-
dant.” The South’s concentration on growing cotton was “not, therefore
the effect of tolerating slavery in these [Southern] states.” All in all, the
translator was not particularly happy about Say’s slouching progress to-
ward a “correct” conclusion about slavery and progress. Say still seemed
to argue strongly on the side of slave efficiency for most of the chapter.
Forcing his translator to fight a running battle of annotations, he had

 ’     67

 arrived at a profreedom conclusion by means of add-ons—“neither log-
ical nor consistent.”32 Say’s argument was deemed to be unsatisfactory
and “compensatory,” merely adding stll more “moral” condemnations to
a stubbornly unyielding and disturbing argument in favor of slaves’ pro-
ductivity. Say, however, had hardly become illogical, even in his fourth
revision. The Traité still considered slave labor to be cheaper, as long as
slaveholders competitively produced export staples for the world market
and even if concentration primarily retarded non-agricultural develop-
ment in the tropics.33
As Say’s reasoning became more widely accessible in English, British
abolitionists worried that the growing prestige of his Traité might too
obviously undercut the basic applicability of the free labor ideology to
their own sugar islands. In the early 1820s, the abolitionist movement
was seeking only gradual and voluntary emancipation by the slave own-
ers. The still-formidable planters needed to be convinced that emancipa-
tion was in their own interest. On the eve of the first mass campaign for
gradual emancipation, Adam Hodgson published a correspondence with
Say, questioning the Frenchman’s unsettling calculations on the profita-
bility of slavery in an otherwise “excellent and popular work on Political
Economy.” Hodgson informed Say that Say, stood against not only Adam
Smith but also David Hume, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Storch. Given
the weight of these venerable authorities, Hodgson requested Say’s ex-
plicit admission that slavery must simply fail in competition with free
labor. The plantation colonies could not be an exception.34
Say replied briefly, politely, and vaguely. He thanked Hodgson for his
interest but declined either to confirm or to relinquish his position. He
agreed with his correspondent on one “fundamental,” that slavery was
incompatible with advanced industry and would someday disappear. Say
retracted none of the calculations and conclusions that had remained
intact through four successive editions of the Traité.
The Traité’s fifth edition (1826) reproduced almost verbatim Say’s cost-
efficiency argument of 1803. This final revision, however, added one
more observation, to the effect that France’s own Atlantic slave colonies
were no longer competing in a free market. Trade protection, not cost
competitiveness, was now sustaining the planters’ profits. Say still would
not claim that slave labor was the core problem. Indeed, he noted a point
constantly made by British planters in parliamentary committees across
the channel. Cuba, which imported African slaves, was now underselling
sugar from both the French and the English slave complexes. France
would actually save millions a year if only it bought its sugar from Ha-
vana. Cuban slave “buyers” were now beating out the Anglo-French slave
breeders. Say would allow no economic arguments for protected staples,
not even for areas in direct competition with slave-trading economies.35
If Havana sugar were cheapest, Cuba should be France’s supplier. The
labor system was irrelevant to the commercial decision.

68   

 If Say retracted none of his slave labor calculations, the fifth edition
added yet one more note of moral hostility to the institution. In the first
four editions, Say’s discussion always ended with the rhetorical question
of whether 18 percent per year was worth the retention of the slave
trade. Now, without altering the wording of the original passage, Say
reduced the slave traders from merchant capitalists to merchant bandits.
“They are weak calculations which count force for everything and equity
for nothing.” To act on his earlier calculation of profitability was to adopt
the morality of “Bedouins” in attacking a caravan. With the addition of
one sentence, Say had transferred the perpetrators of slavery from ra-
tional Christian European businessmen to Arab tribal thieves, shifting the
context from political economy to pillage.36
Say’s incremental trail of add-ons implied a dilution of the question
of slave labor’s efficiency in the conduct of colonial, if not commercial,
policy. Say no longer showed much sympathy for colonies, now sustained
by tariff walls. But his continued insistence on the viability of slave labor
in the plantation colonies still offered very cold comfort to abolitionists.
Having selected Brazil and the Northern United States to illustrate slav-
ery’s retardation effect, he openly insisted, like Bentham, McCulloch, and
company, on the potentially negative economic effects of emancipation.
After a generation of revisions, the plantation colony context, in the
Traité still remained quite different from the situation in Europe. In the
Old World, servile agricultural labor had been and could still be more
easily transformed into free labor than slavery in the Americas. Here Say
agreed with his contempories in Britain.
In the New World tropics, the combination of uncultivated arable
land, European epidemiological disadvantages, and the slave population’s
low level of material needs retained its place in the Traité’s many rein-
carnations. Free Haiti was, in Say’s terms, a discouraging example, pro-
ducing neither sugar exports nor truly free labor. Say maintained that
English planters’ occasional ventures into free labor had offered only du-
bious results. He remained unimpressed by the rising British agitation for
gradual emancipation, and doubted that emancipation would render co-
lonial planters any better off. He foresaw no economic incentive that
would lead planters to support any kind of emancipation.37
Say made a final foray into colonial slavery in his Cours complet
d’économie politique in (1828). These popular lectures made a final sweep-
ing gesture to freedom. Industrial progress was now linked exclusively to
free labor. The comparative value of slave labor production in the French
colonies was now just an “open” question. The daunting references to
rising Cuban competition vanished. Say’s outspoken challenge to the au-
thority of Adam Smith was gone. “Humanity” was now to be the only
ground for judging slavery. The central question was no longer the price
at which one could buy a laborer or force another to work, “but at what
price one can make him work without wounding justice and humanity.”

 ’     69

 Public opinion had done its slow but sure work of altering Say’s terms
of scientific analysis. When the newly formed French Abolitionist Society
began to hold its meetings a few months after the British Emancipation
Act came into effect in August 1834, the late Jean-Baptiste Say was the
first economist whose views on emancipation were discussed. Even so,
for Say one bottom line never disappeared—his deep pessimism about
large-scale projects of manumission and emancipation.38
Other early nineteenth-century French political economists, came to
the same conclusion. No one denied the principle of free labors’ superi-
ority, but no one removed the planters from the ranks of the improving
agricultural class. None maintained that their efficient management was
canceled out by coerced labor. Plantation slave labor was no antiquated
and backward mode of production. It was only by the unrelenting sweat
of his brow that the free French peasant narrowed, but did not eliminate,
the productivity gap between colonial plantations and his metropolitan
farm.39

III
As political economy established itself ever more firmly in Europe during
the first four decades of the nineteenth century, certain propositions
seemed to have become consensual. Civil freedom, material progress, eco-
nomic growth, liberal institutions and national power, as exemplified by
various parts of the Anglo-American world, were positively and histori-
cally linked. The economic aspect of this general development lay in the
evolution of institutions, habits, and mentalities that encouraged individ-
ual choice for both labor and capital. Free labor was acclaimed to be
more efficient than coerced labor in Europe, as witnessed by the relative
prosperity and power of those European states that used the most highly
institutionalized norms of free labor. European history also taught by
example that in the long run material and moral progress was maximized
by institutional protection of the free exchange of commodities, capital,
information, land, and labor. The superiority of free labor was a faith
extrapolated from experience. Political economists shared this faith with
most of their fellow citizens.
The plantation Americas continued to present the major anomalous
challenge to this theory. Up to the moment of British emancipation, At-
lantic slavery flourished under a variety of political regimes, expanding
at a rapid rate. They were often wealthier than the metropolises from
which they were founded. Fifty years after the publication of Wealth of
Nations, the New World’s two largest slave societies, Brazil and the United
States, had gained political independence from their metropolises. Eco-
nomic growth continued to occur where free labor could apparently not

70   

compete with slavery. The slave Americas sustained their specialized role
in the European capitalist system.
Where free labor was accepted as normal, the anomalies of slave la-
bor’s dynamic superiority still needed to be explained. Free labor’s supe-
riority in Europe clearly required no invocation of “special” economic
conditions to render it successful. It was, by self-reference, the natural,
progressive end of history in so many senses of the term. Explaining the
“peculiar” success of slave labor’s superiority, however, quickly led to a
fragmentation of causal analyses. Few European political economists
were yet willing to accept the strongest passage in Wealth of Nations—
that in all ages and among all nations, slave labor was less efficient, less
costly, or more productive than free labor. Extraordinary soil, extraordi-
nary crops, extraordinary modes of production, extraordinary modes of
labor recruitment, extraordinary management skills, extraordinary mea-
sures to preserve the efficiency of gang labor, extraordinary divisions of
labor, extraordinary dearths of laborers, all these “extraordinaries” im-
plied that the norms of western Europe in 1800 or 1825 could not be
immediately applied to the slave colonies.
Moreover, the easy demonstration of the invisible, irreversible, and
gradual liberation in Europe meant that modern slavery might persist as
long as special circumstances encouraged it. For abolitionists and slaves,
this was a deadly conclusion. They had far more pressing time frames
than economists. Exactly where abolitionists required a sense of urgency
and assurances, political economists warned of certain difficulties in the
colonies after any rapid change. Almost without exception the comfort
offered to abolitionists by the statements of even the most sympathetic
political economists varied between cool and cold. During the first half
of the nineteenth century, European political economy was infinitely
more confident about the short-term results of free trade than about the
results of free labor in the plantation Americas. Political economists, at
best, urged delay in coming to a direct conclusion on the question of
liberation. It was wiser to wait “until the facts were better established
and more authentic.” The best that the friends of truth, justice, and
humanity could do was to continue to assemble elements that might
clarify and lead to the ultimate resolution of the issue.40
The third generation after Smith had a keen sense of how difficult it
was to cut through the complexities of the plantation complex. Young
Herman Merivale, making his debut in the Edinburgh Review, cautioned
that political economy was a science of “tendencies or approximations.”
Its propositions concerning to the production of wealth might be univer-
sally true; but those touching on distribution were “liable to be affected
by the peculiar institutions of particular countries,” including slavery or
the Poor Laws. The economist’s role was, alas, a negative one, to warn
of general principles “which it is fatal to neglect.” His general truths did

 ’     71

 “not authorize him in adding a single syllable of advice” either in rev-
erence for institutions or in detestation of abuse or out of love of popu-
larity.41
Contemporaries, especially abolitionists, sought in vain for a consensus
among the political economists. When they selectively culled the econo-
mists’ texts they encountered encouraging abstractions, derived from a
universalized European past and fortified by contemporary experiences
with convict and pauper labor. Ironically, the Eurocentrism and abstract-
ness of classical political economy provided the firmest ground for a free
labor ideology. As soon as these same political economists expanded their
observations to the Americas, the consensus shattered. They agreed that
the colonies were exceptional, but the elements of that exceptionality
were volatile and often contradictory. For reasons already evident, their
science was characterized by a rising wave of modesty in dealing with
the contests over slavery. In their absence both the abolitionists and their
opponents had to turn elsewhere.

72   

 5
, ,
 

A s the question of slavery became politicized toward the end

of the eighteenth century, both defenders and opponents
of the system were tempted to at least scan the horizon beyond political
economy in search of arguments. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, British scientists and gentlemen farmers eagerly volunteered to
support imperial expansion. Since one of the most dynamic components
of Atlantic trade came from the growth of the sugar industry, science
was assigned a special role in ensuring its continued improvement. The
formation of agricultural societies and botanic gardens on both sides of
the Atlantic was testimony to that dynamic faith.1
During the century between 1750 and 1850, however, botanists played
almost no role in the transition from slavery to freedom in the British
tropics, either as practical agents or as theoretical scientists. They con-
tinued to see their principal task as contributing new plants to the com-
mercial expansion of tropical agriculture. Before the abolition of the slave
trade, their activities helped to expand British Caribbean slavery to new
heights of achievement. Captain Bligh’s transportation of breadfruit to
the Caribbean, as a new food for slaves, was a special project of Sir Joseph
Banks, England’s most prominent naturalist.2
In the same year as Bligh’s first voyage, 1787, Banks helped the im-
perial Board of Trade to arrange the secret transfer of varieties of Asian
cotton to the West Indies to improve supplies for one of Britain’s most
rapidly expanding industries. Over the next decades, the introduction of
the O’Tahiti and Bourbon types of cane from the South Pacific and Indian
Ocean islands helped to expand West Indian sugar exports at a faster rate
than at any point in the previous century. During the first abolitionist
wave in the 1780s and 1790s, as we shall see, a few botanists offered

73
 their dreams and services to the attempt to establish a free labor colony
in Africa. By contrast, during the crises of the transition from slavery to
free labor, from the 1820s through the 1840s, botanists seem to have
played no visible role, either as advocates for or opponents of emanic-
pation or in developing new crops to ease the transformation.3
If botanists remained entirely marginal to the problem of emancipa-
tion, the sciences of man seemed to offer a potentially more pertinent
field of knowledge. Agitation for and against slavery was sustained during
an even longer discussion in Western culture, attempting to conceptualize
race as a major category of group identity and behavior. One result of
this dual process was the egalitarian extension of the notions of “free-
dom” and “rights” to include ever broader segments of humanity, dis-
counting differences in religion, education, wealth, color, geography, and
tradition. The other was an attempt to even more carefully assess and
interpret the social significance of measurable differences between hu-
man groups. Eighteenth-century aspirants to the creation of human sci-
ences were faced with the possibility of linking a broad set of observable
variables, placed under the rubric of race, to the institution of slavery.
From the mid-seventeenth century, the New World remained more an
extension of African than of European migration until well after the end
of the Napoleonic wars. Only in parts of seaboard North America did
Europeans and their overseas descendants predominate during the first
three centuries after Columbus. After two centuries of trial-and-error ex-
perimentation with various combinations of European, Indian, and Af-
rican laborers, the enslavement of Africans and their descendants had
become by 1700 the prevailing form of agricultural labor from southern
North America to the Brazils. In the American tropics, a color-based
racial division of labor and status was especially striking. It was a region
in which nine-tenths of the population was enslaved or black.4
When Europeans sought to account for this peculiar economic and
demographic configuration, the most direct and persistent argument was
that Africans were the human group most capable of agricultural labor
in the tropics. Significantly, however, this early pervasive claim was de-
veloped out of trial and error. Native populations of the tropical Americas
were known to have suffered a long demographic catastrophe during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Equally well tested were several ef-
forts to place various groups of European coerced laborers into the Ca-
ribbean. Limitations on the enslavability of Europeans meant that Afri-
cans became the main victims of plantation slavery in the New World.
From the seventeenth-century British planters’ perspective, a European
indentured servant cost about half as much as an African, but the ser-
vitude of enslaved Africans was likely to be longer and intergenerational.
By the mid-eighteenth century, a vague if unchallenged consensus had
developed among European elites. Africans seemed, for whatever reason,
favored by their rates of survival under the severe disease and labor con-

74   

ditions required for competitive production of the principal staples of the
American tropics and subtropics. This epidemiological context, favorable
to the slave trade, did not substantially change before the British abolition
of the slave trade. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, young
adult Europeans who were arriving in the Caribbean died “at about four
times the rate of newly arrived Africans in the same age group.”5 Thus
the paradox of economics and antislavery repeated itself. Britain moved
to terminate its slave trade at a time when the evidence of epidemiology
continued to favor the migration of coerced Africans rather than Euro-
peans to the tropical colonies.
Until the 1770s, the principal conceptual building blocks for establish-
ing hierarchical differences between human groups had little to do with
slavery. Europeans routinely recognized that although slavery was not
institutionalized in western Europe, Europeans continued to function as
servile laborers in much of their own continent. Peasants of Poland and
Russia were routinely described as “mere slaves.” In terms of propensities
to enslavement, to wander through the geographies of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries was to voyage through peoples mired in
coerced ways of living. At the eastern edge of Europe itself, white Cau-
casians bartered their own kindred of all ages and both sexes. Georgians
sold their children or kidnaped others for the slave markets of Islam,
killing the unmarketable. South Asians were linked to rituals of human
female sacrifice and pragmatic infanticide; Brazilian Indians and New
Zealand natives were defined by their cannibalism. Slave markets flour-
ished at Europe’s edges in the Ottoman dominions of North Africa and
the Balkans. Sub-Saharan Africans were centrally framed within a nexus
of enslavement because their populations flowed most massively and vis-
ibly into European overseas settlements.6
Antislavery, not slavery, stimulated attempts to base African slavery
on biology. A major attack on efforts to retain Caribbean servants as
slaves in Britain itself stimulated a flurry of racially justified proslavery
arguments. A series of privately initiated suits against the rights of sla-
veholders in Britain culminated in the widely publicized Somerset deci-
sion of 1772, severly curtailing the enforcement of the slave law in En-
gland. In response, West Indian sympathizers sought to exploit the
general European perception of African cultural inferiority to argue for
a more distinctively biological inferiority and hereditary racial deficiency.
Soon after the Somerset decision, in 1774, the Jamaican planter Edward
Long published a wide-ranging defense of slavery. The History of Jamaica
linked Negroes to the animal world. Blacks were assigned to the status
of an intermediate species between Europeans and “Orang-outans.” Long
located Negroes at a point in a great chain of beings that placed them
closer to the animal world than whites. He ascribed to blacks an affinity
to nonhuman primates that extended to their intellectual shortcomings,
their physical features, and their sexual orientation.7

, ,   75

 The length of Long’s argument, the wide circulation of his ideas, and
the recognition of History of Jamaica as an authoritative, empirical com-
mentary on the West Indies did not mean that his racial ideas were
accepted by a significant minority in Europe or were representative of
British cultural attitudes. Long’s work was no foundational text, in the
manner of Smith or Malthus, for those who sought to maintain the Brit-
ish slave trade and slavery after the rise of abolitionism. On the contrary,
Long’s lack of salience in the debate over slavery is an excellent indicator
of the marginal role played by the science of race as a whole in the
debate over slavery during the three generations after his work appeared.
Long published his History of Jamaica just two years before Smith’s Wealth
of Nations and two years after the Somerset case of 1772. The Somerset
decision was the climax of a successful and widely publicized attack on
the legal status of slavery in England. Long’s History of Jamaica was rec-
ognized for its potential as an argument for blacks’ racial inferiority when
the debate over abolition of the slave trade became a significant political
issue in the decades after the book’s it publication. Yet despite the fact
that the debate brought blacks to the center of a national focus for the
next three generations, Long’s arguments were usually either unused or
repudiated by antiabolitionist writers themselves.
The only sustained argument in Britain that invoked inherent black
“inferiority” as relevant to the debate over slavery appeared during the
opening phase of the abolitionist campaign in 1788. It was published as
a series of anonymous letters by “Civis” in the London Morning Chronicle.
The author self-consciously opened his argument with an acknowledg-
ment that the concept of an inherent racial hierarchy could scarcely find
a single defender “in the debate over abolition.” Civis’s letters produced
a counterracial correspondence in the same newspaper. The lengthy re-
jections of African subhumanity outnumbered Civis’s one supporter by
eight to one.8 Neither in Parliament nor in the public’s petitions regarding
the slave trade was there any articulation of a concern with racial in-
feriority. After Civis’s trial balloon, arguments based on African subhu-
manity virtually disappeared from slave trade debates. The opening round
of abolitionist mobilization showed a pattern of cultural marginalization
for ideas about race that was to last through another half century of
debates on British emancipation.
The following year, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equi-
ano, or Gustavo Vassa, the African, Written by Himself offered first-person
evidence against inherent slavishness or incapicity. The narrator incor-
porated in his own biography the empirical refutation of inherent infe-
riority. His life was an epic in mobility: from free African to enslaved
African-American to Christian to liberated and lettered Afro-Briton. The
nine British editions of the Life of Equiano published during his lifetime
reached a far broader audience than any corresponding, racializing doc-

76   

ument of the last quarter of the eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies.9
In Parliament, pro-slavery spokesmen ignored Long’s racial arguments
altogether. It was rather the leader of the abolitionists who seemed to be
most eager to quote Long’s arguments. William Wilberforce extensively
cited verbatim passages from History of Jamaica, emphasizing the very ones
that most emphatically asserted “Negro” inferiority and brutality. After
twenty years of sustained debates with the slave interest over the aboli-
tion of the British slave trade, he rubbed their noses tacitly in Long’s
racial defense of slavery, confirming the counterproductiveness of that
line of defense for their cause. Wilberforce insisted that Long’s works,
written before the emergence of popular abolitionism in 1788, were a
“fairer representation of the opinion entertained of the Negroes . . . by
the well-informed colonists, than any statements . . . [they] subsequently
made.” On the eve of his anti–slave trade victory, Wilberforce himself
consigned protrade arguments grounded on African inferiority to the
past, assured that his audience, in or out of Parliament, would react to
such arguments “with astonishment as well as with disgust.” Long was
a liability to the defenders of slavery. Wilberforce’s invocation of Long
was more than a rhetorical flourish made in the heat of battle. Long’s
assertions continued to be grist for the abolitionist propaganda mill into
the 1820s. When Wilberforce launched the gradual emancipation cam-
paign in 1823, he again called on Long’s comparison of Africans with
apes. The West Indian response was to accuse Wilberforce of searching
out “a long-forgotten [sic] estimate of the negro race,” once linked to a
scientific discussion of the concept of the “great chain of being,” and of
conflating Long’s discussion of Negroes and Hottentots. Unfortunately for
metropolitan defenders of slavery, some beleaguered planters in the West
Indies could not resist using racial inferiority arguments as emancipation
neared victory in 1832–1833. George Thompson, antislavery’s most pop-
ular itinerant lecturer, relished entertaining abolitionists’ meetings with
selections from the Jamaica Courant that affirmed the Negro’s natural in-
capacity for being improved by education.10
During the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first three
decades of the nineteenth, British politics pressed more heavily on racial
science. The impact of politics may be seen most clearly by comparing
parallel developments in Britain and France. Both countries in the late
1780s and early 1790s were characterized by a wave of optimism about
the possibilities for rapid transformation of social institutions and culture.
The first political campaign against the slave trade in Britain (1787–1788)
coincided with the founding of a British-sponsored “Province of freedom”
in Sierra Leone (1787), with the formation of the Société des Amis des
Noirs in Paris (1788), and with the declaration of the Rights of Man and
Citizens in revolutionary France (1789). The decade of transatlantic

, ,   77

 peace between the end of Britain’s war with the United States (1783) and
the start of Britain’s war with France (1793) marked a high point of
optimism about the rapid elimination of the Atlantic slave trade. The
abolitionists contrasted the high civilization of the slave interior with the
“barbarism” wrought by the European traders on the African coast. Brit-
ish abolitionist and French revolutionary initiatives stimulated a wave of
favorable prognoses for Africa, too. Its accelerated regeneration would
begin with the end of the transatlantic slave trade.11
There was a relatively rapid divergence in the formulation of racial
theories and their implications in the two countries for almost two gen-
erations after the mid-1790s. A decade after its inception, disappointment
with the progress of African colonization produced a sharp diminution
of expectations in Britain about the possible rate of large scale change
in Africa. British disillusion was insignificant, however, compared with
the decimation of the Amis des Noirs by the Jacobin revolutionary Terror
and the cumulative impact of the St. Domingue slave revolution of 1791–
1798, as well as Napoleon’s disastrous attempt to reconquer the island
in 1802–1803. After the late 1790s, French antislavery virtually disap-
peared as a collective movement. St. Domingue became synonymous with
genocidal war and disease in Haiti and with the decimation of Napoleon’s
army.
The impact of these events marked a fork in the road for scientists of
race in Britain and France. The theory of polygenesis, which hypothesized
the separate creation of each race and maximized the ancestral distance
between them, was of marginal significance in Britain during the half
century after the emergence of British abolitionism. The center of the
polygenist school of anthropology lay in France, where it was articulated
by Bory de Saint-Vincent and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, aided by the viru-
lently negative descriptions of Julien-Joseph Virey. But a theoretical pref-
erence for the polygenetic hypothesis was less significant for attitudes
toward slavery than the greater leeway afforded to scientists in France
for negative stereotyping and racial distancing. In the wake of revolu-
tionary traumas on both sides of the Atlantic, the tolerance for theories
of Africans’ inherent mental inferiority became a central assumption of
most scientists who focused on race as a principle determinant of human
behavior.12
This change in scientific mentality may best be observed in the writ-
ings of a monogenist, Georges de Cuvier. He was the dominant French
authority in comparative anatomy during the decades following the
French Revolution. In 1790 the young Cuvier was critical of authors who
proclaimed the inferiority of blacks and who likened them to other pri-
mates. A generation later, his own Animal Kingdom compared Negro fea-
tures to those of apes: “The hordes which compose this race,” he con-
cludes, “have always been savages.” Significantly, Cuvier’s English

78   

translators found it prudent to challenge this assessment of African ca-
pabilities and to insist on the overriding importance of education and
“moral” causes in human behavior.13
Cuvier’s editors were symptomatic of a broader consensus in the sci-
entific discourse on race in Britain. British physical anthropologists were
not only more moderate in their anti-Negro characterizations14 but also
quite conscious of their need to distance their racial theories from antia-
bolitionist implications. The preabolitionist hypothesizing of racial infe-
riority, in the manner of David Hume, had little scientific standing in the
generation after 1800. British racial analysts were less inclined to em-
phasize the sharpness of racial characteristics, and their writings were
more sympathetic to Africans than they had been before the 1780s.
From the perspective of science, James Cowles Prichard, closely asso-
ciated with the humanitarian movement, was Britain’s dominant figure
in racial science. In the three decades before his death in 1848, ethnology
probably could have been called “Dr. Prichard’s science.”15 In the first
edition of his Researches into the Physical Histotry of Man in 1813, Prich-
ard inferred that “the primitive stock of men were Negroes.”16 In later
contexts this might have been assumed to be a negative characterization
of Africans as primitive. But for Prichard and his Christian readers, such
originality implied affiliation to Adam rather than to apes. The first hu-
mans—“created in the image of their Maker—were black.”17 In later
editions, Prichard dropped this conclusion because linguistic research
made him less certain of his ability to trace all of the links back to the
original source. But he remained constantly aware of and hostile to at-
tempts to link racial differentiation to affirmations of radical inequality
and defenses of slavery. And it was Prichard, not Edward Long, who set
the agenda in racial science in the decades before emancipation. The
dominant figure in British anthropology during this period, Prichard
abandoned the eighteenth-century’s linkage of racial classification with
a traditionally conceived “great chain of being.” He emphasized the per-
fectibility of all human beings and insisted on the overlapping charac-
teristics of human groups. The usual “characters ascribed to the Negro”
were “distributed to different nations in a manner of ways, and combined
in each instance with more or fewer characters belonging to the Euro-
pean or Asiatic.”18
As early as 1795, when the evangelical movement was certainly less
powerful in Britain than it was to become in the early nineteenth century,
Charles White challenged the monogenist position with a series of lec-
tures entitled An Account of the Regular Graduations in Man. White, a
Manchester doctor, delivered his lectures in the first stronghold of popular
abolitionism, where he obviously felt freer to challenge monogenesis than
slavery. He outbid the abolitionists of 1795 by declaring himself in favor
of abolishing slavery itself throughout the world. White has often been

, ,   79

 cited to show that polygenists could be abolitionists, but it might be truer
to say that in an exposed theological position, the British scientist
wrapped himself in the mantle of popular ideology.19
More than two decades later, in the wake of Prichard’s Researches into
Physical History, William Lawrence also had to defend himself from
charges of unorthodoxy. Like White, he similarly claimed that his views
of white mental and moral preeminence were no barrier to humanitar-
ianism. He included a spirited attack on slavery and the slave trade in
his otherwise scientific lectures. Lawrence even softened his stereotype of
the “African Character” with a balancing list of African virtues, so that
their “moral inferiority” would not seem as deep as their “mental.”20
In Britain, resistance to such formulations of racial hierarchy also
came from activist missionaries, who associated themselves with a series
of ongoing activities for improving the lot of black slaves. Reverend Rich-
ard Watson’s sermon “Religious Instruction of Slaves in the West India
Colonies Advocated and Defended” was a prominent proponent of the
British “pro-African” defense. Watson’s strategy, reprinted and para-
phrased for decades, was to identify planters and racial scientists as twin
apologists for racial inequality. Humanitarian writers often ensnared
themselves in a theory of African cultural inferiority by the vehemence
of their own distaste for African customs and culture, as well as for
African slavery, but their commitment to antislavery made a difference
in their reaction to racial discourse. For two generations after the 1790s,
this difference was crucial for the political argument over slavery.21
The press strongly supported the prevailing tendency to marginalize
attributions of racial inferiority in general and its implications for anti-
slavery in particular. As enslavement was reimposed or thwarted by
bloody conflict in the French Caribbean in the early nineteenth century,
French racialist doctrines in particular could be treated as alien to British
sensibilities. English reviewers routinely scoffed at French authors who
published extreme forms of racialist doctrines of biological or mental
hierarchy. Occasionally, even British publications were chided by the press
for summarizing French proponents of such doctrines without an edito-
rial caveat. In the wake of the British victory over Napoleon and the
return of peace, even the most conservative British journals could view
black freedom in Haiti in a perspective that would have been difficult for
their French counterparts to adopt. In 1819, the Quarterly Review found
Haiti to be a “fair experiment,” which “completely set at rest that long
disputed problem of Negro inferiority by evincing the fallacy of those
theories which would place him in the lowest link of the chain of human
beings. . . . Such idle dreams ought long since to have vanished.” Com-
parative anatomy, concluded the reviewer in Prichardian fashion, had
long since demonstrated that mankind exhibited only one primitive type,
overlaid by differences that were skin deep. So malleable were these su-
perficial variations that three or four “crossings” would presumably un-

80   

twist the hair and blanch the skin. The Quarterly Review had no qualms
about invoking the authority of the “regicide” Abbé Gregoire, whose fa-
mous summary of outstanding blacks in modern history was proof of
African capacity for freedom. 22
British dismissiveness about inherent African inferiority tended to spill
over into discussions of emancipation. Abolitionists would routinely refer
to that “monstrous doctrine” as one encouraged by slaveholding. Even
those who were wary of abolitionists or fearful of any dramatic change
in the colonies expressed relief that one no longer heard “absurd” ar-
guments of supposed inferiority, which were finally overthrown by the
“torch of reason.” In other words, as in the previous generation’s debate
over the slave trade, those opposed to emancipation had to steer clear of
racial arguments. The taboo occured at every political level. In the great
series of investigations of the British slave system between the first Privy
Council hearings on the slave trade in 1788 and the parliamentary in-
quiries for six more decades over the dismantling of the old slave system,
one is struck by the minor role assigned to questions of inherent and
immutable differences between blacks and other human beings in the
imperial colonies. As Thomas Holt notes, all of the major planners of
emancipation in the administration, whatever their other differences,
avoided racialist interpretations of black behavior. They “insisted that
blacks showed the basic, innate traits of other human beings, that is,
that all human beings could be motivated by self-interest and the desire
for self-improvement.”23
Far from strengthening the the authority of natural science on this
question, the British debate over slavery tended to marginalize racial
analysis, insofar as it tended to imply inherent and inherited differences
in potential and behavior. In marked contrast to debates in the United
States during the generation before emancipation, appeals to race played
almost no role in the British parliamentary discussions of the slave trade
and slavery between the emergence of abolitionism in 1788 and the end
of the colonial apprenticeship system just sixty years later. In the final
debates over British emancipation in the House of Commons in 1833,
not a single MP argued for, or from, any racial incapacity of Africans. If
an emancipation-resistant conservative like Sir Robert Peel wished to give
any weight whatever to racial differences as an obstacle to the emanci-
pation bill, he had to emphasize the hostility of overseas whites toward
blacks in slave societies or the inadequate acculturation of British slaves
to British civilization. Any reference to the disabling characteristics of
blacks as natural or inherent was preemptively dismissed out of hand. In
introducing the government’s emancipation resolution, Edward Stanley
simply would “not credit what some people say about the Negro char-
acter.” No one dared to reopen the issue. Stanley did agree to consider
“what is said about the slave character” as “the effect of a tropical cli-
mate,” offering temptations to recur to “the primitive habits of savage

, ,   81

 life.” The emancipation debates would include grounds of climate and of
civilization, of place and pace, not race.24

I
With direct racial justification for slavery ruled out of political bounds,
scientific racism was kept at pen’s length by both sides in the debate over
slavery. Nevertheless, racial and ethnographic language remained en-
demic, and indeed critical, throughout the period. The last British slave
colonies were acquired during the French wars. Their relative agricultural
development was sharply curtailed by the ending of the transatlantic
slave trade and severe constraints on the British intercolonial slave trade.
Whereas theories of inherent mental or moral difference were muted
in discussions of British slavery before emancipation, the traditional
themes of differential immunity to disease opened a well-worn path to
advocates of the status quo in the tropics. Preabolitionist formulations of
racial differentiation had always drawn stronger support from evidence
of differential mortality than from theories of differential origin or mental
capacity. Long before they reached the Americas, Europeans had discov-
ered that their overseas compatriots died far more quickly than did natives
in Africa. The age of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, with
their unprecedented number of overseas European casualties, fortified
and systematized that perception. Ministers who dispatched large num-
bers of European troops to the Caribbean were as deeply impressed by
the deadly disease environment as they were by battlefield losses to Af-
rican or European military forces. Waves of epidemics swept through
European expeditionary forces in the Caribbean, and its deadly reputation
continued into the post-Napoleonic period. Troops sent from Britain to
the Mediterranean died at a slightly higher annual rate (20 to 25 per
1000) than those serving at or near home. In North America the mor-
tality rate rose to 34 per 1000. In the Caribbean that rate quintupled to
130 per 1000, and considerably higher in epidemic periods. After, as be-
fore, the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, West Africa remained what
it had always been—the white man’s grave—with military death rates
ranging from 150 to more than 250 per 1000 and beyond. From these
facts of death flowed a persistent argument that Africans were especially
capable of survival in the tropics for the labor extracted from them.25
The rise of political abolitionism in Britain initially tended to neutralize
climatoepidemic arguments used in favor of slavery and the slave trade.
At the very outset of the political debate, James Ramsay recalled that in
the early history of Barbados and the Leeward Islands whites were fully
capable of hard labor in the tropics. Early abolitionists also deftly used
the high-mortality data of British seamen in the slave trade as a policy
argument for ending that activity in Africa.26 Such an argument could

82   

boomerang as soon as one considered the epidemiology of the Europeans
in transatlantic tropics. As long as it was possible to do so with impunity,
it seemed easier to work Africans to the limits of endurance. Whites
merely “preferred killing Negroes to killing themselves” through slave
labor.27
The intensification of the political scrutiny by advocates against in-
humanity in the colonies undermined the usefulness of the “tropical”
argument for slavery. Those accumulating data on the slave system began
to break down the general mortality rates into disease-specific racial com-
parisons. If Africans seemed to be more resistant to yellow fever, they
suffered from a much higher infantile death rate from tetanus. But the
bottom line remained the population principle. Abolitionists focused on
the population deficit and the undeniable failure of African-born slaves
to sustain themselves in the West Indies. Antiabolitionists had to shift
their response away from proclaiming “natural” survivability to stressing
African behavioral patterns. After 1788, both sides had recourse to Af-
rican social characteristics as causally significant. Parliamentary inves-
tigating committees gave medical witnesses frequent opportunities to an-
swer to racially based questions of epidemiological susceptibility. A typical
question might be this: “Are the Negro slaves subject to any peculiar
diseases to which white inhabitants are not subject?” To such questions
most medical respondents replied in the negative. The remainder rarely
located increased susceptibility to disease in hereditary predispositions.
Diseases described as most peculiar to Negroes, for example, were yaws
and dirt eating. Abolitionist witnesses linked explanations for African vul-
nerability to harsh treatment or improper feeding. Apologists sometimes
asserted that dirt eating was a form of perverse resistance.
Doctors and surgeons significantly provided little foundation for ra-
cially based explanations on differential rates of survival. Some of those
who had been medical officers on slave ships rather provided Britain with
its most arresting and lurid descriptions of the crowded and filthy con-
ditions on board. Those horrific conditions served to account for the ab-
normally high death rate on the middle passage. Physicians in the West
Indies noted racial differentials in various diseases, but also concentrated
on social or environmental factors to account for tetanus, which seemed
to be a major cause of infant mortality. They called attention to infections
that arose from unsanitary bandaging of the navels of the newborn in-
fants by midwives or the exposure of newborns to the damp and cold by
their mothers. Some West Indians with experience in both the British
Caribbean and North America complicated the causal analysis. They
thought that infant tetanus was geographically rather than racially de-
lineated, testifying that they had never seen tetanus among infant slaves
in Georgia and South Carolina.28
Diseases that affected Africans less severely than Europeans were of
potentially equal interest in the slavery debates. Yellow fever seemed to

, ,   83

 provide an example of differential immunity that lent substance to
Charles White’s claims for racial differentiation as significant in the
choice of tropical labor. The French Revolution also reinforced the dis-
position to focus on bioenvironmental impacts on disease and death in
the Caribbean. By the end of the eighteenth century, British governments
were certainly led to conclude that West Africans and Caribbean blacks
were far less susceptible to the devastating epidemics of yellow fever,
which swept through European expeditionary corps in the West Indies.
By the mid-1790s, the British government reacted to the dual threat
posed by revolutionary ex-slaves from the French colonies and by epidem-
ics of yellow fever among British troops. They began the recruitment of
British West India regiments from colonial slaves and West Africans.29
However, the belief in racial immunity to yellow fever and malaria was
of more use to governmental agencies that were planning troop move-
ments than to defenders of slavery. Arguments for the relative immunity
of Africans to some diseases could do little to dissipate the evidence of
epidemics from intestinal diseases on slave ships. Race was clearly not an
absolute measure of susceptibilty. Blacks often contracted tropical dis-
eases. African Americans, sent to resettle Sierra Leone in the 1790s, per-
ished in considerable numbers. Above all, relative immunity from tropical
fevers could not address the inability of slaves to increase naturally in
the Caribbean.
In general, the population principle overrode the data on selective im-
munity to disease. It appeared doubly damning that slave populations
reproduced so miserably in the West Indies, where the climate and dis-
eases were apparently so similar to that of Africa, while slave populations
did so well in the temperate climate of the United States: even in states
with a severe winter climate, blacks sustained themselves better than did
the Caribbean population. Equally damning to the slave system was the
fact that in the Caribbean, free descendants of slaves “multiplied exceed-
ingly.”30 Selective immunity might be a strong card in determining selec-
tive military operations, in which the choice was between using Euro-
peans and Africans in an entirely nonreproducing institution such as the
military. It was less useful when the policy issue was a choice between
forced migration and reproduction or between coerced and uncoerced
labor.
In the eyes of most observers, the real peculiarity of the British plan-
tation system seemed to involve predominantly environmental, not
hereditary, factors. Planters argued that the combination of tropical ex-
uberance and plentiful land required coercion to facilitate the production
of commercial crops. This argument, as many slaveholders emphasized,
applied to all human behavior in the Americas. Freemen of any color
would not enter into the production of certain crops for the price of labor
at which slaves could be recruited from Africa. Both abolitionists and
their opponents preferred to argue in environmental terms.

84   

 II
The limited relevance of biological theories of distinction to the debate
over slavery was by no means characteristic of historical and cultural
comparisons between Europeans and Africans. The concepts of progress
and civilization that were derived from the perspectives of European his-
tory could be framed as long-term secular processes. Humanity was re-
imagined in historical terms as having passed through a lengthy series
of stages. As outlined by Smith, Turgot, and others, the earliest humans
were hunter-gatherers. Many human groups moved successively through
pastoral and agricultural stages. Material, intellectual, and moral pro-
gress was tied to corresponding changes in complex social organization.
Europeans and a very few other major human groups had reached the
commercial and manufacturing stages, the point at which its progress—
defined as civilization—could be conceived as a singular if globalizable
achievement.
Abolitionism emerged at almost the same time that the concept of
civilization acquired for the first time a quasi-scientific status. The iden-
tification of civilization as a relatively seamless process in Europe was
frequently challenged, but it retained its position as the prevailing view
of history in western Europe, into the nineteenth century, of both im-
perialism and abolitionism. Civilization implied a broad front of economic,
civil, and cultural improvement. Each socioeconomic stage was perceived
as a socioeducational experimental process, in which each stage was
more efficient, more rational, and more humane than its predecessor.31
Once again the transatlantic slave system presented just as jarring a
counterexample to the linear model of civilizational progress as it did to
the free labor ideology. Slavery in the European-dominated American set-
tlements was clearly a case of a discordant system of labor and civil
relations. It was firmly embedded at the periphery of the world’s most
progressive civilization. Civilization required the ultimate realignment, if
not the immediate alteration, of the peculiar institution. In terms of civ-
ilization, African “backwardness” presented less of a political and scien-
tific conundrum. Its deficiencies in literature, science, technology, fine
arts, architecture, and manners could be linked to self-sustaining slavery,
aggravated by the European slave trade. Western Europeans had a prob-
lem of slavery at the periphery of “their” orbit; Africans had the same
problem at their core. In keeping with the theory of civilization, African
barbarism was often regarded as a degeneration from the civilizational
standards of the ancient Africans, Egyptians, and other Mediterranean
societies of classical antiquity. In civilizational models, the causal links
were also considered to be environmental rather than racial. African ge-
ography was portrayed as a series of barriers to intersection with other
areas—the Sahara to the North, few natural harbors to the West, and

, ,   85

 poorly navigable rivers into the interior. Above all, climate deterred pro-
gress. The heat of the tropics slowed industriousness, and “tropical ex-
uberance” encouraged laziness. Their combination created a low-level,
low-subsistence trap. Politically the tropics offered a deadly combination
of ease and despotism.
From this perspective, the persistence of slavery in Africa was no more
problematic than its disappearance from northwestern Europe. Most of
sub-Saharan Africa was assessed as a case of arrested agricultural de-
velopment, not much above the hunting or pastoral stages of production.
Africa’s enervating climate and supposed ease of cultivation explained
both its easy entry into an agricultural stage and the corresponding dif-
ficulty of its exit. Embedded in a larger network of barbarism, slavery
was appropriate to its stage of agriculture, family and gender relations,
polity, economy, and religion. The great eighteenth-century Encyclopédie
epitomized much of this perspective in a entry toward the end of the
multivolume work—“Zone torride”: “The very sun seems to tyrannize
this world of slaves.” The myth of tropical exuberance not only domi-
nated European perspectives but also was to reach a peak of influence
during the age of British abolition. European writers did not place Afri-
cans in a uniquely unfavorable position among the uncivilized tropics,
but the frontier areas of the plantation Americas probably illustrated the
theory of tropical exuberance as well as any place in the world. Well into
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the last resort of anti-
emancipationist rationale continued to flow from the belief that accessible
and continuous labor, at competitive costs, could only be achieved in the
plantation zone by some form of coercion, not by any system of volun-
tarily contracted labor.32
As in the discussion of the free labor and the population principles,
debates over the malleability of tradition dominated the discussion of the
potential role of the civilizing principle in the abolition process.33 Western
Europe and some of its settler societies were consensually the most dy-
namic and rapidly changing areas of the world. Other peoples were more
static in their peculiar cultural and social configurations. The age of
abolition produced no radical shift in this perspective. Abolitionists and
defenders of slavery and the slave trade concurred on some aspects of
African and slave life. Many militant abolitionists insisted on the existence
of a broad range of evils in Africa, created not just by isolation but even
more by slavery, both Atlantic and African. Slavery impinged on their
analysis of Africa even when the image of pervasive coercion was bal-
anced by one of greater “civility” and culture in interior zones not dom-
inated by the Atlantic slave trade.
The great difference between British abolitionists and nonabolitionists
lay in the degree of confidence they expressed in the potential for rapid
social change in the African and African-American societies of the At-
lantic world. Abolitionists tended to emphasize both the essential distance

86   

between slavery and freedom and the possibility of a dramatic and rela-
tively quick metamorphosis from one condition into the other through
the mechanisms of law, faith and commerce. In linking all undesirable
cultural characteristics so tightly to the existence of slave systems, they
could correspondingly envision a more dramatic civilizing process after
abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the Afro-Atlantic than in any
other “backward” area of the globe.
Those hostile to or skeptical of abolition correspondingly emphasized
the futility of expecting any leap in civilization from the passage of ab-
olitionist measures. They tended to stress the world’s massive ratio of
bondage to freedom and its millennial duration, much as Adam Smith
and his generation had done. Skeptics echoed the sarcasm of the Earl of
Westmoreland. Addressing the House of Lords on the eve of the nine-
teenth century, he dismissed abolitionists as self-designated “emperors of
the world,” intoxicated with their own fantasies of redrawing latitudes
of freedom on the map of the globe. The sheer preponderance of bodies
in bondage throughout the world since the beginning of recorded history
would weigh on the British imagination well into the following century,
but the degree to which slavery was susceptible to change or the degree
to which its abolition would affect further change could only be deter-
mined in the realm of action.34

, ,   87

 6
   :
  
 

I f principles of race, economics, and demography all provided

ambiguous and contentious guides to the problem of overseas
slavery, another current of late eighteenth-century culture, experimen-
talism, seemed to promise an alternative means of closing the gap be-
tween the expanding slave world of the Americas and the civic ideal of
European liberty. Although the ideological and political development of
abolitionism has been most closely linked to the rationalist philosophy
and religious revivals of the late eighteenth century, the political debate
over slavery was tied from the outset to the rising prestige of experimental
science. Science provided potential mechanisms of social modulation in
a period of deep political stress. Respectable protectors of the status quo
included a broad range of economic and fiscal interests: West Indian
planters and their creditors, metropolitan merchants, holders of govern-
ment securities, and members of military and imperial institutions. Op-
ponents of slavery had fewer direct economic and imperial interests at
stake. Antislavery’s inimitable political power derived from its numbers
and from its consequent claim to dominate metropolitan public opinion.
Abolitionists could also occasionally, if gingerly, appeal to instances of
slave resistance, at least when they were followed by overreaction and
brutal suppression or attacks on metropolitan missionaries. In patterns
of expression, the economic language of supporters of the transatlantic
slave trade and the ideological language of its opponents were inverted
images of each other. One way of measuring those differences is to note
that it was almost as difficult for abolitionists to obtain interest-based
petitions in favor of their initiatives as it was for antiabolitionists to obtain
community-wide petitions against abolitionist’s initiatives.1

88
 In this asymmetrical contest between morality and business interests,
recourse to a common ground of discussion promised to reduce the in-
tensity of confrontations between irreconcilable formulations of policy
alternatives and imagined futures. An experimental perspective could also
be the means of less contentiously gaining mutual assent to overseas
change. It might shift the balance of support by those who were less
invested psychologically or economically in the issue than they were in
a process that “improved” society with the least possible stress on the
social system as a whole. During the five decades after the emergence of
British abolitionism, the ascription of experimentation to various changes
in Atlantic slavery functioned as an invitation to join a quest for social
scientific truths that might assure all the contestants a measured out-
come under controlled conditions. In no other area of British legislation
did the conscious construction of change, with allowances for feedback
and learning, appear to have as great a chance for success as in the issue
of slavery. For both fearful conservatives and cautious reformers there
was more room for social engineering overseas. The multitude of imperial
colonies and newly independent slave societies in the Americas could be
considered so many separate laboratories.
There was even a respectable intellectual tradition that envisioned the
colonies as affording exemplary lessons in the choice of labor systems.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the defeat of Georgia’s metro-
politan founders, who wanted to keep the colony free of slavery, was often
interpreted as an idealistic error that had been corrected in the light of
overseas realities. On the other hand, as early as 1772 a plan for free
labor settlement had been proposed for the new British province of West
Florida in order to create a competing model of social relations for South-
ern settlements. If free labor could demonstrably cultivate commercial
staples for export, the older colonies would abandon the institution. The
use of purchased and freed Africans could simultaneously demonstrate
the capacities of both free labor and Africans. It was originally planned
as a policy memorandum by a low-level colonial advisor, but its publi-
cation was stimulated by the sharp public discussion of the Somerset case
in 1772.2
With the intensification of the debate over the slave trade in the late
1780s, it became advantageous for abolitionists to begin listing examples
of earlier emancipations.3 “Success” could be framed in terms of a num-
ber of criteria: continuity of public order for the state, the maintenance
of labor; the success of economic activity for employers, and educational
development and the expansion of religion among ex-slaves. Any or all
of these criteria were deemed desirable outcomes. It became advanta-
geous to both sides in the debates over slavery to designate one or another
event or potential option as an “experiment” in social change. One of the
earliest cases to be designated an experiment was the collective repudi-
ation of slave trading and slaveholding by the Quakers in pre-

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 revolutionary North America. For pioneer abolitionists, the Pennsylvania
Quakers were credited with having “tried this experiment with complete
success” in terms of productivity, costs of reproduction, and profitability.
But the Quaker experiment was quickly marginalized by the opposition
to abolition. Neither the Quaker initiative nor any of the state emanci-
pations after 1780 in the American North was applicable to the planta-
tion Americas in crops, labor systems, and above all, the relative weight
of slave labor in the economy. Here one could easily invoke Adam Smith’s
already noted assessment against the relevance of Pennsylvania to soci-
eties more deeply invested in slavery.
In one major respect, the late eighteenth-century revolutions were a
boon to partisans of applied experimentalism. The upheavals set in mo-
tion by the American and French Revolutions provided new openings for
testing transitions from slavery to freedom. In the wake of the American
Revolution, thousands of slaves in North America were liberated by the
British and sent across the Atlantic. The first wave arrived in Britain at
the end of the American War of Independence. The second, larger wave
reached the coast of Africa, via Canada, nearly ten years later. 4 The
French Revolution produced a far larger freed population, which arose
from slave uprisings in the Caribbean. The slave revolutions in the Carib-
bean also opened up an unparalleled opportunity for free labor to enter
into direct competition with coerced labor in the production of crops that
were previously the products most advantageously cultivated by slaves.
The interruptions in cane cultivation during the St. Domingue uprising
in 1791 caused the price of sugar to surge upward. Coffee and cotton
prices also doubled. International, as well as British, demand increased.
In Paris sugar riots added to the revolutionary turmoil early in 1792. The
entire planet, inside and outside of the plantation zone, was a target
of public attention. Some hoped that New England’s maple sugar, pro-
duced by free labor, would fill the gap. Others, in northern England, hoped
that their native birch or a bounty to beekeepers would end the growing
shortage. Advertisements for “free labor” sugar from India appeared
throughout Britain. In this atmosphere a renewed venture in Africa itself
seemed destined by providence for successful competition with slave
labor.5
At the end of the American war, in 1783, a wave of poor overseas
African Americans had found themselves stranded in Canada and Britain.
Ineligible for relief in England under the terms of the English Poor Laws,
the black poor of London aroused the concern of both local philanthrop-
ists and governmental authorities. Their presence suggested the launch-
ing of a pilot project to establish a new zone of freedom in Africa. A free
black community would provide a model for the redemption of Africa
and the ending of the slave trade. Such an experiment in freedom prom-
ised to have a more profound historical influence on the fate of slavery
than the American Revolution.

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 The resettlement of the black poor of England in their “ancestral”
continent therefore promised to be far more than a solution for uprooted
vagrants and starving beggars. It became in the eyes of many of its
promoters, a socioeconomic experiment in the liberation of all Africa.
Faith in man’s potential to reconstitute the social order in Africa along
rational and scientific principles probably reached new heights in the
decade following the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783. Henry
Smeathman, an amateur English botanist, had been sent to West Africa
in the 1770s by Sir Joseph Banks to gather plants and insects in the
islands off the coast of Sierra Leone. In 1783, Smeathman published his
vision of a free commonwealth on the African coast. With an abundant
native population already on the spot, tropical products could be supplied
more cheaply to Europe than by expensively transported Africans in the
Americas. The West Indian planters could be driven from their dominant
place in the world market. The collapse of the Atlantic slave system would
bring freedom for slaves in both the New and the Old Worlds, with wealth
and glory for their peaceful liberators. Since a settlement, begun with
Europeans, would only perpetuate old European ways; poor blacks
stranded in England, supplemented by purchased and liberated Senega-
lese and voluntary settlers from the Atlantic islands, would form the core
of a new, free, and color-blind society.6
Granville Sharp, the most famous spokesman for black rights in
eighteenth-century England, prepared a founding charter for the new
colony, a “Province of Freedom,” on the coast of Sierra Leone. Ultimate
power was to reside in a colonial common council, providing for a degree
of direct democracy of householders unavailable to contemporary Britons
themselves. In Sharp’s charter, slaveholding was to be prohibited, but
local slaves might be purchased by the colonists from neighboring pop-
ulations. These liberated Africans would repay the expense of their re-
demption by five years’ labor at public works. Redemption contracts were
already operative in return for the passage of Europeans to North Amer-
ica. Sierra Leone was also to be a radical experiment in labor democracy.
Equal units of human labor time were to be the basis of exchange, of
taxation, and of allotments of land to settlers. Sharp hoped, as well, to
disprove the epidemiological assumptions about risks to white settlers in
tropical Africa. The Province of Freedom was launched as a multiracial
settlement of Europeans, African Americans, and Africans. In the spring
of 1787, more than 400 passengers sailed from England in British naval
vessels to Sierra Leone. For various reasons, including crop failure, local
hostility, and settlers’ flight, the first colonization effort ended in disaster.7
Two more West African colonization efforts were launched in the early
1790s. The most important one was managed by the government-
chartered Sierra Leone Company. The principal directors of the company
were leading philanthropists, some of whom had sponsored relief for poor
blacks in London and the failed first settlement. The new chartered col-

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 ony was constituted with a distribution of power closer to contemporary
mercantilist models. Thirty shareholders petitioned Parliament for incor-
poration to form a chartered company, with title to land to be granted
to settlers at Sierra Leone. The directors requested a period of exclusive
trading rights in the area, a public grant for a fort and soldiers, and
plenary power to make laws until the settlement was firmly established.
The rationale for the enterprise was that an efficient and economically
competitive colony would have greater chances for success than Sharp’s
labor democracy. Africa would instead be civilized by competitive trade.
The slave trade was to be prohibited within the colony’s jurisdiction. The
new company’s mercantile profits and success would undermine slavery
in an ever-widening competitive arc beyond the core zone of what was
to be protected, “legitimate” trade.
Using standard antimonopoly arguments, African slave traders peti-
tioned against the Sierra Leone Company’s bid for exclusive trade. The
company’s entrepreneurs countered by shifting their emphasis from a
trading monopoly framework to a plan with free labor cultivation. The
early labor force consisted of a few survivors of the Province of Freedom,
about 100 Europeans, and a large number of black Loyalists from Amer-
ica who had first been settled in Nova Scotia. Agricultural production of
tropical staples by free labor was to be the primary economic basis of the
new colony.8 The colony’s settlers included two men of science. Adam
Afzelius, a naturalist, was to begin a botanical garden to test and nurture
food and commercial crops; Thomas Winterbottom, a physician, was to
study tropical medicine. He became the pioneer ethnographer of West
Africa and contributed to the antiracist scientific tradition that dominated
British racial science during the first third of the nineteenth century.9
British parliamentary approval for the new company was directly re-
lated to the debate over the slave trade. In April 1791, William Wilber-
force, one of the principal investors in the Sierra Leone Company, made
his first motion for the abolition of the British slave trade. Despite the
combined support of the prime minister and the leader of the opposition,
the bill was defeated by a margin of nearly two to one. Two weeks later,
Parliament overwhelmingly voted to charter the free labor colony in Af-
rica, under the auspices of the Sierra Leone Company. This was done
despite the hostility of the Liverpool slave traders and the West India
interest, both genuinely apprehensive about the effects of a free labor
colony on their own enterprises. The parliamentary supporters of the
Sierra Leone bill openly acknowledged that the subscribers, “partly from
public spirit and partly from speculation, had embarked a portion of their
fortunes in a commerce for the natural produce of Africa.” Other met-
ropolitan capitalists, however, even some who had vigorously opposed the
Slave Trade Abolition Bill as an unacceptable interference in international
commerce, also welcomed the African venture as an opportunity to test
the abolitionist’s hypothesis that free labor would prove more profitable

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than slave labor. If Parliament remained dubious about legislatively abol-
ishing the slave trade, it was ready to sanction an economic competitor
to slavery should that alternative prove viable and profitable. Thomas
Clarkson understood that the passage of the act was both a compensatory
gesture for the rejection of abolition and a signal that Parliament was
neither committed to slave labor overseas nor opposed to the emergence
of new and free labor sources for tropical staples.10
The Sierra Leone Company envisioned its own venture as part of a
head-to-head competition between cultivation by free labor in Africa and
slavery in the West Indies. Although the directors did not look forward
to spectacular profits, their employers were instructed that their main
and immediate priority was commercial viability. Sugar was selling at
prices that had not been offered for almost a century. The Sierra Leone
venture was soon so heavily subscribed that abolitionists boasted of
having to take precautions to see that West Indians did not attempt to
obtain a substantial share of the capital. Company directors and the gov-
ernor felt that an ideal, perhaps divinely ordained, opportunity had been
offered to them. The English press was also filled with high hopes for
more cotton or sugar from West Africa. The optimism was echoed in
York, Manchester, Northampton, Norwich, Chester, Derby, Shrewsbury,
Reading, and Leeds. By the end of March, 1792 £200,000 had already
been subscribed and the company announced the termination of sub-
scriptions.11 Expectations for Sierra Leone, as for other tropical ventures,
rested on the environmental premise of “tropical exuberance.” The di-
rectors reasoned that Africa’s natural fertility would enable the colony to
compete with West Indian planters, who had to bear the costs of pur-
chasing and transporting an abused, debilitated, and demoralized labor
force from the very area in which the company was establishing its col-
ony.12
The Sierra Leone experiment managed to endure through enormous
initial difficulties, including internal strife, heavy mortality, and a dev-
astating French raid in 1794. The list of plants designated for culture at
Sierra Leone during the first two decades of its existence included sugar,
cotton, coffee, pepper, rice, tobacco, cinnamon, guinea-grass, and man-
goes. Aside from the difficulties of drought and pests, however, the chief
complaint of the governors and directors turned out to be the difficulty
of obtaining steady farm labor, either from white or black settlers or from
native Africans. Successive waves of migrants from England, Nova Scotia,
and Jamaica all failed to meet the directors’ expectations and hopes. As
early as the late 1790s, the company was no longer thinking in terms of
profits, either from local agriculture or more distant trade. A decade after
its launching, the company’s entire capital had fallen by over 90 percent
from its early subscription days of 1791–1792.13
When, on the verge of bankruptcy, the Sierra Leone Company peti-
tioned for the colony’s transfer to the crown in 1807, it acknowledged

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 its inability to compete with the slave traders. In the reasons for retention
of the colony, its economic value and potential were not mentioned. The
only hope was that the closing of the slave trade might remove “the want
of a regular supply of labourers,” at that point “far below the demand.”14
A year before the company’s petition, the government had already con-
templated breaking up the colony to reinforce its black West India regi-
ments. The abolitionists’ rationale for the colony’s existence now veered
sharply away from its initial status as a staple-producing rival to slave
labor. The company’s violations of free labor principles had indeed be-
come one of the many charges laid against Sierra Leone’s managers.
Maintenance of the colony was now defended in strictly humanitarian
terms, as a residence for the resettled black victims of the American
Revolution and of slaves rescued by British warships from the African
slave trade.15
The abolitionists’ strategy became permanently defensive. Responding
to increasingly sarcastic attacks, they stated that the experiment had
proven that the people of Africa were capable of free labor and self-
sustaining cultivation. In the turmoil of the early 1790s, the colony could
be defended as an incomplete and interrupted experiment, not yet put to
a fair trial. Its defenders could promise that favorable data would soon
be forthcoming. Antiabolitionists, on the other hand, were relentless in
their close attention to evidence of the total commercial failure of the
company. In Parliament they took meticulous notice of the precipitous
slide in the annual par value of the company’s shares before 1807. Above
all, they yearned to close the books on the project and so designate it as
a fully failed experiment.16 Whatever the lines of reasoning on either
side, after 1807 it was clear that the abolitionists silently distanced them-
selves from the idea of Sierra Leone as a labor experiment in direct com-
petition with West Indian slavery.
When the British government undertook control of the already heavily
subsidized and bankrupt colony in 1807, its status as a humanitarian
haven for freed slaves was confirmed. Despite the high overhead costs of
maintenance, it was arguably cheaper for the state to pay for its contin-
uance as a refuge than to create a new asylum somewhere else on the
African coast. Sierra Leone was henceforth defended as a successful non-
economic experiment. The very existence of the colony proved that an
orderly society could be maintained in Africa without reliance on either
slavery or the slave trade. The subsidy, however, meant that Sierra Leone
could no longer stand as an experiment in competitive cultivation of a
tropical staple. Just as its predecessor had been scorned by detractors as
an abolitionist “experiment” in quasi-forced migration and high mortality,
so the second colony remained a persistent political target of antiaboli-
tionists’ taunts throughout the age of emancipation. Supporters of the
colony continued to search for an agricultural crop that could form the
basis for a full integration of West Africa into the world market.17

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 Legitimate trade in the hands of the company was also not much of
a success. The idea of using African colonization as a rapid means of
economically undercutting the slave trade and New World slavery was
shelved for more than a generation. Before 1815 the company blamed its
commercial difficulties on the continuation of the slave trade, wartime
losses, ill-disposed and ungrateful labor, and poorly located plantations.
Whatever the reasons, the results were deeply discouraging. As an orig-
inally enthusiastic planter, with faith in free labor, finally put it, “When
they make a hogshead of sugar there [Sierra Leone], I will engage to do
the same at Charing Cross.”18
William Allen, a Quaker chemist and businessman and fellow of the
Chemical Society, made extensive efforts to encourage settlers in Sierra
Leone to produce and market tropical commodities during the decade
after the government adopted the settlement as a Crown Colony in 1808.
His correspondence with the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone and Captain
Paul Cuffe, an American man of color, shows that the colonists tried
their hands at a wide variety of commodities: cotton, pepper, coffee, and
rice. Beyond these Allen suggested that corn, tobacco, and indigo should
also be grown—anything that required processing (i.e., yielded value-
added). None of the crops succeeded in reaching a commercial scale of
exports. Sugar was never even mentioned as a possibility by either Allen
or his African correspondents.19
No major staple crop emerged. It would have been possible for aboli-
tionists to categorically assert that Sierra Leone’s difficulties stemmed
from its lack of natural resources or a willing free labor supply. Only with
the greatest reluctance, however, did they relinquish the idea of Sierra
Leone as an experiment that would, at some point or other, prove the
superiority of free labor. The abolitionists quietly dropped all discussion
of large-scale plantation experiments in Sierra Leone and looked toward
some variant of small-plot cultivation by peasants.
Within months of the passage of the abolition act, the bankrupt com-
pany formally requested that the British government take over full re-
sponsibility for the colony and its expenses. Members of Parliament who
opposed the transfer noted that the project had already cost the govern-
ment more than £900,000 in subsidies, in addition to the vanished pri-
vate capital. No MP argued for Crown Colony status on the grounds that
the settlement could somehow match the Caribbean as a producer of
sugar, much less as a rival of the slave Americas as a whole. Rather,
supporters of colonization now argued only that most of the expended
funds were justifiable as a rescue operation. The British were, they in-
sisted, morally obliged to sustain both the voluntary black refugees from
Nova Scotia and the rebel Jamaican Maroons who had been forcibly de-
ported to Africa.
Parliament was admonished not to think in terms of what the African
colony could do for Great Britain but what Great Britain must do for

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 Africa. The financial failure of the company could not be allowed to block
the ultimate and higher mission of the colony—the civilization of hu-
mankind. If the colony’s difficulties could be attributed principally to the
proximity of the slave trade, that trade’s complete abolition at some future
point would logically herald a new era of prosperity.
Others, who did not expect any more from the “civilizing” than the
“capitalist” project, were resigned to supporting Sierra Leone simply be-
cause it was the cheapest alternative mode of maintaining the Nova Sco-
tians and the Maroons. The anticolonialist position was that Sierra Leone
was a form of outdoor relief for relatives of the Saints, the abolitionist
political elite. That argument proved to be politically less potent than the
humanitarian obligation of providing a homeland for the uprooted ex-
Americans. But the shifting of Sierra Leone from the capitalist to the
welfare side of the imperial ledger was clear to both sides. Rather than
regarding the Nova Scotian settlers as a fortuitous addition to the free
labor force, as they had done early in 1792, the abolitionists rhetorically
recategorized them as a charity charge on the resources of the empire.
The role of Europeans continued to be a matter of sharp dispute. Their
mortality and morbidity rates in Sierra Leone remained analogous to
what had prevailed in the earlier Province of Freedom.20
Sierra Leone’s status as a failed economic experiment did not end with
its change of legal status. During the following decade, some of the col-
ony’s employees were accused of participating in the slave trade, of sanc-
tioning coerced labor, and of constraining the free movement of labor
and trade. Opponents even insisted that Sierra Leone remained as much
a clandestine nest of the slave trade as under the company’s rule. Abo-
litionists continued to respond that international war, the slave trade, and
internal dissension still precluded the experiment from getting a fair trial.
Until the defeat of Napoleon, the obstacles of war and the slave trade
allowed defenders to discount present results while awaiting future ful-
fillment.21 Even before the end of the conflict, Britain’s expanding role in
attempting to end the international slave trade introduced a new and
powerful rationale for Sierra Leone’s continued existence: it was neces-
sary to establish an asylum for Africans aboard slave ships intercepted
by British naval patrols.
In other respects there was a good deal of continuity in the manage-
ment of the colony. The African Institution, founded in 1808, combined
the roles of abolitionists of the slave trade and the Sierra Leone lobby.
For antiabolitionists and those hostile to budgetary waste, the African
colony was a grave of Europeans, a drain on the imperial treasury, and
a failed experiment—even in philanthropy. The company’s early sanction
of forced labor as a means of procuring and training workers briefly
opened up a controversy in Africa and the West Indies over the use of
that labor, dubbed “Apprenticeship.” Although the controversy subsided
by 1820, battles over the boundaries of slavery and freedom in Africa

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would continue. Ministers retreated to minimalism, wearily noting that
“whatever might be thought of the propriety of an establishment like
Sierra Leone,” it was, at worst, an indispensable port of debarkation for
captured victims of the slave trade and, at best, a potential “nucleus of
African civilization.” Defenders of Sierra Leone were eager to keep it out
of all discussions of slavery. Its population was clearly more dependent
than the West Indies on government subsidies. In contrast to African
captives landed in Cuba and Brazil, Sierra Leone’s “recaptives” did not
maintain themselves or depend on local support. Instead it cost the British
government £30,000 for the “maintenance of those very captured ne-
groes who are said to maintain themselves.”22
Hostile members of Parliament also assailed Sierra Leone with the
favorite abolitionist weapons of the preemancipation decade—the popu-
lation principle. Time and again, antiabolitionists returned to the “fatal-
ity” of Sierra Leone, even for blacks, and to the consequent rationality
of discontinuing the colony altogether. When emancipation in the British
colonies became a serious political possibility in the early 1820s, Sierra
Leone was quickly cited as evidence of a subsidized failure in free labor
and a portent of things to come. It was irresistible for antiabolitionists to
target a colony once hailed by Wilberforce as the “morning star beaming
on the breast of Africa,” now become a “charnel house of Europeans”
and a “kidnappers’ den” for African slave traders. More serious for abo-
litionists was the fact that even Radical journals seemed to emphasize its
failure, even in essays dedicated to smashing other defenses of slavery.
Despite the mercantile and ameliorating purposes of its founders, it was
no exception to the Radical charge that demoralization had been the
result of European contact in many areas of the world.23
Probably the most sustained parliamentary attack on the colony was
undertaken soon after the first popular mobilization for gradual eman-
cipation in 1823. James MacQueen, one of the principal polemicists for
the West Indian interest, launched a pamphlet war over government ex-
penditures in Sierra Leone. The attack ranged from operating a killing
field for vulnerable white Europeans to sustaining both an immoral col-
ony and the immoral profits of Zachary Macaulay and his family. The
Times joined the war of hyperbole against the government’s retention of
a costly grave for British subjects by calling it “a school for the civilization
of negroes.”24
One Macaulay responded at length to Macqueen’s charges. He offered
a detailed deconstruction of the categories entered into the Sierra Leone
account, shaving off millions and hundreds of thousands at a time. Mor-
tality and morality were addressed with care. Regarding one of Mac-
queen’s charges, Macaulay responded in a lower key, confining himself
to a single dependent clause: “Mr. Macqueen may sneer at the agriculture
of Sierra Leone, as being confined, in a great degree, to the cultivation
of provisions: and it is undoubtedly a matter of regret that the raising

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 of produce, having exchangeable value in Europe, has not been more
attended to. Yet all must allow that it is no small matter if a colony
produces an ample supply of food for its own population.”25 The reply
was a sturdy compliment to the self-sufficiency of liberated recaptives. As
a message to masters of slaves in the West Indies it was the opposite of
reassuring.
After five years of parliamentary sniping and threatening motions to
reconsider the expediency of British withdrawal from Sierra Leone, the
prominent Radical Joseph Hume launched a major attack in 1830, on
the eve of the first mass campaign for the immediate abolition of British
colonial slavery. For Hume, Sierra Leone was an empirically rich experi-
ment. More than four decades’ worth of economic and demographic data
had accumulated. Of the colony’s first 440 settlers in 1787, 360 had died
within the first two years. After its resettlement in 1792, a large propor-
tion of the colonists, Nova Scotian blacks, as well as European whites,
had also died. Thereafter, the ratio of survivors to the proportion of mi-
grants remained dismal. Hume’s cost analysis was a fraction of Mac-
queen’s but expensive enough. Considering the expenditure of “nearly
three millions of money” and “evils so dreadful that he would not shock
the House by reading them,” Hume threw the population principle into
the balance against the whole venture. According to official colonial fig-
ures, “the number of free Blacks, including the liberated slaves was
11,500,” setting aside 6,000 military personnel and other temporary set-
tlers. From 1826 through 1828, 8,000 additional people, mostly recap-
tured slaves, had been brought into the colony. Even without “natural”
increase, the population should have reached between 25,000 and 26,000
by the end of the 1820s. Yet 9,000 to 10,000 had actually died, leaving
the colony’s population in 1828 at 17,068, less than it had contained in
1826. Hume offered the same bottom-line analogy applied by abolitionists
to the West Indian colonies. Sierra Leone, with its annual death rate of
160 per 1,000, ranked below that of any contemporary British slave col-
ony. Its deficit made it rank it below every one of the Caribbean slave
colonies, even at the height of their eighteenth-century dependency on
the slave trade.
Hume turned to the colony’s economy. Neither imports nor exports
amounted to more than £150,000, extremely low totals per inhabitant
compared with contemporary British West Indian figures. He inverted the
strongest welfare argument for Sierra Leone—as an asylum for the lib-
erated Africans. Blacks sent to the colony “perished nearly as fast as
whites.” Any alternative island off the coast of Africa, he suggested, or
some arrangement with Haiti would be preferable. For one Radical, the
Sierra Leone experiment was finished. Colonization had been tried for
twenty years as a private enterprise and for twenty years as a government
venture. “That was enough for a fair trial; and, as it had failed,” Hume

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now moved a resolution—“that it was expedient to adopt measures for
withdrawing the settlement of Sierra Leone.”26
Thomas Fowell Buxton, the parliamentary leader of the abolitionists,
responded. He agreed “that the experiment of Sierra Leone had failed,”
but he objected to Hume’s finality. The population was not “so totally
destitute of industry” as Hume represented it to be. Buxton steered clear
of Hume’s appeal to the principle of population, the abolitionist’s strong
suit. He shifted the grounds of argument, as many West Indians had
done before 1807, to epidemiological factors and policy errors. The cli-
mate was unhealthy. The government was to blame for mortality failures
in “not restricting military personnel to black or brown men.” The West
Indian advantage in mortality was finessed with a compliment to the
moral management of the military in the Caribbean: “The troops sent to
Sierra Leone were generally of dissolute habits, and those of the West
Indies were in the highest state of discipline.” What Buxton gave to gov-
ernment on one side of the ocean he withdrew on the other. His most
startling move was to invert the welfare argument. To save the colony,
abolitionists were now prepared to charge the government with excessive
benefits. Much of the failure at Sierra Leone could be inferred, not from
climate, race, or insufficient military discipline, but from too much money
spent on the black population, depriving people of their incentives to
work. At the same time, Buxton curiously found one category of trade
most relevant to his rebuttal. He insisted that the proportion of West
African imports per government expenditure was higher than in the West
Indies. Government largess had spoiled the blacks but spared the mer-
chants. That, at least, was to be credited to the Sierra Leone experiment,
although most of the actual credits had gone to the Macaulays. John
McCulloch added the authority of academic political economy to the par-
liamentary chorus. His Dictionary of Commerce in 1832 designated the
colony as a disaster. As a habitat for humanity, it was “the most pestif-
erous of all pestiferous places.” As a colony, it was a “prodigious” public
burden, even estimating the cost at half of Macqueen’s £16 million. Even
as a project in civilization, McCulloch found Sierra Leone unsatisfactory.27
Antislavery’s antagonists sensed that the abolitionists’ enormous in-
vestment in the population principle made Sierra Leone’s demography
their most valuable weapon. For twenty years before 1807, the abolition-
ists had insisted that the high mortality of seamen was one unanswerable
reason for withdrawing Britons from the African slave trade. It was not
very difficult to turn this mortality principle against the abolitionists in
the twenty-five years after 1807. One could compare gentlemen gover-
nors, as well as rank-and-file troops. Buxton’s opponents challenged him
to compare the mortality of British officials in Sierra Leone with any
cohort’s mortality in any part of the West Indies. The coast that had
long been the grave of British seamen had also become the grave of

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 British soldiers, clergymen, and civilians. Abolitionists could only reply
that European mortality rates in the slave colonies and Sierra Leone were
not comparable. They focused their appeal not on the population principle
but on the welfare principle. What was the practical alternative to Sierra
Leone? Uprooting 17,000 liberated Africans and British subjects would be
enormously expensive, as well as utterly inhumane. The British were
stuck with the colony. They had established it and were bound in good
faith to keep it.
When all else failed, it was shame, not science, that silenced all but a
few like the stubborn Hume. Cornered by empirical findings, abolitionists
found that the slave trade was a stronger card than science. They pointed
out that some of their erstwhile enemies were just trying to avenge their
former humiliation in the slave trade debates of 1807. Who could credit
arguments coming from speakers “who had formerly been anxious to
perpetuate in this country the eternal disgrace of the slave trade,” even
at a time when “with the exception of twenty Members, the whole of
that House was unanimous for the abolition of the Slave Trade.” Only
such men could be shameless enough to criticize the asylum of the
wretched recaptives in Sierra Leone.28 The colony survived Joseph
Hume’s assault, but Sierra Leone literally disappeared as experimental
evidence for free labor in the great debates over emancipation.

I
Within a few months of Parliament’s decision to establish a zone of free-
dom in Africa, a far larger and far more explosive transition from slavery
to freedom occurred in the Caribbean. In August 1791 the most massive
and successful uprising in the history of slavery broke out in French St.
Domingue, a colony with well over 400,000 slaves. For most British ab-
olitionists, St. Domingue in the 1790s was not a very likely experimental
model. Emancipation occurred outside European control and in defiance
of all subsequent attempts by British, Spanish, and French armies to
suppress the revolution. While the British government might sanction a
small experiment in freedom at a remote fringe of West Africa, the same
government was expanding the British Caribbean slave system in the
1790s, at an enormous cost in lives and treasure. British power was being
used to reverse emancipation in the French colonies.29 The element of
control, so central to the experimental concept, was less appropriate to
Haiti than to any other colonial settlement in the world. Only after the
total failure of French reconquest in 1802–1803 and the political stabi-
lization of the successor regime did Haiti’s potential as a free labor ex-
periment, rather than as a revolutionary threat, begin to be entertained
in Britain.

100   

 The first black nation in the Americas was first and foremost a military
threat—“the experiment of a black nation possessed of European tactics
and of arts which have never visited the deserts of Africa . . . —is now
fairly at issue.”30 As soon perceived by early nineteenth-century British
observers, the British slave colonies had little to worry about from Haitian
economic competition. With each passing year after independence, ob-
servers noted that Haitian exports did not recover their prerevolutionary
position. Many considered that Haiti’s combination of revolutionary de-
struction, resistance to plantation labor, and continuing internal disorder
made it an unlikely model for European imitation. James Stephen, the
Saints’ most informed and authoritative expert on the Caribbean, strongly
agreed. In 1802, as he observed the diminished exports of staples from
revolutionary St. Domingue and Guadeloupe, Stephen anonymously an-
ticipated a permanently diminished output. From his personal experience
in the Caribbean, he had a “clear conviction, that such cheapness of labour
is by no means to be expected from the voluntary industry, however great, of
negroes in a state of freedom, as now excites the enterprise and splendidly
rewards the success of the planter, in places where slavery is established.”31
For another decade after its devastating defeat of Napoleon’s army of
reconquest, Haiti’s twin image as a potential revolutionary example to
the Caribbean and as a potential victim of French reconquest still dom-
inated British discussions of the new black republic. There was little cog-
nitive space for the experimental perspective. The end of the Napoleonic
wars, however, ushered in a renewed abolitionist concern over France’s
continuance of the slave trade and its plans for another recolonizing
expedition. Only after 1815, when fears of French reconquest subsided,
could British discussion of Haiti focus primarily on its long-term potential
for economic growth and civilization.
As the post-Napoleonic world turned toward peace, some of those who
had initially been most deeply skeptical about the cultivation of planta-
tions by free labor found the prospects of Haitian civilization an exhila-
rating prospect. Joseph Banks wrote with scientific enthusiasm to William
Wilberforce: “To see a sort[sic] of Human beings emerging from slavery
& making most Rapid Strides towards the perfection of Civilization, must
I think be the most delightful of all Food for Contemplation.”32 Even the
Tory Quarterly Review waxed enthusiastic about Haiti in April 1819. Care-
fully distinguishing between the desirable government of northern Haiti,
ruled by King Henri Christophe, and the mulatto-ruled republic to the
south, the Quarterly Review praised monarchical Haiti’s order and its
flourishing finances, schooling, and husbandry. Haiti could be the har-
binger of the “general emancipation of the negro race” and the model
of free labor agriculture.33 Although the monarchy ended with Chris-
tophe, Haiti finally seemed pacified under the regime of President Boyer.
In 1824 France recognized Haitian independence in return for a negoti-

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 ated compensation. The context was propitious for a shift of emphasis to
the socioeconomic results of Haitian independence. Haiti could now be
examined as a “great experiment” in freedom.
From the abolitionist’s perspective, the most significant outcome of
the slaves’ revolution was measurable in terms of the population prin-
ciple. Old regime St. Domingue had been analogous to its colonial neigh-
bors in its net annual surpluses of deaths over births. Yet despite tumul-
tuous decades of revolution, war, mass emigrations, and civil violence,
Haiti’s population had actually risen above its 500,000 in 1790. Buxton’s
opening parliamentary speech for gradual emancipation, in 1823, casu-
ally observed that 800,000 Haitian blacks now enjoyed “all the blessings
. . . which freedom gives.” Seven years later, when Buxton again returned
to demographics, he proudly contrasted the British slave colonies with
Haiti. It had passed the all-important test of the population principle. Its
numbers, he claimed, had increased from 423,000 in 1804 to 935,000
in 1831. Under freedom, Haiti seemed to be a magnificent vindication of
Mathus’s thesis. Buxton also emphasized the inverse correlation between
the end of sugar production in postrevolutionary Haiti and the change
of population trends from deficit to dramatic surplus. The primary cause
of the excessive mortality of slaves was therefore excessive labor in
sugar.34
Contrary to their use of population figures in Sierra Leone, opponents
of emancipation did not focus on Haiti’s demographic performance. The
Quarterly Review, voicing opposition to rapid change in the British Carib-
bean, challenged just those estimates of the black nation’s population in
which the Whig Edinburgh Review delighted. Antiabolitionists insisted that
Buxton had inflated Haitian figures by as much as 100 percent. Haiti
itself contributed to the debate. President Boyer’s census officially set the
population at more than 900,000. Antiabolitionists responded by chal-
lenging the reliability of the republic’s census. Nevertheless, the new na-
tion, allowing for any reasonable margin of error, had clearly achieved
positive natural growth since independence in 1804. The population
growth of the British slave colonies, by Britain’s own official registration
statistics, was clearly negative.35
The slave interest’s tactical response was to deploy Haitian economics
against Haitian demographics. Haiti’s complete failure to produce sugar
for export after independence was an empirically verifiable demonstration
that free labor was incompatible with the continuation of large-scale
sugar production. The postrevolutionary decline of all of Haiti’s staple
exports seemed equally undeniable. Even allowing for the abolitionists’
most optimistic, and disputed, export figures, no antiabolitionist had dif-
ficulty in demonstrating that St. Domingue had been the world’s premier
exporter of sugar in 1791.36 By the mid-1820s, Haiti’s sugar and cotton
exports had nearly ceased. The total value of Haitian exports was worth
less than half that of Cuba, a slave-importing country. Thus the aboli-

102   

tionists’ citation of population growth could quickly be used by their
opponents to emphasize the economic decline of Haiti.37 The more rap-
idly Haiti’s free labor population grew, the smaller became its exports per
capita.
Only coffee production had survived, but even Haiti’s still substantial
coffee export figures could be converted into an attack on free labor su-
periority. Detractors claimed that if Haiti’s new Rural Code made the
republic something more than a slave labor economy, it remained some-
thing less than a free peasant economy. Was coffee production sustained
primarily by the coercion of the Rural Code? Had Haitian labor become
too free to grow sugar but too coercive to be called free labor?38 In 1827,
West Indian propagandists briefly made much of the coercive provisions
in Haiti’s new Rural Code. Abolitionists quickly responded by referring to
sanctions listed in Blackstone’s Commentaries against vagabondage and
breaches of contract in England. Presumably, some forms of labor coer-
cion were neither incompatible with civic freedom nor confined to the
Caribbean. Nevertheless, abolitionists were obviously uncomfortable in
discussing coerced labor at home. They self-protectively added, “We are
not bound, neither are we disposed, to bestow any laudatory epithets
either on [these laws of England] or on the corresponding clauses of the
Haytian Code” or on their “humanity.”39
If Haiti could not be used as an all-purpose experiment, abolitionists
were momentarily grateful to have at least one major example of a co-
hesive, orderly postslave society that was surviving on its own. Because
of its economic weaknesses, however, Wilberforce deemed it “better to
keep Haiti in the background, till it is better able to stand on its own
legs.” When Wilberforce published a list of “industrious” formerly slave
societies in his first plea for emancipation in 1823, Haiti was absent.
Clarkson, too, remained uneasy about Haiti as the economic counter-
arguments accumulated.40
By the time the government introduced the Slave Emancipation Bill in
1833, Haiti had been devalued as a good experimental precedent. Aboli-
tionists conceded that Haiti was not a favorable example of postemanci-
pation society in the terms that Parliament was discussing. Stephen Lu-
shington called on the ever skeptical Joseph Hume to offer “a single
instance in which emancipation, attempted on a just, wise and deliberate
principle, had failed”, but the challenger preemptively ruled Haiti out of
the discussion. Lushington said he was not speaking “of emancipation
by the bloody revolution of St. Domingo—not of emancipation com-
menced at a time when the principles of revolutionary France were
spread over that ill-fated colony.” Emancipation had never failed “when
the experiment had been properly conducted.” Admiral Fleming, the par-
liamentary abolitionists’ most important eye-witness expert on circum-
Caribbean labor, acknowledged that Haitians no longer produced sugar
commercially. He emphasized the contentment of the peasantry. With his

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 own eyes, he had seen them clad, fed, and working in their fields, “being
the happiest negroes in the West Indies.”41
The abolitionists were clearly less comfortable about the Haitian “ex-
periment” than any other New World case raised in the debates. Conser-
vative leader Sir Robert Peel targeted the key distinction between those
who welcomed and those who feared contentment as a measure of suc-
cess. Contentment might be relevant if the object “was to raise up twenty
St. Domingos, but their object was not to abandon, but to continue, the
cultivation of sugar, to enable the white population to remain in the
colonies, and to set the example of order and industry to the blacks. If
the plan should fail . . . our colonies might all be reduced to the same
state as Saint Domingo.” Peel loftily abstained from “detailing the atroc-
ities” of St. Domingo, thereby, of course, calling attention to them. He
found temporarily emancipated Guadeloupe sufficient to make his point.
Following Peel’s lead, West Indians framed the issue as “whether the
slothful and degraded state of the population in St. Domingo” was to be
the fate of “our colonies by immediate emancipation.”42
The debate over Haiti thus offered a deeply mixed message to policy-
makers and commentators. Both sides appealed to the revolution’s out-
come because the implications of Haitian freedom were bivalent. The
chief value of the black republic for abolitionists lay less in its economic
performance than in its persistence as the ineradicable example of free-
dom amid Caribbean slavery. The planters always began with the indelible
fact of vanished sugar exports and insisted on the overwhelming odds
against the continuity of sugar production in the British islands. What
West Indians saw as the danger of reversion to African barbarism or
tropical indolence abolitionists envisioned as a rational response, made
by free men. If well-fed and rapidly reproducing Haitians, like Britons,
had to import sugar, that was “a pretty good proof of their civilization.”
Between the contenders a government that wished to launch another,
much more commercially oriented experiment in the British colonies
needed assurances of economic continuity, as well as of civilization. In
this frame of reference, the Haitian outcome at best offered little guid-
ance. As Secretary Edward Stanley tersely put it when he introduced the
emancipation bill, Haiti had proved “nothing at all.”43
The opening of the campaign to abolish British slavery in 1823 gave
Haiti a brief moment of importance in the debate over the future of the
Caribbean. Ten years later Haiti’s significance was peripheral to the Brit-
ish discussion. The reasons for its rise and fall as the key experiment in
the West Indies are not difficult to discern. In 1823 one could hardly
dismiss Haiti outright, as was being done with contemporary Sierra Le-
one. The latter was a heavily subsidized, long-term dependency of the
metropolitan treasury. It was more notable for receiving bodies than for
producing goods. It was a white man’s grave that also swallowed up black
men, women, and children. It was a dumping ground for displaced ref-

104   

ugees from the middle passage, rescued at considerable expense by British
naval patrols.
In contrast, Haiti had come into existence as a postslave society de-
spite, and not because of, European imperial power. However depleted its
export sector relative to that of the old regime in St. Domingue, Haiti
generated enough wealth to support its own government, its own army,
and its national independence. It even produced enough revenue to pay
an indemnity to France in exchange for formal recognition. The only ex-
slaves who could and did pay an indemnity to ex-masters in the Americas
were those who had won their freedom almost unaided by outsiders. The
Caribbean’s sole postslavery society could not have much standing for a
legislature that was imagining controlled emancipation in the British
plantation complex. If the first free black nation in the Caribbean was
not quite as peripheral to the British in 1833 as the first free black colony
in Africa, both had failed to meet the full test of experimental relevance.

    105

 7
 
 , 1791–1833

D uring the final reading in the House of Commons of the

bill to abolish the slave trade in 1807, the most vigorous
West Indian defender of the status quo observed, “But we are not now
in the case of debating whether our colonies shall or shall not be culti-
vated by slaves from Africa; they are and ever have been so cultivated;
and we know at least that their prosperity has been hitherto dependent
upon occasional supplies of the same description of imported population.
All the rest is experiment merely, and theory, contradicted too by all that
we know from fact and experience.”1
In drawing a sharp distinction between experiment and theory, on the
one hand, and empirical fact and direct experience, on the other hand,
George Hibbert seemed to be condemning all innovation at the expense
of established tradition. Yet he was instead complaining of the lack of a
controlled, predesigned experiment, whose outcome, for that very reason,
would have been more acceptable to all sides:

Most sincerely do I wish that, respecting the treatment of Negroes,

either in one island or in one insulated district, an experiment had
been made at the expense of government, and upon the maxims of the
abolitionists, and that it might have been seen how far the voluntary
services of African Negroes could have been obtained, and industry
and happiness have been advantageously promoted, under a system
essentially differing from that which prevails in our colonies. We should
then have proceeded upon sound and safe principles, to innovate upon
that which, however imperfect, has conduced hitherto to their pros-
perity.2

106
When the abolition of British slavery itself became a parliamentary issue
in 1823, Hibbert again asked, why did the government not begin eman-
cipation on one of the smaller colonies, “entirely subject to their control?
Surely, in an experiment of this kind . . . it were most prudent to attempt
it on 10,000 or 30,000 people, who are to be found perfectly isolated,
than at once to try it on . . . near a million?”3
As we have seen, abolitionists muted the claims for free labor’s supe-
riority before 1820. They discreetly framed demands in terms of stopping
the transatlantic slave trade. The initial arguments focused on the impact
of the slave trade in Africa and on the high seas. In the West Indies their
issue was whether or not the colonial slave labor forces already in place
were sufficient for the present and future needs of staple production on
the plantations. Demography and security took precedence over economy,
and population trends took priority over measures of productivity.4 Dur-
ing the first tide of abolitionism between 1788 and 1792, however, the
Saints had been the most fervent advocates for a free labor experiment
in Africa. They enthusiastically invested in the Sierra Leone Company,
fearful only that the West Indians might try to buy a controlling share
of the capital. They confined themselves to reiterating that by universal
experience and indisputable logic, slave labor was immensely wasteful.
Free labor, by the general laws of human nature and the decree of
Heaven, was intrinsically better. From their first mass campaign against
the African slave trade in 1788 to their agitation against colonial “ap-
prenticeship” fifty years later, abolitionists committed themselves to cre-
ating one world of labor relations. As William Wilberforce emphasized
on the eve of the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, “The prin-
ciples of justice are immutable in their nature and universal in their application;
the duty at once, and the interest, of nations, no less than of individuals.”5
The supreme object and obligation of abolitionism was to dissolve “the
line” in the interests of freedom.
However, the abolitionist elite was wary about using the generic as-
sertion of free labor superiority to guide policymaking beyond the line.
For decades, while theoretically armed with the good news of free labor
superiority, most parliamentary abolitionists opposed the immediate ap-
plication of this immutable principle. The most significant aspect of free
labor experiments in the forty years after the founding of Sierra Leone
was the reluctance of British abolitionists to engage in them. Until well
after the Napoleonic wars, and despite their creed of the unity of religion,
justice, and policy, they deliberately underplayed what historians have
come to call the “free labor ideology.” The principle of slave labor ineffi-
ciency was usually tucked modestly into the back pages of antislavery
polemics.6 Until the 1810s, abolitionists practiced the same caution, even
outright opposition, toward free labor experiments in the West Indies.
Nevertheless, in maintaining, even sotto voce, that an inevitable im-
provement would result from giving the blessings of freedom to the West

   , 1791–1833 107

 Indian slaves, abolitionists continually exposed themselves to the charge
of hypocrisy in postponing emancipation. In response, abolitionist leaders
declared that “insanity alone could dictate” immediate emancipation. In
1807 they demonstrated this conviction. As the Slave Trade Abolition Bill
reached its final stage in Parliament, an enthusiastic young MP made a
dramatic motion, envisioning the immediate emancipation of all infants
henceforth born in the colonies. Wilberforce immediately opposed this
motion as unsafe and ruinous.7
The abolitionists’ rationale for delay was straightforward: too high a
proportion of Caribbean slaves were African “savages,” debased by both
superstition and enslavement. Slaves as a group required a long transition
to absorb proper work habits, religion, and civilization. Free labor would
be superior when and only when the slow-growing plant of “true liberty”
overcame, through gradual “amelioration,” the slave’s indolence and li-
centiousness. In his first writings on the subject, Henry Brougham, later
a parliamentary pillar of antislavery, could not even imagine testing the
principle of free labor among uncivilized Africans, the “common enemy
of civilized society.”8 What Wealth of Nations seemed to affirm as a uni-
versal effect of free agency in labor was deemed disastrous as an imme-
diate policy in the West Indian situation. The singular situation created
by the slave trade therefore left the free labor ideology intact. Free labor
superiority could be tested only by “truly” free men.
Historians have tended to accept this version of the abolitionists’ belief
in free labor superiority as a national ideology during the age of abolition.
The British national elite has been widely characterized as adhering con-
sensually to the principle of free labor superiority.9 This is highly im-
probable. The abolitionists, of course, knew from the beginning of their
bitterly contested movement that the least controversial way to end both
the slave trade and the slave system of production was to supply free
labor sugar at a cheaper rate.10 In the early 1790s, they looked hopefully
from one potential free labor competitor to another—to the British East
India Company and to North American maple sugar extractors, as well
as to Sierra Leone. By the time abolitionists finally succeeded in prohib-
iting the British slave trade in 1806–1807, all of these potential free labor
alternatives had failed them. New World slaves supplied more than 95
percent of the North Atlantic’s sugar.11
When slave trade abolition finally loomed in 1806, Joseph Barham,
one of its few West Indian sympathizers, suggested that the time was
ripe to venture beyond abolition of the slave trade and to challenge slav-
ery itself. Barham suggested using Britain’s recently acquired and unde-
veloped colony of Trinidad as an ideal laboratory for demonstrating the
superiority of free labor. He wanted the British government to sponsor
the migration of free Chinese laborers, famed for their good labor disci-
pline. Wilberforce was initially inclined to support a project so favorably
framed in favor of free labor. But the main author and strategist of the

108   

recent Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill of 1806 warned Wilberforce
against supporting Barham’s project. As the best-informed abolitionist on
the West Indies, James Stephen foresaw nothing but disaster in being
associated with such a venture.
Stephen had already anonymously registered his opinion that slave
labor had a decisive advantage over both free and other forms of invol-
untary labor in the sugar islands. As indicated in chapter 6, he argued
primarily from his knowledge of the results of emancipation in the
French colonies of St. Domingue and Guadeloupe. Stephen convinced
Wilberforce that the experiment’s failure would discredit all who spon-
sored it, including abolitionists. In print he again anonymously de-
nounced the Trinidad free labor project as preposterous. The case of Trin-
idad throws crucial light on abolitionists’ early assumptions. In 1802,
when Trinidad’s development as a slave colony with an unimpeded Af-
rican slave trade still seemed likely, Stephen desperately urged the alter-
native importation of “free Negroes.” Even then, he assumed that slave
labor was the most profitable form of labor. Free (and even indentured)
labor would have to be permanently protected against slave labor. From
the beginning, Stephen could not assent to a competitive experiment.12
Although Wilberforce did not underwrite the venture on behalf of the
abolitionists, the experiment went forward. It was the first such initiative
sponsored by a British government since the founding of Sierra Leone.
Since Britain’s newly acquired areas were bound to experience a sharp
rise in their demands for labor, the government decided to import a num-
ber of free Chinese as plantation laborers in Trinidad.
The results were not promising. The Chinese abandoned plantation
labor, and the plan was terminated after a brief period. Three years after
the abolition of the slave trade, West Indians proposed to follow up this
failed first attempt at Chinese migration with another trial of Asian labor,
drawn from India. James Stephen, now an MP, again unconditionally
opposed the petition. He flatly insisted that the Chinese free labor venture
had been a failure. The attempt had broken down despite the Chinese
reputation for individual industriousness and despite the added motiva-
tion of family responsibilities among the Chinese workers. A black slave
of Trinidad, Stephen concluded, even unmotivated by family responsibil-
ities, “did as much in a week as one of the [Chinese] in a month.” He
grimly concluded that while slavery existed in the West Indies, it was
impossible for free labor to succeed in competition with it.13 When Ste-
phen pronounced this conclusion, not a single abolitionist rose in Parlia-
ment to oppose or even soften his categorical dismissal of free labor’s
competitiveness. Nor did any parliamentary abolitionist ever suggest an-
other such experiment with Asian laborers.
The idea of using Asian alternatives for West Indian labor needs was
not raised again by any legislator until after the abolition of British slav-
ery. Meanwhile, shortly after Stephen’s damning speech, Trinidad was

   , 1791–1833 109

 opened for the resettlement of some U.S. ex-slaves who sought freedom
under the protection of the British flag during the Anglo-American war
of 1812–1815. The outcome was much the same with American freed-
men as with the free Chinese before them. Abolitionists thereafter em-
phasized the survival and independence of the free black settlement in
Trinidad. The West India interest correspondingly noted that the Amer-
icans, like the Asians before them, neither participated in the plantation
labor force nor produced export staples on their own. The planters em-
phasized the similarity between the behavior of free blacks in the Carib-
bean and free whites in Great Britain. The metropolitan habit of extend-
ing the weekend into “St. Monday” was a cause for West Indian despair
about the probability of steady free labor in the colonies.14 By the mid-
1820s both sides had accumulated lists of free labor migrations to the
British slave islands. All were accounted as successes in terms of survival,
and all were failures in terms of additions to staple production: the Nova
Scotia emigration to Sierra Leone in the 1790s, the post-Napoleonic
American settlers in Trinidad; the discharged Black Regiments settled in
Sierra Leone and Trinidad, the newly freed African captives in Sierra
Leone, and the citizens of Haiti.15
All ventures in the elimination or modification of slavery came under
greater scrutiny in the generation between Napoleon’s defeat and British
emancipation. In 1823 Thomas Clarkson’s enumeration of half-a-dozen
instances of large-scale emancipations received extensive attention from
the press. More modest alterations were not overlooked. These latter in-
stances conformed even more precisely to the specifications of controlled
change that were deemed essential to an experimental model. Although
the abolitionists and the government shied away from initiating further
experiments, the language of experimentalism permeated discussions of
slavery. Abolitionists recalled that a Tortola slaveholder, Samuel Notting-
ham, had enfranchised twenty-five slaves in the island as early as 1776.
Nottingham’s action offered a built-in, multigenerational perspective on
the outcome of emancipation. The abolitionists again pointed to the per-
sistence of a totally free, self-sustaining community in the British Carib-
bean. Opponents used the same Tortolan community to illustrate con-
trary economic conclusions. The prolific James Macqueen insisted that
the free laborers of Tortola, even when endowed with their own land and
a cash inheritance, had been “beaten out of the home market in the cheap-
est of all cultivation, cotton, by the same article produced by Slave labor
in the United States, and even in the very Colony of Tortola, where cotton
is cultivated by Slaves.” To defenders of the status quo in the 1820s, the
Tortolan experiment provided the best empirical response to Adam Hodg-
son’s pamphlet and correspondence on the relative expense of free and
slave labor. Macqueen’s assessment came as no surprise: freed Negroes
would not work in West Indian agriculture “for such terms, and from

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such inducements, as the value of Colonial production can afford to
give.”16
An isolated case of manumissions in a peripheral and poor-soil colony
could easily be dismissed by one or the other side as irrelevant to the
probable outcome of general British emancipation in the sugar Islands.
After all, the West Indian shift away from cotton production was a gen-
eral trend after 1800 even in Guyana, the newest and most dynamic
plantation area of the British colonies in the Americas. A more modest
experiment in quasi emancipation seemed much more promising. Shortly
after the end of the British slave trade, the abolitionists turned their at-
tention to a very precisely delineated and implemented “experiment” in
the gradual transformation of Caribbean labor relations. It had been con-
ducted in Barbados, the oldest and, until 1816, one of the quietest sugar
colonies. In 1814, William Dickson, an abolitionist, published a 400-page
volume entitled Mitigation of Slavery: Letters and Papers of the Late Hon-
orable Joshua Steele.
Steele had not been a provincial planter, vegetating in a backwater
of the empire, like Tortola, nor a pious absentee in Britain, charitably
releasing his slaves in his will with no further earthly concern about the
economic consequences of his actions. Rather, Steele had spent most of
his long life in the metropolis as a successful and enlightened improver.
An early member of the London Society of Arts Manufactures and Com-
merce, he formed a similar society in Barbados when he went to the
Island in the early 1780s to revive the flagging fortunes of his plantations.
Steele’s venture had an added scientific advantage of having been un-
dertaken before the emergence of political abolitionism in Britain. He
risked an experiment on his own property in order to determine whether
or not Caribbean slaves on a sugar plantation could be made to approach
the condition of English civil liberty. According to Dickson, the result of
the experiment was “to advance above three hundred debased field Negroes
. . . [to a condition] resembling that of contented, honest and industrious ser-
vants . . . and [to] TRIPLE in a few years, the annual neat clearance of his
estate.” In the course of doing this, Steele had “established” as fact what
had before been only theory and conjecture, “that the paying of Slaves for
their labor, does actually produce a very great profit to their owners.”17 Joshua
Steele had apparently preempted George Hibbert’s request for a fair trial
twenty years before the West Indian MP even suggested it, and with
workers born and raised on a Barbados plantation under English super-
vision.
Another advantage was Steele’s own starting point. His laboratory was
his own estate. It had been run down by a series of agents for fully thirty
years before his arrival. As his first step, Steele threw out his agent and
took direct control of the plantation. He then “resolved to make a further
experiment, in order to try whether I could not obtain the labor of Ne-

   , 1791–1833 111

 groes by voluntary means, instead of the old method by violence.” The
first part of the experiment focused on the difficult task of “holing.” It
was completed “for less than a fourth part of the stated price paid the
undertakers for holing.” Steele repeated the experiment the following year
with equal success. Finally on November 18, 1789, he gave all of his
slaves “tenements of land and wages by hour, day and week.”
Steele’s was an experiment in partial manumission. He did not free
his slaves. They became what he called “Copyhold Bond-slaves,” working
within a system of the landlord’s company store, his rents, and his pre-
miums. Fines and forfeitures “for delinquencies” were handled by slave-
run courts. Not only sugar production but also production of provisions
was expanded. For six years before the change, the plantation had run a
deficit in provisions. Almost overnight the deficit became a surplus. Sur-
veillance costs diminished and losses from theft went down. Henceforth,
slaves had “something like freedom during their good behavior.” Land was
divided into “grants,” with a shift of plantation labor to task work as
much as possible. As reported by Dickson, the profits of Steele’s property
more than tripled in about four years. Thomas Clarkson made Steele’s
experiment his prime illustration of the inferiority of the West Indian
slave system.18
Once entered into the lists of gradual emancipation experiments,
Steele’s venture was naturally subjected to scrutiny. In economic terms,
his early years of increased profit were explained away as a contextual
coincidence. The experiment had begun at a low point in West Indian
profits, and Steele benefitted by the generally favorable market of the late
1780s and early 1790s. With a baseline of some of the worst years in
plantation profits during the American Revolution, every planter’s situ-
ation improved after 1783. More significant, and from the planters per-
spective, decisive, Steele’s plantation did not continue to be a prosperous
estate on the island. It was sold for debt in chancery. Rather than occa-
sioning the proverbial double rate of sugar production under the copy-
hold system, the slaves after a few years had not even performed up to
the par for slavery. Nothing might be easier “than to convert slaves into
free men. The grand question is how to convert them into free labor.”19
In population the estate’s trend also went the wrong way. It ran
counter both to the abolitionists’ hypothesis of “natural increase” under
improved conditions and to the demographic pattern of Barbados itself.
Barbados’s court records show that Steele’s plantation had begun with
288 slaves in 1780 and ended with 240 in 1797, a decrease of 17 percent
in seventeen years. This figure contrasted with the natural replacement
profile characteristic of most other Barbados estates. On Steele’s estate,
the “exceptionalism” of the West Indies was doubly exceptional—it went
in the wrong direction and on the wrong island.20
The critical significance of the time horizon in determining the out-
come of an experiment was strikingly illustrated in Steele’s venture. It

112   

raised the unavoidable question: when did a social science experiment
come to an end? For embattled antiabolitionists in the 1820s, the terminal
point occurred in bankruptcy court, where one could see the long-term
outcome of production and population on the Steele estate.21 For Thomas
Clarkson the experiment properly ended with the end of the long corre-
spondence between Steele and Dickson, when the outcome was still per-
ceived as generally positive. The experiment had lasted seven years be-
tween the end of the American war and the end of Steele’s
correspondence. For abolitionists it was absolutely irrelevant “that from
causes yet unexplained, it [the experiment] may have failed afterwards,
whether at Steele’s death or before.” They were concerned with the
sources of success, not failure. Since Steele was around 90 years old at
the end of those seven years, the question of why anyone “reverted to
the old system” or why Steele’s estate did not stimulate emulation by his
successors or neighbors was not relevant.22
Moreover, this most detailed of all experiments proffered by abolition-
ists was beginning to be an embarrassment after 1823, whether it had
temporarily succeeded or later failed. It had been apt for the abolitionists
when a long, slow death for slavery was still a treasured vision. As an-
tislavery impatience accelerated, it became fodder for those resisting rapid
mass emancipation. Steele himself had conceived of his changes within
a very gradual emancipation model, along the trajectory of Anglo-Saxon
and Norman England. His relative caution could too easily be incorpo-
rated into a secular time frame that extended over centuries.23 As anti-
slavery moved away from a policy of gradual emancipation in 1830,
modifications within slavery ceased to hold any attraction for abolition-
ists. By the time of the debates over immediate emancipation in 1830–
1833, the experiment disappeared entirely from the abolitionists’ vocab-
ulary.
Another explicitly abolitionist venture in amelioration went largely un-
heralded on the eve of emancipation. The capture of Berbice from the
Dutch in 1804 incidentally brought about 1,300 slaves into the possession
of the crown. The government feared that the already excessive mortality
might grow worse and placed the slaves under a commission of “Saints,”
including Wilberforce, Stephen, Macaulay, and others. The commission-
ers had the added advantage of being consignees for all produce that
derived from the slaves’ labor. When the Dutch Berbice Association re-
claimed the slaves after the return of peace in 1815, however, they
claimed that the work discipline of the labor force had been undermined
by leniency, and they sold their interest in the remaining plantations.
The one group of “crown slaves” remaining in the commission’s hands
ran a substantial deficit. The commission’s evangelical agent was inves-
tigated by a parliamentary commission in 1826. He was reprimanded
both for fiscal mismanagement and for abusing the slaves; for neglecting
housing, food, and medical care; for allowing flogging and sexual exploi-

   , 1791–1833 113

 tation in a remote estate; and for introducing solitary confinement as
punishment. The commission’s report resulted in a process of accelerated
manumission, culminating in the emancipation of all crown slaves in
1831.24
The Berbice experiment would have gone unheralded in the final de-
bates over the emancipation bill of 1833 but for the indefatigable Joseph
Hume. This devourer of Parliamentary Papers noted that the final reports
of the special commission had not been made public, from which he
tauntingly assumed a lack of success. The scourge of Sierra Leone again
honed in on the population principle. He observed that the deficit among
the crown slaves had exceeded the colony’s average. Abolitionists might
have brushed aside the numbers, noting that there were special demo-
graphic patterns in the population under their care. However, they could
do this only by abandoning the position that net rates of decline spoke
for themselves. West Indians were not shy about using the continued
bondage of crown slaves to emphasize the fact that the government itself
did not consider measures tending to rapid emancipation to be safe or
easy.25
All of the most widely discussed cases of amelioration or freedom
originated in the Atlantic zone. Yet the potential for Asiatic alternatives
never ceased to attract the attention of abolitionists. British-dominated
India bore little demographic resemblance to the low-density populations
and frontier zones of the Caribbean and North America. It seemed quite
plausible that the poor Indian peasants might be induced to work for
lower wages than the cumulative costs of buying and using African slaves
in the Americas. India offered investors tropical and semitropical climates
analogous to those areas in the Western Hemisphere that were success-
fully specializing in sugar, coffee, and cotton. From the earliest days of
the debates over the slave trade and slavery in the 1780s and 1790s,
there were calls for encouraging the production of staples by Eastern free
labor at prices that surely must undercut slavery in the Americas.26
India was a primary producer of cotton and cotton goods long before
the rise of the abolitionist movement. Throughout the eighteenth century,
Indian cottons were more of a competitive menace to British metropoli-
tan, free labor textile producers than to West Indian cotton growers. The
emergence of British abolitionism in the 1780s coincided with a new
outburst of manufacturers’ appeals for protection from the competition
of cheap Indian labor. From one perspective, however, the pattern of
economic development in India was thereafter a source of embarrass-
ment. Indian cotton manufacturers began losing out to British industrial
production during the period between the rise of abolition in 1788 and
slave trade abolition in 1807. Even more significant for antislavery, Indian
cotton cultivators also began losing out to U.S. and Brazilian slave plan-
tations just as the abolitionists began agitating for emancipation in the
1820s. Thus Indian labor seemed to be equally ineffective against the

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competition of the free labor factory system in Britain and the slave plan-
tation system of the Americas. To the dismay of abolitionists, the signif-
icance of Indian cotton as a source of British supply steadily dimin-
ished.27
Since West Indian cotton production also dropped steadily after the
abolition of the slave trade, the question of comparative cotton produc-
tivity had no significance in the final debates over emancipation. British
Caribbean production had long since lost out to the slave plantations of
Brazil and the United States. As a producer of sugar, however, British
India was a more recent entrant and potential rival in the European world
market. During the century before the emergence of political abolition-
ism, no sugar had been commercially imported from India into Britain.
The last decade of the eighteenth century seemed especially propitious
for the launching of a new experiment in Eastern sugar production.
When the massive slave uprisings in the French Caribbean brought a
sharp rise in the price of sugar throughout the North Atlantic economy,
India quickly made the short list of candidates to relieve the shortfall.
The sugar shortage might be overcome, with the incidental benefit of
lessening British reliance on slavery.28
Under these circumstances, the East India Company seriously dis-
cussed the possibility of dramatically expanding sugar production in
the territory under its jurisdiction. The results of the discussion were
not encouraging. East Indian sugar could not be imported into the Brit-
ish Isles on the same terms as British Caribbean sugar. West Indian
sugar received preferential treatment under the Navigation Acts. It was
also pointed out, however, that East India sugar had always been free
to compete in the continental European market but had never success-
fully done so. To the hesitant councils of the East India Company was
added the united hostility of the West India interest. The latter claimed
that the trade monopoly of the East India Company already gave it an
unfair advantage in the imperial market. Another privilege could lead
to India’s monopoly of all tropical trade, to the detriment of both col-
onies and consumers. West Indian spokesmen also added a social ar-
gument with a future. East Indian natives, they claimed, were hardly
less oppressed or freer than West Indian slaves. No morally uncontam-
inated sugar could be obtained from the dominions of the East India
Company.29
The salience of the East India sugar option subsided almost as quickly
as it had arisen. The government refused to alter the West Indian mer-
cantilist advantage. East India’s potential played no further role in the
next decade and a half of parliamentary debates over the abolition of
the slave trade. British and foreign West Indian slave production filled the
supply gap. At the time of slave trade abolition, India accounted for only
2 percent of North Atlantic consumption. Moreover, the East Indian in-
terest stubbornly refused to align itself with the attack on the trans-

   , 1791–1833 115

 atlantic slave trade and slavery during the decades before emancipation.
It took a second conjuncture of abolitionists’ agitation and East Indian
economic distress three decades after the St. Domingue revolt to bring
East India briefly back into the discussion of slavery. In the early 1820s
James Cropper, a Quaker importer of East Indian sugar and a fervent
disciple of Adam Smith, began a vigorous campaign to employ Smith’s
principles of competition as the major catalyst for British emancipation.
Just at the moment when abolitionists were turning their attention to
emancipation in West India, Cropper suggested that the abolitionists’
strategy of incremental legal and administrative pressure would be in-
adequate. Economic science and the free market were necessary to dem-
onstrate to both West Indians and metropolitans the superiority of free
labor in India. Cropper proposed the experiment of equalizing sugar du-
ties between the East and West Indies. This would allow “free labor and
free trade, the divinely appointed engines of moral progress” to under-
mine the West Indians and to bring them to their commercial and social
senses.30
However, when the London abolitionists opened the emancipationist
stage of their campaign, they stressed the same traditional humanitarian
and security arguments that had predominated during the previous de-
bates over abolition. In the first parliamentary test of emancipation of
1823, participants on both sides instanced ancient Rome, continental
Europe, the United States, Ceylon, and Central and South America. The
alternative of Indian free labor sugar was not mentioned. Parliamentary
abolitionists reserved their discussion of the potential of Indian free labor
exclusively for the nearly simultaneous debates on East and West India
sugar duties. The separate motion for equalizing duties was based on a
convergence of consumer, Indian, and West Indian economic interests.
Consumers paid £2 million to subsidize West Indian sugar. India was
suffering from the loss of its cotton sector to both British industry and
American slavery. With equalization of the duties, the West Indies would
be encouraged to eliminate their inefficient labor system: “Wherever slav-
ery existed the cost of production was so much increased as to render it
impossible to compete with those countries where the soil was cultivated
by free labor.”31 Freedom of trade would therefore induce a most profit-
able emancipation, thus fulfilling Cropper’s vision of a moral market en-
gine of progress.
The West Indian response continued along the lines first laid out in
the debates of 1792. Regarding the British consumer’s interest, they
pointed out that the motion requested an equalization of the East and
West Indian monopolies, not free trade. The prohibitory duties on foreign
sugar and consequent protection of all imperial planters from Cuban and
Brazilian slave-grown sugar were left in place. East Indian distress, stem-
ming from the loss of its major cotton trade, meant only an appeal for

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the extension of its privileges while mercantilist restrictions against West
Indian trade remained in place. West Indians returned to the theme that
India was not a society of free people but of castes. As such, it produced
instances of more degrading slavery than could be found anywhere in
the West.
West Indian counterattacks were most unrelenting in their discussions
of competitive efficiency. Indian “slavery” could compete neither with the
plantations of America nor with the free agricultural laborers of Asia.
Despite the company’s experiments in the 1790s, China and the Dutch
East Indies continued to supply even Bengal and Madras with sugar. One
of Britain’s renowned political economists indirectly intervened in the
slavery issue in the parliamentary debates on sugar duties. David Ricardo
asserted that the labor costs of East Indian cultivation would indeed be
cheaper than those of West Indian planters. However, little East Indian
sugar would be imported into Britain for other reasons. To the extent that
competition impinged on inefficient producers, West Indian capital would
be shifted, if any shift were necessary, to “a more remunerating com-
modity.” Ricardo had no interest in determining the relative competitive-
ness of slave and free labor. He was intent on furthering free trade from
every part of the world as the really important experiment for British
political economy. Thus Ricardo looked forward to “a competition not
alone of East-India sugar” but of the sugars of South America, Cuba,
the Brazils, and China.32
Like the leading abolitionists, the British administration was anxious
to avoid conflating the economic and noneconomic issues of slavery and
sugar duties. William Huskisson significantly closed the debate for the
government, by deploring the intrusion of the “delicate subject of Negro
slavery” into a strictly commercial question. His own judgment was that
equalization would not decisively overthrow West Indian slave labor. In-
deed, the measure “would be injurious in the end to the [Indian] growers
of it.” The East Indians were not blocked from using their cheap labor.
They had the whole of Europe and the United States as their open mar-
kets. Their exports to all these parts of the non-British world amounted
to no more than 4,000 tons, much less than West Indian exports to the
same areas. From a ministerial perspective, the competitive balance be-
tween East and West remained unchanged. Before the French revolution,
“it was notorious” that France had even supplied its own Indian posses-
sions with sugar from St. Domingue. For Huskisson, the question of rel-
ative labor superiority remained an open one, but he noted that cotton
cultivation had not been a very good illustration of the superiority of the
East Indian peasant over the North American. British cotton, which had
once been produced by India, was now nonexistent—“every ounce of it
[cotton] was produced by the labor of slaves in the United States and the
Brazils, and the demand for it was one main cause why the slave trade

   , 1791–1833 117

 still existed upon the latter station to so dreadful a degree.”33 Whatever
the House of Commons thought of the East Indian, the Ricardian, or the
government’s arguments, it overwhelmingly defeated the bid for imperial
sugar equalization.
If the majority of MPs seemed skeptical about India’s ability to displace
slave-produced cotton and sugar, one minor staple actually seemed to
have reversed the movement of major staples such as sugar, coffee, and
cotton toward the West and slavery. Before the rise of abolitionism, sub-
sidized indigo for the British market had been produced almost entirely
by slave labor. Forty years later British indigo was the virtual monopoly
of Indian labor. Even if indigo production was far too minor a sector of
the British political economy of 1830 to warrant much parliamentary
attention, the abolitionists had at least one star product on which to build
hopes for an imminent Indian free labor takeover of agricultural produc-
tion. Indigo alone was insufficient to make the case against slavery. The
analysis of its agricultural performance would only stimulate more dis-
paraging references to cotton and caste. The idea of an Eastern compet-
itive experiment faded into the background as the debate over emanci-
pation intensified. In the end, abolitionists consoled themselves by
observing that even if India contributed only a little to British annual
domestic sugar consumption, some West Indian forced labor would be
pushed out of the Caribbean’s highest mortality crop.34
Unfortunately, all of the economic pressures were operating the other
way. Without fresh cohorts of Africans, the postabolition British West
Indies silently shifted its labor force toward sugar. As the candidate for
Britain’s free labor alternative, India, like Sierra Leone and Haiti, raised
too many issues: how free was its labor and how competitive? How well
had it performed in the production of cotton for the British market, or
of sugar for the world market? By the time of the climactic debate on
emancipation in 1833, India played no role.
One more area of the globe was drawn into the expanding public
debate in the decade before the Emancipation Act of 1833. Latin America,
with its tropical climates and crops, offered other potentially fruitful ex-
amples of emancipation. The region got off to a slow start on the British
antislavery agenda. Brazil, the oldest sugar colony in the New World, was
also the largest importer of African slaves to the Americas between the
rise of abolitionism and British emancipation. More might be expected of
the Spanish American mainland, whose new republics enacted various
forms of emancipation during or shortly after their wars of national
independence.35 The condition of postemancipation Mexico and Colombia
was occasionally mentioned in the polemical literature, but the new re-
gimes remained in too much turmoil to serve as empirically useful ex-
perimental candidates until the late 1820s. Unexpectedly, one new Latin
American nation became the primary object of attention during the
emancipation debates in 1833: Venezuela was experiencing an expansion

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of its agricultural output, especially coffee, which surpassed cacao as the
principal export on the eve of British emancipation.36
In the early 1830s, parliamentary committees eagerly collected testi-
mony on free and slave labor areas in anticipation of legislative action.
Witnesses gave conflicting assessments of the role of freedom in the Ve-
nezuelan expansion. In the debates themselves, Colonial Secretary Ed-
ward Stanley drew encouraging conclusions. The figures of depleted ag-
ricultural exports from Haiti could be regarded as tainted by “the horrors
of the long struggle for liberty.” Venezuela represented a less completely
destroyed social system, and therefore a more relevant transition to free-
dom. Through a legislated combination of freedom at birth and a re-
demption fund, the number of Venezuelan slaves had diminished from
100,000 to 25,000 over the course of a generation. Officials testified that
agriculture in general was flourishing: “Far from any deterioration having
taken place, the cultivation of it [sugar] had only begun since 1821. Till
there was a free labouring population in Venezuela, not a single pound
was raised in Venezuela.”37
Stanley’s close attention to Venezuela ensured that it would be a major
point of contention in 1833. The ever skeptical Joseph Hume challenged
Venezuela’s appropriateness to the British situation. Demography was his
first ground of dismissal. The percentage of black slaves in Venezuela was
closer to that of New York or New Jersey than to that of Virginia or
Maryland, much less the British Caribbean colonies. It by no means fol-
lowed “that an experiment which was successful at Venezuela . . . would
succeed in Jamaica, where the great mass of population were Negroes.”
Hume also disputed the colonial secretary’s account of Venezuelan sugar
exports. He played dueling witnesses on the floor of the House, boldly
matching Stanley’s prize witness, the “Vice-President of Venezuela,” with
his own Venezuelan-born magistrate from Trinidad. The latter claimed,
contrary to Stanley, that Venezuelan sugar had been cultivated by slave,
not free, labor both before and after independence.38
Hume deemed the government’s alleged inaccuracies on Venezuela to
be emblematic of the “utter ignorance” and “total absence of the nec-
essary information” in which the emancipation debate was proceeding.
He moved for the formation of yet one more parliamentary committee to
complete the work of the interrupted investigation of the year before.
Abolitionists exploded with alarm at this direct threat to their timetable
and their evidence. Admiral Fleming, whose eyewitness testimony before
a previous parliamentary committee had enhanced Venezuela’s standing,
offered to supplement the testimony of Venezuela’s vice-president with
that of a former president, sitting in the gallery of the House of Commons
for the occasion. Fleming also offered to obtain further corroboration
from the governor of Bogota.39
The Venezuela sugar controversy devolved into a discussion of the
exact extent and mode of Venezuelan production. The debate on the floor

   , 1791–1833 119

 of the House of Commons reflected the degree to which the parliamen-
tary investigating committee on slavery had been presented with contra-
dictory testimony during the previous session. Witnesses had not been
able to agree on the extent to which slave or free labor was used on
specific plantations. With his eye-witness authority at stake, Admiral
Fleming countered that he had personally observed more than thirty
sugar estates worked by free Negroes. Sugar refining was “better done
now, and cheaper by freemen than by slaves.” For good measure Fleming
estimated that with free labor cocoa productivity was six to eight times
greater than it had been under slavery. Given just a few years of peace,
he predicted, free labor would simply drive slave labor entirely out of the
Venezuelan labor market.
The abolitionists, having relinquished the experimental relevance of
Sierra Leone and Haiti, drew the line at Venezuela, and for good reason.
Venezuela offered evidence of a plantation society that was undergoing
gradual emancipation with an expanding agricultural sector. It could not
be characterized as an economy unable to sustain a competitive export
sector after emancipation. Skeptics had to shift tactics, from demonstrat-
ing global failure to disputing more particular and more uncertain ele-
ments of the Venezuelan situation. Venezuela served antislavery well.
Hume’s motion was dismissed, and the press took heed.40
For fifty years before British emancipation, every crisis of slavery ex-
panded the geographic search for relevant cases. From Africa to Asia to
Latin America, the combatants identified and exhibited new varieties of
slavery and freedom like specimens in a naturalist’s collection. Yet the
ephemeral quality of most examples was as striking as their discovery.
When the time came to debate the crucial issue of colonial emancipation
in the colonies in 1833, most early test cases had been discarded. Some,
like Sierra Leone or Steele’s estate, had vanished utterly, and Haiti was
declared irrelevant. The one prominent exception emphasized the rule:
Venezuela momentarily caught the attention of the public because there
was insufficient time to verify its performance or relevance. It worked
best for both antislavery and the government because it was the latest
example. Pressure from without enhanced plausibility in a Parliament
that was searching for good news. After ten years of committee investi-
gations, MPs knew that they could expect no certainty in the transition
from Britain’s predecessors. They could only hope to do emancipation
right, for the sake of their colonies, themselves, their constituents, and
their global audience.

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 8
  

T he Slave Emancipation Bill came before Parliament after

three years of increasing pressure from without. The slavery
question, described as being in a “torpor” by the Anti-Slavery Reporter
toward the end of 1829, was transformed a year later. The abolitionists
began and ended their final thrust with their traditional weapon. In
1830–1831 a mass petition campaign, largely sponsored by religious dis-
sent, sent more than 5000 petitions to Parliament, exceeding the number
of parliamentary reform petitions during the same period. The petition
campaign was repeated in the spring of 1833, gathering well over 1.3
million names, the largest number in the history of British abolitionism.
During the same period, the number of local chapters of the movement
increased to 1,300. The Agency Committee, a more radical branch of
antislavery, organized a continuous series of public lectures to keep sen-
timents mobilized across the nation.
Two major events beyond abolitionist control pushed emancipation to
the top of the political agenda between the two petitions. The second
petition was preceded by the first election to Parliament under the Reform
Act of 1832. Abolitionists participated in the election to an unprece-
dented degree, managing to secure up to 200 pledged candidates and to
defeat many candidates who declined to take an unqualified pledge for
immediate emancipation.1 The second transforming event was the largest
slave rebellion in the history of British slavery. At the end of 1831, the
“Baptist War” broke out in an area inhabited by one-fifth of Jamaica’s
300,000 slaves. The physical damage was widespread, the political re-
percussions still more significant. The evidence of both the slaves’ im-
patience and the planters’ fury at the dissenting missionaries was woven
into the abolitionist agitation in the year between the suppression of the
uprising and the formal opening of the emancipation debates.2

121
 The most important aspect of both popular mobilizations was their
distance from the economic and demographic preoccupations of the leg-
islators and the press. As far as the slaves themselves were concerned,
there is no evidence that they had any interest in their potential produc-
tive or reproductive performance as free men and women for the planters.
No parliamentary committee requested their testimony on that or on any
other subject. Missionaries, speaking on their behalf, did not indicate
those concerns as an important aspect of slaves’ aspirations. At most,
some slave leaders in the Jamaican uprising appear to have envisioned
freedom in terms of working for wages. Other leaders imagined them-
selves as remaining growers of sugar, among other crops. Neither of
these imagined futures (still less the destruction of crops and plantation
infrastructures by rank-and-file insurgents in 1831–1832) bespeaks any
interest in their potential productivity within the plantation system.
The few glimpses offered by slaves to the British public were not re-
assuring. In January 1833, the Globe, strongly identified with the incom-
ing Whig government and favorable to emancipation, reported on a case
in the Court of Chancery. The Earl of Crawford, owner of an estate in
Antigua, freed 134 slaves in his will. Since many of the slaves were aged
or disabled, Antiguan law required that the estate’s trustees post bond to
prevent any of them from becoming public charges. The estate lacked
sufficient liquid resources to meet that requirement. Instead, the able-
bodied slaves were asked whether they would contract to stay together
on the plantation following manumission. The land, “being of no value
without their labour, the trustees would gladly divide [it] among them,
giving to each a little freehold of a few acres. This the negroes will not
even promise to do,” reported the Globe, “and reasonably, for when they
have their freedom they can probably employ their labour more benefi-
cially in some other place.”3 From this account of the case, the newspaper
inferred that general emancipation would have two effects. It would raise
welfare costs and might prefigure an exodus by ex-slaves, not only from
their estates, but also from their colonies. Thus, even if slaves continued
to work for wages, an intercolonial redistribution of labor would ensue,
at considerable cost to many planters. For the slaves involved, the most
important element of their imminent liberation was their opportunity to
keep their options open, individually and collectively. The case certainly
did nothing to alleviate the anxiety of plantation owners.
Continuity of commercial agriculture also seemed of extremely limited
significance to abolitionist audiences in the months preceding emanci-
pation. Agency Committee speakers deliberately focused on religious and
moral themes, not economic outcomes, as the core of their appeal: Chris-
tianity established humanity’s natural and moral equality, its common
ancestry and brotherhood; and its common submission to divine justice
and mercy. Abolitionist texts stuck to motivation. The choice was Wages

122   

or the Whip, backed, if necessary, by Adam Smith’s dictum on the infe-
riority of slave labor. There was no middle ground. From accounts of
lectures, audiences did not receive or demand any extended discussion
about potential problems of free labor. Emancipation, insisted the aboli-
tionists, would now vindicate the superiority of free labor, even for plan-
tation owners.4 But what if it did not? We have only fleeting glimpses of
the reaction of abolitionist audiences to that question, frequently posed
by antiabolitionists. When the West Indians’ own hired speaker predicted
falling staple production, antislavery’s most popular lecturer, George
Thompson, resolved the issue in a cascade of contempt. So what if Hai-
tian exports were down by two-thirds and if the British colonies were to
do likewise? Would Ireland be worse off if it exported less, keeping it
produce “for home consumption”? The only reported response was “Loud
Cheers.”5 The symbols of commercial economic failure at both ends of
the Atlantic elicited enthusiastic dismissal.
Among them the three successive mass campaigns and the Jamaica
slave rebellion convinced Parliament and the government that there was
no longer any possibility of postponing a resolution of the question. Mem-
bers of the government and of Parliament, however, were not so sanguine
about the potential outcome as were abolitionist rallies. Even after the
slave uprising of December 1831 and after the cabinet’s approval of a bill
in principle, Prime Minister Grey was convinced that the Colonial Office’s
plans for emancipation would harm both the West Indies and Great Brit-
ain. This deep vein of skepticism and uncertainty at the very center of
decision making must be the point of departure for any discussion of the
passage of the emancipation act. The government moved forward only
under threats of still further pressure from Buxton and other parliamen-
tary abolitionists.6
On May 14, 1833, Edward Stanley (later Lord Derby), the colonial
secretary, rose in the House of Commons to move the government’s res-
olution for the emancipation of slaves in the British colonies. He began
by noting that the question he was about to introduce “involved a greater
amount of property—affecting the happiness and well-being of a larger
portion of individuals than was ever brought forward,” and in peculiarly
difficult fiscal circumstances. He then widened the frame of reference in
which he wanted the measure to be discussed and decided. The happiness
of generations yet unborn in the British colonies would be affected “for
good or evil.” Even more significant was the impact on the population
and welfare of millions of slaves in foreign colonies, “which must arise
from the result of the mighty experiment which we now propose to
make.” The magnitude of the initiative was clearly identified. The exper-
imental metaphor was meant to convey the implication of a tightly con-
trolled protocol. By acting deliberately and consensually on a predeter-
mined set of fixed imperial conditions, Parliament could rigorously

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 control the means of transformation from one condition to another. The
precise outcome of the action, however controlled, was indeterminate, as
any social experiment was bound to be.7
Stanley’s rhetorical gambit was designed to set the terms of the debate.
How successful was it, and how significant in terms of the outcome?
Stanley struck a responsive chord. Over the course of a series of debates
that ran from May to August, speakers on all sides of the issue repeatedly
returned to the image of the emancipation bill as a complex search for
the validation of a hypothesis. The most influential speakers in Parlia-
ment were especially prone to repeat the metaphor. The press took the
concept quite seriously. Stanley himself reiterated the “experimental” no-
tion during the debate, especially when his carefully negotiated package
of conditions threatened to unravel under assault-by-amendment from
both sides.
The concept could also be used, especially by those opposed to im-
mediate emancipation, as an excuse for recommending postponement or
drastic revision of the conditions of liberation. Such MPs referred to the
emancipation bill as a procedure with disproportionate social risks—a
“mere,” “hasty,” or “dangerous” experiment. Stanley’s supporters also
echoed his sense of global grandeur. The bill, they insisted, was the heir
of many smaller experimental predecessors over the previous forty years.
Emancipation’s debut as a consciously shaped, coherent, and controlled
program of social change offered advantages to almost all speakers as a
point of departure for supporting, amending or attacking the most
lengthily debated legislative motion in the history of Atlantic colonial
slavery.
Despite its extraordinary appeal as a frame of reference, most histo-
rians have been inclined to offer little more than a passing reference to
Parliament’s “scientific” metaphor. It was obvious to everyone who wit-
nessed the debate that emancipation had come to the floor of the House
of Commons to settle more than a scientific dispute. For forty-five years
abolitionism had been accelerated or stymied by combinations of popular
abolitionist campaigns, national emergencies, and political maneuvering.
Major parliamentary action on slavery was almost invariably a response
to pressures from without. As late as 1830, parliamentary discussions of
slavery proceeded within a framework of medium-term horizons of ame-
lioration and of gradual preparatory steps to emancipation.
In the debates of 1833, the abolitionists’ parliamentary leader had to
sit uncomfortably while the Tory leader in the House of Commons read
Buxton’s own words of just a decade before: “The object at which we
aim is the extinction of slavery . . . not the sudden emancipation of the
negro—but . . . by slow degrees. . . . In point of fact, it [slavery] will never
be abolished: it will never be destroyed. . . . We rather shall leave it gently
to decay—slowly, silently, almost imperceptibly, to die away and be for-
gotten.”8 As late as the spring of 1832, some members of Parliament

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were uncompromisingly insisting on the gradualist frame of reference
confirmed by the Parliamentary Resolution of 1823. But they were now
a small and shrinking minority. In the three years before 1833, the grad-
ualist frame of reference simply disintegrated. Stanley made no secret of
the fact that the government’s plan was hastily put together under the
impact of enormous cross-pressures. Each metropolitan mobilization, he
noted, increased the danger of slaves’ resistance overseas. He had moved
in order to forestall a still more radical abolitionist initiative demanded
by the latest wave of petitions.
Nevertheless, the elements for reconfiguring emancipation as an ex-
perimental design were not lacking. Parliament jealously guarded its pre-
rogative of determining the legislative frame of reference in which any
statute was crafted. For at least two decades before 1833, the outcome of
emancipations and settlements of free blacks outside the British colonies
had been discussed by parliamentary committees. In 1832 no fewer than
three separate committees were formed, all of which gathered abundant,
even redundant, data on economic, political, and social conditions in the
West Indies. One committee was unmistakably designated as the Select
Committee on the Extinction of Slavery throughout the British Domin-
ions. It complained of insufficient time to hear all of its prospective wit-
nesses and to evaluate the often discordant testimony. Above all, the com-
mittee regretted its abrupt automatic termination by the end of the 1832
parliamentary session.9 Stanley repeatedly acknowledged that the legis-
lators had to proceed quickly with conflicting and imperfectly digested
data.
Above the melee of conflicting testimony, however, some uncontested
points had emerged. Abolitionists were gratified by the fact that there
was virtually no contention from the defenders of the status quo, even
implicitly, that the slaves were racially inferior in capability. The parlia-
mentary West India interest denied that blacks were differently consti-
tuted in their motivation to work, to learn, or to improve their condition.
Spokesmen with the longest experience in the West Indies were anxious
to affirm that slaves were similar to their laboring counterparts in the
British Isles. They insisted, with considerable evidence, that planters had
pragmatically instituted a process of amelioration after the abolition of
the slave trade. On the other hand, when asked whether any individual
ex-slaves or free people of color engaged in plantation field work, most
select committee witnesses simply answered in the negative. Illustrations
of free blacks working in the cane fields were drawn largely from areas
outside the British plantation zones.10
Another investigating committee in the House of Commons had time
to gather more precise data and came to more definitive conclusions. A
month before the Select Committee on the Extinction of Slavery began
to gather its evidence, the Select Committee on the Commercial State of
the West India Colonies issued its report. If its general implications for

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 the great experiment were ambiguous, it reached one conclusion that
was of considerable value to both abolitionists and the government. The
British West Indies were in severe distress. Large portions of the sugar
plantations were currently turning little or no profit, and many were
running multiyear losses. For many planters the status quo might not be
tenable. The credibility of these conclusions was enhanced by the fact
that the “Commercial Committee” had a far weaker abolitionist presence
than the “Extinction Committee.” Avoiding any abolitionist rhetoric, it
noted that the reason for the depression of the British plantation was
that the metropolitan market was “overstocked.” British sugar in excess
of home market demand was sold overseas. Rather than benefitting from
any monopoly in the metropolitan market, the price of British colonial
sugar was being set by the competitive Atlantic market.11 Thus the gov-
ernment could plausibly argue that West Indian distress demanded
change of some sort and that somewhat lower production might actually
bring metropolitan supply and demand into greater equilibrium.
At the same time the Commercial Committee pointed toward abolition
as another source of West Indian distress rather than its solution. The
abolition of the slave trade had forced British sugar producers to compete
in European markets against slave-importing Cuba and Brazil. Access to
Africans created a differential cost between British sugar production and
that of “Iberian” slaves. Other British measures to increase the slaves’
welfare further increased the planters’ competitive difficulties. In the com-
mittee’s perspective, the successive mass campaigns for emancipation fur-
ther depressed the British West Indies by frightening metropolitan inves-
tors and creditors. The committee concluded that if the European sugar
market was overstocked, the slave-importing economies, not the British
sugar islands, were the principal contributors to that problem. The flow
of Africans inexorably increased Iberian production. The committee’s tri-
partite solution to the British West Indies’ economic problems lay in de-
creasing the slave trade, in diminishing abolitionists’ agitation, and in
decreasing the metropolitan duty on British colonial sugar.12
In 1833 the outlook for the Commercial Committee’s recommenda-
tions looked grim indeed. A generation of diplomatic and naval efforts
had demonstrated severe limits to British policy in ending the slave trade.
The elections of 1832 and the petitions of 1833 demonstrated the futility
of hoping for a suspension of abolitionists’ agitation. Finally, as we shall
see, the passage of immediate emancipation required the raising, not the
lowering, of sugar duties. The policy disagreements between these two
committees was deep enough to further justify Stanley’s notion of eman-
cipation as an experiment. British emancipation could resolve the prob-
lem of slavery in the most carefully controlled transition to freedom that
had ever been attempted.
But how mighty was the mighty experiment? Was there as much at
stake as Stanley’s prologue postulated? Many historians have been prone

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to emphasize two frames of reference that deflate both the stakes at issue
and the degree of division over the outcome. Whatever the significance
of New World slavery in the expansion of British industry, the West India
colonies were inevitably becoming less important to Britain. On the eve
of emancipation, the share of the British slave colonies in the trade and
income of the metropolis had been measurably declining for more than
fifteen years.13 Despite this decline (and a much reduced West Indian
presence in the reformed Parliament), there was sober calculation in
Stanley’s remark about the substantial capital still at risk in the decision
for emancipation. When the whole plan was endangered by various
amendments, the colonial secretary forcefully reminded Parliament that
the government would withdraw from any experiment that did not pro-
tect property rights. In every part of the metropolis lived individuals who
were directly or indirectly involved in the prosperity of the West Indies.
The major anxiety for both the governing Whigs and for the opposition
Tories was that events might confirm the planters’ worst warnings. Sir
Robert Peel, leader of the Tory opposition in the House of Commons, and
the Duke of Wellington, his counterpart in the House of Lords, made it
clear that the fiscal stakes were also quite high for the government. Sugar
duties made a contribution to the revenue and credit of the imperial
treasury that no government was willing to forego.14
If the short-term stakes were highest for the British West Indians,
white and black, and for the sponsoring government, the long-term im-
plications seemed at least as high for abolitionists and their adopted con-
stituency throughout the Atlantic. Abolitionists’ aims encompassed a
world far beyond the British slave colonies. Emancipation was to be a
shining example of a nonviolent and prosperous liberation. It was to
usher in a new stage in the termination of European involvement in
slavery, in the civilization of Africa, and in the triumph of free labor in
the Americas. The hundreds of thousands to be liberated in the British
colonies and the millions of pounds sterling and cane sugar flowing to
Britain were to be eclipsed by the millions of lives yet to be saved and
redeemed in Africa and America. British emancipation might be irre-
versible, whatever the outcome. Its economic failure, however, could pro-
duce the most negative backlash from slave owners in both hemispheres
and the indefinite prolongation of needless human suffering and violence.
Abolitionists were far more fervently committed to designating emanci-
pation as a momentous experiment than was a colonial secretary who
had become involved in the problem of emancipation only a few weeks
before introducing his bill.
The debate over the bill extended for more than three months in the
spring and summer of 1833. It was a major reason that the session of
1833 became one of the longest in Parliament’s recorded history. The
cabinet’s resolve to control the terms of the debate by introducing eman-
cipation as a ministerial initiative also made the bill distinctive in the

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 history of British antislavery. None of the bills for the general abolition
of the slave trade before 1807 or for gradual emancipation in 1823 had
been sponsored as administration measures.
The Slave Emancipation Bill contained four mutually interlocking prin-
ciples: (1) all slaves were to be simultaneously freed, (2) most ex-slaves
were to become “apprentices” (required to work for their ex-masters for
a fixed number of hours per day for a specified number of years), (3) a
monetary payment to slave owners was to be funded by the government
out of metropolitan taxes, and (4) the revenue to ensure that compen-
sation was to come from an increase in the duties on colonial sugar. The
last three elements of the emancipation package were clearly intended
as compensatory gestures and assurances to the slaveholding interests.
In speaking of the bill as an experiment, the parliamentarians selec-
tively drew more on some scientific traditions than on others. Unlike
American legislators, parliamentary supporters of slavery made almost
no use of claims of racial inferiority. West Indian MPs dismissed race as
a salient factor and premised a single universal psychology in imagining
the outcome of abolition. Their premise was that the motivation of la-
borers was identical on both sides of the Atlantic. All assented to state-
ments that whites and blacks shared the same nature.15
The marginalization of race was as characteristic outside the houses
of Parliament as within. In the negotiations with the government. Ja-
maica’s agent noted, without comment, that no legal differences would
be allowed between persons already free and those newly manumitted.16
Even in presuming the reluctance of freed persons to work in the cane
fields, West Indians insisted on using examples of free laborers in Britain
to predict Caribbean behavior after emancipation.17 The Tory Morning
Herald was dismissive of “the supposed racial inferiority of the negro” or
of any other “gratuitous hypothesis . . . which the pure torch of reason
has consumed.” It united with the Radical Westminster Review in describ-
ing racial hierarchies as “absurd arguments” and “silly” prejudices. There
was cause for concern only when a British journal was insufficiently
disparaging in summarizing foreign defenses of racial inferiority.18
As Thomas Holt notes in his assessment of Colonial Office plans for
emancipation, bureaucratic discussions beyond public scrutiny also dis-
missed any racist grounds for limiting the freedom of action of former
slaves. All participants assumed rational responses by freed blacks to
whatever legal or economic environment might be created by the terms
of emancipation. All of the plans filed in the Colonial Office records,
whether printed or private, followed the same rule.19 Throughout months
of often-heated discussions of emancipation there were no polemical ex-
changes over racial differences. When the issue was raised, it always
came in the discreet form of arguing, not about race, but about racism.
Tory leader Robert Peel urged postponement or delay of emancipation on
the premise that a tradition of overseas racial antagonism made the im-

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mediate application of a European wage system inappropriate for the
West Indies. When abolitionists drew on U.S. examples as evidence for
postemancipation economic success, Peel countered with the testimony
of white hostility toward blacks in America. He noted the degraded status
of free blacks even in the free states. By implication, the legacy of mutual
racial antagonism portended even greater problems in the Caribbean,
where ex-slaves would be the overwhelming majority. Peel alluded to “the
distinction of colour” not, he said, to imply “any inferiority of black to
white, but as . . . [creating] a difficulty in amalgamating the slave popu-
lation with the free, which did not exist either in any country of Europe,
or in any country of the East where slavery was extinguished.”20
In 1833 one could approach the question of ethnic difference only in
a developmental frame of reference. Science fiction, not science, provided
Peel with the most striking image of “immaturity” used in the emanci-
pation debate. He asked the House of Commons to recollect a previous
prime minister’s parliamentary caution against rapid emancipation just
ten years before. George Canning had then described

the negro as a being with the form and strength of a man but with
the intellect only of a child. “To turn him loose,” said Canning, “in the
maturity of his physical passions, but in the infancy of his uninstructed
reason, would be to raise up a creature resembling the splendid fiction
of a recent romance; the hero of which constructs a human form, with
all the corporal capabilities of man, and with the thighs and sinews of
a giant . . . he finds too late, that he has only created a more than
mortal power of doing mischief, and himself recoils from the monster
which he has made.”

Peel linked Canning’s evocation of Frankenstein’s monster to the recent

slave rebellion in Jamaica. Crediting West Indian “amelioration,” Peel al-
lowed that the “progressive improvement” of the slave in the intervening
decade “might impose upon us the necessity” of granting freedom. How-
ever, the “evidence” was, at least, not yet clearly on the side of readiness
or “necessity.” Both parliamentary abolitionists and the government sim-
ply ignored Peel’s racially edged speech. The Frankenstein allusion was
not noted even in the press. Peel’s concluding motion, to delay emanci-
pation, was defeated without a roll-call vote.21
Malthus’s population principle had a much better run than did race
in Parliament. Abolitionists considered it important to press home the
argument for emancipation on demographic principles. From beginning
to end, the most radical abolitionists continued to reiterate Thomas Fowell
Buxton’s arguments. The great test of any society remained the progress
of its population. The great flaw of the British Caribbean colonies was
still the progressive decrease of its slave population. At current rates, the
“murderous” decline of its slave population would destroy Trinidad’s

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 work force in a generation, and Demerara’s in a century. Emancipation
was the only cure for an incremental genocide, whose proximate cause
was the cultivation of sugar.
Abolitionists offered three comparisons to bolster their extermination
hypothesis. The first was the generally increasing population trends
among black populations in non-British regions, above all Africa and the
American South. Both regions lacked the peculiar combination of slavery
and sugar. The second comparison was intracolonial, between British
sugar and nonsugar Caribbean colonies. Many of the latter also dem-
onstrated a high positive, natural increase.22 The third comparison was
between different population groups in the sugar colonies themselves.
Nonslave and non-sugar-growing populations showed better reproductive
outcomes than those on sugar estates. All of these were exemplifications
of what Thomas Babington Macaulay, following Buxton, called the “im-
pregnable” argument, the peculiarity of decreasing slave populations in
an environment that should have been naturally hospitable to them.23
The beleaguered opponents of immediate abolition continued to re-
configure and to nuance their counterattack against the slave-sugar hy-
pothesis. Before the emancipation debates of 1833, the West Indians had
requested a formal parliamentary committee to investigate the population
profile of the West Indies. They also tried to use the committees of 1832
to nibble away at the abolitionist argument. Under rigorous cross-
examination, an expert witness on slavery in the United States acknowl-
edged that slaves in sugar regions of Louisiana had rates of reproduction
closer to those of Virginia than the Caribbean, allowing for the brief
“seasoning” period following relocation. Antiabolitionists strategically
avoided making many comparisons outside of the English-speaking world.
Faced with unimpeachable evidence of a black population increase in
Haiti, West Indians concentrated on explaining the demographic deficit
of their slaves’ reproduction.24
They were aided by the fact that the new Reform Parliament was
simultaneously considering legislation for both metropolitan factory chil-
dren and colonial slaves. Supporters of the West Indian slaveholders
found it irresistible to compare the demographics of labor on both sides
of the British Atlantic.25 William Gladstone’s maiden speech in Parlia-
ment was devoted to this major theme. He compared the life expectancy
of Demerara sugar workers with that of Sheffield grinders, of course to
the advantage of Demerara’s slaves. He offered to match abolitionists’
“deficits” and “surpluses” case for case. As the son of the owner of large
Demerara plantations, Gladstone’s exculpation of that colony, a “worst-
case” challenge for planters, implicitly defended his family’s reputation.
But Gladstone wielded his analytic rapier in defense of other British col-
onies. Why was Trinidad a more poorly reproducing slave society than
Jamaica? Did not Trinidad, as Admiral Fleming maintained, operate un-
der “the excellent laws of Spain”? Gladstone’s unrelenting empirical ar-

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gument anticipated a career strewn with quantitative speeches. It was
too well received for abolitionists’ comfort. Buxton, rising to reiterate his
natural-suicide thesis, expressed astonishment at the cheers he had heard
for Gladstone’s erudition.26
There were two notable characteristics of the demographic dimension
of the debate. Abolitionists stuck to their major theme: British slavery
was in terminal deficit. With the exception of Barbados, the deficit was
indisputably greater in the sugar colonies than in others. So valuable
were reproduction rates that one hard-line radical abolitionist was willing
to risk the stigma of recalling Haiti’s staple export deficit in exchange for
its population surplus. Supporters of the slave interest, by contrast, dis-
aggregated the categories of demographic comparison throughout the
proceedings. They drew fine distinctions between African and Creole rates
of reproduction and between the age of cohorts within each category.
They also sharply expanded the geographic terms of comparison. They
argued that metropolitan factory children labored in conditions far worse
than those of slaves, a charge echoed in the radical working-class press.27
For all the attention lavished on the reproductive performance of the
sugar colonies, the discussion left no trace in the details of the emanci-
pation bill itself. Neither the abolitionists nor the government introduced
clauses or amendments designed to enhance the number or the survival
of children born in the islands. Nor did the population principle enhance
the case for immediate emancipation. The low rates of decrease or po-
tential positive trends could not possibly have been decisive, one way or
the other, for a generation. Whether the abolitionists or their opponents
were right, the immediate future of existing labor, not the distant future
of potential labor, was the central issue in the emancipation debates of
1833.
When he introduced the bill in May 1833, Colonial Secretary Stanley
referred dismissively to the potential fall in sugar output. Whether feigned
or not, his casual attitude quickly altered. The planters’ unyielding pre-
dictions of declining production had to be a concern of the government.
On the verge of victory, abolitionist leaders in Parliament attempted to
counter this fundamental fear with a very different forecast for the eco-
nomic outcome of the great experiment. Lord Buckingham was the most
sanguine. Beginning with Josiah Condor’s Wages or the Whip, he invoked
an honor roll of authorities in support of free labor’s superior productiv-
ity wherever it had been tried and over the whole course of human
history.28
Admiral Fleming added the weight of his eye-witness experience in
the Caribbean. Free laborers were displacing slave labor in plantations of
Caracas. They were working alongside slaves on Cuban plantations. Since
free labor was more productive, “it must then follow, that both masters
and slaves would be enriched” by emancipation. As for metropolitan con-
sumption, as long as “England resorted to the Caribbean for tropical

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 goods West India proprietors would be enriched by a larger demand.”
Along the Atlantic trade network, there would be improvements for all.
British merchants would gain, as would manufacturers, seamen, and ar-
tisans. The ex-slave would prosper, for it was not sugar cultivation in
itself that was deadly but too much work, for too long, and for too scanty
a reward. High wages would sustain disagreeable labor and afford more
rest, more sustenance, more comfort, and more production. A rising tide
of rewards would increase both labor and capital.29
The real risk to labor, abolitionists insisted and as Adam Smith had
observed, was that, some free laborers would work themselves to death
in their zeal for acquiring newly available goods. The ethos of mass con-
sumption that was replacing the negative work-or-starve incentive among
the British working class would quickly spread to the Caribbean working
class. The power of positive incentives echoed through the debates in the
House of Lords. If you wished to see the probable outcome of emanci-
pation in action, said Buckingham, look to free America. The trade be-
tween the independent United States and Britain “was twenty times as
great as it ever had been between those countries previous to emanci-
pation.” By “emancipation,” Buckingham did not, apparently, refer to
freedom for the American slaves, who accounted for so much of a trade
that had increased twentyfold.30
Buckingham’s perspective, of course, drew on the widely shared met-
ropolitan consensus that greater daily output could be expected from a
British laborer who was working for wages than from a Poor Law or a
convict laborer. The only question was this: would ex-slaves produce more
or nearly as much for their ex-masters under freedom at relatively un-
changed costs? A decade before West Indian writers had challenged “the
whole world to produce a single satisfactory precedent, where a similar
ratio exists between population, capital and space, of slaves, in any num-
bers, who have been made free, executing the necessary duties of tropical
sugar labour for wages [or any equivalent income] consistent with the
maintenance of the . . . necessary and average profits of plantations.”
They denied even “the probability of such a result.”31
On the Extinction Committee of 1832, West Indian witnesses testified
that they had never seen a free laborer working in the cane fields. Plant-
ers were therefore totally unimpressed by metropolitan labor productivity.
They were more concerned about the continuity of their supply of gang
labor than the daily output of individual laborers. The most widely dis-
cussed designs for a free labor experiment assumed that wages for the
freed slave would rise anywhere from double to quadruple the cost of the
laborer as a slave. The question was whether agricultural productivity
would increase proportionately.
The first challenge to Stanley’s motion for emancipation, on economic
grounds, did not emanate from a West Indian spokesman. The opponent
was Lord Howick, a Whig, a free trader, a Colonial Office planner, and

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the son of the prime minister. Howick’s major objection was to the con-
tinuation of coerced labor itself in the apprenticeship system. His cal-
culations of the differential costs of labor inadvertently showed why
planters preferred coerced labor for as long as possible on economic
grounds. Howick compared the 1832 Extinction of Slavery Committee’s
estimates of the planter’s annual outlay per slave with the rate for hiring
a slave in jobbing gangs. He concluded that the labor given by an ap-
prentice would be rewarded at one-fifteenth of the market rate. The gap
between potential and actual reward would destroy any motivation for
increased productivity under apprenticeship. Howick, of course, was us-
ing these figures as an argument against the principle of apprenticeship.
No one had hitherto assessed a free laborer’s productivity at quite so
many times that of a slave. But it cast a longer shadow over free labor.
His figures also implied that the differential between slave and wage labor
elsewhere in the Caribbean was so great that a slave was far cheaper to
employ than a free laborer. Even if a slave was only half as productive
as a hired laborer (the most frequent rule of thumb in such comparisons),
the master purchased that half-rate at an even smaller fraction of the
hiring price of colonial free labor in 1833.32
Analogous arguments about the cost and availability of labor
abounded during the emancipation debate. The most frequently invoked
was the hypothesis of the backward-bending labor supply curve. Under
the current system, one day’s labor by a slave was deemed enough to
produce a week’s self-sufficiency. Would ex-slaves work for five times their
current requirements for self-sufficiency and replicate the labor output of
their bondage even at higher wages? The abolitionists’ traditional reply
was a consumerist one. The taste for luxuries, like the innate drive for
perpetual improvement, knew no limit. A revolution of rising expecta-
tions would fuel the drive for work. Skeptics replied in two ways. Most
slaves already had some physical amenities, like furniture. Many had sav-
ings in amounts well beyond the reach of metropolitan workers. How
much more would they need? Self-employment and leisure were also
amenities. Who could be assured that the worker’s cost-benefit choices
between these two elements of economic freedom would not cause a
serious labor shortage?
Once again, it was Peel who targeted the abolitionists’ conflation of
choices. The taste for finery might suffice someday, but in the tropics,
“the great blessing of life is the absence of labor.” Peel emphasized that
disposable time, as well as potential income, would become available to
the ex-slaves when the labor market became fully free. Who could predict
how the freed would choose to allocate between the two? The “notion
that wages would induce labour would be a most dangerous experi-
ment.”33
Another MP, Colonel Torrens, voiced similar skepticism from his per-
spective as a political economist. Not climate, race, previous degree of

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 servitude, or stage of civilization made the result less hazardous. Having
waited for more than two months before he got into the debate, the
colonel may have been a bit testy over some of his colleagues’ assump-
tions about the willingness of ex-slaves to work for wages. For the colonel,
the error of Lushington, Buxton, and other abolitionists was that they
applied general principles without any regard to particular circumstances
or to “living man.” As naked abstractions, general free labor principles
went for nothing—their value simply could not be separated from their
practical utility. Adopting them for their own sake was the opposite of
scientific and philosophical. It was “fanaticism and quackery” rather than
a careful induction from experience and fact.34
For Torrens the decisive measure in the case at hand was the man-
land ratio. Wide variations in population density would produce different
outcomes in labor relations, regardless of climate or civilization. The for-
mer determined the latter. In a densely populated island like Barbados,
“there could be no doubt, but that labour could be obtained for hire.”
Population pressure permitted profitable wage labor. In Trinidad and Gui-
ana, where ample subsistence could be achieved by cultivators working
for themselves, “labour could not be procured for wages.” Torrens sup-
ported Buxton on the common nature of Africans and Europeans, but
Torrens drew a different lesson from that assumption. Others sought their
evidence from transatlantic colonies, in areas with high proportions of
black populations. Torrens drew his from the new experiments in colo-
nization by Britons in the South Pacific. He asked the House of Commons
to base its expectations on the actual behavior of “men of the British
race,” already placed in circumstances quite similar to those in which,
Buxton contended, freed Africans would work for wages. On any frontier,
Englishmen “immediately ceased to work for wages” and sought to cul-
tivate on their own. Reports from penal settlements in Australia had been
unsupportive of free labor superiority during the decade before emanci-
pation. Torrens clearly followed Wakefield’s general line of reasoning, and
he followed it with rigor. To suppose that freed slaves in Jamaica, Trinidad,
and Guiana would not follow the Australian pattern, in which “civilized
and Christian people fall back to the semi-barbarism of squatters and
woodsmen,” was in Torren’s view “pernicious and absurd.”35
The relentless Joseph Hume, the free trader who represented metro-
politan London, was geographically less wide-ranging than Torrens but
no less vehement in his appeal to political economy. He again denounced
the rush to an ill-considered experiment, with incomplete evidence,
drawn from aborted parliamentary committee hearings. Hume found no
record of evidence that free labor would do the job of staple cultivation.
He considered Daniel O’Connell’s unconditional enthusiasm for free labor
to be based on a tissue of errors. Hume reiterated one example after
another of “failed” free labor experiments, in Trinidad, in Guiana, and in
Spanish America. The “mighty experiment” was a headlong plunge, reck-

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less, hasty, dangerous, and crude. Even the abolitionists’ spokesman, he
concluded, changed “his mind every year.”36
Hume’s arguments did not go unanswered. They stimulated a triple-
barreled counterattack from Admiral Fleming, Lord Buckingham, and Dr.
Stephen Lushington. Were wealthy Englishmen less idle than freed slaves?
The people’s happiness was the ultimate and only object of government.
Free people invariably worked to a maximum, and a free laborer’s effi-
ciency would diminish any putative gaps in production. If happiness, not
production, were given priority, no experiments in freedom had ever
failed, not even those in Sierra Leone and Haiti.37
By the end of the debates, the scientific metaphor of a great experi-
ment had taken on a symbolic life of its own. Against the more caustic
political economists, some moderates and West Indians realized that rais-
ing such a belated storm of theoretical criticism against the very principle
of emancipation might undermine the consensus that would maximize
the experiment’s chances for success, and the compensation package as
well. The West Indian planters could alternately argue that they were a
key variable in an uncertain process. Reaching a consensus on the con-
ditions of transition required some imperial assurance of plantation con-
tinuity, as well as the promise of a nonviolent and more contented freed
population. When abolitionist MPs posed a last-minute threat to the ap-
prenticeship compromise by calling for immediate, full, and free waged
labor, the government quashed the motion in the name of scientific pro-
cedure. Stanley reiterated the government’s view of what the transition
was about. He warned the abolitionists to be exceedingly cautious about
how they tampered with an experiment, “the magnitude of which had
never been equaled.” It was not sufficient that the freed slaves “should
be orderly and peaceable; it was necessary that sugar should be raised
on those islands; it was necessary that they should continue to contribute
to the wealth, and strength and commercial prosperity, and maritime
power of this great empire.”38 Freedom and sugar were equally essential
to the success of the experiment.
The press was as preoccupied with the labor question as was Parlia-
ment. The editorial evolution of the London Times, increasingly identified
as a journalistic organ of national public opinion, reveals the uncertain-
ties entailed in the transition to freedom. When emancipation was first
brought before Parliament in May 1823, the Times stood squarely in the
middle. It would not “alarm prudent men, by starting the experiment of
an immediate emancipation of the negroes.” Yet, could the “vile stain”
of bondage “be affixed for ever to the British name”? It remained only to
ascertain “whether a negro laboring voluntarily for pay or for himself
could outproduce, and perhaps even treble, what a slave under the whip
could be forced to do.” Only the stimulus of new wants was necessary
to ensure full production. Otherwise, idleness would be the curse of the
West Indies.39

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 Ten years later the question of immediate emancipation was resolved
for the Times by the “national conscience,” even before it had received
the sanction of Parliament. The continuity of labor, however, was now
even more of a problem than in the extended gradualist perspective of
the previous decade. The Times would “not deny the superior advantages
of free labour “in the colonies,” as well as in the metropolis, but the
advantages would appear only gradually. Only a disagreement on the
timing necessary for assured success compelled the Times to reject the
abolitionists’ manouvers to eliminate any coerced labor transition period
whatever. The abolitionists had still not produced convincing evidence,
on a large-enough scale, that ex-slaves would immediately match existing
levels of industry and output. Apprenticeship was a cautious and nec-
essary genuflection before the hazards of the unknown.40
The hopes and fears of the experimenters were as concisely laid out
in the final provisions of the bill as in the extended arguments. The
clearest evidence that the government believed that the transition to lib-
erty would be costly to the slaveholders lay in the provision for compen-
sation to those who were about to lose title to their property rights in
persons. After three months of discussion, the original proposal of a loan
of £15 million, to be repaid in part by a tax on the ex-slaves, was con-
verted into an outright compensation fund of £20 million, to be paid by
the sugar consumers of Britain. The planters unsuccessfully requested a
still more generous outlay of up to £10 million more in “transition loans.”
Nevertheless, £20 million represented an enormous investment in a single
overseas policy—40 percent of the government’s annual average in-
come.41 It was three times England’s annual expenditure on the Poor
Laws, at a moment when taxpayers’ anxiety about the rising costs of
metropolitan welfare was reaching a peak. The funding of compensation
required additional public borrowing. Morality and equity had to come
to a delicate compromise. The government quickly agreed with abolition-
ists that the notion of enslaved victims who had to purchase or pay for
their own freedom was disgraceful. On the other hand, outraged working-
class radical newspapers denounced news of the new expenditure as
another scheme to soak the poor. William Cobbett, ever hostile to blacks,
taxes, and abolitionists alike, felt free to abandon his 1832 parliamentary
campaign pledge to support emancipation. He refused to vote a farthing
in taxes for poor Britons to pay for freeing “comfortable” West Indian
slaves.42
Those MPs who were hostile to the bill for any reason whatever now
had a rhetorical field day. They pushed the putative superiority of free
labor in the faces of those who supported the government’s tax-raising
provision for planters’ indemnification. If free laborers were more valu-
able than slaves, what was the meaning of this outrageously large tax
on just those metropolitan groups who were materially more deprived
than West Indian slaves? Lord Belmore scorned the very principle of com-

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pensation as subversive of the belief in free labor’s superiority. Others
wondered why Parliament should not follow the precedent set in the
abolition of the slave trade, in which no preemptive compensation had
been offered. Their argument was strengthened by abolitionists’ assur-
ances of increased prosperity without any apprenticeship whatever. Stan-
ley defended compensation as an integral part of a legislative package
designed to ensure planters’ acquiescence and to increase prospects for a
successful experiment. Abolitionists were offering a reassuring prognosis,
but it was West Indian fortunes that were on the line: “The parties most
interested were willing to run the risk, on certain pecuniary considera-
tion, of carrying this great and important experiment into effect.”43
As the debate lengthened, the colonial secretary elaborated increas-
ingly detailed calculations to undergird compensation. He now assumed
that emancipation entailed a net loss to planters from the transition to
free labor. Compensation was intended to “pay down the value” of the
“one-fourth” of the value of the slaves’ labor, taken immediately from
the planter under the apprenticeship plan, and for potential extra costs
of labor thereafter. Stanley insisted that perfect predictability was impos-
sible. There was always the possibility that the ex-master would lose both
capital and returns to laboring capital during or after the end of appren-
ticeship. The planter had to be compensated for both present and pro-
spective losses.44
It was not only the radical working class that took issue with com-
pensation. Abolitionists’ rallies and lectures had never discussed the com-
pensation at length, much less the staggering sums of £15 million and
then £20 million. The Times reacted with resignation to the upgrade. The
indemnity seemed “extravagant, from the smallness of the change expected
to be produced in the efficiency of the forced exertions of the apprenticed
labourers’ during the proposed 12 years . . . and the superior cheapness,
in ordinary circumstances, of free over slave labour.” If the West India
planter rationally altered his system, “he will rather derive a benefit than
suffer a loss from . . . emancipation. The 20,000,000 will thus become a
mere surplusage of national generosity, to reconcile the colonists to a
course of conduct which their own interests dictated as much as the
humanity of the British legislature.” Though one must make some allow-
ances for taxpayers’ remorse, it seems clear that the Times was sufficiently
optimistic about the economic outcome of the experiment to feel that the
government was probably overestimating the risks and underestimating
the benefits of emancipation. The Tory press was far more pessimistic.45
The same premise of possible loss underlay the system of apprentice-
ship built into the emancipation law. The government’s original proposal
called for twelve years of bound labor. Freed slaves would have to work
for their ex-masters without wages for three-quarters of each working
day. The backlash against the West Indians over the size of the compen-
sation helped to diminish parliamentary resistance to abolitionists’ de-

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 mands for a shorter period of bondage. The government was initially
taken aback by their sudden move toward a full free labor market. From
the late 1790s until the early 1830s, most parliamentary abolitionists had
accepted, indeed insisted, on the need for a special transitional period.46
Yet antislavery tolerance for the gradual introduction of a full wage sys-
tem evaporated as soon as Parliament passed the general resolution for
immediate emancipation. As the Times editorial record shows, abolition-
ists combined the free labor ideology and the rising compensation pack-
age to great effect during the debates.
Lord Howick, of course, attacked apprenticeship from the outset. He
argued that apprenticeship resembled slavery more than liberty. It could
not possibly act as a real school for wage labor. Others assailed the very
idea of apprenticeship for the skepticism it implied about the superiority
of free labor. Buckingham and O’Connell taunted the government for its
lack of faith in the efficacy of hunger as a stimulus to labor. A partial
experiment in free labor was impossible because there could be no half-
way house between freedom and slavery. Apprenticeship was merely slav-
ery under a disguised name.47
In the final stages of the debate on apprenticeship, the colonial sec-
retary explicitly challenged the abolitionists’ refusal to allow that there
were any intermediate positions between wages and the whip. Indeed
“apprenticeship” had been metaphorically recycled from the metropolitan
lexicon of contracted labor precisely for its intermediary overtones. Met-
ropolitan apprentices were bound by parents or parish officers to serve
for specific periods. West Indians were unable to postpone emancipation,
but abolitionists were overwhelmingly defeated on the general principle
of an unmediated labor transition. Abolitionists then haggled, paring
down the transition time from twelve to six years for field slaves and to
four years for all others. Their final amendment, to reduce the term of
bondage from six years to one (the duration of an English agricultural
laborer’s contract) was defeated. Stanley successfully insisted that a mixed
system was feasible, always brandishing before Parliament the possibility
of endangering the whole experiment. Without all of the government’s
precautions, the House of Commons might move the colonies in the di-
rection of irreversible failure.48
The Apprenticeship debates thus produced the clearest formulations
of the free labor ideology. They also produced the clearest reservations to
implementing that ideology. When the abolitionists finally forced a roll-
call vote on the amendment to eliminate bound labor from the emanci-
pation package, they lost by a margin of almost eight to one (42 to 324).
The Tory and Whig leadership came together to deliver a severe rejection
to supporters of unequivocal and universal free labor. Significantly, the
press accepted apprenticeship far more casually than compensation.49
The apprenticeship vote showed the limits of parliamentary faith in
free labor. And the debate over the sugar duties, the last element in the

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emancipation package, showed the limits of parliamentary faith in free
trade. Historians who have emphasized the role of a free trade movement
in encouraging emancipation have rarely attended to the public discus-
sion of the emancipation bill. By 1833 sugar had long been one of the
most highly taxed commodities in the British economy. Various interests
had been pushing hard for some reform of the system in the decade
before emancipation. The West Indians wanted a continuation of their
protected position, along with a lowering of duties on colonial sugar to
consumers. The East India interest pressed for the equalization of only
East and West Indian sugar. Advocates of full free trade, like Joseph
Hume, used the opening of the Reform Parliament to revive the issue.
Manufacturers that were trading with the expanding tropical zones of
slave production, especially in Cuba and Brazil, also advocated a more
general equalization and lowering of duties on all foreign sugar.50
The government, for its part, regarded high sugar duties as a mainstay
of its annual revenue. The imminence of emancipation intensified the
debate. Early in the 1833 session, Hume moved the equalization of sugar
duties to make the product more accessible to the metropolitan poor. His
motion was rejected by Lord Althorp, the government’s spokesman in the
House of Commons, on the grounds that the approach of emancipation
was no time to be tinkering with sugar duties. Hume’s initiative was
rejected by an overwhelming majority of ten to one. Much of the argu-
ment over sugar duties hinged on what legislators imagined would hap-
pen to sugar production after emancipation. The colonial secretary began
the emancipation debate by welcoming the possibility of relieving colonial
“overproduction.” But Stanley soon changed his tone, insisting that the
continuity of sugar production was the sine qua non of emancipation’s
success. Defenders of the West Indian planters had long predicted a fall
in production after emancipation. Now they predicted a drop of 25 per-
cent, probably deriving from the fact that the apprenticeship clause set
aside one-quarter of the workday as voluntary, paid work by the freed
laborers.51
Abolitionists responded to these tactics in a variety of ways. The first
was the moral bottom line. If production fell in exchange for the rise in
the slaves’ happiness, this was entirely appropriate. As for the impact of
such a drop on the metropolitan poor, East Indian equalization could
easily make good the 25 percent drop or even increase consumption. The
major party leaders envisioned no such automatic relief. For Peel, the
object of emancipation was hardly to produce twenty more internally
oriented Haitis, importing rather than exporting sugar. In the govern-
ment’s view, emancipation entailed raising, not lowering, sugar duties.
Voices were raised in outrage from all directions. The abolitionist Buck-
ingham noted that with increased duties, the cost of emancipation would
rise by £2 million per year over and above the compensation package.
Free traders angrily argued that if West Indian agriculture faced new

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 difficulties, lower production would create a real, as opposed to a formerly
nominal, monopoly. They demanded at least the equalization of West and
East Indian free sugar. Others demanded free trade in sugar as a prior
condition of both emancipation and compensation, or they suggested
lower duties for sugar and a shift of taxation to other commodities.
Against all these appeals the government insisted that emancipation
required both West Indian protection and higher duties to cover the in-
terest on the public loans used to finance compensation. Althorp empha-
sized that the large majority of members of Parliament understood and
supported the need to allow the West Indies a protected metropolitan
market. Abolitionists, East Indians, and free traders alike saw their
amendments for imperial or for global equalization go down to over-
whelming defeat. For the first time since Wilberforce’s first abolition bill
in 1791, British sugar was to have real, as well as nominal, price protec-
tion.52
The full implications of the decision to sustain protection could not
be predicted with great accuracy. However, the West India interest made
a bid for permanent protection late in the debate. Lord Wynford employed
for the first time the abolitionists’ appeal to avoid consumption of slave-
produced goods. He offered an amendment to the emancipation bill that
would have banned the importation of all slave-grown produce, except
cotton, from the British market. Lord Brougham, Britain’s most promi-
nent abolitionist peer, objected on economic grounds, reckoning that such
a blanket prohibition would quickly cost the British consumer more than
the total compensation bill of £20 million. The Duke of Wellington, lead-
ing the die-hard opposition to emancipation, in the upper house, agreed
with Brougham’s cost estimate, precisely because it focused attention on
the deep chasm between the ideologies of free trade and those of free
labor. The amendment lost by a two-to-one margin. It would permanently
have placed most slave-grown produce in the same prohibited category
as the slave trade within the orbit of British power. But it would also
completely have insulated the West Indian planters and workers from the
outcome of the great experiment, indefinitely shifting the costs of lost
production to the British consumer. The government did not care to set
a time limit on the great experiment, but no one wanted to ensure pro-
tection that would go on as long as competitive slave colonies might
continue to exist.53
By keeping protective duties in place, the government reintroduced
another volatile and destabilizing issue into the emancipation debate—
the impact of the new colonial legislation on the international slave trade.
The continuance of the slave trade was a principal concern of the Com-
mercial Committee’s hearings in 1832. That committee duly noted that
an increasing proportion of the world’s sugar and coffee was being pro-
duced by slave-importing Cuba and Brazil.54 In Parliament, some speakers
predicted a rise in the slave trade and production shares of these im-

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porting countries as a result of emancipation. The government’s insis-
tence on protection addressed this issue by insulating the experiment
from the direct competition of Cuban and Brazilian exports, but the at-
tention of the 1833 debates was on the internal issue of free labor versus
slave labor. Given the acceptance of emancipation as a settled imperative
of national conscience, the chance of any national hesitation because of
more remote potential effects on the transatlantic slave trade was nil in
1833.55
This was demonstrated by Wellington’s last-ditch protest against
emancipation. The “noble Duke’s friends” registered a formal minority
“Protest” in the journals of the House of Lords at the end of the 1833
session. One of its key assertions was almost an inversion of Adam
Smith’s: The “experience of all times and all nations has proved that men
at liberty to labour or not will not work for hire at agricultural labour in
the low grounds within the tropics.” The usually cautious Times treated
this protest, by Britain’s most illustrious living military hero with un-
characteristic contempt. The “all nations” phrase struck them as gratu-
itous since only the tropics were meant. “Of all times” implied “that we
can never, at any future period, commend the free labour which cultivates
sugar within the tropics.” Wellington’s anti-Smithian universalism played
perfectly into the hands of the overwhelming majority, who wished for
the trial of free labor. Otherwise, an “endless and enormous system of
oppression would continue,” and, “unless we intend to support intermi-
nable slavery, the experiment of emancipation may be as safely tried now
as at any distant period.”56
A second aspect of the editorial revealed the implicit rather than the
explicit conditions under which the Times imagined freedom was being
granted. The duke argued that the man-land ratio in America was so
low and the land so fertile that one could not expect ex-slaves to work
for hire. “And why not work ‘for hire,’ ” admonished the Times, if the
emancipated slave “has not a foot of land in which he can call his own,”
with severe laws to compel residence and to repress vagrancy?” The free
Negro could be punished as a vagabond, “as in our own free island at
home.” Adding conditions not actually included in the emancipation bill,
the Times could not resist symbolically delegitimizing the duke himself
from the seat of power. It was cause for national self-congratulation “that
the noble author of such a protest has ceased to be a Minister of the
Crown with no prospect of ever being called to its councils.” The prox-
imity of the “Protest” to a disguised defense of slavery left the Times to
wonder “what business his Grace had at the funeral of Mr. Wilberforce
with such a protest in his head or his pocket.” There were moments and
places when the language of dissent bore the odor of desecration.57
The Whig Globe offered a more sober response to Wellington’s grim
prognosis. Emancipation was an experiment with a considerable chance
of success. Some areas, especially in Spanish America, offered the hope

   141

 that “the experiment will not be destructive of regular industry . . .
though there is enough in the opposite opinion entertained by great num-
bers of intelligent persons to prevent us from feeling entire confidence on
the subject.” Science and reason, however, could have only a supporting
role in this historic action: “This much all but a very few sanguine per-
sons will readily concede to the protestors, that, if the emancipation of
slaves is not to be defended on the grounds of morals and religion, it
cannot be defended on pecuniary calculations. It is avowedly a sacrifice
by the nation to its sense of duty. The grant of compensation is in itself
an acknowledgment that great loss will be sustained, or, at any rate, great
risk incurred.”58
In one crucial respect, emancipation was not at all a scientific exper-
iment. No economic outcome, perhaps not even a major slave uprising
against apprenticeship, would have stimulated reenslavement. After half
a century of abolitionist agitation, the question of legal freedom was
closed. At the same time, Britain’s act was very much a true experiment
in every sense of the term. In the still-expanding slave economies of the
New World, planters, or their fellow citizens, might be convinced to adopt
the British model as a blueprint for an orderly and prosperous transition
to freedom. The Emancipation Act of 1833 was designed to do more than
merely influence slaveholders and others “for whom profits and land val-
ues counterbalanced tons of humanitarian rhetoric.”59 The experiment
was intended to be a systematic demonstration of the costs and benefits
of transition in terms of additions to revenues and relative public tran-
quility. Editorial paeans to scenes of peaceful transition could alternate
with clinical calculations in the same newspapers, estimating the prob-
able balance of profit in favor of the free labor plantations. Previous slave
owners could look forward to the infusion of millions of pounds into the
islands.60
It is possible to view the Emancipation Act of 1833 as the expression
of a consensual bourgeois capitalist ideology. This conclusion is easier to
support if one concentrates only on the planners of the Colonial Office,
the success of the government’s bill, and the celebrations on both sides
of the Atlantic on August 1, 1834, the day of liberation. In this perspec-
tive, freedom was the outcome of a fusion between contemporary political
economy and evangelical theology. The parliamentary debates and the
commentaries of the press quickly shatter that impression. For most par-
ticipants in the discussion, the world beyond Europe still represented a
place with deep differences from the metropolis. These differences war-
ranted extreme caution in an attempt to make the overseas world con-
gruent with that of Europe. The specter of willed idleness, the backward-
bending labor supply curve, never ceased to hover over the deliberations.
Parliament decisively refused to vote for liberty without the recognition
of overseas claims to capital in persons; without a transitional system to
ensure labor continuity, and without protectionist guarantees that com-

142   

pletely overrode consumer considerations. Each of these constraints was
a vote of little confidence in free labor, in free trade, or in both. In terms
of trade policy, this major act of the new Reform Parliament was an
explicit repudiation of laissez-faire. The act was therefore nonconformist
in economic, as well as religious, inspiration. Under severe pressure from
without, both Parliament and the government could still demonstrate
that they were in charge, legislating emancipation as a rational choice
for controlled social change. It certainly was controlled by the imperial
metropolis to a much greater extent than any of its predecessors in the
Caribbean and South America. Maintaining control, however, was also a
dauntingly expensive exercise, involving “a prodigious almost incredible
sum for a British Parliament,” elected to enact stringent economic re-
forms, to award to any sector at an imperial periphery.61 For all these
reasons, the most intensely investigated and discussed overseas reform in
the nation’s history would remain a “great experiment” in British political
vocabulary for decades to come.

   143

 9
  

F or two generations before 1833, most abolitionists argued

that once liberated, workers in British colonies could pro-
duce tropical staples as abundantly, more cheaply, and more efficiently
than former slaves. During the remainder of the decade, there were oc-
casional allusions to the attractiveness of the peasant option along the
lines that George Thompson had offered in his rousing dismissal of eco-
nomic performance before abolitionist audiences prior to emancipation.
The more dominant note was in the other direction. If anything, the
passage of the emancipation act intensified both abolitionists’ and non-
abolitionists’ commitments to the experimental concept. In recounting a
major journey through the West Indies at the end of the 1830s, Quaker
John Gurney urged abolitionists in Britain to promote “a steady attention
to the cultivation of staple articles . . . for the sake of slaves in the Brazils,
in Cuba and Porto Rico, and far above all, for the safety of untold mul-
titudes in benighted Africa.” Gurney’s account itself was confidently ad-
dressed to a leader of the United States Senate, and a slaveholder.1
As a way of exterminating slavery through a successful economic
demonstration, the same message was preached by Captain Charles Stu-
art, a lifelong, itinerant British abolitionist, to newly liberated plantation
workers in the Caribbean: “You strengthen the fetters of the slave in other
lands, by giving colour to the charge, that if not compelled by force to
labour as he is, he would be as idle as you are.”2 The West Indies had
become the world’s operating theater for the anatomy of emancipation.
The most striking characteristic of the two decades after 1833 was the
persistence of the experimental concept through a series of policy debates
in Britain. The basis on which the experiment should be assessed varied
dramatically from one year or decade to another, but there was a wide-
spread acceptance of the idea that its results could be assayed according

144
to formal and objectively measurable criteria. As long as political partic-
ipants on all sides had a major stake in emphasizing the rationality of
their policymaking, it was in the interest of all to assert that the outcome
could be consensually assessed. One could plead for a policy change on
grounds that it was necessary to bring the experiment to a full and fair
test, or one could oppose a change on the grounds that it would place
the experiment in an unfair or even an abortive situation.
The first stage of emancipation lasted from its implementation in 1834
through the termination of apprenticeship in 1838. Under the terms of
the act, slavery came to a legal end in the British colonies on August 1,
1834. With the exception of children under 6 years old, ex-slaves were
bound to labor for a period of years, six years for agricultural laborers
and four years for the rest, classified as “non-predial” (i.e., not attached
to the land). The market for labor was operative only for a portion of the
working day of ex-slaves. By lowering intraimperial duties, the West In-
dies was brought into competition with British East Indian sugar. Both
regions remained protected from non-imperial, mostly slave-grown sugar.
The flow of foreign sugar into the metropolis and of non–West Indian
labor into the ex-slave colonies was extremely small. A very constricted
immigration flow penetrated into the British Caribbean. In most British
colonies, the ex-slaves remained attached to their islands and were able
to bargain for a portion of their time in exchange for wages.3
From a number of the perspectives outlined in the debates of 1833,
the transition was an unequivocal success. The initial passage to freedom
was accomplished with an astonishingly low incidence of violence. In
these terms, all British governments could emphasize the overwhelming
success of the great experiment for decades to come. The new situation
was, of course, especially striking in comparison with the end of French
colonial slavery four decades earlier. Observers were no less impressed
with the contrast of British emancipation to the military revolutions and
continuing turbulence of much of Spanish America. Indeed, whether
compared to the preemancipation British Caribbean or to the European
continent, the behavior of the ex-slaves made the British colonies one of
the most tranquil portions of the Atlantic world during the second third
of the nineteenth century.
Despite considerable dissatisfaction, agitation, and work stoppages by
some ex-slaves in protest against the apprenticeship system, abolitionists,
missionaries, planters, government agents, and freed persons were suffi-
ciently cooperative to ensure widespread acquiescence in the new con-
dition. The peaceful metamorphosis of the day of liberation remained the
hallmark of British emancipation. Reviewing the British example from
across the channel, Alexis de Tocqueville urged his compatriots to mute
their general suspicion of British policy and to acknowledge its awesome
success: “Probably no human event has ever been written and spoken
about so much as the English emancipation”:

   145

 [England] dared to take the initiative and break the chains of 800,000
men at a single stroke. . . . Up to this moment the abolition of slavery
in the English colonies has not produced a single insurrection; it has
not cost the life of a single man, and yet the Negroes are twelve times
as numerous as the whites in the English colonies. . . . [Calling]
800,000 slaves to freedom on the same day and hour has not caused
a tenth of the disorder in ten years which ordinarily results from the
most minor political question that agitates opinion in the civilized
nations of Europe.4

For a generation, this image of nonviolence was to remain the most

distinguishing feature of British emancipation.
Other results of the process were equally auspicious. The bulk of the
compensation fund was distributed well before the end of apprenticeship.
Calculated at roughly 40 percent of the market value of slaves in each
colony, it was disbursed to 44,000 planters and their merchant-creditors,
subject only to litigation over contested private claims. The large infusion
of public funds allowed for a substantial reduction of long-term debts,
for the opening of fresh channels of credit, and for fresh investment in
technology. In those islands where planters could adjust to the new re-
gime without severe loss of labor or efficiency, the rewards varied from
satisfactory to spectacular.5 Colonies with dense populations, like Bar-
bados, experienced a surge of confidence in the land market and a dra-
matic increase in estate prices. The sugar island of Antigua opted to skip
apprenticeship altogether, and the immediate results of its choice became
a boon to abolitionists in their demands for early termination of that
transitional system.
Emancipation also temporarily transformed the discussion of the co-
lonial population problem. The reproductive deficit of the slave colonies
disappeared overnight from debates in Parliament and the press, except
as a retrospective justification of the demographic necessity for emanci-
pation. This was not the result of any surge in the size of the plantations’
working population. On the contrary, the reproduction problem was sim-
ply replaced by the labor problem. The rate of work force loss in the
period of apprenticeship, especially in the period immediately following
its termination, was greater than the rate of losses due to aging and
mortality in the years before emancipation. This phenomenon brought a
rapid shift of positions between the former antagonists. Those who had
argued for emancipation on the basis of a hemorrhaging slave mortality
now rejected what many planters described as a free labor hemorrhage.
Even in the most closely watched aspect of the mighty experiment,
there was much to encourage planters, legislators, and abolitionists alike.
Before emancipation the planters were enduring a deep commercial crisis.
Yet almost immediately on the heels of their crushing political defeat in
Britain, the economic outlook brightened in the colonies. Mid-decade

146   

prosperity in Britain stimulated a rise in imports and consumption. Al-
though British West Indian sugar exports fell by nearly 10 percent (see
table 9.1), the London price rose by a more than compensatory 40 per-
cent. There were, to be sure, some thick clouds on the horizon. In a
number of colonies, above all Jamaica, the dominant sugar producer,
output ominously fell by twice the average or more. Even in Jamaica,
however, profitability and investment rose, stimulated both by the slave
compensation funds and the rising sugar prices. If coffee estates fared
less well, this could easily be explained within the terms of political econ-
omy. Resources were being shifted from marginal or losing enterprises to
more profitable pursuits.6
The results of emancipation thus made certain preemancipation dis-
tinctions in political economy even more significant. The differences be-
tween thickly and thinly settled areas had played a considerable role in
discussions of slaves’ reproduction, productivity, and prices before eman-
cipation. They had been used to account for differences in the statistical
profiles of age, sex, and geographical origins and, implicitly, for differences
in both productivity and reproductivity. With the freedom to partially
withdraw labor, the differences in man-land ratios became still more im-
portant. Ex-slaves had highly differential access to land in the various
colonies and recourse to partial, intermittent, or total withdrawals from
the work force. At least in the short run, access to land became a much
more significant issue to both laborers and employers than fertility and
mortality figures.
In the wake of emancipation, the discussion of population abuse and
deficit was virtually displaced by a consensus on the ex-slaves’ rising
standard of living. Evidence for this change was presented in long lists
of improvements in material possessions, in education, and in leisure.
Dramatic anecdotal tidbits were backed up by statistics of rising com-
modity imports from Britain, of burgeoning church and educational at-
tendance, and of expanding land ownership. Whether enthusiastically or
grudgingly, the press and Parliament agreed on the basic facts of material
and religious improvement. The government exulted in this outcome. The
consensus on the workers’ standard of living was to prove a more ephem-
eral and more controversial topic than social peace, but during the first
decade of freedom rising imports of consumables to the colonies silenced
prophecies of postemancipation improverishment.7
The proposition that free labor was cheaper than slave labor also fared
relatively well during the period of apprenticeship. Antigua played an
especially important role as the case in point for the abolitionists. The
colony’s planters volunteered to forego apprenticeship and opted for im-
mediate freedom—the end of noncontractual obligations on either side.
Whereas some other colonies experienced a reduction in sugar exports,
Antigua maintained its level. Its success with immediate freedom did not,
of course, end the argument. Barbados, with an even higher population

   147

Table 9.1
Average Annual Sugar Production in the British West Indies, 1814–1866 (tons)

British Virgin
Years Antigua Barbados Guiana Dominica Grenada Jamaica Montserrat St. Kitts St. Lucia St. Vincent Tobago Trinidad Nevis Is. Total

1814–23 8,346 11,622 23,237 2,089 10,880 78,518 1,548 6,050 3,415 12,117 6,097 7,629 2,751 1,727 176,027
1824–23 8,215 14,838 55,936 2,478 10,769 68,465 1,134 4,819 3,531 12,212a 5,202 12,117 2,453 873 203,152a
1834–38 8,328 20,309 51,278 1,971 8,408 54,225 762 4,246 2,591 10,006 4,363 15,227 1,730 616 184,060
1839–46 8,927 15,652 31,865 2,319 4,744 33,431 638 5,002 2,762 6,383 2,731 15,000 1,395 328 131,177
1847–56 9,858 28,622 41,790 2,821 4,687 27,474 126 5,347 3,457 7,209 2,740 22,061 1,443 120 157,755
1857–66 10,011 36,367 61,284 2,854 4,401 25,168 343 7,978 4,627 6,934 2,820 26,564 1,699 — 191,050a

Source: Noel Deer, History of Sugar, 2 vols. (London: Chapman & Halll, 1949–1950), I, 923–203; II, 377; as corrected by William A. Green, British Slave Emancipaiton: The Sugar Colonies and
the Great Experiment, 1830–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 246.
a Indicates corrections made on Deer’s figures.
of slaves per square mile, opted for apprenticeship. Its postemancipation
increase of 37 percent in sugar output was a good deal more spectacular
than Antigua’s 1 percent. However, the fact that one of the good sugar
production records in the British Caribbean was registered by the one
colony that had taken the risk of bypassing apprenticeship afforded em-
pirical and imperial bragging rights. As the abolitionists insisted, Antigua,
with “perfect freedom,” ranked closer in performance to the top than to
the bottom of the sugar-growing colonies.8
For some larger, less densely populated colonies, and therefore for the
West Indies as a whole, the day-to-day labor situation was less satisfac-
tory. Frequent disputes between apprentices and planters—over items
ranging from land use and usufruct to corporal punishments and mobil-
ity—occupied the full attention of the special magistracy created by the
Emancipation Act of 1833 to supervise and to arbitrate the new terms
of labor. Whereas the apprenticeship system resulted in a considerable
diminution of staple output, it was possible for abolitionists to attribute
the initial reduction to a variety of causes. Preemancipation figures could
be discounted as the inflated result of a last-minute, forced-pace rush to
maximize output before liberation. For a year or two, abolitionists could
point to weather conditions and to the inevitable or cyclical variations in
agricultural production.9
Moreover, in every colony, especially in the low labor-land colonies,
the performance of slaves during the uncoerced hours (when wage pre-
miums had to be offered) for labor could be compared with their oblig-
atory labor-time performance. The result seemed to be a clear victory for
free labor. Almost two years into the apprenticeship period, Parliament
appointed a Select Parliamentary Committee on Negro Apprenticeship in
the Colonies to assess the results of the system. Its membership included
some of the most vigorous parliamentary abolitionist spokesmen of 1833
(Thomas Fowell Buxton, Stephen Lushington, and Daniel O’Connell);
some of the most diehard skeptics of emancipation (Patrick Stewart, and
William Gladstone); and Lord Howick, the first outspoken critic of ap-
prenticeship in 1833 on economic grounds. The committee’s unanimous
endorsement of free labor superiority was the most optimistic assessment
that had ever issued from so broadly representative an official group of
legislators. Free labor was being vindicated by experience: “It is indeed
fully proved, that the labour thus voluntarily performed by the Negro, is
more effective than that which was obtained from him [sic] while in a
state of Slavery, or which is now given to his Employer during the period
for which he is compelled to work as an apprentice.” The committee saw
much reason to look forward “with a confident hope to the result of this
great experiment, a growing disposition on the part of the Negro to work
for hire and a gradual decrease of suspicion and irritation between the
races.”10

   149

 In a sense this was also a qualified endorsement of apprenticeship.
William Knibb, the most outspoken missionary advocate of full freedom
for the ex-slaves in Jamaica, privately noted that even with the foolish
and dishonorable system of apprenticeship, things in the usually troubled
island “were progressing much better than I ever expected they would.”11
The committee also agreed that apprenticeship was “not unfavorable to
the momentous change from slavery to freedom.” Flaws were noted but
deemed understandable. The persistence of “traces of evils,” including
class hostility, were only to be expected in so vast a social change. The
protective safety net afforded to West Indian sugar now came fully into
its own. In the closed metropolitan market, the price of sugar more than
mitigated the fall in colonial production. As abolitionists were quick to
note, West Indian complaints about distress sharply diminished immedi-
ately after emancipation in 1834. While affirming the general proposition
of free labor superiority, the committee thus also reaffirmed the sanctity
of the transitional mechanism. It unanimously insisted that the time
period and restrictive elements of the experiment had to remain in place
until 1840, when the end of the “solemn engagement” would bring “un-
qualified freedom” under law. The members cautioned against even fram-
ing postapprenticeship laws until very shortly before liberation.
Unfortunately for these legislative assessors, abolitionists’ pressure
from without once more accelerated the emancipation process. The com-
mittee’s optimism was not quite as irenic as it seemed. The apprenticeship
system was already under attack by extraparliamentary abolitionists. The
relative equilibrium attained under apprenticeship stimulated demands to
accelerate the transition to full free labor. The decrease of suspicion and
irritation was taken as an assurance that the mutual learning curve had
reached the requisite point of fulfillment. Four antislavery leaders sailed
to the West Indies in October 1836. Two of them, Joseph Sturge and
Thomas Harvey, published The West Indies in 1837. It showcased Antigua
as the peerless example of successful full freedom, the very model exper-
iment that West Indians like George Hibbert had demanded before eman-
cipation. Evidence from other islands demonstrated the ex-slaves’ ability
to finish work, in their free time, at much faster rates than under slavery.
Some prestigious planters’ testimony further undermined pessimistic pre-
dictions that independent cultivation would supersede estate culture or
that people when free would “refuse to labour ‘continuously’ for
wages.”12
Another national abolitionist campaign was launched in 1837 for the
immediate abolition of apprenticeship, and the “battering ram of public
opinion” was brought to bear. The classic combination of propaganda
and public meetings was climaxed by thousands of petitions signed and
delivered to Parliament. For the first time, a large flow of Irish, and even
some West Indian freedmen’s, petitions joined the campaign. Women par-
ticipated in record numbers. Once more the parliamentary abolitionists

150   

scrambled to place themselves at the head of their impatient followers.
A now-reluctant government was momentarily beaten on a motion to
end apprenticeship in 1838. The administration quickly mobilized its par-
liamentary loyalists and reversed the earlier vote, but the political damage
was done. The government quickly advised the legislatures in the sugar
colonies to abandon apprenticeship before metropolitan opinion again
combined with restive apprentices to overthrow the system. One by one,
the colonial assemblies fell into line. Apprenticeship was abolished in
1838, two years ahead of schedule.
With apprenticeship safely buried and antislavery at a pinnacle of
popularity, the abolitionists began to consider the possibilities for trans-
forming the slave systems that still prevailed beyond the British plantation
colonies. Less than a year after the end of apprenticeship, the British
abolitionists decided to convene a World Antislavery Convention in Lon-
don in 1840. They hoped to mobilize similar movements in Europe and
America. British emancipation had already stimulated the formation of
a small French abolition in 1834, organized in Paris around a core of
liberal legislators. In tandem with, and again responding to, the ending
of West Indian apprenticeship, successive French legislative commissions
were formed in 1838 and 1839 to consider the feasibility of following the
British example in the French slave colonies.13 An ephemeral antislavery
society briefly formed in Madrid. A few Cuban writers began to speculate
openly on the possibility of using free labor for cultivating sugar cane,
and there were renewed initiatives against the slave trade in Lisbon.14
The most significant response to the great British mobilizations of the
1830s, however, came in the United States. In stark contrast to the small
and subdued echoes of British emancipation in Europe and Cuba, the
American antislavery movement, like its British counterpart, was popular,
decentralized, and radical in its demand for political action. In 1835 the
American Antislavery Society initiated a bold move to bring antislavery
before the U.S. Congress. A permanent stream of popular petitions was
sent to Congress, protesting the existence of slavery and the slave trade
in the District of Columbia. Since the district was under the direct control
of the national government, it was within the constitutional competency
of the federal legislators. As in Britain, disenfranchised women and even
children could register their sentiments. In Britain the sheer number of
time-consuming presentations of antislavery petitions had threatened to
halt other public business by 1833. The American petitions also raised
American congressional consciousness, but not quite in the way the An-
tislavery Society had anticipated. Representatives of South Carolina de-
manded that such nation-wrecking petitions not even be received by the
legislators. Northern congressmen rushed to find formulas that would
bury the whole mass of antislavery petitions without ceremony, while
not destroying a right that had belonged to Americans even under George
III.

   151

 By the time American abolitionists sailed for the World Antislavery
Conference in 1840, Congress had instituted a total gag on antislavery
petitions. Abolitionists were sorely in need of encouragement.15 Their
British colleagues, distressingly uncooperative in some matters (such as
seating American women delegates), did not disappoint their cousins in
offering the consolations of science. The longest session of the confer-
ence, running for two days, was introduced by the Committee on Free
Labour.16 Its chair, John Sturge, Joseph’s brother, gave an extensive sum-
mary of the free labor ideology. Sturge reiterated the axiomatic superi-
ority of free labor as attested to by Smith, Storch, Hume, and others. In
an ascending hierarchy of labor prices, buying was more costly than
breeding, and coercion was more costly than wages. Slave systems could
maintain only temporary viability in peculiar circumstances, such as vir-
gin soil. Even then, slavery quickly negated such advantages by employ-
ing wasteful techniques that destroyed fertility. For the committee, the
most certain numerical indicator of economic value was not rising pro-
duction or profits but the price of estates. The land market in the post-
emancipation West Indies, particularly Barbados, provided the most sci-
entifically possible vindication of free labor. Difficulties, as in Jamaica and
Demerara, were occasional and attributable to temporary and exceptional
circumstances.
For the world’s first international human rights convention, Sturge
appropriately globalized the scope of his survey to reinforce the results
of the British experiment. The best evidence that imported slave labor
was driven out by home-bred slave labor was demonstrated by the relative
victory of the slave-breeding United States over slave-importing Brazil in
cotton production. At a higher stage of labor competition, between slave
and free labor, South Carolina’s complete loss of the indigo market bore
witness to the economic power of East Indian free labor. Only three years
after Britain’s first importation of indigo from India, South Carolina had
closed its ports to fresh importations of Africans. Admittedly, Sturge ac-
knowledged, the planters found a consolation prize in growing cotton.
Nevertheless, the story of indigo demonstrated “that by the operation of
this beautiful law, slavery always contains within itself the seeds of its
own destruction.”17
The population principle was equally illustrative of free labor superi-
ority. If slaves were driven to exhaustion and demographic deficit, as in
the Caribbean, soil exhaustion soon made slavery unprofitable. If slaves’
lives were made comfortable enough to breed, as in North America, their
abundance would also soon diminish their relative value. Either way the
planter would be presently compelled to quit “by the unrestricted com-
petition of free-labour.”18 The abolitionists had anticipated this outcome,
but the results so far “transcended their most sanguine hopes.” Even the
temporary fall in British colonial sugar production had been foreseen. It
had been more than compensated for by a rise in sugar prices and plant-

152   

ers’ profits. These profits would stimulate new free labor production
around the world. High-wage and high-profit free labor production would
very soon undersell Cuba and Brazil in all the markets of the world.19
The committee concluded its work by offering two key resolutions: that
free labor was cheaper and more profitable to employers and that im-
ported slaves were the most costly and expensive of all.20
The committee’s scenario was indeed an inspiring exposition of the
“beautiful law.” However, some delegates with experience in Cuba found
it a bit too consoling to be useful and far too unbalanced to be convincing.
David Turnbull, shortly to be deeply involved in Cuba’s La Escalera slave
conspiracy, wished to amend the slave trade resolution to incorporate a
modifying clause, asserting the trade’s unprofitability and allowing for an
indefinite time period. He reminded the convention that Brazil, Cuba, and
Puerto Rico were “notoriously profitable.”21 Richard Madden, a friend of
Turnbull, disagreed with the whole formulation of the slave trade reso-
lution. Considering the cost of Africans and the hours they could be
forced to work, he lamented, a free laborer yielded 1500 fewer hours of
labor per year than a Cuban slave. The relative costs for British and
Cuban sugar were all too accurately reflected in the European price dif-
ferential between their products.22
The Cuban experts were met with a rush of objections. The market
price differential was a temporary, monopoly-induced phenomenon. It
would stimulate free labor production. If the British colonies did not re-
spond more quickly from within their own undeveloped areas, Cuba and
Brazil would be undersold by Manila and Siam. Fifty years after the great
slave revolution in St. Domingue, a new sugar scramble was already stir-
ring in the British antislavery imagination. Supporters of the original
resolution argued that it was inextricably linked to the preceding reso-
lution, which declared free labor’s superiority. How could abolitionists
themselves chip away at the very cornerstone of antislavery? If the slave
trade resolution were watered down, abolitionists would be mocked for
having been foiled by results and being half afraid to acknowledge it at
their world convention. Scoble warned participants of the high stakes
involved. What if the English people were to suspect that British West
Indian sugar, which they were now buying at 47 shillings per hundred,
was to be permanently priced higher than 23-shilling Cuban sugar, which
they were not allowed to buy? They would soon demand the opening of
the market to Cuban slave sugar, a possibility Scoble considered with
horror. The result would be otherwise, he insisted, because “the laws of
God demand such a result.”23 Turnbull’s amendment was rejected.
Some abolitionists attempted to give the American delegation a further
boost by anticipating the proximate displacement of U.S. cotton by Indian
competition. Daniel O’Connell rhetorically asked how American slavery
could “compete for a single year with the results of free labour in India?”
On this question, however, with less (or more?) immediately at stake for

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 the British, a more cautious counsel prevailed. India’s imminent victory
over the cotton South was not predicted by a formal resolution.24
While the eyes of the convention, the government, and the press were
riveted on developments in the British West Indies, with frequent asides
toward the United States, Latin America, and India, one of the most
interesting of the laboratories of British emancipation received almost no
attention on the floor of the convention. Only at the closing session did
Stephen Lushington happily announce the defeat of Colonial Secretary
Russell’s bill to lift the ban on Indian indentured migration to Mauritius
in the Indian Ocean. With this victory, British antislavery added to its
unbroken string of political successes within the empire. “We must all
congratulate each other, all be thankful to Providence, that for the pres-
ent, at least, a stop has been put to what I conceive to be little less than
the renewal of the traffic in man.” Now that a whole new race of human
beings was at risk east of Africa, O’Connell announced that he would
rather be party to “the total annihilation of that unfortunate race, than
to their being subjected to a new species of slavery.”25
The unique geographical and historical position of Mauritius offered
vital historical evidence about planters’ reactions to the process of abo-
lition in a situation in which they had maximum leeway to implement
their preferences. Britain’s colony in the Indian Ocean was the last slave
island to be added to the British Empire. When it was captured from
France in 1810, it was still a relatively undeveloped colony. Whatever
lessons abolitionists imagined might be taught by Britain’s abolition of
the slave trade in 1807 were apparently lost on Mauritian planters. For
a decade after Waterloo it was the least well policed of the slave colonies.
Whereas African slave imports to the British West Indies effectively ended
in 1808, a clandestine trade to Mauritius continued for almost two more
decades. In 1825 it was also accorded parity with the British Caribbean
in the British sugar market. Within five years, the supposedly declining
years of British sugar, the production of cane in Mauritius doubled and
slave prices quadrupled (see table 9.2).26 Between 1807 and 1832, Maur-
itius remained the only “new” British colony to increase its slave popu-
lation. Despite an excess of deaths over births, it outperformed even Bar-
bados in the growth of its slave system, and despite the notoriously illegal
origin of so many of its slaves, Mauritius received a compensation share
proportionate to the relative size of its slave population within the British
Empire. The fund provided not only new credit options and debt relief, as
in other colonies, but also the means for importing a whole new labor
force.27
Between 1834 and 1839, planters imported a largely adult, male work
force, nearly approaching the size of the effective ex-slave population.
More than 20,000 Indian indentured servants were in place when full
emancipation was implemented (see table 9.2). Their fixed wages and
penal requirement to labor made them less costly than Creoles, even with

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Table 9.2
Average Annual Sugar Production of Mauritus, 1824–1828 to 1854–1858
(thousands of tons), and Average Size of the Labor Force, 1835–1851 (selected years)

Work Force

Period Sugar Production Period Ex-slaves Indians

1824–28 17,119
1829–33 33,158
1834–38 32,713 1835–38 55,170 10,167
1839–43 33,713
1844–48 50,777 1846–48 49,602 56,135
1849–53 69,886 1849–51 49,322 66,518
1854–58 113,014 1861 192,634

Source: Noel Deer, History of Sugar (London: Chapman & Hall, 1949–1950), I, 193–204; Marina
Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers: Indians in Mauritus, 1834–1874 (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1995), 16, table 1.2; S. Chandrasekhar, The Population of Mauritus: Fact, Problem and Policy (New
Delhi: Indus, 1990), 39, table 3.

the costs of transportation included. Immigrants could be forced to work

more hours per day than was legally required of apprentices. With longer
hours and fewer holidays for Indians than for Creole ex-slaves, Indians
gave planters up to twice the productivity of apprentices, the proverbial
edge of superiority of free over slave labor. Some restrictive colonial laws
on ex-slaves and indentured servants were, as in the West Indies, disal-
lowed by the metropolitan government, but the unregulated migration
of tens of thousands of migrant laborers offered the planters a relatively
easy transition to a new system of labor.
In contrast to the fears of the Colonial Office about labor shortages in
the West Indies, the imperial government became more concerned with
a glut of labor in Mauritius, threatening to reduce the wages of ex-slaves
so far as to produce a “nation of paupers.”28 At the end of apprenticeship,
what looked more like the voluntary withdrawal of labor in the West
Indies was paralleled by mass expulsions from estates in Mauritus. Ex-
slaves were chased off estates for refusing the low wages offered by plant-
ers with indentured labor on hand.29 Given the unusual degree of the
planters’ latitude in their choice of labor before 1838, it is worth noting
their preferences and options in sequence. Although Mascarene planters
had access to both eastern African and Indian labor markets, they clearly
preferred slaves and Africans to any alternative forms of labor. Under
British policies that increasingly constrained their labor sources after the
Napoleonic wars, planters preferred to buy slaves for as long as that
option was available to them. Historians have frequently attributed the
ethnic distribution of Mauritian slaves to Europeans’ ethnic prejudice.
The Mauritian transition seems to imply a clear primacy of economic
criteria over race in the critical transition from slave to nonslave labor.

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 In 1826, well over 80 percent of Mozambique-born slaves were held in
the countryside, with lower percentages of Madagascans and Indians. Yet
as soon as the emancipation act was passed, Mauritius’s planters began
a rapid acquisition of indentured Indians, in preference to their quasi-
free Creole apprentices. This process was accelerated after 1838 by the
planters’ choice for indentured Indians over free labor regardless of ethnic
origin. In Mauritius from 1810 to 1838 planters consistently chose as
much labor compulsion as possible, before and after emancipation.
The suspension of indentured migration to Mauritius in 1838 was
more than simply a response to Colonial Office fears of labor oversupply
or Creole pauperization. It was also affected by strong abolitionists’ back-
lash, in atonement for their relative neglect of Mauritius and India for
decades. During the great preemancipation mobilization before 1833,
Mauritius occupied a tiny proportion of the concern and energy devoted
to the West Indies. This neglect was not altered by emancipation in 1833,
although individual Saints squabbled over the distribution of credit for
bringing the smuggling abuses in the island to light and in challenging
compensation for Mauritius’s illegally imported slaves.30
Abolitionists’ and governmental attention to the Mauritian labor mi-
gration converged with a general concern over Indian labor migration to
the West Indies. As the end of apprenticeship loomed on the horizon,
William Gladstone’s father attempted to tap into the indentured servant
market in India to build up an alternative labor supply. John Gladstone,
a Liverpool merchant with extensive investments in Caribbean planta-
tions, wanted to follow the example of Mauritian planters and make him-
self independent “as far as possible [of] our negro population.” In 1838,
a few months before apprenticeship ended in that colony, more than 400
laborers were boarded in India for British Guiana. After an abolitionists’
protest that the process was “tantamount to a revival of the Slave Trade,”
permission to export workers from India to the sugar colonies was re-
scinded. The abolitionists followed up this victory with close observation
of the original shipment of servants to Gladstone’s estate. They found
evidence of illegal boardings in India; high mortality in the middle pas-
sage; and abuse, incarceration, and extremely high mortality once the
servants reached the plantation. From this evidence, John Scoble pub-
lished an exposé of the “Gladstone slave-trade.” The experiment seemed
to have failed so utterly that further permission to secure labor for the
Caribbean was abandoned for years. Although the abolitionists did not
oppose contracted indentures in principle, by 1838 they had succeeded
in virtually cutting off recruitment from India to the Caribbean by stress-
ing the ease with which indentured servitude slid into abuses that ap-
proached slavery.31
Abolitionists sought to cast a protective net over African migration as
well. Here their lobbying task was eased by two intractable problems: it
was to all practical purposes impossible to separate the recruitment of

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free labor from that of slaves on the coast of Africa, and the alternative
possibility of recruiting enslaved voyagers liberated during the middle
passage by the British navy was almost as difficult for political reasons.32
Slaveholders throughout the Americas never relented in characterizing
both African and Indian labor recruitment as slave trades in disguise.
Six years after formal emancipation, the abolitionists seemed to have
redefined and redrawn the line between freedom and bondage. They had
successfully lobbied the British Empire into ruling that conditions in Afro-
Asia made all potential laborers in vast areas of those continents suscep-
tible to either overt coercion or fraudulent recruitment. They had simul-
taneously stemmed Afro-Asian threats to the wages of freed blacks in the
West Indies. They were even suspicious of North American blacks who
were recruiting the labor of other free African Americans. Forty years
after the Earl of Westmoreland had sneered at the Saints for their pre-
tensions to be “emperors of the world,” his words seemed to have been
transformed from irony to prophecy. By the close of the convention, the
abolitionists were poised to expand the “great experiment” to every corner
of the earth.33

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 10
  

E ven as the international antislavery convention celebrated

victories and anticipated victories from the Atlantic to the
Indian oceans, deep shadows were beginning to fall over the great ex-
periment. With the ending of apprenticeship, the price of sugar to the
British consumer rose to a height not equaled since the end of the Na-
poleonic wars a generation before. In the months after the convention,
consumers were paying nearly 60 percent more for their sugar than the
average price during apprenticeship, itself a 40 percent rise over the final
years of slavery. In 1840, British per capita consumption dipped to its
lowest level in twenty years, and in the period 1839–1842 it was nearly
one-eighth less than in the corresponding years before emancipation.
Moreover, the British West Indies was supplying a smaller proportion of
that diminished consumption.1 Mauritius could not fill the gap. With
migration from India virtually suspended in 1839 sugar production stag-
nated (see tables 9.1 and 9.2). By 1840, the preemancipation surplus,
noted by Edward Stanley when he introduced the emancipation resolu-
tion, had vanished. The West Indies now met less than two-thirds of
British demand. In the seven years after the end of apprenticeship, West
Indian production fell more than 35 percent below slave period levels.
Despite the equalization of British East and West Indian sugar duties in
1836, Indian production did not rise to close the gap.2
The key to the transformation was the change in the terms of labor
between ex-slaves and ex-masters. A large historical literature has
emerged to investigate the “flight” from the plantations, but there is little
disagreement that there was a reduction of labor discipline and conti-
nuity. The precipitous abolition of apprenticeship in 1838 resulted in a
scramble to enact devices for free labor discipline. The planters were not
helped by the Colonial Office’s insistence that the new vagrancy acts had

158
to be more lenient than the English statutes, which were their model.
But even when regulations on vagrancy and the enforcement of contracts
were stiffened, laborers who refused to sign contracts could not be forced
to work, nor could women and children be forced back onto the fields.
The price of labor rose accordingly in low-density sugar colonies with
land available for provision grounds. Attempts at collective wage fixing,
work codes, and eviction for nonperformance were met by mass strikes
by the freedmen. As the governor of British Guiana concluded, “Who is
to eject some twenty thousand [strikers], and having done so where are
they to go?” Labor did not evaporate, but as William Green concludes,
“The main fact of life in the free West Indies was that black labourers
were unwilling to remain submissive and disciplined labour.”3
From the metropolitan perspective, the overriding economic fact of the
postapprenticeship British Caribbean was the deficit of West Indian sugar
exports. The pattern of metropolitan consumption, manufacturing, public
revenue, and antislavery were all affected by the shortfall. For seven
years, from 1839 to 1846, the problem of sugar supply became one of
Britain’s major policy considerations. Its ramifications called into question
the abolitionists’ free labor premises for emancipation. Many MPs, prob-
ably a majority, had never been convinced that free labor was always
superior to slave labor. Already, in the debates of 1833, Joseph Hume, a
parliamentary free trader, had protested the initiation of the experiment.
Subsequent debates over the expansion of British colonization in the
1830s and 1840s showed that the Wakefieldian premise of special labor
conditions in sparsely inhabited, arable countries empirically falsified as-
sertions of the universal superiority of free labor, even where the issue
of slavery did not intrude. Economists asserted that unconstrained labor
could act as a restraint on economic development in the temperate col-
onies of North America and Australia. Throughout the European-
dominated tropics, free labor remained exceptional.
In the mid-1830s abolitionists predicted, on the basis of economic per-
formance, that British West Indian free labor could soon be unleashed
against its slave-importing competitors. The press anxiously looked for
hints of the outcome of the experiment. The Tory Quarterly Review re-
mained uniformly glum about its prospects. The Edinburgh Review was
cautious but sanguine during apprenticeship. Herman Merivale, a future
undersecretary for the colonies, used an optimistic analysis of free labor
in Puerto Rico to shed light on the “momentous experiment” in the Brit-
ish colonies midway through the apprenticeship period.4 Following full
emancipation, he began a series of lectures on colonization at Oxford
from 1839 to 1841. Merivale was fully alive to the intense passions
aroused by emancipation, “so deeply interesting to every social and moral
feeling of our nature.” Unlike Mountifort Longfield, however, he no longer
hesitated to treat the subject from the perspective of political economy.
Merivale accepted Adam Smith’s free labor axiom, with an italicized ca-

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 veat: “Slave labour is dearer than free, wherever an abundance of free labour
can be procured.” What did this mean for the great experiment? Unlike
Adam Smith, Merivale traced the full development of labor in the Amer-
icas and, like Wakefield, he described slavery as a fully rational economic
response to land-labor ratios. Slavery reemerged as an eminently rational
response to the New World’s tropical Atlantic conditions. Within this
frame of reference, both Smith and J. B. Say could now be invoked to
support the conclusion that it was more profitable to cultivate the virgin
soil of the Americas by the “dear labor” of slaves than to cultivate the
depleted soil of Europe by the “cheap labor” of freemen.5
Moreover, slavery was not an anachronistic residue from an earlier
stage of history. It was an integral part of the capitalist present. Not only
could slave labor produce more agricultural value in Cuba than could
free labor in France or Germany, but also it could continue to do so for
the foreseeable future. Merivale made his economic prognosis unequivo-
cal: “No economical cause can be assigned on which we may rely for the
extinction of slavery.” Abolitionists who hoped for a gradual redefinition
of capitalist interests were delusional, at least until the forests of the
Americas had been cleared and long tilled from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The gap in Smith’s explicit analysis of the special nature of the Atlantic
slave system allowed Merivale to imagine a hypothetically unending
stream of slaves across the Atlantic economy unless checked by coun-
tervailing political power.6
The prognosis was not bright for most of the British Caribbean. In the
wake of the emancipation experiment, either the upward surge of wages
would have to be reversed or the plantations would founder. Merivale
regarded the long British march to emancipation as an economic sacri-
fice. And he warned, “If all our sacrifices, end but in the establishment
of . . . commonwealths such as Haiti now is, flourishing in contented ob-
scurity, side by side with the portentous and brilliant opulence of slave
owning and slave trading states—the best interests of humanity will have
received a shock which it may take centuries to repair.”7 For Merivale,
even the abolition of the slave trade was already a rare act of considerable
self-denial, relentlessly reducing the competitiveness of the British slave
colonies against the slave-importing areas.
What now sustained the cultivation of sugar in the low-density British
colonies, such as Trinidad and British Guiana, was the high and protected
price of their sugar. If an abundance of new labor was not continually
supplied from some other quarter of the globe, both the great experiment
and the ex-slaves’ standard of living would ultimately deteriorate. The
real novelty in Merivale’s meditations on slavery’s continuing competitive
viability in the American tropics was the ease with which a political
economist now felt in making them. During the era of great popular
mobilizations against the British slave system, major political economists
seemed to have been reticent to draw high-profile conclusions about the

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competitiveness of slavery. Deflating the attack on West Indian slavery
risked placing political economy in the role of embarrassing Britain’s
great moral crusade before it had been tried. Merivale had himself hailed
the fragmentary evidence from one Spanish colony as offering an empir-
ical basis for optimism. In the wake of the returns from the islands after
1839 optimism vanished.
In Parliament, too, the analogy of the labor economics of tropical and
of temperate colonies in the same terms became more commonplace. In
a general survey of unappropriated lands, MP William Molesworth ca-
sually echoed Wakefield’s conclusion that in modern colonial history the
slave colonies had been wealthy. Australia seemed no less amenable to
development by compulsory labor than the West Indies had been. For
Molesworth, as for Lords Howick and Russell, free labor both in Trinidad
and in Australia would be cheaper only if it were easily accessible. Wake-
field’s gloss on the political economy of low-density temperate colonies—
a situation that still obtained for large portions of the globe—explained
the continued recourse to slavery by other nations.8
The crisis of the metropolitan sugar supply, however, made the prob-
lem of West Indian free labor more pressing than that of Australia or
South Africa. Full emancipation coincided almost exactly with the onset
of a long depression in the British Isles. Glowing tales of rising wages in
the Caribbean only inflamed radical working-class rhetoric against upper-
class abolitionists. Diffuse strands of radicalism coalesced into a mass
Chartist movement at the end of the 1830s. In the final stages of the
antiapprenticeship campaign, working-class radicals interrupted a Bir-
mingham mass meeting in 1838. They were momentarily assuaged by
the evocation of the middle passage. By the fall of 1840, however, an
antislavery meeting was broken up by Chartist men and women in Tho-
mas Powell Buxton’s own town of Norwich. Those who seized control of
the proceedings claimed that English laborers were “slaves working for
idle Gentlemen.” They demanded universal suffrage, the distribution of
property, and the destruction of the workhouses. The following May, less
than a year after the triumphal world convention, the annual national
meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was itself dis-
rupted by Chartist hecklers.9
Old themes were revived and infused with a new sense of change in
the Caribbean. Both official and antislavery testimony confirmed that
British West Indians were combining a rising standard of living and the
lowest working hours of any agricultural laborers in the empire. In the
very issue preceding the Chartist disruption of the Norwich meeting, the
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society Reporter had proudly published the
following excerpt from a visitor to Jamaica: “Where else, in the whole
wide world, is there a peasantry that with so little toil had such a com-
mand over the good things of this life? These people keep poultry. . . .
They keep goats. . . . They do not work very hard, they live well, they

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 dress handsomely, they send their children to school . . . build chapels at
their own expense and support entirely many of the missionaries.”10
Allusions to the plight of Irish peasants, Scottish highlanders, English
handloom weavers, European textile manufacturers, and overworked chil-
dren fleshed out a reinvigorated rhetoric of “wage slavery.” Such com-
parisons between well-fed slaves abroad and half-starved workers at home
had been standard fare for West Indian planters for two generations. With
rising sugar prices and metropolitan unemployment, the contrast took
on a sharper edge in full-scale parliamentary debates. In May 1841 Lord
Russell, speaking on behalf of an already shaky government, asked, what
no previous minister had dared to do, whether the happiness of the Negro
depended on the “excessive price” of West Indian free labor. Abolitionists
could no longer deflect such barbs with their classic response—that the
horrors of enslavement in colonial islands overrode any comparison with
working and living conditions in the British Isles. It was now a matter
of comparing like with like, free laborers with free laborers, consumers
with consumers, and Britons at home with Creoles in the Caribbean.11
Russell’s words were the opening salvo of a long debate over the pro-
tection of sugar. Discontent over sugar prices had been simmering for
two full years. The first battle over altering the terms of the great exper-
iment began with the minutiae of altering differential duties between
imperial and foreign sugar. For the proponents of liberalization, including
representatives of the sugar-consuming and textile-exporting interests,
political economy could be invoked in unified support of a single market
for sugar, with a vigor that it never managed to muster for a single
standard in labor. Free trade had to be the final, unequivocal, and nec-
essary test of free labor, not vice versa. Only three years before, aboli-
tionists had claimed that the experimental success of apprenticeship sanc-
tioned the transition to full freedom. For free traders, the experiment
could be clinching evidence to the extent that it might demonstrate the
superior performance of free cultivation.
Opposition to the lowering of duties on foreign sugar was spearheaded
by a new coalition among abolitionists, East and West Indian sugar in-
terests, and metropolitan agricultural protectionists. Their premise was
the current inability of the combined British Indies to compete with their
slave-importing competitors. Throughout the early 1840s, this coalition
appealed to the authority of a vigorous proponent of free trade, James
Deacon Hume. When called to testify before the Parliamentary Select
Committee on Import Duties in 1840, the “venerable Hume” had already
put in thirty-eight years at the Customs Department and eleven years at
the Board of Trade. He thus played the same bureaucratic role in the
debates of the early 1840s that Thomas Irving, as Inspector-General of
the customs records, had played at the outset of debates over abolition
fifty years before. Hume was an unequivocal opponent of British trade
protection, relentlessly predicting that if Britain relinquished its own bar-

162   

riers against foreign traders it would become impossible for other coun-
tries to retain theirs. He made the same strong case against British im-
perial protectionism. If the colonies were allowed complete free trade with
the metropolis, they would neither deserve nor require subsidies for their
products in the metropolitan market.
Nevertheless Hume added one unequivocal caveat to his testimony
before the Committee on Import Duties. Colonies freed for global com-
petition had to be those that were “placed in all respects upon an equal
footing with those countries which produce similar commodities. I cannot
conceive, that having 30 years ago abolished the slave trade and now
abolished slavery itself, that any question of free trade can arise between
Jamaica and Cuba.” This was not a question of comparative frontier fer-
tility. Cuba had the “advantage” of slavery and the slave trade. The British
sugar colonies thus had to be treated as exceptions to the rule. In ending
slavery and apprenticeship, the British Caribbean had shifted production
to the category of noneconomic welfare, like matters of metropolitan
public health, national defense, security, and public morality. The islands
had been “by law interfered with, for purposes independent of trade.”12
Hume’s words, uttered from the inner sanctum of trade, were
thereafter cited, chapter and verse, by protectionist ministers, with meta-
phors added to taste. Deacon Hume had declared that free trade principles
were irrelevant to the condition of the West Indies. For ex-Colonial Sec-
retary Stanley Parliament’s successive surgeries on the labor force had
made planters of the West Indies “one-legged runners” in an open field
race. Russell’s successor, Sir Robert Peel, stuck with Hume’s distinction
for the duration of his tenure as prime minister between 1841 and 1846.
Most abolitionists also welcomed the distinction. Uncompromising free
traders could only focus on Hume’s general emphasis or add that their
oracle, like a penitent sinner, had repented for his sin of exceptionalism
just before death. But the words of a revered oracle could not so easily
be unspoken. Thereafter, cotton, coffee, rice, and tobacco could all be
sacrificed, in good conscience, on the alter of the free market. Sugar alone
deserved a plenary indulgence of colonial protection. Frustrated free trad-
ers could only vent their rage or scorn that sugar, like some Eucharist,
was placed outside the natural world, above the law of supply and de-
mand. Occasionally, free traders also appealed to a higher authority than
Deacon Hume. Why, wondered Lord Russell sarcastically, did Parliament
not just offer prizes for the best repudiation of Adam Smith himself?13
Some with unimpeachable free trade credentials agreed with Hume.
Joseph Hume had warned his fellow MPs that they were carrying the
West Indies into a protectionist cul-de-sac in 1833. He now insisted that
Parliament live with the consequences of its original sin. Other supporters
of Hume had abolitionist priorities. Lord Brougham had no hesitation in
rejecting the free trade recipe as a poison pill. Free sugar trumped the
market principle. Opening British ports to Cuban sugar was no venal

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 misdemeanor, like defending the lottery or even (as some Continentals
advocated) legalizing brothels. The slave trade and slavery were at stake.
Daniel O’Connell, as usual, was less saccharine and more abrasive. Man-
chester might regard political economy as “the highest exercise of the
human mind,” but political economy be damned if it conflicted with free-
dom. Peel himself preferred to argue against reducing the sugar duties
in order to honor economic science, not bury it. In May 1841, at the end
of a long debate, he asked Parliament to look beyond fiscal policy. Gutting
British sugar production by lowering protection would bring an ignomin-
ious end to the great experiment. Eight years after his fruitless opposition
to the emancipation bill, it probably did not diminish Peel’s satisfaction
that the stake he was driving through the heart of the Whig ministry
was made of pure, free-grown sugar. A departing minister’s speech re-
flected despair: you can’t end the international slave trade, he warned
the House of Commons, but you may injure free trade by pitting it against
the antislavery experiment.14
By May 1841, time had run out faster for the Whig government than
for the great experiment. Still powerful abolitionists contributed for the
first (and last) time to the demise of a British government. The Whigs
had not even asked for free trade, only for a reduction of the differential
duties to increase the British sugar supply for consumers and the working
classes. Yet because the terms of the debate had immediately inflated into
a moral choice between free labor and free trade, realignment was the
order of the day. For half a century many abolitionists had overridden
their own interests as consumers by buying “free” and avoiding slave-
grown sugar. Their private preference had now become obligatory for all
consumers. West Indians also began to quote the Quaker Gurney on slave
sugar’s danger to the experiment as fervently as the Saints. Free traders
turned furiously on their erstwhile allies, the East Indian interest. Like
the earlier abolitionists, the latter had made soothing predictions about
the prowess of their cheap labor. Now they, too, had abandoned free trade
in favor of imperial protectionism.
Whigs attacked abolitionists as hypocrites for protecting slave sugar
but buying slave cotton, tobacco, and coffee, reinforcing the argument
that free labor was not competitive with slavery. Abolitionists who were
attacking Whig arguments for lowering foreign sugar duties relished cit-
ing Deacon Hume. Free traders, like West Indians before emancipation,
mined earlier abolitionists’ claims that free labor could vanquish slavery.
Was not one free man’s labor the equal of two able-bodied slaves? It was
now high time to cleanse the great engine of development by relieving
it of abolitionists’ obfuscation: Commerce alone was “the great emanci-
pator.” How could we be experimenting with free labor, wondered a future
free-trading secretary of the exchequer, when “we bolster and cocker up”
the West Indies while the Negroes were drinking champagne?15

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 Opponents of reducing protection hammered away at the government
for being at least as inconsistent as were the abolitionists. A year earlier,
Russell himself had pleaded for postponement of any reduction of duties
on grounds that time was needed for a fair trial of emancipation. Did a
single year offer sufficient evidence on so great an issue? Metropolitan
protectionists now bathed in the rhetoric of experimentalism. They noted
that the beleaguered Russell was no longer referring to the experiment
in his defense of the government’s volte-face. Tories who had denounced
the rush to emancipation insisted that it deserved priority status because
slavery had preceded free trade as an issue that required political reso-
lution. Gladstone agreed, other things being equal, that free trade was
preferable. So must free traders surely agree that, ceteris paribus free
labor was preferable. If consumers paid a bit more per pound for freedom
than for slavery, was that not the price of glory? That sugar seemed more
suited than other crops to coercion was the world’s misfortune.16
What had begun as a fiscal debate on sugar duties escalated into one
of Parliament’s lengthiest debates on free trade and slavery. Edward, now
Lord Stanley, aligned himself with Robert Peel and summed up the in-
clinations of the majority. In 1833 a majority of MPs had suspected that
free labor colonies might not be able to compete with slave labor. Parlia-
ment had protected the West Indies, refusing to wager emancipation on
the market. A dilemma had now emerged: despite a steady flow of evi-
dence that free labor simply could not compete in sugar, the British po-
litical system could not even envision reversing the “splendid experi-
ment.” So, perhaps one could follow Adam Smith, accepting a spectrum
of free labor superiority: the nature of corn cultivation allowed it to be
raised primarily by free labor; coffee and tobacco occupied a grey zone;
cotton and sugar were still prime examples of slavery’s productive prow-
ess.
If one insisted on the theoretical superiority of free trade and free la-
bor over any other combination of conditions, how could the faltering
West Indies be accounted for?17 For Joseph Hume, the answer was ob-
vious. Abolition was a premature policy in the absence of a third free-
dom, free trade in labor. When philanthropists attacked such a trade as
slavery in disguise, rationality was a victim of rhetoric. Since British
pride and continental prejudice required Britain to avoid even the ap-
pearance of dealing in slaves, the British Caribbean’s access to the la-
borers of Africa and Asia was severely hobbled. Other free traders
warned their colleagues that the market clock was ticking. They awaited
the pressure of world prices to end protectionist moral posturing. Did
Parliament imagine that the metropolitan consumer would sign a blank
check on sugar forever?18
Faced with the prospect of the experiment’s immediate failure in
1839–1841, the parliamentary majority gave priority to rescuing the

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 West Indians. Robert Peel perpetuated this priority for his next five years
in power. Nevertheless, both the West Indians and their abolitionist allies
stood forewarned. The debate of May 1841 was the last unalloyed victory
of abolitionism over countervailing economic pressures. Colonial sugar
protection for the great experiment won that victory by the less than
comfortable margin of 317 to 281. The usual flood of nationwide peti-
tions failed to materialize. Some northern industrial abolitionists, fully
committed to liberalizing trade, were in open revolt against sugar protec-
tion. The London Anti-Slavery Society was in disarray. Its issue of May
12, 1841, was the last in which the Times characterized the Anti-Slavery
Society as “the central embodiment of an almost unanimous feeling
throughout the country.”19
The year 1841 seemed to mark a turning point in the fortunes of
slavery all around the Atlantic basin. At the end of the 1830s, Thomas
Fowell Buxton convinced the British government to open up a new an-
tislavery front in Africa itself. In an influential study, Buxton argued that
after half a century of abolitionists’ mobilizations against the transatlan-
tic slave trade, its volume had actually doubled. Slavers continued to
inflict annual losses of African lives at levels that exceeded Cooper’s cal-
culations fifty years before. The law of supply and demand ensured that
British patrols could drive up the price of slaves but never enough to
make the trade unprofitable. The only practical solution was to under-
mine the supply at its source. Buxton proposed launching model farm
communities in the interior of Africa, where free laborers could demon-
strate such clear superiority that African rulers would abandon both the
transatlantic traffic and slavery itself. To ensure a viable commercial net-
work for the sugar and cotton produced by free labor, the British govern-
ment was asked to launch an exploratory and colonizing expedition up
the Niger River, the major artery of West African waterborne trade. At
the confluence of the Niger and the Benue, a great internal citadel would
be established, thereafter to become “the New Orleans of Africa.”20
Within two years of its first articulation in 1838 the government
agreed to launch a publicly funded naval expedition. The African Civili-
zation Society was launched at Exeter Hall on June 1, 1840, in support
of the venture. In sheer social prestige it towered over the gathering for
the World Anti-slavery Convention, held the same month. Queen Victo-
ria’s consort, Prince Albert, made his entrance into British public life by
presiding over the inauguration of the society. Its list of seventy vice-
presidents included three archbishops, five dukes, six marquises, fourteen
earls, and sixteen bishops. Exeter Hall had never looked so much like the
House of Lords in session. From those glittering heights the Niger expe-
dition proceeded steadily downward. Its thoroughly aristocratic aura
helped to stimulate a Chartist counterattack. The military dimension of
the venture stimulated the opposition of the Quaker-dominated British
Anti-Slavery Society. The expedition was virtually ignored in the global

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reports of the World Anti-Slavery Convention. By the end of 1840, Bux-
ton realized that his African Civilization Society was an elite organization
without a following, not daring to convene public meetings throughout
the country.21
Equally dispiriting, Britain’s intellectual elite had no qualms about pre-
dicting the experiment’s imminent failure on scientific grounds. At Ox-
ford, Professor Herman Merivale paused in his discussion of colonization
to mention Buxton’s African Slave Trade. As a document, it was an im-
portant manifesto of abolitionists’ sentiments. Unfortunately, it was linked
to “the chimerical speculation of civilizing Africa, by establishing a legit-
imate commerce with her inhabitants through the force of government
bounties.” Merivale warned that, of those who had responded “with en-
thusiastic applause, few indeed could have reflected on the utter dispro-
portion between the means and the object, even were there any reason-
able probability of those means being carried into execution.” The
professor politely invited his students not to devote too much time to
“these visionary plans.”22
Outside the cloistered walls of Oxford, the commentary was far less
polite. For the Radical Westminster Review, the African experiment had
already been tried at Sierra Leone for forty-eight years. The same ven-
ture, with the same patronage, would lead to the same failure. Taking
note of Sierra Leone, a colony with no population problem and with
cheap labor, the journal stated that “we do not believe that any colony
of Great Britain presents such a lamentable result.”23 The Spectator of-
fered the brutal advice that, as far as the government was concerned,
“the wiser plan will be to take the money and throw it into the sea, for
thereby no lives will be lost.” Both economic science and epidemiology
seemed to guarantee the failure of the venture. Previous commercial
voyages had uncovered no produce. The climate was more deadly than
Sierra Leone’s. Attention and money were being diverted from easing
the free labor crisis in the West Indies, which would be the decisive ex-
periment for slaves in every country. Joseph Hume, always taking deadly
aim on Sierra Leone, found the new project to be as ill conceived and
uninvestigated as its predecessor. He found it absurd to be using British
sailors to plant agricultural colonies in the African interior. Returning
to African colonization meant creating new death swamps like Sierra Le-
one, with its abundant data on mortality and its minuscule production
for export.24
The Times clearly reflected changing views of antislavery projects. The
Niger expedition provided the nation’s leading newspaper with a chance
to vent its growing unease about the outcome of emancipation, for which
the editors were beginning to tote up the results. To the £20 million in
compensation, they now added £3 million per year as the excess cost of
monopoly sugar, “making the people of England pay a second time for
the freedom of the slave, out of the pockets of the poor.” The Times, now

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 reputed to be “The Thunderer” of public opinion, condemned the Niger
expedition, root and branch: “The absurdity of a handful of European
adventurers expecting, as if by an enchanter’s wand, to change the face
of the great African continent, and to stop the slave trade, on the prin-
ciples of political economy, surpasses anything which the imagination of
Swift was able to conceive.”25
As it turned out, none of the extensive medical precautions saved the
expedition from complete disaster. Fevers killed or disabled the bulk of
those who entered the Niger area. The rest, who briefly established an
experimental farm along the river, were accused of using whips to extract
work from their “idle and promiscuous” remnant of laborers. The Times
gleefully summed it up: “The Niger ANTI-Slavery Expedition has . . .
planted a very ‘model’ of the most cruel and iniquitous slavery,” the whips
being held by the liberated blacks of Sierra Leone recruited for the ex-
periment.26 The charge of slavery was quickly rebutted, but it was im-
possible for abolitionists to ignore the angry public discussion of squan-
dered money, squandered lives, vanished farms, and the charges of
irresponsible arrogance and of indifference to human suffering.
Buxton could do no better than to bow before the facts and before
God. To the second World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1843, he confessed
that “it is essential that I show the complete failure of that remedy.” He
now insisted that fifty years’ experience at Sierra Leone had proven be-
yond measure the deadliness of West Africa. Providence itself had
“erected a wall of malaria around it which we cannot break through.”
So crushed was Buxton by his responsibility that he failed to grasp the
significance of the fact that all three doctors aboard the expeditionary
vessel Wilberforce had remained fit, one recording his achievement in an
article entitled “On the Value of Quinine in African Remittent Fever.” For
the Medical History of the Expedition to the Niger, of 1843, however, as
for the second World Anti-Slavery Convention, the fever remained an
overwhelming and deadly mystery. For the world at large, the Niger ex-
pedition was a grim reenactment of the age-old tale of the white man’s
grave, now embroidered with cautionary narratives about the tragedy
and the folly of the antislavery imagination.27
Europe was also proving to be as disappointing as Africa. After a spurt
of activity following the end of British apprenticeship in 1838–1839,
French antislavery interests endured a period of setbacks. An Anglo-
French war scare caused French abolitionists to fear being too closely
identified with an “English” cause. The French government even prohib-
ited the first, modest “public” meeting of the French Abolitionists in Paris
in 1842, where the French society had hoped to reciprocate the hospi-
tality of British abolitionists two years earlier.28
An English-style commission was appointed by the French government
in 1840. Chaired by the Duc de Broglie, it found the colonial legislatures
to be totally hostile to general emancipation. The colonists continually

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referred to British colonial problems in sustaining sugar production. Most
abolitionists on the Broglie commission were primarily concerned with
preparing the slaves for emancipation in such a way as to avoid the
shortcomings of British emancipation. After rejecting the British appren-
ticeship system as quasi slavery, the commission voted to keep undisgu-
ised slavery intact until full liberation occurred. They further proposed to
keep slavery in being for ten years after any emancipation law was prom-
ulgated. Five further years of indenture would follow the formal end of
slavery. Although no one openly challenged the ultimate superiority of
free labor, the more cautious abolitionists were prompted by the British
example to insist on full labor continuity.29 This concern was based on a
broad consensus that the economic performance of the various British
colonies ranged from fair to disastrous. The sum of the commission’s
recommendations meant postponing full freedom in the French colonies
until 1858 at the earliest. British abolitionists were dismayed by the com-
mission’s priorities, and its report remained a dead letter until the July
Monarchy was overthrown in 1848.30
If French antislavery was beset by stalemate and complicated by dip-
lomatic hostility, the outlook in North America seemed even bleaker to
abolitionists. In the United States, no new area had been organized as a
slave territory since the beginning of the British emancipation campaign
of 1823. At the western edge of the American South, however, a vast
new slave frontier loomed when Texas declared its independence from
Mexico in 1836. For the next decade, Texas hovered between indepen-
dence and annexation. Its status as a slave state also seemed to hang in
the balance. When the first World Anti-Slavery Convention met in Lon-
don, Texas contained fewer than 15,000 slaves, less than one-sixth the
number freed on the island of Barbados alone in 1834. Yet its ill-defined
boundaries contained more square miles than all of the British West
Indies combined. Still worse, the vast lands to the west and southwest of
Texas seemed open to further expansions of slavery.31
Throughout the late 1830s and early 1840s, complex diplomatic ex-
changes took place among representatives of Texas, the United States,
Great Britain, Mexico, and France. They concerned the twin themes of
political independence and the legal status of slavery, always complicated
by the freelance diplomacy of self-appointed go-betweens. At the World
Anti-Slavery Convention of 1843, the Committee on Slavery in Texas
envisioned the outcome to be a matter of life and death for slavery in
America. If it remained independent, Texas could develop as a rival to
the cotton South. From the Southern perspective, the convention was
told, Texas had to be annexed in order to incorporate a potential rival
and to provide fresh land for the soil-depleting methods of cultivation by
slaves. As a free state, however, Texas could block the expansion of U.S.
slavery and become a refuge for runaways. It would bottle up the slave
South within its own ever-depleting environment.

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 Texas was thus seen by the committee as divided between two great
factions. The proslavery group, including some leading men, were traitors
and thieves. Another group apparently entertained the idea of aboli-
tion.32 The Edinburgh Review presumed that the balance of forces was
weighted in favor of freedom, on grounds of both race and political econ-
omy. The “leading men” of Texas, obviously not the thieves, were “fear-
ful” of a “Negro population, whether free or enslaved.” The reviewer
placed his confidence in economic factors—“in the superiority of free
labour, in a country in which . . . cotton and sugar may be cultivated by
whites more effectively than by Negroes.” Europe, instead of depending
on the slave labor of the United States and Brazil for cotton and sugar,
“would draw a cheap supply from the industry of a white and free pop-
ulation in Texas.”33
Texan sentiments seem to have been far less evenly balanced than the
World Anti-Slavery Convention was told. The leaders of the first Texan
settlers came with slaves and believed that Texas must be a slave country.
The Texas Constitution of 1836 was thoroughly supportive of slavehold-
ing and of the movement of slaveholders from the United States. The
migrants were overwhelmingly Southern-born, and many brought or
traded their slaves into Texas. The slave population increased 450 percent
more rapidly than the white population between independence and U.S.
annexation. Thus Texas was conforming to the frontier profile of the
lower, rather than the upper, South, falsifying the prognoses of the Irish-
born journalist William Kennedy, in 1841, that Texas was not adaptable
to slavery. Free farmers moved into Texas in considerable numbers to
compete with slaves, as many abolitionists hoped, but free labor was ap-
parently more expensive than slaves in agricultural and domestic ser-
vice.34
For the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1843, the British govern-
ment’s duty was clear: it should offer to recognize Texas’s independence
by encouraging British capitalists to underwrite part of its large public
debt in such a way as to elicit emancipation. The leaders of the American
delegation to the convention also used their time in London to gain an
audience with British Foreign Secretary Lord Aberdeen to push their ab-
olitionist agenda. Aberdeen’s cautious reply promised nothing but sup-
ported freedom for Texas in principle. That was enough to give the fearful
U.S. administration in Washington a major stimulus and rationale for
accelerating annexation, in order to forestall any British and abolitionist
menace to America’s Manifest Destiny.35
The thrust toward annexation also produced the most highly publi-
cized diplomatic rationalization of slavery’s economic superiority. The
British Foreign Secretary had opened a tiny space in his diplomatic lan-
guage by acknowledging, to the American ambassador in London, that
Britain found emancipation in Texas to be an eminently desirable goal.
The U.S. Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun, used the opening to broaden

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the diplomatic exchange into a panoramic overview of the conflict be-
tween freedom and slavery. In a widely publicized communication to the
American ambassador to France, Calhoun laid out the reasons that the
French should dissociate themselves from any British design to hinder the
U.S. annexation of Texas. Behind British opposition lay a desire for eman-
cipation in Texas, and behind this lay a still broader ambition for eman-
cipation throughout the transatlantic world. The policy had apparently
been broached at “the (so called) ‘World’s Convention’ in London, in
1840.” It derived from a fatal economic miscalculation. Before emanci-
pation, the British had assumed that after abolition, “the labour of the
Negroes would be at least as profitable” as free labor, “if not more so.”
They had also assumed that tropical products could be produced more
cheaply by free Africans and East Indians than by slaves. Britain wanted
“philanthropy with profit and power.” Its subsequent drive for abolition
beyond the empire, said Calhoun, derived from the initial “fallacy of her
calculations.” The experiment had been both costly and ruinous: “Ne-
groes had proved less productive without improved conditions.”36
From a recent summary of tropical economic development already
quite familiar to British readers of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in June
1844, Calhoun developed a statistical message on slavery to France’s gov-
ernment and its press: slave trade abolition and emancipation had cost
the British people $250 million and put twice that much capital at risk
in the British West Indies. By contrast, Euro-American capital invested
in non-British “tropical” staples since 1808 amounted to $4 billion. That
capital produced goods selling for $220 million per year, up from $72
million in 1808. Capital in the British tropics now amounted to only $830
million, generating only $50 million. Britain’s declining share of tropical
production was as visible in coffee and cotton as in sugar. Atlantic sup-
porters of slavery found these figures to be so impressive that they trans-
lated Calhoun’s letter into French and Portuguese.
Shortly before Calhoun lectured Lord Aberdeen on the superior eco-
nomic performance of slaves for white masters and of the welfare benefits
of slavery for blacks in the United States, the Brazilian Chamber of Dep-
uties refused Aberdeen’s offer to negotiate the importation of 60,000
Chinese as a substitute for purchasing enslaved Africans. At the other
end of the Portuguese Atlantic, the official journal of the Cape Verde
Islands fulminated against the “deadly example” of British emancipation,
with its “quasi-fabulous” compensation costs and its “delendo-mania.”37
Equally interesting was the reaction of the British press to Calhoun’s
challenge. The Economist, a militant new free trade journal, was equally
dedicated to upholding the Smithian principal of free labor superiority
over slavery. It remained silent in the face of Calhoun’s statistical barrage
in favor of slavery’s dynamism in the New World. The U.S. Secretary of
State happily endorsed the new journal’s appearance. The Times’s re-
sponse to Calhoun was more typical and more direct. It reprinted the

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 letter to the American ambassador to France and responded editorially
on the same day. England’s elite organ of public opinion began by noting,
with painful surprise, that Calhoun’s argument implied the permanence
and expansion of slavery. The “aggrandizement of the United States for
the express purpose of perpetuating the servile condition of the Negro
race . . . [is] laid bare to the wonder and execration of mankind . . . of
civilized France and civilized Europe.”38 The Times and other newspapers
dismissed Calhoun’s figures by noting that they were already old news
to British readers.
If the figures were not good news in economic terms, they could also
be reinterpreted as decisive evidence that the British did not measure
antislavery policy by “mere rules of temporary interest.” Emancipation
was sacred because “it is the policy of freedom, justice, and civilization.”
The discouraging aspect of the statistics had to be that midway through
the fifth decade of the nineteenth century and a decade after emanci-
pating its colonial slaves, Britain still seemed isolated in its antislavery
commitment: “If we do stand alone, in the defense of these great prin-
ciples, we stand armed with the most terrible power ever placed by
Providence in the hands of a great nation.” The Times could only hope
that Calhoun’s unapologetic defense of slavery “would suffice to rouse
the just indignation of this country, and to show the real nature of these
scandalous proceedings to the whole world.”39
While Secretary Calhoun contented himself with demonstrating the
dynamism of slavery to the foreign ministers of Europe’s great powers,
his fellow South Carolinian and governor of that state, James Hammond,
was delivering a similar message to Thomas Clarkson, the venerable pa-
triarch of British antislavery. Hammond’s widely published letters on slav-
ery were begun just weeks after Calhoun’s diplomatic note appeared in
the European press. The governor exuded confidence in his institution.
He graciously admitted “from the economical point of view” that as “a
general rule . . . free labor is cheaper than slave labor.” After including
the cost of maintenance (Smith’s “wear and tear”) in the “wages bill,”
Hammond found that his fellow slaveholders were spending more on the
welfare of their laborers (food, health, family, and disability costs) than
were Clarkson’s capitalist compatriots on free labor in England. The ques-
tion remained, however, of what kind of labor was “cheapest to us in
this country, at this time, situated as we are.” Since Southern planters
could not procure other labor on the same terms, they had to content
themselves “with our dear labor, under the consoling reflection that what
is lost to us, is gained to humanity.” As for “your recent experiments,”
he told Clarkson, the best evidence lay in the tables of West Indian ex-
ports, which exhibited “a woeful falling off,” and in the fact that a large
and “constantly increasing” expenditure was “devoted to repairing the
monstrous error of emancipation.” For good measure Hammond quoted
the Quarterly Review to the effect that emancipation had lost to the British

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half the value of the West Indies. 40 On the verge of the admission of
Texas to the American federation as a slave state, the mighty experiment
seemed to dwindle in both significance and impact.
Almost in tandem with the creation of a new empire for slavery in
North America, the British government sanctioned the revival of bound
labor in the Indian and Atlantic oceans. As pre-1838 contracts ran out
in Mauritus, its planters mounted a vigorous appeal to redefine inden-
tured laborers as essentially different from slave laborers. The language
of contract, market, and choice was mobilized in defense of the free
movement of free labor. A planters’ Free Labor Association asked why
emigration of Englishmen to America and Australia was considered a
passage of, and not a traffic in, human beings? Abolitionists’ fears for the
standard of living among existing Mauritian laborers was parried by
pointing to the same threat posed by free, unrestricted migration to En-
gland. Finally, supporters of indentured migration argued that the well-
being of all British subjects was equally important. Indians were freely
entitled to take their labor to any part of the empire.41
The population principle appeared to be as compelling for Indian mi-
gration to Mauritius as for English migration to Australia. The potential
“demonstration effect” of the great experiment in staple exports was of-
fered as an additional and final reason to override antislavery opposition.
Probably the most decisive political factor was the crisis of British sugar
consumption. The Peel government that came to power after the sugar
duties debate in May 1841 felt the need to demonstrate that it could come
up with alternatives to the West Indian shortfall. Voluntarily contracting
Indians proved to be the weakest link in the humanitarian cordon sani-
taire against Afro-Asian labor migration. The best that humanitarians
could bargain for was an enhanced system of regulation and inspection,
designed to maximize informed Indian consent, monitor the conditions
of passage and labor, and ensure free return passage on fulfillment of the
contract. Abolitionists held the flow of Indians to the Caribbean to a
trickle, but 70,000 Indians were brought to Mauritius in the next four
years and average sugar production rose by 50 percent.42
The Mauritian migration was a relatively minor skirmish between the
government and the antislavery lobby. Far more serious than transoce-
anic developments was the fact that British abolitionism as a popular
movement was ebbing and fragmenting. The 1840s was the first decade
in half a century in which a united antislavery front could no longer
produce mass mobilizations to influence public policy. For two years after
1841, the split between antislavery free traders and protectionists sim-
mered before finally coming to a head in the second World Anti-Slavery
Convention in 1843.
While the antislavery movement splintered and receded, a new pop-
ular movement was rising. It was as fiercely committed to the triumph
of universal free trade as were abolitionists to free labor. Richard Cobden

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 and John Bright were both parliamentary supporters of abolition and
cofounders of another mass movement, the Anti-Corn Law League. Cob-
den participated in the 1843 World Anti-Slavery Convention as a delegate
of the Manchester Anti-Slavery Society in the heartland of the free trade
movement. He issued a direct challenge to the London society’s support
of the differential sugar duties. Protection against any foreign commodity,
whether corn, cotton, or sugar, stood in direct violation of every sound
principle of political economy, fiscal responsibility and consumer welfare.
It was ridiculous, argued Cobden, to single out one slave-grown item
on grounds that it encouraged slavery. Every American abolitionist who
had come to the convention had sailed aboard a ship that was carrying
cotton or tobacco. Britons were happily welcoming both American abo-
litionists and American slave-made products into its ports. The very paper
on which the deliberations would be published included slave-grown cot-
ton. Above all, an experiment premised on free labor superiority would
convince no one of its validity while it remained a protected monopoly.
The only real test would be such an experiment with unrestricted trade.
Sugar protection was a “monstrous inconsistency.”43
The defenders of protection at the convention tried to shift the grounds
of the discussion. All agreed that free labor was cheaper than slave labor,
other things being equal. The imbalance of population growth was mo-
mentarily in favor of the slave societies. The convention had to acknowl-
edge that the slave trade made things unequal in the wrong direction.
Cuba, Brazil, Trinidad, and Guiana were equally fertile, tropical frontier
areas. The latter two would somehow have to increase their labor forces,
already in short supply because of failings in natural reproduction. Even
were they to match the United States, “that nursery of children,” in
natural growth, it would take generations to bring the British colonies
into competition with Cuba and America. Meanwhile, Africa would be
emptied of its people in horrible conditions.44 So deep was the split that
it was agreed not to put a resolution exempting free labor sugar from
slave labor competition to a vote. The blanket assertion of free labor
superiority simply dissipated from the rhetoric of the convention.
Meanwhile, the high cost of British sugar continued to fester in major,
annual parliamentary debates. In a desperate attempt to locate alterna-
tive sources of supply, Peel’s government opened the British market to
foreign (Southeast Asian) free labor sugar in 1844. Java briefly became
the great hope for a “free sugar” solution. The Dutch colony also became
the choice for free traders, as they simultaneously struggled to strengthen
the campaign for unrestricted trade while staunching defections from the
free labor ideology. For the Economist, Dutch Java became “the perfect
reply to all assertions in favour of the cheapness of slave labour.” Its rate
of increase in sugar production, quintupling since British emancipation,
was “without parallel in the history of the world.” It occurred in “open
competition with all the slave-labour countries and with prices varying

174   

25 to 50 percent less than the British planter has obtained. Monopoly
alone made British imperial sugar expensive and scarce.” The price of
labour was “regulated by supply and demand.”45
The only aspect of the Javan miracle that the free traders in and out
of Parliament did not stress was that the transformation was accom-
plished by a Dutch shift in policy from free to unfree labor. In 1830, after
a careful comparative analysis of the cost of slave labor production in
Dutch Suriname and the cost of free production in Java, the Dutch gov-
ernment had concluded that Suriname’s sugar was 30 percent cheaper
than Java’s. Dutch West Indian expansion, however, was out of the ques-
tion, as it was constrained by the abolition of the slave trade under British
pressure. Its future was made more uncertain by the approach of eman-
cipation in neighboring British Guiana.
The Dutch imperial administrators concluded that the production of
cash crops in Java could be made competitive only by using coerced labor.
Without compulsion the Javanese peasants would, from the imperial per-
spective, use their productive powers for nonproductive purposes. The
Javanese peasant could obtain subsistence by working fewer hours than
most European free laborers. Peasants needed less than one-third of the
year to produce enough rice for survival. The Dutch solution was a sys-
tem of forced cropping, known as the cultivation system. Government-
decreed taxes forced the peasantry to work on cash crops selected by the
state for a certain number of days per year in exchange for the right to
remain in their villages.46
The cultivation system was advertised as a system of free, paid labor,
although its relative success on Javan plantations in comparison with
British East Indian competitors remained puzzling. The fact that Javan
sugar was not a free wage labor system was noted in Parliament as early
as the first great debates over sugar duties in 1841 by William Gladstone,
just before he became a prominent member of the Peel government.47
Java’s “free labor” status, however, went almost unchallenged during five
years of endless parliamentary discussion. The explanation seems clear:
for uncompromising free traders with a statistical bent, like the Economist,
Java saved the cause of free labor competitiveness in an otherwise dreary
landscape of low-cost, foreign slave labor expansion and high-cost, British
free labor stagnation. On the protectionist side, the government, the West
India interest, and official antislavery bodies shared the increasingly for-
lorn hope of sustaining a distinction between free- and slave-grown sugar
at the customs house, while fending off metropolitan consumers’ de-
mands, taxpayers’ complaints, and mounting free trade agitation.
In quietly consigning the Javanese peasantry to the status of free la-
borers, free traders, protectionists, and West Indians all had something
to gain. The antislavery lobby also silently consented to the assignment
of Java to free labor. As in the case of Mauritius, it signified a second
retreat from the identification of Eastern indentured labor as quasi slav-

   175

 ery. At the same time, British antislavery proponents were abandoning
any attempt to extend the principle of immediate emancipation to the
population of India. A new line of distinction was quietly drawn between
European-sponsored slave systems and those under African and Asian
rulers. The contrast with the expansive mood of 1840 was dramatic if
unheralded. After having boldly identified the existence of millions of
Indian slaves at the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, the anti-
slavery lobby in 1843 was satisfied with an imperial policy of a very
gradual end to slavery in the East.48
The end of sugar protection, when it came, was curiously anticlimac-
tic. The Peel government, still firmly committed to a peculiar status for
free sugar, fell because of a split in its ranks over repeal of the Corn Laws
in June 1846. The Whigs, again led by Lord John Russell, took office and
promptly passed the Corn Law Abolition Act. A month later, Russell in-
troduced a bill for the gradual reduction of all duty differentials on sugar
over five years.49 The government insisted that for the sake of the con-
sumer and public revenue, sugar’s exceptional status had to end. The
West Indians cried foul. Their protection in the transition to free labor
had been aborted, and now their last line of defense against foreign slave
labor was being removed. The only surprise came from the uncomfortable
speech of the outgoing minister. Peel still stood by Deacon Hume’s as-
sessment of West Indian exceptionalism and the “peculiar relation” to
British political economy entailed in the great experiment. His govern-
ment would have continued to extend protection to sugar colonies not
yet ready for competition. Nevertheless, the new government, consistent
with its general policy, had made the decision not to exempt sugar. For
the sake of metropolitan political stability, the former prime minister felt
obliged to avoid bringing down the new government. Given the general
state of opinion in the country, the hour of competition had struck.
Planters and workers in the British colonies had to confront slaveholders
and slave labor in the market.50
The editors of the Times claimed to be disillusioned: The British people
had payed £20 million in compensation to emancipate their colonial
slaves. What seemed like an extravagant overpayment in 1833 might
actually have been an underpayment. Millions more had gone into sup-
porting overseas labor. But how long was one “to go on paying this
humanity-tax” when “every man, woman, and child in these islands
wears,—at least we hope so,—some article or other of slave-grown
cotton. We take tobacco, spirits, indigo, spices, and we know not what
besides, the product of slavery, without for a moment thinking there is
any crime in it.” Since Britain sent its clothes to the slave owners in the
Americas, “Why not take their sugar?” To “an experiment we had no
objection,” concluded the “Thunderer,” “or rather, we felt it a duty to
withdraw our objections.” The experiment had offered “deplorably slender
results.” Good money was thrown after bad: “Duties, Niger expeditions,

176   

coast blockades achieved nothing. No one followed. Brazil was angry. How
should we feel if the United States were to insult us with commercial
prohibitions because the labourers in some counties of England, and the
peasantry of Ireland, are in a very degraded and miserable state?”51
The Times took pleasure in only one aspect of the outcome—the hu-
miliation of the abolitionists. How the mighty had fallen. Where were
the masses in favor of the sugar duties? The sugar debates, the taxes, the
failed African expedition, the endless tales of British Caribbean peasants
who were becoming more prosperous than British agricultural laborers,
not to mention famine-stricken Irish peasants, encouraged a new note of
separation. The Times pitted “us” against “them,” metropolitans against
peripherals. Whom, mocked the Times, will abolitionists now get to help
them out of doors? “Will they invite themselves to the market tables, and,
amid clouds of slave-grown tobacco-smoke, discourse to the farmers on
the wrongs of the African and the abominations of Havannah? We will
not say how little an honest English yeoman, after imbibing his quantum
of well-sugared brandy and water, is likely to concern himself with the
imaginary sufferings of the hypothetical ‘nigger.’ ” Exeter Hall, stripped
of its mass support, was ripe for humiliation. The heirs of the Saints had
offered Britain not sober science and common sense but “knight-
errantry.” The “appeal to the people, then, is utterly hopeless.” Abolition-
ists had not even dared to make the attempt.52
Public opinion, as Peel noted, had changed. The free traders were
exultant over the Sugar Duties Act. From its founding moment in 1843,
the Economist had been unrelentingly bullish on the ability of British West
Indian labor to subvert the slave world under conditions of free trade.
The journal boasted of a Suriname planter’s promise to emancipate his
slaves the day after free trade in sugar passed through Parliament. Above
all, the equalization of sugar duties would be the unshackling of the
British consumer. “The duty of the government of England,” insisted the
Economist, was to its own subjects, “not to the natives of Africa, nor to
the slaves in Brazils [sic] or Cuba. Its first duty is to secure to every man
in the community the enjoyment, as far is it can, of every farthing of
his own property.” Antislavery prophecies of disaster were mere flights
of speculation. Any “momentary stimulus” given to slave sugar by British
markets would quickly be negated by the superiority of free labor.53
Abolitionists bitterly agreed that the hour of full competition for free
labor had struck. They feared for the well-being of the ex-slaves; they
dreaded the expansion of the slave trade and the failure of the whole
great experiment. If there was any novelty in 1846 after five interminable
years of debate, it was the sight of William Wilberforce’s son, rising in
the House of Lords twelve years after British emancipation to attack the
free labor ideology, root and branch. Slave labor, the bishop of Oxford
warned his fellow peers, was “absolutely cheaper” than Caribbean free
labor. The Sugar Duties Bill was a dream come true for plantation slave-

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 holders and transatlantic slave dealers. Wilbeforce foresaw new oppor-
tunities for forcing down colonial wages and for diminishing the West
Indian share of the world’s sugar production.54
Five years after the great protectionist victory over sugar duties, the
basic arguments for and against protection had not changed. Two polit-
ical considerations weighed heavily in the sugar bill’s passage in 1846.
First, the outgoing parliamentary leader of protection had abandoned all
resistance. Having yielded on the issue of the Corn Laws at home, Peel
felt obliged to support the incoming Whigs against protection overseas.
The second reason was more fundamental. With each passing year the
plea for sugar “exceptionalism” became less convincing. It was grounded
on the argument that Caribbean free labor was approaching the point of
underselling and outproducing slave labor. Metropolitan impatience and
skepticism grew faster than West Indian production. Sooner or later, the
“real world” experiment must come to its true test in the market. That
time had come.

178   

 11
   :
, ,  

A s the 1846 sugar bill stood on the brink of passage, the

unswerving organ of free trade exulted in the nuptials of
morality and science throughout the globe:

We believe therefore, that to put an end to all discriminating duty,

and open our markets to the world, would encourage the inhabitants
of the Brazils and Cuba to improve labour rather than to import
slaves—to substitute skill for mere brutal toil—to introduce refined ma-
chinery from Europe instead of rude Africans from the Bight of Benin.
. . . We have a firm reliance on the union between morality and pros-
perity, and we feel confident that every increase of the prosperity of
civilized Europe would promote every where the happiness of mankind.
It would hasten the emancipation of the slave labourer in every part
of the world. Our example, particularly our wonderful machinery, the
result of freedom, would then be of tenfold efficacy, and free labour
would every where be preferred, not only for its inherent beauties, but
for its pecuniary benefit.1

The next four years were to sorely tax this proclamation. A year later the
lead article of the same journal was entitled “The Prostrate Sugar Colo-
nies.” The Economist acknowledged the extreme commercial distress and
the jeopardy of the British tropical colonies.2 Worse was in store. The
inevitable fall in British sugar prices in 1847–1848 wiped out dozens of
merchant houses. Their collapse, in both the West Indies and in Britain,
signaled an imperial credit and cash flow crisis. The economic depression
of 1846–1847 in Europe compounded the difficulties overseas. Metropol-
itan capital drew back from the rising risk of investment. A wave of

179
 defaults by planters spread economic hardship through the whole social
scale. The principal banks of the eastern and western Caribbean islands
suspended cash payments. Estimated capital in estates fell to a quarter or
less of previous values, occasionally depreciating by up to 95 percent of
sale prices before emancipation.3
Planters, faced with evaporating credit and forced to sell sugar below
its cost of production, could no longer draw on metropolitan advances
to meet wage bills. For the first time since the end of apprenticeship,
boycotts and strikes by estate workers, even when backed by intimidation,
failed to roll back wage cuts. The economic downturn appeared to be of
a different order of magnitude than in previous crises. Even at bank-
ruptcy’s bargain prices, estates were not simply being sold and transferred
but removed from staple cultivation altogether. In Guiana, in response to
wage cuts, the drift of laborers away from plantations to peasant villages
rose by more than 50 percent between mid-1847 and the end of 1848.4
As usual, the colonies with the lowest densities of population to land
suffered the severest depreciation, but bad news seemed to flow in from
every sugar island, from Barbados to Mauritius. Samuel Wilberforce re-
newed his dire prophecy that the “vast social experiment,” now also “the
fearful experiment,” was in peril. The grim dispatches from colonial gov-
ernors, not excluding Governor Reid of populous Barbados, were now
added testimony to the emergency: sugar grown by free laborers “could
not yet compete on equal terms with slave labour” and required protec-
tion for a “considerable time to come.” The bishop of Oxford now not
only cast aside free labor superiority but denied that the Saints had ever
advocated it. His father’s generation had never claimed that principle
during the struggle for abolition of the slave trade. Even in their cam-
paigns for emancipation, they had insisted on free labor superiority only
if the foreign slave trade were terminated. It would have been difficult to
find many such explicit caveats in the vast record of antislavery propo-
nents’ speeches, pamphlets, and petitions, but one could not find a better
indicator of antislavery’s ebbing confidence than in Wilberforce’s retro-
spective denial of abolitionists’ complicity in the entire free labor ideol-
ogy.5
The Times swung dramatically from calm resignation in 1848 to deep
pessimism: “We have thought fit to make of those islands the scene of a
great experiment. . . . We have made a desert and called it freedom.”6
Regardless of political affiliation, one newspaper after another felt called
on to account for a process gone very bad indeed. The widely read liberal
and antislavery London Daily News was adamantly opposed to any hint
of reversion to protection but felt that the West Indian sugar growers
had ample reason to complain. Both at home and abroad the term ruin
slipped casually into editorials on the colonies. The Radical Spectator
asked why Jamaica had been ruined to enrich Cuba? The Nonconformist,
anxious to deny that emancipation could be called a failure, even as “an

180   

economical experiment,” voiced fears of losing the fruits “of all the self-
denying labours of the Negro-emancipationists, and all of the solid results
of twenty millions compensation money.” The pro-Chartist Northern Star
was no more reluctant to speak of the ruined West Indies than the Times
or the Spectator. Even governmental conduits and supporters were clearly
on the defensive: “It is now clear,” editorialized the Whig Globe, “that we
have made some mistake. What seems to have come of the abolition of
slavery in our colonies—we say ‘seems’ . . . —is not what was expected
but something much worse—something we should hardly have chosen
to encounter willingly.”7
A government on the defensive begrudgingly allowed the formation of
yet another parliamentary committee to investigate the crisis of the sugar
colonies. The inevitable “Select Committee” faithfully collected another
vast amount of official data and official correspondence, as well as un-
usually emotional testimony from merchants, planters, engineers, and
now even bankrupted members of Parliament. The evidence blossomed
into four printed volumes of the Parliamentary Papers, the largest survey
of sugar production in history, from China to Peru.8 From the govern-
ment’s perspective, however, the most authoritative and embarrassing
material came from the unbroken stream of assessments by their colonial
governors’ correspondence.
The select committee’s report surprised no one in claiming that the
optimistic predictions made by free trade advocates of lower sugar duties
had been falsified. Even Mauritius, the model success story of the tran-
sition to free labor in the 1840s, was in trouble. Eighteen merchant
houses connected with that island were insolvent. British India was faring
no better. Even with wage rates a fraction of those of some West Indian
colonies, the subcontinent also seemed mired in paralysis. East India mer-
chants, planters, and company executives told eerily familiar stories of
vanishing capital and imminent suspensions of sugar growing. Managers
of the cheapest “free” labor force in the empire testified that without the
restoration of protection they could not compete with the slave-buying
merchants and slave-driving planters of the Americas. East Indian mer-
chants and planters added their own novel racial wrinkle to the myriad
of Caribbean complaints, affirming the lower efficiency of coolies in India
than of black labor in the Americas. One Mauritius planter announced
that he had made his own survey and was moving to Brazil.9
Caribbean witnesses formed the principal chorus of desolation. The
manager of Jamaica’s Worthy Park plantation, long hailed as one of the
most profitable and efficient estates on the island, reported that his plan-
tation was operating at a loss. He wondered whether any form of free
labor could compete with slave labor, except at wages paid in the East.
Barbados planters, whose postemancipation expansion had defied the
downward trend in other major sugar colonies, sent word that they could
certainly not make a profit at current labor costs. Antigua, the jewel of

    181

 immediate emancipationists in the 1830s, was uncertain about the is-
land’s ability to continue commercial cultivation. Was it possible that
even the most densely populated colonies in the empire could not compete
with economies based on transporting African labor purchased thousands
of miles away?10
The 1848 committee was not only more geographically inclusive than
ever before but also more detailed than in any previous evidentiary hear-
ing. In 1832 the Select Committee on the State of the West Indies had
roughly calculated the excess cost of British over Cuban slave-produced
sugar that was due to the latter’s ability to purchase rather than to breed
its labor force. Now a planter submitted a down-to-the-hour calculation.
He estimated a further 40 percent drop in the average work year from
laborers in postemancipation Jamaica (from 2653 to 1560 hours per
year). Cuba remained the benchmark of efficient labor extraction. Ja-
maica offered an ironic twist on Adam Smith’s “wear and tear” argu-
ment. Laborers had to contribute to the support of nonworking women
and children of the labor force. By contrast, women and children in Cuba
formed a smaller proportion of the plantations’ slave force. Africa, not
Cuba, bore the remainder of “wear and tear” costs of labor reproduc-
tion.11
The calculations of the select committee were reflected in less detailed
assessments outside of Parliament. The performance of free labor was
under greater scrutiny than ever before. The Times published as many
editorials on British Caribbean and antislavery policy in the first quarter
of 1848 as it had during the three months following the introduction of
the emancipation bill of 1833. Over the next three years, its editorial
attention to the West Indies was greater and more sustained than at any
previous period. The nature and results of the great experiment were
reviewed from every angle. The Daily News, exasperated by the experi-
ment’s unsatisfactory outcome, insisted that the millions in direct com-
pensation and as many millions more in sugar taxation should allow the
metropolis to call it quits, even if the original £17 million had not been
adequate payment. This admission amounted to a shift of opinion from
compensation as something of a giveaway in 1833 to a stunned reas-
sessment in 1848. The Spectator explicitly referred to the “great experi-
ment” in the past tense, reflecting its view that the Sugar Duties Act had
marked the abandonment of an emancipation experiment in favor of a
free trade experiment.12
Despite the journalistic furor, free trade remained the cornerstone of
the government’s political economy. Prime Minister Lord Russell made it
clear from the outset of the 1848 debates that there would be no rever-
sion to protection, although he finally agreed, under pressure, to stretch
out the transition to full equalization. Embittered protectionist Tories, who
had no hope of repealing the Corn Laws, took rhetorical delight in com-
paring the devastated sugar colonies to the government’s earlier predic-

182   

tions of emerging prosperity. Benjamin Disraeli found West Indian distress
a convenient stick with which to beat the free trade Whigs. The great
experiment, the greatest blunder in the history of the English people, had
simultaneously ruined the British colonies, encouraged the African slave
trade, and revealed “the quackery of economic science!” Some members
of the government wavered in their former united front on free labor
superiority. Even Russell conceded that he could not agree with the in-
dustrial free traders of the North and the laissez-faire supporters of Lon-
don that free labor was less expensive than slave labor. He simply pleaded
that the whole abolitionist experiment, which had already cost the British
people £80 million should not be abandoned on the basis of a single
agricultural season or parliamentary debate.13
The state of the scientific argument over slavery and free labor was
most sharply revealed by the first MP who rose to defend the Whig prime
minister’s embattled defense of the equalization of sugar duties. James
Wilson, founder and director of the Economist, was now the MP for West-
bury. Like Thomas Fowell Buxton in 1831, he dramatically cast aside all
moral arguments in defending the government’s decision to support free
trade in all sugars. Wilson promised to refute the West Indians’ plea for
relief on their own economic grounds—“that slave labour is cheaper than
free” and that the West Indies was exposed to an unequal and unjust
competition. Exclusion of slave-grown sugar was no moral issue. All so-
cieties had moved through slavery on the way to civilization. Wilson was
not prepared to say “that because the relation between employer and
employed was that of master and slave we should brand it as injustice
and oppression.” Each society was free to determine its own moment of
emancipation in accord with its own progress toward civilization. Mean-
while, however, it was no more incumbent on Britain to exclude slave-
grown sugar from Cuba and Brazil than the slave-grown products of the
United States, Egypt, or Russia, where the condition of laborers was “per-
fect slavery.”14
Having grandly widened the definition of slavery to coercive relations
well beyond chattel slavery by invoking Russia and Egypt, Wilson quickly
proceeded to narrow it. The great political question was to measure the
“exact value” of free and slave labor, “an exceedingly difficult thing.”
However, Mauritius’s indentured laborers provided an excellent source of
evidentiary data. Its sugar production per capita had risen from three-
quarters of a ton to a full ton per laborer between slavery and 1848.
However, Mauritius’s agents had joined the pack of complainants and
commercial bankrupts howling for parliamentary relief. The fallback case
was the Economist’s old standby, Dutch Java. Its exports had risen spec-
tacularly from 1,000 tons in 1826 to 75,000 tons in 1847, in “open
competition” with the slave labor of Cuba and Brazil: “We had not in the
whole world the example of so rapid an increase in the production of
sugar.” Wilson took the added precaution of a preemptive strike against

    183

 potential challengers of Javan free labor. From the information he had
received from Dutch sources, “the inhabitants of that island were as free
as almost any population in the world.”15
Wilson well knew the ground on which he shook. Far-flung British
scientific travelers were returning from distant Java with disturbing de-
tails. Fresh off the press was a Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S.
Fly . . . Together with an Excursion into the Eastern Part of Java, by J. Beete
Jukes, M.A. and F.G.S. Jukes reported the universal complaint “among all
Europeans”—“that the Javanese peasantry will not work for wages, but
only at the command of their native superiors . . . without such an order
no inducement is sufficient to make him break through his natural in-
dolence and love of ease.” Good Englishman that he was, Jukes hopefully
awaited the result of the real emancipation of “the Javanese from their
feudal servitude.” Meanwhile, however, the “people were compelled to
work by their rulers, native and Dutch, and to receive such wages as they
may choose to order them. If not a system of slavery it is one of the
most complete serfdom.”16 To no one’s great surprise, references to
Jukes’s book quickly turned up in the polemic writings of West Indian
pamphleteers, including those of Matthew James Higgins, a Tory jour-
nalist whom Wilson had defeated in the parliamentary election of 1847.
As “Jacob Omnium,” Higgins was to shadow Wilson’s Economist for years
to come,17 and Java’s celebrity status on the free labor roster receded
almost as quickly as it had emerged.
Wilson’s next candidate had the most unimpeachable free labor cre-
dentials of all. Beetroot was becoming “a new branch of agriculture,”
and every sugar beet in western Europe was grown by impeccably Eu-
ropean labor.18 Wilson curiously dispatched the newest sugar contestant
in a few brief sentences. As easily as beetroot passed the test of free labor,
it failed the test of free trade. After it had made its cameo appearance
against the West Indies in 1848, beetroot actually became another cau-
tionary tale for political economists. When desperate Ireland also looked
to the beet as a possible slavation to its devastated agriculture, the Econ-
omist, logical as usual, hastened to warn them, skeptically (and some-
times sarcastically), to make haste slowly. Irish beets, unlike those on the
protective European continent, could succeed only in open competition
with the slave-grown sugar of Cuba and Brazil and the free-grown sugar
of Britain’s own colonies. “That,” concluded the Economist, “is an ordeal
to which beet-root has not yet been anywhere exposed.”19
Wilson’s checklist consisted of a set of experiments that might be
contested for one “definitional” reason or another. His final case, however,
must have been the one that really caught the attention of the House of
Commons. By their own immediate avowal, it bowled over its bankers,
West Indians, and abolitionists alike. Wilson selected an example whose
economic success was universally recognized from one end of the world
to the other. Subsequent historians have verified that impression. By

184   

1850, “its per capita output must have ranked among the top half dozen
of the world’s nations,” 65 percent above that of Jamaica.20
Wilson’s pièce de resistance was, of course, the island of Cuba. “Let
the House,” thundered the editor of the Economist, “compare those under
the British Crown with Cuba or Porto Rico: there was a material differ-
ence between the social position of the inhabitants.” In Cuba, both En-
glish and Spanish families avoided the perils of absenteeism. There was
no need to look only at its economic growth, in sugar or coffee exports.
The signs of contingent economic development were everywhere. Cuba
had no fewer than 800 miles of railway, the great symbol of modernity
and progress, whereas there were only 1200 miles of railroad in all of
the British colonies combined. Cuba was purchasing the latest British
machinery for increasing the efficiency of production and transportation.
The British colonies were also admonished to follow Cuba’s stringent reg-
ulations against vagrancy and squatting—the test of a “civilized and
cultivated society.”21
The West Indian who replied to Wilson confessed that he was devas-
tated by Wilson’s argument. He heard the British government’s spokes-
man wax eloquent on the magnificent prosperity of Cuba, saying, “See
what slavery has done!” and then he heard the same speaker point to
the distressed British Caribbean, saying, “Behold the result of freedom.”22
To what conclusion should the House of Commons come if all Wilson’s
statistics on bridges, buildings, and railways pointed to the accomplish-
ments of slave labor? Even those unconnected with the West Indies noted
that an argument for the superiority of free labor based on the dynamism
of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Louisiana was a peculiar message to the slave-
holders of the New World. Eventually, even a free trader from Lancashire
reminded Wilson that there was a free labor experiment in progress. If
that experiment failed commercially, no other country would imitate Brit-
ain’s example.23
By the end of the 1848 session, Wilson and many of his proministerial
colleagues had surrendered none of their faith in the ultimate competi-
tiveness of free labor, but they had begun to recast the question in terms
of more cautious hopefulness rather than certainty. The government ex-
tended the transition to full equalization until 1854. Most significantly,
the ministers quietly ceased to prophecy a rapid turnaround in West
Indian fortunes. The dramatic drop in plantation wages that followed the
great collapse of 1847–1848, initially added more to the fury of the
Creole workers than to the resurgence of West Indian prosperity and
sugar exports.
One by one, in 1848, the ingredients of free labor superiority were
reexamined. As early as 1841, Peel had cautioned against the “techno-
logical fallacy” of the free labor ideology. The use of slave labor was
conventionally and routinely connected with poor labor use, land deple-
tion, and primitive technology. Free labor would stimulate the substitution

    185

 of productive labor-saving technology in order to compete with inefficient
modes of production, dependent on poorly motivated slave labor. Peel had
cautioned that slave-importing countries could easily match the British
colonies in capital accumulation and innovative technology, usually pur-
chased from British suppliers. Year after year, however, opponents of pro-
tection had argued for free labor’s special affinity with technology and
scientific improvement as the means of overcoming competition from
slave labor. Free trade would stimulate entrepreneurial ingenuity, as well
as efficient labor and profit-seeking capital.24
By 1848, few free traders maintained that emancipation plus compe-
tition would produce a widening technology gap in favor of freedom.
Their opponents echoed Peel’s question: how, under free trade, could one
prevent slave owners from purchasing machinery? It was not just a ques-
tion of technological parity. British machinery was pouring more swiftly
into the Spanish than into the British Caribbean. Old machinery was
being left to rust in the British colonies while British planters reexported
their own most recent purchases to Havana, where planters could pur-
chase them at bankruptcy prices. Free trade was opening a technological
gap in favor of slaveholders. The new steam-based machines could run
for twenty-four hours a day, so Cuban planters could run their laborers
closer to twenty-four hours a day at the harvest peak. This point was
also made by those calculating the relative productivity of Cuban and
Jamaican labor. Cuba was outpacing the British colonies off the planta-
tion as well. New steam-driven vessels were being introduced into the
transatlantic slave trade.25 Cuban “dependence upon slave labor and the
slave trade remained as central characteristics of a colonial sugar econ-
omy which had reduced every other economic sector to insignificance.”26
The Economist’s prediction had been right. Free trade stimulated the pur-
chase of “our wonderful machinery”—in Cuba.
The Times took special pains in recounting a free labor, free trade
experiment by antislavery sympathizers. It was designed to demonstrate
the superiority of new British entrepreneurship when unencumbered by
the traditionalism and domineering habits of the old planter class. A
Liverpool company headed by names linked to abolitionism and free trade
had amassed £400,000 in subscriptions. It hoped to demonstrate in situ
Lord Russell’s “firm conviction that five or six men of capital and science,
emigrating to the sugar colonies” . . . and establishing “a central manu-
factory could not fail of the most perfect success.” Two years later, no
dividend had been declared, the capital was rapidly disappearing, and the
director was complaining bitterly of exorbitant wage demands and of the
want of continuous labor. Had the cruel experiment not involved so many
families in ruin and desolation, concluded the Times, “we could almost
rejoice that it had been made.” Its schadenfreude was implicit in its de-
nial.27

186   

 While the relative efficiencies of free and slave labor enterprises in the
Caribbean were rehearsed in the press, the population principle also took
on new urgency in the form of the impact of labor density in the colonies
and the impact of replenishment and expansion. The problem of labor
replacement through reproduction had ceased to be a major concern.
The problem was now framed in terms of the relative flow of labor to
free and slave plantation colonies. The low-density colonies were the most
dramatic cases of decline. Imperial acceptance of indentured migration
from India had been restored for Mauritius in 1842, and small streams
of labor from Africa, Madeira, and India flowed intermittently into the
Caribbean during the 1840s. The decision in favor of free trade in sugar
intensified West Indian demands for freer movements of labor to, and
greater planter control of, indentures in the Caribbean. A Whig govern-
ment already reluctant to subsidize mass migration for the relief of the
famine in Ireland was more eager to rely on the law of supply and de-
mand to effect downward pressure on Creole wages than on new migra-
tion laws to bring in new Asian laborers. Nevertheless, the crisis of 1848
prompted the government to frame laws that placed a higher priority on
providing labor more rapidly to the West Indian planters. By 1851 the
imperial government was encouraging assisted migration from India
through guaranteed British loans. At the same time, contract terms and
disciplinary rules were altered in favor of the planters.28

I
Economic science was at the heart of another major policy of debate that
was given new impetus by the relaxation of the duties on foreign sugar.
The abolitionists’ major objection to equalizing the sugar duties had been
its probable stimulus in increasing the slave trade to Brazil and Cuba.
Just before the passage of the Sugar Duties Act in 1846, a new combi-
nation of abolitionists and free traders had challenged the continuation
of the British policy of suppression on the coast of Africa. Early in 1845,
an abolitionist petition declared that the African Squadron had failed to
suppress the trade while only increasing the horrors of the middle pas-
sage. William Hutt, a free trade MP, used abolitionists’ documentation to
request the suspension of the patrol system on strictly economic grounds.
Hutt noted that the interception system clearly violated the fundamental
law of supply and demand. This, in turn, only produced higher profits
for smugglers, less concern for the lives of the captives, greater European
hostility toward British naval hegemony, and a patriotic backlash in slave
societies that were still tolerating the African trade. For Hutt and his free
trade supporters, the fundamental error was to have attempted to limit
African migration to the New World in the first place.29 Hutt’s motion

    187

 assumed that British constraint on the transatlantic flow of Africans
might even have prolonged the trade beyond its “natural” duration. The
natural law of supply and demand could not be annulled by the man-
made law of prohibition.
As the Economist wrote in support of Hutt’s premise, Africa and Amer-
ica still remained in the same essential relationship to each other as they
had before British abolition in 1807: “Africa had a vast, uncivilized, un-
employed and unfed population; while America and the adjacent islands
possessed, as they then existed, an ample opportunity of affording civi-
lization, employment and support to that race.” Suppression only denied
Africans the full benefit of the transfer, “and this is the secret of the
impossibility to suppress the slave trade by force.” The Economist advo-
cated the “free emigration of Africans to any country, in exchange for
their freedom.” Countering the objection that the past record of landing
freed African captives in slave countries did not promise real freedom to
those landed, the Economist noted that things would at least be no worse,
in terms of humanity, with less suffering on the high seas.30
The crisis of 1847–1848 gave renewed force to Hutt’s ongoing effort.
He reintroduced his motion in 1848 and again in 1849 on the grounds
that abolitionists and West Indians had been correct in their forecast.
Free trade not only continued but also stimulated the slave trade. This
time the press overwhelmingly treated the African Squadron as a policy
failure. It began to seem plausible that purchasing and transporting
“freed” Africans to the British colonies could undercut the slave traders,
compete with the slave producers, and raise the living and cultural stan-
dards of the transported Africans. The Times insisted that British policy
should become consistent and natural: “We (the mother country) will
apply a pure scientific theorem to the practical business of life and sac-
rifice all other considerations to the realization of a commercial system.”
The West Indian planters’ case for a “free market” in labor was voiced:
‘Let it be carried out in our own case . . . no protection, no differential
duties, no favour. . . . Leave us, however, free to contend on equal terms
with our rivals. Give us free trade, or give us back our slaves!”31
Even after editor James Wilson became a member of the ministerial
coalition in Parliament, his rigorously consistent journal found that
Hutt’s position, which embarrassed the government, was based on sound
economic science. The empirical evidence was formidable, relying on Tho-
mas Fowell Buxton’s famous study of 1840, “the truth of which has
received the general concurrence and admission of all parties.” The Econ-
omist repeated its thesis that Britain had committed “an enormous and
fatal blunder” in attempting to block the flow of Africans to the Americas.
The net result of the system was “a frightful aggravation of horrors.” If
there “was one common principle established by experience, it is, that
there is no risk, no hazard so great that it will not be incurred by the
prospect of a certain amount of gain.” However fair and rigorously the

188   

policy of force was applied, ‘it will not succeed.” The Economist’s argu-
ment usually went still further. A free flow of labor to America was not
only possible but also would have already abolished the slave trade had
it been implemented in 1806, “as soon as the supply of labor was suffi-
ciently abundant to excite that competition which arouses energy, inge-
nuity and exertion.” New treaties, allowing for unrestricted, “freed” Af-
rican labor, could, in one way or another, resolve the problems of low
population density and lack of labor competition, which fostered foreign
slavery.32
The debate over withdrawal of the African patrol reached its climax
early in 1850, when Hutt introduced a resolution requesting that the
government withdraw from any treaty that required the use of force to
put down the slave trade. Although contemporaries lacked historical data
on the value of every Caribbean colony’s product, it was clear that three
generations since the first stirrings of abolitionism had wrought a pro-
found transformation in the distribution of wealth and exports in the
Caribbean. Midway through the nineteenth century, numbers showed
that the colonies that had derived most economic advantages from the
rise of antislavery were the ones least touched by it (see tables 11.1 and
11.2). For the first time, the Whig government and its supporting press
appeared to officially concede that slave trade labor might undersell free
labor. Removing the last obstacle that raised the price of slave-produced
sugar might be the last straw for the British plantations. Lord Russell’s argu-

Table 11.1
Estimated Shares of Sugar Production for the North Atlantic Market, 1770–1850
(by percentage)

1770 1787 1806 1850

British West Indies 34.8 36.7 55.1 13.1

Mauritius — — — 5.2
India — — 2.3 5.9
(24.2)
French West Indies 39.6 43.3 9.8 1.7
French East Indies 0.4 1.9
(3.6)
Dutch West Indies 7.5 4.4 1.1 1.3
Java 0.1 0.1 0.9 8.2
Danish West India 3.2 2.7 1.9 0.6
Spanish West Indies 3.9 11.9 27.0
Phillipines 6.3 0.4 2.3
29.3
Brazil 10.8 6.6 15.0 10.5
Louisiana — — 0.7 11.9
European sugar beet — — — 10.3

Source: Noel Deer, The History of Sugar, 2 vols (London: Chapman & Hall, 1949–1950) I, 193–
204; Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1977), 48, 78, tables 11 and 17.

    189

 Table 11.2
Shares of Plantation Output in the Caribbean Plantations, 1770–1850 (percentage of
total value)

British French Spanish Dutch Danish

All Crops Colonies Colonies Colonies Colonies Colonies

1770 34.4 51.2 2.9 7.7 2.9

1850 29.2a 9.3 57.4 2.8 1.3
Sugar only
1770 40 46.7 5 4.7 3.6
1850 28.5 7.4a 60 2.8 1.4

Source: David Eltis, “The Slave Economies of the Caribbean,” in General History of the Caribbean,
Vol. III, The Slave Societies of the Caribbean (London: Unesco, 1997), 113–14, 117–18, tables 3.1 and
3.2.
a Includes Haiti.

ment was based on the fact that the British West Indies were on the verge
of succumbing to Cuba and Brazil.33
If Brazil were able to import freely, concluded Russell in his summa-
tion, the British West Indies “would be unable to stand under such com-
petition [hear, hear]. That of itself would not only be a great misfortune
as regards our interests, but a great misfortune in the contest between
free and slave labour [hear].” Having been abandoned by the voice of
economic science and lacking the voice of the people, Russell could only
appeal to the voice of God (and party discipline: “The noble lord resumed
his seat amidst great cheering”).34
The Times, of course, made space for a West Indian letter to highlight
the Whig confession: “When it suited them to do so they contended that
the free-labour sugar-farmers of the British West Indies could easily con-
tend against all sorts of slave labour, and that their distress and ruin
were occasioned by their marvelous ignorance and torpor.” The Times
itself editorialized that the increased cost of slaves to Cubans and Brazil-
ians as a result of the blockade merely increased the cost of sugar to the
British consumer. The great free trade argument—that one could not
distinguish between slave and free sugar in the marketplace—was now
turned on the Whigs: “From the one bank of the river [Thames] go forth
war steamers for the suppression of the slave trade, from the other go
forth the merchantmen that pay for its sustentation. Why not save a little
trouble, and moor the African squadron in the Thames to sink every
merchant man with a cargo of slave sugar on board—if it can be de-
tected? If not, give up the attempt altogether.” A million pounds a year
could be wasted on a philanthropic sham, whereas voices murmured in
disapproval when the chancellor of the exchequer dared to ask for
£300,000 for the relief of Irish distress. Great indeed was the “Thun-

190   

derer’s” outrage when stirred to invoke British uncharitableness toward
Ireland in order to express its disgust at an imperial policy toward Af-
rica.35
There was no longer a strong voice in the press for the maintenance
of the principle of free labor superiority in connection with the British
naval interdiction. The Daily News, always belligerently antislavery, noted
that the government had abandoned all the arguments on the merits.
The more vehement opponents of the British African Squadron inces-
santly appealed to the violation of the most fundamental economic prin-
ciple as the radical flaw in suppression policy. The slave trade would
increase in proportion to the increased flow of capital and enterprise into
slave societies. As long as the market existed, one could not prevent its
supply, with all of the extra atrocities produced by a clandestine and
unregulated traffic in human beings.36
Aside from economic arguments, the Daily News questioned the wis-
dom of any policy that could no longer mobilize strong public support at
home and antagonized public opinion abroad.37 The government had ar-
gued against sugar protection in 1846 on the grounds that competition
with slave labor was the only way to stop the slave trade. Now it was
arguing that raising the price of slaves by even a partially successful
blockade was the only way of saving the British West Indies from the
unrelenting competition of Cuban and Brazilian labor. The government
and its supporters now acceded, however belatedly, to the abolitionists’
warning, that free labor superiority per hour was more than counter-
balanced by labor that could be flogged, worked to death, and quickly
replaced. There was indeed “slave labour with which no free labour can
compete,” a system possible only under a slave trade. The British colonies
could well compete with slavery, “though they cannot compete with the
slave trade.”38 Of all the press, the Economist’s position was perhaps the
most telling. It had always managed to invoke the principle of the ab-
solute superiority of free labor in all previous debates related to sugar
and slavery. In March 1850 it remained silent.
The vote on Hutt’s resolution was perhaps “the last important stand
of humanitarian politics.” It was also a clear notice of the abandonment
of economic rationality on behalf of the suppression policy. Across the
political spectrum, the press was uniformly unimpressed by the govern-
ment’s arguments. Suppression policy had been a minefield for British
governments ever since the end of the Napoleonic wars. Now for the first
time since the Whig defeat of 1841 over sugar duties, a government had
to openly stake its survival on the outcome of a vote related to slavery.
Prime Minister Russell and Foreign Secretary Palmerston gave notice of
their intention to resign if Hutt’s motion was supported by a parliamen-
tary majority. Party loyalty and the prospect of an election comfortably
carried the day, 232 votes to 154.39

    191

 What was at stake on both sides of the Atlantic in 1850 was not just
a grim present but also an immensely grimmer future. Few disagreed
with the obvious vitality of slave-importing states in the world market.
Parliamentary abolitionists imagined a free trade in slaves as well as in
sugar, allowing the price of slave labor to fall to its “natural” level. In
Brazil alone, “3 to 4 million square miles” remained to be opened to
tropical cultivation. Merivale’s 1840 vista of a slave frontier that would
stretch from the Atlantic to the Andes was now an abolitionists’ night-
mare. Thomas Fowell Buxton’s son, Charles, now estimated that to bring
Brazil to a threshold (i.e., a Barbadian) density of competitive emanci-
pation would require the transportation of 240 million more Africans to
the Americas, fueled by vast amounts of British capital. The resulting
shambles in Africa would be accompanied by the ruin of the British
Caribbean colonies, abandoned “to the ordeal of an experiment which
has not yet been tried, namely the experiment how far free labour in
tropical climates can compete, not with slavery alone, but with slavery
resting upon a slave trade freed from all restraint.” Europe could hence-
forth be supplied largely with sugar from slave-importing states. It must
have given Charles Buxton bitter satisfaction to invoke as his clinching
authority the “proposer of the Sugar Bill of 1846.” But Lord John Rus-
sell’s free trade optimism had long since vanished. Exposed to a “free
trade” in labor, he desperately informed Parliament, “the produce of our
own West India islands . . . will be unable to stand against the competi-
tion.”40
With their hard-won parliamentary victory, Whigs faced the same eco-
nomic pressure that their predecessors had faced over the sugar duties.
They were stuck with an interminable, costly, and minimally effective
policy, inexorably forcing the British taxpayer to pay for the increasing
price of growing sugar in order to have the British consumer pay a higher
price for the product. With time running out, the government abandoned
the official policy of converting Brazilian planters to emancipation by
means of long-term commercial contact. It shifted to a more direct “con-
version” process—an overwhelming display of naval force. Only a few
weeks before the discussion of Hutt’s motion, Russell had complained that
the alternative to the ineffective African patrol—a blockade of Brazil and
Cuba—was so violent that he couldn’t imagine that it would be supported
by either the cabinet or Parliament. Within a few days of the vote on
Hutt’s motion, however, Palmerston expanded naval action against slav-
ers in Brazilian waters, precipitating the final crisis over the abolition of
the slave trade in Brazil.41
There has been considerable historiographical debate over the relative
roles of exogenous (i.e., British) and endogenous (i.e., Brazilian) pressures
in ending the African slave trade to its major customer in the Americas.42
For our purposes, the overriding fact is the lack of any economic or
demographic arguments against the trade, either in Britain or in Brazil,

192   

at this climactic moment. In pleading for suppression before the Brazilian
Chamber of Deputies, the conservative minister of Foreign Affairs, Pau-
lino José Soares de Sousa, did not hide the fact that British naval action
had precipitated the crisis. Brazil’s economy still depended on importa-
tions of slaves, but Brazilian planters would have to adapt to abolition or
face a ruinous war with Britain. A temporary slave glut, planters’ in-
debtedness and mortgages to Portuguese slavers may have played their
role in lowering planters’ resistance at the moment of decision, but “there
is little evidence for thinking that in the years 1849–50 the landed in-
terest, or indeed any important section of the landed interest, was de-
manding the abolition of the African slave trade.”43 The long-term con-
text of Brazilian economics was still in place.
The Cuban slave trade, less accessible to British naval coercion, more
than doubled its importation of enslaved Africans during the following
decade. Cuban planters not only continued to import Africans but also
clearly indicated their preference for such labor in the world market, even
though British patrols caused slave prices to rise at the steepest rate in
the nineteenth century. By 1856–1860, the price of slaves being loaded
in Africa had dropped by over 40 percent, but it had risen by 75 percent
when they were landed in Cuba. Cuban planters also had increasing
access to indentured migrant labor from China in the 1850s. They were
able to subject the indentured servants to a level of coercion in the field
almost indistinguishable from that meted out to their slaves. Yet Cubans
preferred the African slaves for as long as they could purchase them.
During the 1850s, Cuban planters purchased two Africans for every in-
dentured laborer from Asia.44
The successful termination of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil
in 1850 reduced political pressure on the British government to aban-
don the naval suppression policy for almost a decade. However, the fi-
nal crisis over the economics of the slave trade took place in the late
1850s. In tandem with sharply rising Cuban imports of slaves, under
American auspices, the French began to transport “freed” indentured
Africans to the French colonies, where slavery had been abolished by
the Revolution of 1848. In July 1858, Hutt again tried to reduce the
British African naval commitment on political, humanitarian, and eco-
nomic grounds. This time the outcome was never in doubt. Hutt’s res-
olution was defeated by a margin of ten to one. What rankled the jour-
nalistic guardian of economics, however, was Hutt’s final attempt to
use that science as his clinching argument. Why had Britain previously
abandoned high duties on spirits and tobacco? “Because they found it
impossible to prevent the operations of the smuggler; and they might as
well arm a fleet or denounce legal penalties to prevent the flow of the tides,
or the revolutions of the seasons, as attempt to stop by similar means the
operations of that great law of commercial intercourse, the law of demand
and supply.”45

    193

 What James Wilson had allowed his journal to pass over in virtual
silence eight years earlier his more evangelist successor, Richard Holt
Hutton, was not ready to ignore. Since its founding, the Economist had
been in the habit of taking fellow journalists to task for backsliding from
rigorous scientific analysis to sentimental exceptionalism. The Economist
would never pander to popularity, whether it involved weakening the
rigor of the Poor Laws for impoverished Englishmen, providing massive
relief for destitute Irishmen, or protecting distressed West Indian sugar
growers. Under Wilson, the Economist had clung more unflinchingly to
the universal validity of political economy, including free labor superi-
ority, than any other journal in Britain. If even the Times hesitated to
follow the logic of economic science in enforcing the Poor Laws, the
Economist called the “Thunderer” to order: “If political economy will ad-
mit of realization in A.D. 2500, it does so now, and the writer in the Times
knows it does.”46
However, in A.D. 1858, free trade in slave-grown sugar was one thing,
free trade in slaves was another. In “The Slave Trade and Economical
Laws,” the Economist became “downright heretical” in distinguishing be-
tween the laws of economics and those of natural science. Hutton argued
that it was

simply a blunder to speak of a moral law like that of demand and

supply, as in any way analogous to those inexorable physical laws
which determine the “flow of the tides” and the “revolutions of the
seasons.” The law of demand and supply is simply a law of tendency,—
the others are laws of absolutely necessary connection. Demand sup-
plies a motive which tends, in the absence of serious impediment, to
bring forward a supply; but such impediments may be interposed in
almost any number, by appeals to motives having an opposite tendency
in the minds of those who could alone furnish the supply. No possibility
of such impediments exists in the case of the laws of the tides and the
seasons.

The misuse of the term “law” vitiated the logic of those who used it
“against the use of force in suppressing the slave trade.”47
One of the most interesting aspects of this argument was that it flatly
contradicted the Economist’s support of Hutt’s reasoning ten (and thir-
teen) years before: that is, “that there is one common principle established
by experience, it is, that there is no risk, no hazard so great, that it will
not be incurred by a prospect of a certain amount of gain.”48 The Econ-
omist now called attention to an intervening variable, a principle of eq-
uity and human rights. “The sphere of economical science extends only
to the operation of self-interested tendencies, where no universal principle
of equity intervenes to restrain the actual development of those tenden-
cies; and the principles of commercial freedom take the far higher

194   

ground, that it is, in general, where human rights are not invaded, wrong
to interfere with the natural relation of demand and supply.”49
What had really intervened was not a principle of equity but the Brit-
ish government’s smashing success in Brazil. Its success meant that Brit-
ish coercion had made the difference, aided by “good faith,” “shame,”
and “genuine patriotism” on the British side. What the Economist had
also proved, although it did not choose to say so, was that free labor su-
periority was also a “tendency,” not, as it had once castigated the Times,
a truth always applicable now and without further consideration to the
elements of wealth—“the way of their production, distribution and con-
sumption.” Russell had been vindicated by military force, not economic
success. One criterion of success was that naval patrols raised the cost
of slaves “indefinitely above what their market price would be as esti-
mated by their cost of exportation, and nearly up to their cost in Lou-
isiana.” The other criterion of policymaking was actually the lack of
any economic alternative. Any sign of relenting on Britain’s part would
unravel the whole process. The patrol prevented four to five times more
Africans from being forced across the Atlantic. Barbados, with its rising
productivity and its now 734 people to the square mile, would certainly
not deter slavers from heading to Cuba, with its 50 people to the square
mile. Then “Brazil would revert quickly to her old and profitable trade.
Spain would pursue it with threefold activity. The United States would
no longer feel ashamed to permit it. France would enlarge her system
of ‘hiring negro apprentices.’ Portugal . . . could not stand alone.” Re-
laxation “would be a new lease on life for this horrible commerce.” The
British finger alone, so to speak, kept the whole tide of the slave trade
form pouring through the dike. The Economist’s conclusion was quite
pragmatic: the “international police” counteracted a “tendency” of de-
mand to produce a supply of people in one place, making room for a
“better” supply of other people to other places. The argument of the ab-
olitionists of 1846 about sugar could hardly have been better stated.50
In regard to the African Squadron, the slave labor supply curve was a
more supple, if not more slippery, slope from that of sugar, cotton, cof-
fee, or rice.
In one respect, the competitiveness of slave labor under certain con-
ditions became very widely recognized by the 1850s. In another respect,
it was recognized that there were, after all, practical alternatives to slave
labor in tropical plantation production. The demand for fresh African
slaves in the New World had been reduced to one major if enlarging
outlet in the Caribbean. However, other labor migrations, without the
overhead costs of smuggling, continued their upward momentum. In the
1850s two African slaves were imported into Cuba for every indentured
servant, but more than three indentured servants entered the plantation
sector as a whole for every enslaved African transported across the At-
lantic.51

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 II
After 1850, the fate of slavery in the Americas seemed to hinge less and
less on assessments of the great experiment in the Caribbean than on
unfolding events in the United States. British prosperity seemed to be
intimately, too intimately, tied to slave-grown cotton production. The
1840 Anti-Slavery Convention’s high hopes for a rapid shift of cotton
culture to free labor India were no closer to fulfillment, nor were growing
British anxieties about the persistent economic dependency of the British
cotton industry on the volatile United States. When sugar failed to in-
crease in Jamaica, the press looked to the island for a revival of cotton.
Australia, West Africa, and Egypt were quickly added to the list. The
successful cultivation of indigo in India now stood almost as a rebuke to
British capitalism and free labor. Why hadn’t India driven the slave-grown
cotton of the Southern states out of the market as effectively as the indigo
planters had snatched that trade from the rest of the world? “Nothing
could stand against the cheapness of labour in India, combined with
European enterprise, skill, and capital.”52 On the other hand, there was
the gnawing reminder that a generation before India had been displaced
by American planters’ who were offering annually increasing crops at
prices that undersold all competitors.
Reviewing American agriculture in 1853, the Economist echoed
Storch’s view that the American planter was the capitalist entrepreneur
par excellence. In the American South, efficient management and an
exclusively market mentality trumped any mode of labor. Notwithstand-
ing that the bulk of the laborers in the cotton districts were slaves and
unequal to free men, the slave owners of the United States were “ex-
tremely free, and subject amongst themselves to keen and active com-
petition. They use their slaves simply as a great instrument of production;
they grow cotton exclusively for the market, every pod is intended for
sale; they live surrounded by men of the highest degree of intelligence,
and in a condition of almost perfect freedom; they must keep pace with
the New Englanders or sink into lamentable political and social inferi-
ority.”53 Competition stirred Southern masters to maintain parity with
their countrymen.
It was India’s inability to capitalize on its putative asset of low-cost
free labor that needed to be accounted for. Once again, aspects of Amer-
ican freedom were contrasted with constraints on Indian enterprise.54
Americans of both sections were free to treat land, labor, and produce as
economic factors in a free market. The bondage of Indian peasants to
collectors, headmen, princes, and systems of minute regulations were the
factors that allowed Americans to distance every cotton-growing rival
into the indefinite future.55 There was no hope that England or any other
country could become independent of the American staple.

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 If labor was relatively less significant than management as a factor in
the competitiveness of the cotton market, where was the hope that slav-
ery would ever come to an end? Economics offered few clues. One timely
note of optimism came from John C. Calhoun’s farewell speech to U.S.
Senate in 1850. It was reported in the Times within days after Hutt’s
failed motion to withdraw the African Squadron. The debate had been
depressing to winners and losers alike, leaving in its wake the vision of
British seamen, like ancient mariners, patrolling the African coast forever,
in defiance of the economic law of demand and supply, and paying the
price of tropical mortality. Calhoun’s words came as music to the ears of
most Britons. At least somewhere in the Atlantic there was progress to-
ward freedom. Gone was Calhoun’s former bravado about the ever-
expanding world of slave labor. What economics could not achieve the
demography of freedom would deliver.
Calhoun’s speech wearily summarized the persistent and growing dis-
proportion between the populations of the Northern and Southern sec-
tions of the United States. It was not the productivity of the British col-
onies but the fecundity of the free states that would seal the fate of
Western slavery. Ohio, founded more than a decade later than Kentucky,
had a million more citizens than its Southern neighbor. In just five years
after Calhoun’s statistical summary of surging slavery, the North had
leaped beyond the Rockies to the Pacific. Northern labor was honored,
and a ceaseless stream of Old World immigrants swelled its numbers and
filled its workshops. Population would trump slave wealth because Amer-
ican political power flowed from the population principle. The “Thun-
derer,” widely echoed by the rest of the British press, shifted back into
the optimistic-prophetic mode, pointing to ‘the immutable laws of human
nature that the one [section] flourishes in unbounded luxuriance, whilst
the other is crippled by the elements of its own existence.”56 In this
perspective, one could at least serenely view the expansion of slavery as
confined within the limits assigned to it by climate and by the geograph-
ical dynamism of superabundant, Euro-American free labor. Slavery’s
destiny was to be slowly and inevitably engulfed by freedom.
Demography allowed one to review De Bow’s pro-Southern The Indus-
trial Resources . . . of the United States with equanimity, revealing the fun-
damental Southern problem to be a slaveholder’s society chained to an
enslaved labor force pathetically confined to increasing by reproduction
alone. The freemen of the South were “much more to be pitied than
condemned.” Slavery was part of every age of the world, as much a part
of the splendor of Greece and Rome as of “the civilization of the Anglo-
Saxon race, of which we are still prouder.” Slavery was an inevitable part
of creation’s intention to preserve in America every variety of the human
species.57
Meanwhile, until slavery was sufficiently penned up within a given
area to exhaust the soil, it retained its one salient Wakefieldian advantage.

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 The capitalist owner of compulsory labor could “collect, group, and or-
ganize it at pleasure even in the very centre of the most thinly-peopled
district, and very far from any labour market.” The slaveholder could
concentrate and use gang labor on the best soil, needing only sufficiently
cheap transport. Slavery’s quick departure from the Northern states after
the American Revolution could be explained by the subdivision and ex-
treme sterility of its soil. Slavery in the United States would fade away
everywhere when, and only when, its population became too dense for
the “large and superficial” system of slavery. It would then become nec-
essary to substitute for it the skill and energy of “educated and volun-
tary” labor.58
Throughout the 1850s, British forecasts of slavery’s future in America
wavered, or rather lurched, between two scenarios. When the British
press discussed the termination of the institution, they emphasized slav-
ery’s inability to extract as much from the soil by coercion as by freedom.
When they discussed the prospects of the cotton supply, however, allow-
ances had to be made for the uncanny ability of American management
to overcome the disabilities of coercion.
By the end of the decade, the Economist also discovered that the cotton
crop and slave populations were no longer rising at the same relative
rates. In 1855–1860 production was increasing more rapidly than pop-
ulation. The journal attributed the rise in productivity to two causes:
closer picking and the introduction of guano. The first implied that slave-
holders were capable of extracting still greater productivity gains from
their slaves. The second implied that soil exhaustion was being overcome
by scientific agriculture. “We have even heard,” wrote the impressed
Economist, “of cases where the produce per acre has been doubled by its
[guano’s] use.” Because articles on the cotton supply tended to be nar-
rowly focused, such factors never crossed over into discussions of slav-
ery.59
The U.S. slave interests also exhibited a new dynamic potential, an
ideological power, and a political potency that confounded British visions
of a gradual emancipation process that would not disrupt the American
economic system, the British cotton supply, and the unfolding trajectory
of Anglo-Saxon global expansion. There were also dismaying signs of
imagined slavery well beyond that in the American South. In the 1850s,
the American imagination seemed to be drenched with limitless possibil-
ities for new empires of slavery in the tropical Americas. The U.S. gov-
ernment turned its attention from the rapidly developing valley of the
Mississippi to the less developed valley of the Amazon. One report of an
exploratory naval expedition to the Amazon deeply disturbed a British
reviewer. The great tropical valley, felt the reviewer, was more necessary
for the peoples of crowded Europe than for the sparse inhabitants of the
United States. Yet the naval officer who reflected on his exploratory ex-
pedition thought neither of the future fate of humanity nor of Europe’s

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opinions. He supposed the valley of the Amazon “divided into large es-
tates and cultivated by slave labour, so as to produce all that they are
capable of producing.” With the expansion of U.S. power, the “wealth
and grandeur of ancient Babylon and modern London must yield to that
of the depôts of trade . . . at the mouths of the Orinoco, the Amazon,
and the La Plata.” The reviewer admitted that the Brazilians already
cultivated the developed part of the valley with slave labor, but its exten-
sion, under the less dynamic Brazilians, would only doom the vast valley
to sterility. The reviewer could only hope that European settlers would
hasten thither to compete with Americans and their curse of slavery.60
These aspects of the American imagination tended to undermine the
scientific assurances provided by the laws of climate, nature, and
Northern wealth and numbers. Still more disruptive was a succession of
events in the late 1850s that seemed to open the doors to Southern ex-
pansion far beyond Texas: the news of armed adventurers in Central
America; American manouvers for the acquisition of Cuba; the opening
up of Kansas, a region the size of New England, to slaveholding settlers;
the Dred Scott decision, allowing unlimited expansion in the undeveloped
territories; and especially the agitation for the renewal of the slave trade.
British observers relied less and less on the automatic unfolding of
Northern development and paid more attention to structural divisions
within each section. If the nonextension of slavery was the most essential
precondition for its long-term annihilation, few of these developments
were good signs.
One striking characteristic about the discussion of foreign slave sys-
tems was that one of them was now more vital to Britain’s economy
than any colonial sugar colony before 1850. Little reference was made to
the great experiment in relation to American slavery. It was not that the
British colonies failed to enter into the discussion of the cotton supply.
Indeed, the decade was filled with ongoing exhortations to add cotton to
the major export crops of the West Indies. Such a development would
naturally increase the prosperity of Jamaica and Demerara while reduc-
ing the dependency of Britain on American and slave cotton. During the
1850s, however, the results were quite discouraging. The challenge of
American hegemony in cotton remained unresolved, and the very indus-
trial groups that had agitated for forcing the British colonies to compete
without taxpayer support were now hoist on their own economic petard.
They completely failed to generate any potential enthusiasm for long-term
public subsidies to stimulate the development of cotton plantations in the
British East or West Indies.
The actual results of the great experiment were very rarely invoked
in discussions of the future of U.S. slavery, but its success or failure was
hotly contested throughout the fifteen years between the Sugar Duties
Act in Britain in 1846 and the Acts of Secession in America in 1861.
When French efforts to recruit African labor rekindled British antislavery

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 agitation in 1857, a large section of the press openly dismissed the eman-
cipation of 1833 as a failed experiment: at £20 million, “other nations
were not likely to admire the results or follow the example.”61 The Times
also editorialized on the diminished prestige of the philanthropists, “the
result of falsified predictions and blasted hopes”:

Our own colonies are impoverished, but the sum of slavery is not di-
minished, it has only been transferred from us to more grasping pitiless
and unscrupulous hands. Never was the prospect of emancipation
more distant than now that foreign slave-owners are establishing a
monopoly of all the great staples of tropical produce. [The old islands]
. . . are going out of cultivation, while Cuba, the United States and
Brazil are every day extending the area of their cultivation and the
number of their slaves.

Cuba was still importing thousands of Africans each year, its wealth such
that despite mismanagement, taxes, and heavy military presence, “its
proprietors are among the richest in the world.” In the United States,
slavery was growing and profitable. The French, whose emancipation was
the one major gain of the previous twenty-five years, was backsliding
into the slave trade. They were on the move to obtain Africans from the
Old World in one way or another. How long could one resist empirical
evidence and scientific logic? The rising value of slaves was the great
indicator of the renewed vitality of slavery: “The existence of slavery is
an economical question, and so long as the system is profitable we cannot
doubt that it will be maintained.”62
Demography might promise the triumph of free labor in the temperate
zones of the world beyond Europe. In the short run, however, the crisis
in the British tropics remained palpable, if not as critical as in 1848.
After two decades’ experience, it remained to be proven that Trinidad
could be, as Cuba was, as wealthy an island under British rule as it would
have been, “in spite of tyranny and misrule,” under Spanish sway. The
colonies were stagnating for want of sufficient labor. Massive immigration
of Coolies could alone reverse the inexorable slide. That remained the
only hope of showing that the culture of the tropics by free labor “is not
the impossibility which the partisans of slavery represent.”63 At the end
of the 1850s, the question was no longer whether superior free labor
could drive slave labor out of the market but whether or not commercially
competitive free labor was practicable in the West Indies.
Most of the “Thunderer’s” assessment would have brought a wry smile
to the lips of the late John Calhoun. Here, in the capital of abolitionism’s
homeland, on editorial pages of its leading newspaper, was a confession
of defeat. Whatever comfort and food for thought a Southern slaveholder
might gather from economic science on the eve of secession, economic
and experimental justification was there for the taking. And, of course,

200   

U.S. slaveholders took it. On the eve of Southern secession, a hefty, 900-
page compilation of arguments and facts incorporated the whole stockpile
of British commentary on the problems of emancipation. They offered
the Macqueen statistics used by Calhoun in his encounters with European
ministers, summaries of the voiced disappointments in the grand exper-
iment in the West Indies, the abolitionists’ falsified prophecies about In-
dia’s coming displacement of the American South in cotton agriculture,
damaging testimony culled from the British parliamentary committee
hearings, and generous excerpts from London’s Times and Economist. Es-
pecially prized because of its overt hostility to slavery, the Economist was
of particular value when it concluded that, with the example of West
Indian emancipation before them, it could not be expected that Southern
statesmen would ever risk the liberation of their slaves on such condi-
tions.64
The voice of academic social science was no more hopeful of a prox-
imate ending of slavery than the journalistic voice. Economist Nassau
Senior warned readers of the Edinburgh Review that views of the repro-
ductive “defectiveness” of slavery were outmoded. They had been inher-
ited from the eighteenth century, when “the laws that regulate the in-
crease of mankind” were little understood. Above all, they had to be
scrapped when one viewed the American South. The superfecundity of
U.S. slavery allowed its supporters to engulf Texas, to covet Cuba, and to
contemplate annexing Jamaica. Every tropical region was at risk. “We do
not venture to hope,” concluded one of Britain’s most venerable political
economists, “that we or our sons or our grandsons, will see American
slavery extirpated from the earth.”65
Across the ocean, American slaveholders might have drawn a mo-
ment’s satisfaction from the Times’s weary catalogue of American slav-
ery’s dynamic performance in comparison with the British West Indies
or from the sober prognoses of British economists. As the new decade
opened, however, it was more likely that Northern population figures and
an isolated event at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, weighed far more heavily in
their minds than all of the accumulated evidence of stagnation in the
British Caribbean.66

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 12
  

I n the decades following British emancipation, commentators

had occasionally noted that for an experiment to qualify as
such, one had to assume some terminal or measuring point. As with a
revolution or a novel, however, the most difficult part to invent was the
end. The results of emancipation had been complicated by a long series
of unanticipated changes: the ending of colonial sugar protection, the
continued flow of African slaves to the labor zones of the Americas, the
closing and reopening of the indentured labor flow to British tropical
frontiers, and the expansion of alternative forms of coerced labor and
sources of sugar production. Too much remained at stake in the outcome
for all interested groups to agree to either a single set of criteria for
measuring the success of emancipation or an appropriate moment to
assess its results. Nevertheless, by the late 1850s a retrospective reflex
began to appear in discussions of emancipation. Both the declining
strength of abolitionism as a political movement and the passing of a
generation appeared to make it appropriate to match the passage of time
with the measure of outcomes.
The renewal of the debate over the African Squadron, the sharp up-
turn in the slave trade to Cuba,1 the French project to import Africans
to their colonies, the possibilities of expanded tropical production from
Africa to Australia, the Sepoy uprising in India, all helped to stimulate a
global and temporal assessment of British policy over the previous half
century. The Times used a parliamentary speech on the slave trade by
veteran abolitionist Lord Brougham to assess the “intentions and failures
of the last generation.” “Confessedly,” it editorialized, “taking that grand
summary view of the question which we cannot help taking after a quar-
ter of a century, the process was a failure; it destroyed an immense prop-
erty, ruined thousands of good families, degraded the Negroes still lower

202
than they were, and, after all, increased the mass of Slavery in less scru-
pulous hands.” Editorial condescension for Brougham’s half century of
errors was palpable. The more doubts that were raised about Britain’s
course of action, “the more positive are the men of the past that they
did right in their days and that they cannot be improved upon in our
days.” Even those who had been less irked by the abolitionist’s priorities
now charged the abolitionist remnant with obstinate adhesion to certain
“errors” and “failures” of the philanthropic achievement of the nine-
teenth century.2
The Times’s taunt was immediately and hotly contested because of its
implications for immediate policy. The Daily News warned that the Times
was opening the door for a new, massive African migration, just to satisfy
“a syllogism in political economy [the land-labor ratio] which no one
disputes.” Failure was still the responsibility of the planters who had
created the deficiency of labor by their own behavior, alienating labor
from capital. The Daily News acknowledged the decline of capital and
plantation prices but balanced this outcome by the huge number of small
landholders who had arisen in the generation since emancipation. Their
diligence, economy, and ingenuity still offered hope for the rise of a new
prosperous class of proprietors. The new class, unspoiled by monopoly,
would bring new “middle-class” energy into sugar production. Yet even
these defenders of emancipation still spoke the language of production,
of free labor’s continuing need to prove itself in the production of staples,
which would finally drive out slave labor from the earth in accordance
with the basic principles of political economy.3
The editorials were symptomatic of an emergent pattern in social sci-
entific discussion. In October 1858, Lewis Chamerovzow, secretary of the
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, presented a formal paper on
emancipation to the newly formed National Association for the Advance-
ment of Social Science, meeting in Liverpool. Chamerovzow returned to
the fundamental problem of slavery versus free labor. He declared himself
willing to use the strongest comparative cases in the opposition’s arsenal:
Cuba versus Jamaica. Secretary Chamerovzow argued that the per diem
price of hired slave gangs in Cuba was higher than the wages of laborers
in Jamaica. Unable to gain the floor at the session, Stephen Cave, chair
of the West India Committee, used the pages of the Times to issue a
rejoinder. Cave’s tone was deliberately, perhaps ostentatiously, nonpolem-
ical. He assented to much of Chamerovzow’s assessment, but in his view
Chamerovzow had clearly failed to consider the difference between the
Jamaican laborer’s six-hour workday and discontinuous four-day work
week and the Cuban slave’s continuous eighteen-hour workday, and
seven-day work week. Cave noted that this was the rational explanation
for the huge demand for Asian immigrants to the British West Indies,
now accepted without murmur by most antislavery parliamentarians.
Chamerowzow replied that he merely wished to establish the fact that a

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 Jamaican worker did in six hours what took a slave twelve hours. Cham-
erovzow conceded that his knowledge was “theoretical,” but what, he
asked, did Cave’s correction point to? Did the West Indians really want
Britons to consider continuous and regular free labor to mean an
eighteen-hour day, seven days a week? Cuban competitiveness really had
to be attributed to its unique stream of fresh slaves continuously fed onto
virgin soil, using all of the improved Cuban technology “which science
has placed at [the planter’s] command, but which, from some cause, our
West India proprietary have not as a rule adopted.”4
The editors of the Times were stimulated by the exchange to ask for
further clarification of the data. If, as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society maintained, the sugar islands could be profitably cultivated by
their free black population, “cadit questio—the problem is solved.” In that
case the government was not required to help those, planters or workers,
who would not help themselves. Was Jamaica, then, a fair sample, a
mutually agreeable case, to test the results of the new system? Its sugar
crop had fallen from 90,000 to 19,000 tons. Or was densely populated
Barbados, with its encouraging increase in production, or were Antigua
and St. Kitt’s, with their barely sustained levels of export? Finally, asked
the Times, addressing a supporting abolitionist letter by Charles Buxton,
how much of the “alleged prosperity” of the revived labor was black
labor? The question required further rumination.5
A week later the Times had ruminated enough to propose its answer:
“In the great struggle between Slavery and Freedom,” the West Indians
were beaten men. But the antislavery society had not been content to
graciously discontinue itself, like the Anti-Corn Law Leaguers, when its
task was done. It survived “to lecture its unfortunate opponents, and to
prove to them . . . that they never lost anything at all, but . . . have been
constant gainers . . . except for their own perversity, misgovernment, un-
thrift, and extravagance.” The Times distilled the wisdom of the sugar,
slave, and slave trade debates over the previous generation: “It is by no
means improbable that free labour may be really more profitable than
slave labour, especially when the cost of the slave is enhanced by the
interdict placed upon the slave trade.” However, free labor could cope
with slavery but not with the combination of the slave trade and slavery.6
The Times’s criterion of success for the experiment was whether the
West Indies as a whole enjoyed the prosperity that Charles Buxton still
claimed for it and which Stephen Cave flatly denied. Once again, the latest
sugar data were wheeled on stage, down through the spring of 1858.
Using the time frame 1831–1857, the Times deemed that the global figures
spoke for themselves. From the beginning to the end of the designated
period, British sugar imports from the West Indies dropped 25 percent,
from 4 million to 3 million hundred weight. Disaggregation increased
editorial certitude. Of the seventeen colonies, only four had increased
their exports in 1857, over those in 1831. Jamaican and St. Vincent ex-

204   

ports had declined considerably. Growth was very slight in Demerara and
Berbice. Barbados and Trinidad had substantially increased their output.
Barbados, with its 50 percent increase, was irrelevant by virtue of its
population density. It could have relevance for policymakers or scientists
concerning the British tropical empire but much less for the great slave
societies of the Americas.
Meanwhile, during the same period, the Spanish Caribbean and Bra-
zilian slaveholders had quadrupled their exports to Britain. In the decade
following the passage of the Sugar Duties Act of 1846, British consump-
tion of slave sugar had risen from nil to 40 percent of British supply.
Charles Buxton’s reference to agricultural progress in seventeen of the
eighteen British colonies, the Times noted dismissively, used a postap-
prenticeship, not preemancipation, starting year. In the British West In-
dies, Trinidad alone could be placed in the category of clear posteman-
cipation prosperity, and Trinidad was a land of labor immigrants. It
clinched a case only for more “free labor.” Give all the West Indians
indentured labor like Trinidad or still more, like Mauritius, concluded the
Times, “and Mr. Cave will probable cry quits out of hand.” Whatever else
they had lost, ruled the Times, the planters had not lost their wits. Once
rich, luxurious, and improvident, “they are now poor, but they need not
be rated as fools into the bargain.”7
Whatever their insistence on other successes of emancipation, the ab-
olitionists had to take note of the fact that West Indian spokesmen in-
sisted on injecting the issue of economic success into the evaluation of
the great experiment. Regardless of the intensification of the polemical
political debates across the Atlantic, it was necessary that British eman-
cipation be viewed within the British tradition of rational objectivity.
Stephen Cave reentered the scientific arena in October 1859, speaking
to the Economics Section at the annual meeting of the National Asso-
ciation for the Promotion of Social Science. His paper was reprinted in
toto by the Times. Cave reiterated the Times’s theme of the previous year:
the battle of British emancipation was now over. The West Indian labor
question was “only just now freeing itself from the trammels of passion
and prejudice.” The passage of a quarter of a century should have “soft-
ened if not extinguished, the violent personal hostility aroused by so great
a revolution as the abolition of slavery necessarily excited.” Cave preemp-
tively admonished both sides for having polemicized the question. All
West Indians now recognized that “man is seldom fit to have uncontrolled
power over man.” There were too many well-authenticated examples
among slaveholders, including “highly civilized females,” of “insane tyr-
anny.” Moreover, even one atrocity sufficed to condemn the system, root
and branch. The old slaveholders’ argument, that their interest ensured
the slaves’ welfare, was judged equally deficient. At all too many moments
in real life, passion was more powerful than interest. Nor could one se-
riously argue the case for slavery by appealing to black barbarism. Cave

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 doubted whether authentic accounts of the lower classes of emancipated
Negroes showed them to be any worse behaved than those of Britain’s
own urban dwellers.
However, Cave insisted, the experiment was unsuccessful “from an
economical point of view,” especially the inducement held out to the
slaveholding nations to follow Britain’s example. The planter of Louisiana
could not be persuaded by densely populated Barbados. Demerara would
furnish a far better analogy, as would Jamaica, to Cuba. Barbadian crop
expansion could be explained not by freedom but by the fact that, unlike
in slavery days, every acre was planted with cane. It certainly did not
follow logically that Barbadian agriculture under a slave system would
not be still more profitable than it was now. Supply and demand still
ruled. Cuban planters wasted life more than Louisianans because the
American South’s labor supply, lacking African imports, was more ex-
pensive. Its slaveholders had no doubt, however, that their labor supply
would go down with emancipation.
If immigration had helped to improve the British colonies slightly,
Spanish Cuba was developing still more rapidly. British importation of
slave sugar was nearly equal to Britain’s entire preemancipation con-
sumption. Cave dismissed the “shortage of capital” argument out of
hand. Capital would go wherever it could increase. It was difficult to
identify planters’ ineptitude as the principle reason for the difficulty since
planters of the same background fared so differently in Barbados and
elsewhere. Cave found the principal difference in outcome among islands
to be the result of the backward-bending Caribbean labor supply curve.
Even a decade after the great crisis of 1847–1848, wages were well above
subsistence. Indeed, they were sufficient for coolies, at contract termi-
nation, to form companies and to begin businesses of their own. Finally,
Cave dismissed the soil fertility argument: in all colonies except Barbados,
colonial fertility was sufficient to compete with any area in the world.
Continuity of labor was the key to Cuba’s productivity advantage. Its
planters’ greater command of continuous hours of labor per day and per
week enabled Cuban sugar mills to go on day and night without inter-
ruption, even decreasing saccharin loss from freshly harvested canes.
Granted free labor’s theoretical cheapness, without continuity it was of
no avail. Hourly rates of output were irrelevant. In terms of total output,
the slave trade allowed for a more rapid rate of expansion in Cuba than
in the British colonies. It might well be more profitable to pay workers 5
shillings a day for six full days a week than half that amount for three
days.
Cave, of course, did not resolve the question of whether it was the
continuity of hours or the intensity of labor that made the greatest dif-
ference in the advantage of slave over free labor. This is a question that
would not be largely resolved until the emergence of cliometric historians
during the last third of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, he could

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approach the question with a sense of the productivity gap between free
and slave laborers who were working in contiguous islands in the same
region. For Cave, the key indicator of Cuba’s comparative competitiveness
was the fact that there, as in England, bankrupted estates changed hands
but were never abandoned to nature as they were in some colonies. Free
labor superiority had become an axiom because it was frequently superior
whenever slave labor was inefficiently managed or skill levels were suf-
ficiently high. But where work could be done in large gangs, closely con-
trolled by one driver, the expense was less. Most age groups could be
made useful and were made to be useful. Where children and women
could all be fully occupied for the whole year, slave labor was cheapest.
Turning Adam Smith’s overhead argument on its head, Cave noted that
the employer in a free country paid both higher wages for effective la-
borers and contributed poor rates for the ineffective.
Cave appealed finally to the empirical rationality of the Economics
Section. If slavery were ruinous, how could one account for “the tenacity
with which the most practical people in the world cling, in spite of their
convictions, to every shred of it? . . . If the slave in Cuba works to an
extent which would enrich him in a few years in Jamaica, and yet receives
only the miserable rags which half-clothe him, and just food enough to
keep body and should together, it stands to reason that the master re-
ceives the labourer’s profit as well as his own.” Whatever drags on prof-
itability premodern slavery might have produced, its current form was a
crime that “for the moment” was “more profitable than honest labour”—
unless the “hour of vengeance,” that is, slave revolt, intervened.
Cave hypothesized a hierarchy of compulsion, harking back to
Steuart’s fundamental proposition: “No one works except from compul-
sion of some kind.” In a fully peopled country, the mass of men could
not choose to work for themselves in preference for wages. In new coun-
tries peopled by Europeans, free labor was sustained by combinations of
voluntary servitude, artificial wants, and constant immigration. In hotter
climates, with abundant land and “a less ambitious race,” a few days’
labor secured “independence” from continuous labor. Without penal en-
forcement, an employer lacked “that authority over his workmen which
every English farmer and manufacturer exercises.” For Cave, Barbados
and Mauritius offered the experimental proof of his hypothesis. Sufficient
population (Barbados) required minimal legal compulsion. A sufficient
combination of migration and compulsion (Mauritius) provided the same
solution. A similar timely combination of migration and compulsion to
the frontier Caribbean colonies would have allowed Britain, instead of
Spain, to have supplied the sugar markets of the world in 1860.9
Significantly, the outcome of the great contest between slavery and
free labor was presumed to hinge on the comparative cost of each in the
Caribbean. As the twenty-fifth anniversary of slave liberation, on August
1, 1859, approached, Sir Charles Buxton accepted the challenge to view

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 emancipation as a completed experiment. He wanted to set aside some
of the broader criteria of evaluation and to move the focus away from
the comparative performances of Jamaica and Cuba to the internal tra-
jectory of the ex-slave colonies over time. As his father had done in Par-
liament thirty years before, Buxton set aside all moral appeals and posed
the question in raw business terms: “What sort of thing have we got for
our money? Was it a wise investment of capital?” Buxton asked permis-
sion to answer the question in hypothetical terms. Had Britain not en-
acted emancipation, what would have been the outcome? His answer
again harked back to his father’s appeal in 1831: the population principle.
Slavery in 1830 was stagnating—“the slaves were dying of it.” Without
emancipation and without the slave trade, the British colonies were, in
any event, doomed to dwindling stagnation. Buxton acknowledged the
“appalling years at the end of the 1840s,” but now only as an inevitable
crash. He acknowleged that free labor had not only elimintated profita-
bility but also dead loss in capital followed. Bankruptcy in the sugar is-
lands, however, like the Irish famine, was providential—a salvation by
“calamity.” The planters’ and workers’ misfortune had been intensified
by the African slave trade to Cuba and Brazil. The ability of foreigners to
make up slavery’s loss of life was “indeed a powerful antagonist.”10
The tide, however, had turned. Profitability had recovered from the
abyss of 1847–1851. The British colonies were on the verge of again
becoming a gem of the British crown, areas of higher value than they
had ever been, with a sound and splendid prosperity. They were on the
path to a “height of wealth, happiness and comfort, unknown to them
before.” Sugar output, too, had recovered from the low point of the 1840s
and was moving upward. Buxton now felt free to accept a condition that
the antislavery society had strongly resisted twenty years before. He ad-
mitted that the sugar produced by Mauritius, and by coolie labor in gen-
eral, had to be included in his accounting of imperial recovery. Coolies
were now not only accepted but also embraced by Buxton as free laborers:
“The influx of free labour is exactly one of those advantages of which a
land is debarred by slavery.” Coolies were a “useful importation,” not a
necessary evil, and “one of many blessings that freedom has brought in
her train.”11 If some denigrators insisted on excluding Mauritius from
the plus side of the ledgers, concluded Buxton, it would only be fair for
him to delete Jamaica from the minus side.
Buxton deftly chose not to mention one population statistic from
Mauritius. In 1845 James Stephen, at the Colonial Office, had declared,
“There is one question to which neither the government nor anyone else
ever refers . . . what has been . . . the effect of these Indian immigrations
on the old emancipated population of the colony [Mauritius]. There were
nearly 80,000 of these people 12 years ago.” In 1847, a census registered
their numbers at 38,049; in 1851, at 31,028.12 Stephen overcounted the
apprenticed population of 1835 by a full third, but there was little doubt

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about the downward trend of that population after the ending of ap-
prenticeship. Its rate of decline during the twelve years after apprentice-
ship exceeded the overall rate of decline for British West Indian slaves
during the same number of years before emancipation. If the slaves, as
Buxton put it, were dying of slavery before 1833, what were the freed
people dying of in Mauritius? Keeping the frame of reference strictly
confined to sugar production on the British colonies over the past twenty-
five years, Buxton found that two experiments, in free labor and free
trade, had jointly resulted in a sequence of decline, crisis, and recovery.
Unlimited prosperity was now in sight.
In August 1859, British emancipation reached an important mile-
stone. A full generation had elapsed since the beginning of the great
experiment. The commemoration of the anniversary was hailed by an
ardent segment of London journalists as a fitting recognition of “one of
the greatest events in the history of England.” Even the firmest friends
of antislavery, however, noted that “we were not yet able to realise the
grandeur of this great act of national justice” nor foresee its “influence
on hundreds of millions of Africans.13
The provincial press was even more muted in its recognition of the
anniversary. Only a small proportion of the provincial press even covered
the event and almost invariably without editorial comment. The press
coverage reflected the dimunition of the movement. The gathering was
only a faint echo of the intense mass meetings of popular antislavery in
its heyday. Equally absent was the glittering procession of ecclesiastics
and nobility who had filled Exeter Hall to launch the Niger expedition.
The tone of the commemorative gathering was set by the venerable and
presiding Lord Brougham, now the sole survivor of the generation that
effected slave trade abolition. He proudly recited the role call of vanished
Saints but added a note of regret that Britain’s example had not been
followed. Sir Francis Hincks, governor of Barbados, argued that unless
ending slavery was shown to have been a total, not just a partial success,
it would not be replicated anywhere. Would Cuba and Louisiana follow
Jamaica? If they were to do so, it had to be proven to them that even
Jamaica was “a gainer by the experiment.” Hincks’s statistics showed that
Trinidad’s labor now produced sugar at two-thirds, Barbados at less than
half, the cost of Cuba’s labor. Since the figures were costs of a unit of
sugar per unit of labor, they indicated that slavery could be beaten on
the slave capitalists’ own grounds. Hincks’s solution was a variant of the
“peasant option.” Tenures should be secure enough so that cultivators
would produce cane on their own, restricting the planters’ role to mill
manufacturing. Governor Hincks asserted that such self-employed labor
would drive slave labour of Cuba and Louisiana out of the market. Slav-
ery was the weak, not the strong, link on slave plantations.14
After months of listening to the outpouring of arguments from both
sides, the Times was ready after the anniversary to pronounce another

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 valedictory on the great experiment. Like Steven Cave, the editors rhe-
torically historicized the question: “All feuds come to an end with time.”
The liberation of the African race from slavery within the British Empire
was a fait accompli. Emancipation was history. But with it had come the
collapse of West Indian enterprise. And “there were the sneering Amer-
icans,” reacting to their own abolitionists by contrasting the productive-
ness of Georgia, Louisiana or Cuba with the ruin of Jamaica. The British
abolitionists were deemed inwardly angry because their own “economical
prophecies about increased production and the superiority of free labour
had been falsified.” They had become “peevish and disputatious” because
they had to show, as predicted, that “the colonies were prosperous.”15
“What had been the result of the experiment tried in 1833?” asked
the Times. “It succeeded in converting every man, woman, and children
in these [British] islands to the condemnation of slavery as a system.”
This much had been definitely gained. Then France and two other minor
states of Europe had been “induced” to emancipate their bondsmen.
Meanwhile, the British West India islands had also declined in importance
to the empire, less from their absolute decay than from the development
of great new colonies in North America, Australia, and Asia, including,
of course, the United States—“a commercial if not a political province
of England.” There was also great improvement in the manners and
education of all races in the British Caribbean, despite its declining sali-
ence to the home islands: “However rich the old race of colonists may
have been, civilization in the Caribbean . . . as it is understood in England,
only commenced with Emancipation of the Slaves.”
Economically the results were more doubtful. The Times noted that
with or without emancipation, the vast global expansion of sugar growth
would have reduced the price of sugar to the British consumer. Cuba,
Louisiana, and Texas were vast areas. A single province of Brazil could
contain the British islands ten times over. Allowing for all this, however,
there still remained Cave’s “sufficient evidence that free labour is not as
advantageous as slavery to the owner of property . . . so that where the
legislators are owners the abolition of slavery is not likely to come for a
long time.” There could be no doubt “that slavery in the United States
has extended, is extending, and will extend. It is renumerative, and as
long as it is so there is not the smallest chance for the Abolitionists. Mr.
Cave, with all his experience, only bids us trust in the justice of our cause,
and hope that a time will come when conscience will be seconded by
interest.” Whatever one’s belief in the ultimate cheapness of free labor,
the end was not nigh.
The Times’s attempt to draw up a definitive balance sheet and to his-
toricize the question of slave and free labor at the end of 1859 was
poignantly premature. At that precise moment, John Brown’s body had
opened up a fresh wound in the larger saga of Atlantic slavery that would
cease to bleed only six years later. The West Indies would continue to

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figure in political discussions in Britain, but more often as a model to be
avoided than imitated. There was even a growing disillusionment with
the ambivalent success, at best, of emancipation in the West Indies. Much
more important, the experiment was no longer so large in its perceived
salience to the outcomes of slavery throughout the world. As the British
sugar colonies receded first in economic and then in political significance,
retrospective assessments of the experiment shifted back into the calmer
orbit of political economy. Where politicians and petitioners no longer
cared to tread, economists could rush in. In 1861 Heman Merivale re-
published his lecture series of 1839–1841, updating his observations and
conclusions. On two economic fundamentals Merivale’s assessment re-
mained unchanged. He did not budge from his premise that slave labor
was “dearer than free wherever abundance of labour can be procured.” The
New World illustrated this caveat: if “unchecked by any other than ec-
onomical causes,” there still was no reason “why the slave trade and
slave cultivation should not extend with the extending market of Europe
until the forest has been cleared . . . from the Atlantic to the Andes.” To
the latter proposition, Merivale appended a note, indicating that the Af-
rican slave trade had been limited by Brazilian abolition in the early
1850s.16
“Those who have persuaded themselves,” he had said in 1840, “that
nations will gradually attain a conviction that would go against their
interests were under a delusion.” In 1861 he added, “Whatever emanci-
pationists may hold to the contrary, there can be no doubt that, with
plenty of fertile soil, and a slave trade, tropical production may continue
to thrive for an indefinite period, as Cuba has proved of late years, and
as Jamaica and St. Domingo had in truth proved before.”17 As long as
there was thinly populated fresh soil, slavery was secure, and it was more
profitable to cultivate the virgin soil of the Americas by the dear labor
of slaves than an exhasusted one by the cheap labor of freemen. Soil was
inevitably depleted without fertilization, but that was as characteristic of
the free- as of slave-tilled soils. Merivale now freely cited J.-B. Say’s Traité
d’économie politique in support of his conclusion. Africa still remained as
impervious as before to rapid free labor development, although Merivale
commended Dr. Livingstone’s attempts, more modest than Buxton’s, to
stimulate yet another “experiment, which, on old ground, has failed
everywhere.” Even if the experiment failed on economic grounds, it would
achieve some civilizing results in other respects.18
More novel were Merivale’s observations on the results of the experi-
ments within the British colonies after two further decades. In 1841, he
had written that the British West Indies “were injured, perhaps, by the
abolition of the slave trade” and surrendered “the means of preserving
and extending our colonial opulence.” Twenty years later he was more
categorical: “The abolition of the slave trade was the real death blow to
the old fabric, such as it was, of West Indian prosperity.”19 Given slave

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 trade abolition, Merivale unreservedly endorsed the demographic argu-
ment of the two Buxtons. Emancipation was a necessary experiment.
West Indian arguments and Barbados’s demography gained no hearing.
The slave population simply could not reproduce: “In some years prior to
emancipation, it was diminishing so rapidly, that if slavery had not been
destroyed by law, it must have died of inanition.” Freedom, and then free
trade in sugar, brought first a drop in production, then a drop in prices.
The result “was undoubtedly disastrous in the extreme.”20
It had required bold faith in economic science to defend free trade in
sugar against the combined West Indian, philanthropic, and protectionist
parties in 1840. If the predictions of abolitionists who “relied on the
ordinary doctrine of motives of labour were abundantly falsified,” free
trade was vindicated. The “signs of progress, slight as they are, become
more and more distinct,” but the really salutary effect of sugar duty
equalization was the metropolitan message to the West Indies interest
that there was no more hope for protection from governments or con-
sumers. Far from accelerating the downfall of the West Indian interest,
“free trade had at the worst delayed it, and may, it may be hoped, averted
it.”21 In other words, if things had turned out far less well than aboli-
tionists hoped for in 1833, they had not turned out as badly as abolition-
ists, West Indians, and some free traders feared in 1848.
The most interesting part of Merivale’s retrospective was the break-
down of the comparative results of emancipation in the freed colonies.
In 1840 he divided the sugar colonies into three important groups. The
first group, the smaller populated islands—above all, Barbados and An-
tigua—were least injured by immediate emancipation. Barbados, the
most crowded spot in the Western Hemisphere, had actually risen to more
than its former prosperity. The only drawback of its superabundant pop-
ulation was a consequent disincentive for planters to substitute capital
for labor.
In Merivale’s second class were those colonies—above all, Jamaica—
in which the commercially useful soils had all been cultivated but large
noncommercial soils remained unoccupied. In 1840 Merivale had con-
sidered Jamaica’s pessimism excessive. Although the working out of the
great experiment would be difficult, if one reasoned from Wakefieldian
principles to its postapprentice population, Jamaica’s population density
was relatively greater than that of Trinidad and Guyana. In 1840 its
palpable labor difficulties could be considered to be “perhaps” temporary.
By 1860, however, Jamaica was designated the least successful colony in
the experimental set.
Merivale brushed aside all ascriptions of “peculiar ineffectiveness” to
either planters or laborers in the island. He took due note of Governor
Hinck’s hypothesis of general indebtedness, of planters’ mismanagement,
and of the insecurity of land tenure for Creoles. Given the conflicting
causal assertions, he preferred to rely on a general cause for a general

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phenomenon—the man-land ratio. Jamaica had neither abundance of
labor after slave trade abolition nor abundance of commercially profitable,
new cane soil. Judged by “the test of statistics” the postemancipation
decline of the great sugar planters was evident. Judged by the alternative
test of a broadening middle class of proprietors, prosperity seemed to be
advancing. Judged by the condition of the laboring majority, the evidence
seemed so ambiguous that Merivale could draw no conclusion. He was
not the last who would find Jamaica inscrutable.22
Merivale’s third group in 1841 consisted of Trinidad, Guiana and
Mauritius. He now divided this group into two, the West Indian colonies
and Mauritius. Guiana seemed to be the most interesting case of the
three. It was “one of the most productive countries on the face of the
globe.” Had the slave trade continued, it would have exceeded Cuba in
prosperity. In 1841 Merivale strongly argued that abolitionists’ opposition
to migration was depriving Demerara and Trinidad of their future pros-
perity. He characterized the abolitionists’ fears of a new system of slavery
as a fantasy and dismissed their fears of migrant wage competition as
irrelevant. Sooner or later, he warned, wages would fall anyway. The only
choice was whether the capitalists and laborers went down together or
in sequence. Without migration, when protection was removed the whole
social system would face ruin.
In 1840 Merivale had also dismissed the other, more radical abolition-
ist alternative to migration—allowing the plantations to collapse in favor
of an independent yeomanry. In that scenario Merivale foresaw a Haitian-
style relapse into low-level subsistence farming. He had invoked the au-
thority of Victor Schoelcher, the future architect of French emancipation,
to depict a grim picture of Haitian stagnation. For the British West Indies,
relief had to come from the free colored population of the United States
or, secondarily, the East Indies. Either way migration was the principal
hope for West Indian labor.23 By 1861, East Indian labor had proven to
be the new labor source of choice and the bridge to the plantations’
recuperation. Merivale was not very impressed with its results in Trinidad
and British Guiana. With their new laborers, the two colonies had barely
recouped the level of production that they had lost after emancipation.
Merivale would not have quarreled with the Times hypothesis about Trin-
idad’s potentially greater prosperity under continued Spanish sovereignty
and the slave trade during the first half of the nineteenth century.24
For Merivale in 1861, Mauritius had replaced British Guiana as the
most interesting experimental outcome of emancipation. Mauritius stood
alone. It contained the sugar-growing potential of British Guiana and
Trinidad, with the added advantage of proximity to the great free labor
reservoir of India. In the 1850s alone, Mauritius had absorbed more than
150,000 coolies, almost five times as many as Trinidad and British Guiana
combined. The number of indentured servants who migrated to Mauri-
tius in that decade was also greater than the total number of enslaved

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 Africans shipped to all of the Americas. Between 1840 and 1860, the
colony accounted for one out of every three transcontinental indentures
and two out of every three of those arriving in the British colonies. The
high point of its average annual arrivals was reached in the late 1850s.
Mauritius’s rate of development in sugar production exceeded that of its
two most dynamic competitors, Cuba and Java.25 It was the star per-
former for the British newspapers, as they periodically scanned the globe
in search of good news about competition with slavery. Even for the
skeptical Times, Mauritius also sustained the possibility that free labor,
properly instituted, could “beat slave labor out of the field.”26
Merivale, too, found it “impossible not to admire the energetic will and
practical wisdom which, sharpened by necessity, thus repaired in a few
years the breach which abolition measures had made in the continuity
of industry, and raised the prosperity of this splendid island to a pitch
far exceeding what it had attained in the times of slavery.”27 However,
the political economist felt bound to caution his readers about the excep-
tionality of Mauritius. Conflating its statistics with those of West Indies,
as controversialists like Buxton were tempted to do, confused the whole
process of measuring outcomes.
Merivale felt obliged to note that the results were far from the imag-
ined community of which the abolitionists had dreamed in 1833. Maur-
itian workers were, of course, “not slaves seized by violence and brought
over in fetters, and working under the lash.” But they were raised like
recruits for military service, and they evoked the analogue of regimented
labor, not of freemen. In the cane fields of Mauritius, moreover, all the
potential dexterity, ingenuity, frugality, and efficiency of free laborers were
less important to the employer than the continuity, reliability, and coerced
pliability of indentured servants, answerable with their bodies for
breaches of contract. The disparity between Mauritian laborers and the
free civilians of Europe and America went still deeper. Mauritius’s results
were “in the main unsatisfactory, because forced and unnatural.” For all
the security entailed in a formal, voluntary contract—good transporta-
tion, medical services, security of wages, and an improved standard of
living—what could be the social prospects of a colony in which industry
is exercised by “a multitude of strangers” and artificially organized for
temporary purposes? Its demographics (five-sixths male) also recalled that
of a slave-trading economy, not of a free labor society. Merivale could not
shake loose from the abolitionist indictment of 1838: “In short, in every-
thing but the compulsion and the cruelty, the immigration trade is but
a repetition of the slave trade, and the economy of Mauritius resembles
that of Cuba.” The British colony was little more than a great workshop,
making undynamic Barbados quite enviable by comparison.28
Merivale’s ranking of experimental success certainly did not favor the
Creole-dominated population of the West Indies. Coincidentally with his
summation, another widely reviewed book surveyed the contemporary

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British West Indies. In light of the growing chasm in the United States
over slavery, William Sewell, a Canadian who wrote for the New York
Times, offered an outsider’s perspective on British emancipation at a mo-
ment of rising transatlantic interest in the consequences of the slaves’
liberation. For Sewell, as for most British writers who regarded British
emancipation as a great moral victory, Barbados was a truly comforting
laboratory. It irrefutably demonstrated that fully waged free labor could
sustain capitalist employers against slaveholders in the unfettered global
marketplace. Barbadian planters prospered by employing the good and
steady labor of Creoles. The workers’ standard of living was comfortable.
Their decorum and religiosity were “unquestionably above the level of
their brethren in the United States.” Barbadians were faithful, intelligent,
God-fearing, and proud citizens. A Barbadian Creole boasted “with all the
pride and pomposity of a down-east Yankee that he is free.”29
Sewell’s hopeful eye found even Jamaica to be in the process of forming
a native middle class, the seeds of its imminent return to prosperity. Nev-
ertheless, he did not conceal the colony’s less than encouraging aspects:
its decayed towns, abandoned plantations, and a peasantry less “ener-
getic” than Anglo-American farmers. Still, Sewell leaned toward the ab-
olitionists’ causal perspective. The primary responsibility for Jamaica’s
difficulties lay principally with faulty management rather than with
faulty labor. The superior economy of the free worker could be discerned
even through the shortcomings of Jamaican life. On one crucial bottom
line, however, Sewell sided with the overwhelming weight of opinion in
the press and Parliament and against abolitionists’ qualms: indentured
coolies accounted in great part for the successful recuperation of Trinidad
and British Guiana, not to mention the dynamic plantation system of
Mauritius. It was also the prerequisite for full Jamaican recovery. Sewell
admonished the philanthropist remnant, who were “only excited by their
fears” of abuses, against blindly seeking “to abolish what is giving life to
a desolated empire.”30
This general message echoed through the British media. The British
colonies as a whole had survived but had not thrived. The West Indies
had not sunk to “Haitian” levels of commercial decay, but they were still
so feeble and impoverished that neither of the neighboring slave powers,
imperial Spain and the expansion-obsessed United States, “would wish to
possess a tropical territory in which the soil is cultivated by free black
laborers.” Such was the dreary judgment of the Edinburgh Review, hith-
erto the elite journal most receptive to abolitionists’ defenses of emanci-
pation.31
The terms of experimental success had decisively altered since the
heady days of the first World Anti-Slavery Convention, when the slave
trade had been defined expansively enough to attack Asian indentured
migration head on, to envision Africa’s rapid metamorphosis, and to pre-
dict victory for the juggernaut of British free labor over the brutalized

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 gangs of the slave Americas. What had been posited as an easy choice
between wages or the whip, between freedom and absolute dehumani-
zation, was ending with the return of the long-excluded middle, the
bonded labor of freemen. In this perspective, the titanic victory over slav-
ery seemed less like a great revolution than a particularly dramatic in-
terlude in the longer, more nuanced story of labor constraint in the his-
tory of European tropical expansion “from servants to slaves to
servants.”32
This expansion of the broad middle ground of the terms of labor, this
blurring of the line between bondage and freedom, was denoted in a
number of ways. For the free traders of the 1840s, Java had been the
colony of choice, the example par excellence of free labor competitiveness.
With the definitive ending of the Tories’ protectionist threat in the 1850s,
Java lost its political utility. Thereafter, the Economist felt free not only to
acknowledge but also to heighten the coercive element in the Dutch “cul-
tivation system.” Indeed, so servile was Dutch colonial labor that it was
beneath consideration as a model for labor relations in British India.33
The second agricultural system to be demoted from the honor roll of
free labor was the indigo cultivation system in India. At the 1840 anti-
slavery convention, indigo had been the prime exemplar of India’s first
triumph over South Carolina’s slave labor and the harbinger of a still
greater victory of Indian over American cotton. By 1861, labor riots by
the indigo laborers of Bengal brought to the press’s attention the exis-
tence of yet one more system of labor coercion. Indigo’s heroic status as
the first pure exemplar of free labor superiority vanished.34
What is most significant about these reassessments of Javan sugar and
Indian indigo cultivation is how they were recategorized from free to
unfree without a single thought about the implications of the new per-
spective for the problem of free labor. The silence was another indicator
that the issues of the great experiment itself were of diminishing signif-
icance to metropolitan society. Although British Caribbean laborers in
1860 still seemed remarkably orderly in comparison with their continen-
tal European counterparts, few ex-slave colonies had demonstrated the
ability to expand, or even sustain, their staple output without the further
aid of compulsory labor on the Mauritian or Javan model. The exemplary
success of Barbados was proverbially irrelevant to frontier economies like
the United States, Cuba, and Brazil. Compared with the triumphant pro-
gress of free labor communities in temperate North America and in the
southern Pacific or the “scarcely less brilliant though sinister and inse-
cure prosperity of Cuba and Louisiana,” the British Caribbean seemed
“stationary at best, subsisting but not accumulating.” They could neither
match their American free labor brethren in standards of living nor their
Cuban slave-labor brethren in productivity.35
In 1860 certain fundamental results of emancipation seemed firmly
in place. In relative nonviolence, the postapprenticeship colonies contin-

216   

ued to contrast dramatically with the turbulence of revolutionary work-
ers in continental Europe, the uprisings of the Sepoys in India, and the
combined threats of Civil War and servile insurrection in the United
States. Economically, the sugar colonies also seemed to be set in their
trajectory, already assuming the status of less-developed societies that
would be theirs for more than a century to come.36
A generation after British emancipation, the condition of its ex-slave
colonies had registered little positive influence on the largest remaining
slave systems in the Americas. The British Caribbean’s struggling plant-
ers, merchants, workers, and independent peasants, and its stagnant or
slowly recovering export sectors, were deterrents to change for most
slaveholders in the United States, Cuba, and Brazil. The British experi-
ment had a direct impact on one remaining slave system in the transition
from slavery to indentured servitude. The Netherlands stretched out its
process of West Indian slave liberation into the seventh decade of the
nineteenth century. The lapse of time between (British-induced) Dutch
Atlantic slave trade abolition (1814) and Dutch West Indian emancipa-
tion (1863) was the longest in the Caribbean. The Dutch compensation
rate to colonial planters was uniquely higher than that offered to the
British slaveholders. The revenues for the compensation package came
from surpluses generated by the coerced labor system in the Dutch East
Indies, not from the consumers and taxpayers in the Netherlands. The
apprenticeship period was extended for more than twice as long as in the
British slave colonies. Most significant, there was no delay between the
end of Suriname’s apprenticeship in 1873 and the introduction of Asian
indentured labor. A decade after apprenticeship, Indians outnumbered ex-
slaves on the plantations of Suriname. Still, Suriname was not able to
avoid the decline in postapprenticeship sugar exports that had afflicted
its British predecessors.37
Beyond the realm of political economy, the science of race also rapidly
gained credence as an explanatory device in the analysis of the transition
from slavery to freedom. During the debates leading up to British eman-
cipation and the end of apprenticeship, appeals to race as an explanatory
device in predicting the outcome of emancipation had been absent or
held in abeyance. Significantly, the upsurge of British racial ideology, be-
ginning in the late 1840s, was not primarily a weapon of West Indian
ideology. Throughout the generation after British apprenticeship, most of
the leading spokesmen for the West India interest continued to speak the
language of political economy, that realm of scientific discourse that
spoke directly to their primary concern with the fate of their investments
and profits.
When it finally came, the racialization of the analysis of emancipation
did not displace prior economic and demographic paradigms. The initial
enthusiasm for the emergence of the “free Negro,” analogous to the “free
Briton,” did not vanish with the emergence of postemancipation diffi-

   217

 culties. Well into the 1840s, enthusiasm for signs of rapid “civilization”
in the West Indies continued to be cited in the general press, as well as
in antislavery organs. Resentment against the immediate postemancipa-
tion difficulties was directed more against the “quixotic” abolitionists than
the ex-slaves. The complete failure of the Niger expedition, however, was
a major milestone to racialization of the problem of freedom in the slave
colonies. The abolitionists’ criticism of slavery had always provided a
potential wedge for racism. Traditional African society had been dispar-
aged by the abolitionists as slave-ridden and barbarous. The entire abo-
litionist premise for accelerated and then immediate emancipation had
been predicated on the malleability of Africans, even on their “special”
cultural plasticity in a changing social environment. Any combination of
negative behavioral patterns represented a setback for the aboltionists’
cause. The Niger expedition was a sharp reminder of the epidemiological
factor in the Atlantic distribution of labor and of the relative impervi-
ousness of Africa to European power. It was an imperviousness that could
be transferred to the analysis of the outcome of British emancipation. As
noted earlier, by 1846 it was possible for the Times to refer to “hypothet-
ical ‘niggers.’ ” The press was still using quotation marks, but it clearly
dehumanized “imaginary Africans,” the “pampered poodles” of a vicar-
ious charity.38
The most important thrust toward racialization, however, came after
the crisis of the sugar colonies in 1847–1848. Within the press a rising
tide of resentment against abolitionists for “privileging” West Indian
blacks spilled over into resentment of privileged blacks and their special
lobbyists. Any event could evoke analogies of resentment. As the French
National Workshops approached their crisis in June 1848, coinciding
with the depth of the colonial depression, the Times imperiously noted
that its “patience” [sic] was “running out against these black ouvriers,
[who] are enjoying an existence almost as agreeable and as dignified as
some of their whiter specimens of the class.” The editors were

altogether unprepared to demand that the finest islands in the world

should be left uncultivated, and deserts of swarming uncivilized sav-
ages, lest by some accident an African should be forced to work too
hard for his bread. . . . [A] day’s work is seldom done except the African
ambition has been stimulated by the recollections of rum or roused by
the attractions of some outrageously red piece of calico. One day’s
labour in a week will supply the necessities which negro nature owns
. . . they squat and vegetate in groups, working only lazily, and at rare
intervals, till their condition becomes far more brutish than it was on
their first landing. But it is this state of things which either for hu-
manity’s sake, or our own credits’ sake, we must needs perpetuate at
such a tremendous sacrifice.39

218   

 Such sentiments demonstrate how much leeway was already available
to the rhetoric of race when Thomas Carlyle published his famous “Oc-
casional Discourses on the Negro [Nigger] Question” in 1849 and again
in 1853. Carlyle’s essay gushed with a vivid word picture of West Indian
blacks, “sitting yonder with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in
pumpkins . . . and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates,
while the sugar crops rot round them uncut, because labour cannot be
hired, or so cheap are the pumpkins.” In such climes, supply and demand
had no effect—or rather the pumpkin supply was gratis and the demand
limited to the supply. In a literary flourish, Carlyle could suggest what no
West Indian dared to say in Parliament—that a worker in the West Indies
had the “right” to be compelled by proprietors “to work for his living.”40
Carlyle’s essay did not go unanswered. From John Stuart Mill’s vigorous
reply to decades of press dismissals of Carlyle’s caricature, it is clear that
Carlyle’s effusion was still regarded as an extremist’s perspective.
Throughout the 1850s and 1860s, newspapers and journals like the Daily
News and the Economist waged a running battle on the Times whenever
it indulged in stereotypes of Africans and West Indians too blatantly at
odds with what they insisted was the true public opinion of the nation.
The Economist, with its inveterate quantitative bent, cited the over-
whelming popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as conclusive evidence that
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s image of blacks, not Carlyle’s, prevailed in Brit-
ain. In its empirical tradition, of course, it placed Stowe’s evaluation at
the optimistic extreme of the spectrum of British opinion, not in the
realistic “average.”41
Nevertheless, Thomas Holt has aptly observed that Carlyle’s essay was
indicative of an evolving and increasingly respectable set of ideas about
race in Britain. Carlyle certainly opened a wider literary space for racial
epithets. In 1840, it is unlikely that the Chartist Northern Star would have
entitled a lead editorial on the slave trade “Parliamentary ‘Niggers’ and
‘Ministerial Drivers,’ ” as it did in disgust with the forced vote on Hutt’s
motion against the African Squadron in March 1850.42 In examining
what had gone wrong in the West Indies, The Examiner of January 29,
1848 felt the need to raise a prior question before considering the “com-
parative economy of free and slave labour.” Perhaps the problem of Ca-
ribbean freedom was “a mere [sic] question of race and civilization.” The
Examiner examined wheat culture in (free labor) Bengal and (free labor)
Java against (slave labor) South Carolina. It matched the “cost” of pro-
ducing Indian corn in the American North against the South and even
against slave-grown sugar in Cuba. It concluded that energetic European
free labor was as productive as Negro slave labor—even more so; “but
negro free labour is by no means as productive as negro slave labour.”43
Even the Economist conceded to Carlyle as a political economist what
it withheld from the flamboyant literary racialist:

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 We think the philanthropic party, in their tenderness for the eman-
cipated Africans, are sometimes not a little blind to the advantages of
stern industrial necessities. We are no believers in Mr. Carlyle’s gospel
of the ‘beneficent whip’ as the bearers of salvation to tropical indo-
lence. But we cannot for a moment doubt that the first result of eman-
cipation was, in most of the islands [except Barbados], to substitute for
the worst kind of moral and political evil, one of a less fatal but still
pernicious kind. . . . The Negroes in most of the West India islands
wanted vastly less than such people as these in civilized states—wanted
nothing in fact but the plantains they could grow almost without la-
bour and the huts which they could build on any waste mountain land
without paying rent for it.

The really beneficent whip of “hunger and cold was not substituted for
the human cruelty from which they had escaped . . . The natural spur of
competition for the means of living took the place . . . [in Barbados alone]
. . . of the artificial spur of slavery, and the slow, indolent temperament
of the African race.”44
Racialized categories could even become the means for resolving sit-
uations created by economic and political conundrums, such as expand-
ing slavery in the American South. With some deft statistical manipula-
tion, the Economist assured Americans and Britons of a slow death for
both slavery and white racial anxieties. In America the demographic bal-
ance in favor of free whites over free blacks was moving even more rap-
idly than the balance of free citizens over slaves. Slaves, however, in-
creased more rapidly than “free coloreds.” This could be attributed to the
“discipline and care of the superior race, just as sheep and swine and
oxen and all other inferior animals multiply more under civilized man
than in a wild state.” Thus, to emancipate America’s slaves would only
be a step toward weakening and slowly destroying the Negro race in the
slave states. With the diminution of fear, masters would more willingly
get rid of slavery, and “as the superior race ceased to have an interest in
preserving them [the slaves] they would cease to increase.” They would
probably “after a season, die out and disappear . . . everywhere the fate
of an inferior race” in contact with a superior. Therefore,

To get rid of the Negroes . . . the slaves should be gradually eman-

cipated. In fact their emancipation, and the slow, but not inhuman
extinction of the race, seem identical. Not merely is there no cruelty—
no violation of the laws of nature in such a course—it is consistent
with those laws; it is recommended, and even imperiously called for by
morality. It appears even necessary to realize the all-glorious future
which is dawning on the Western Continent, and, through it, on all
the human family.45

Casually, almost seamlessly, perceptions of racial hierarchy were fil-

tering into discussions of the future of slavery. Here the Economist’s fine

220   

distinctions between the human sciences, as moral “tendencies,” and the
laws of nature as inevitabilities, were unnecessary. This was a tendency
that required no legislation, merely a grand inversion of the universal
Malthusian population principle when applied to relations between infe-
rior races in contact with superior races.
Almost invariably, national pride in ending colonial slavery and in
restricting the Atlantic slave trade constituted a final barrier to the rise
of racial speculation in public policy discussions of slavery. When young
Francis Galton, African explorer and future pioneer in anthropometric
demography, offered the Times his views on the perennial question of
transatlantic African mobility, he held the line both between informed
and involuntary migration and between the races:

I do not join in the belief that the African is our equal in brain or
heart, I do not think that the average negro cares for his liberty as
much as an Englishman, or even as a serf-born Russian; and I believe
that if we can, in any fair way, possess ourselves of his services, we
have an equal right to utilize them to our advantage as the State has
to drill and coerce a recruit who, in a moment of intoxication has
accepted the Queen’s shilling, or as a shopkeeper [has] to order about
a boy whose parents bound him over to an apprenticeship. . . . If we
can by any legitimate, or even quasi legitimate means, possess ourselves
of a right to their services, and if we can insure that our mastership
shall elevate them and not degrade them, by all means work them well;
but in proportion as we cannot act so favorably upon them our inter-
ference becomes a curse to the Africans.

Galton’s letter, however, was not a Carlylean diatribe. On his travels in

Africa he had been struck by the extent of tribal warfare, the absence of
ideas of liberty, and the ability of monetary incentives to work as a pre-
mium to enslavement. If interior peoples of Africa could be taught that
they could escape the insecurity of that continent for the security of the
British law, “vast numbers of Africans could be deported to colonies
where they will do us good.”46
Seven years later, amid the rekindled interest in slavery initiated by
the American Civil War, a pro-Southern anthropologist tacked even closer
to the forbidden zone. James Hunt, a physician, was a leader of the new
Anthropological Society of London, founded to separate racial science
from the humanitarian constraints of the earlier London Ethnological
Society. Hunt’s papers on the nature and status of the Negro were ex-
ercises in aligning British racial anthropology with a Continental racial
anthropology that had not been limited for two generations by mass ab-
olitionism. Thirty years after emancipation, Hunt felt that the time was
ripe to break new ground against the pro-Negro cultural consensus based
on “little real knowledge.” He stated his opposition to the slave trade,

   221

 although he thoroughly subverted his literal words by referring to them
in quotes (as the “slave trade”). However, once enslaved Africans had
been deposited across the Atlantic, “by whatever means,” Hunt consid-
ered the Negro to be better off in the American South or the British West
Indies before emancipation than he had been either as a savage African
or “as a current resident ‘emancipated (from work?’)” of the British West
Indies. Hunt’s anti-Negro lectures might still be greeted by “hisses and
catcalls” at scientific associations outside the venue of his anthropological
society, but hierarchical racial science now had an institutional and the-
oretical foothold in Britain that would not abate for the rest of the cen-
tury.47
One racial aspect of the experiment seemed to be confirmed during
the generation after emancipation in the British colonies. Despite ad-
vances in medical knowledge, the small flow of European labor to the
plantation tropics during the 1850s (3 percent of indentured servants)
and the mortality data in Africa and the Caribbean reinforced the idea
that tropical labor would have to be non-European. There were occasional
suggestions that areas of new development, like Australia, should be used
to retest the empirical limits of European labor: “There is no part of the
earth where we could try the experiment of free [i.e., convict] labour in
a hot climate except the ‘northern coast of Australia.’ ” Tropical agri-
culture was an economic activity with images of racialized disease, death,
domination, and capitalist expansion. For the Times the terms of tropical
labor seemed to override those of abolitionism: “Does a colony in the
tropics involve necessarily the labour, and consequently the servitude,
open or disguised, of an inferior race? Can we, who have abolished slavery
and pledged ourselves to the protection of aborigines everywhere, hope
for success in the colonization of a coast in such a latitude?” On the
other hand, commerce was not subject to the racial division of labor: “It
seems certain that the race [i.e., Anglo-Saxon] which has founded Sin-
gapore, Hong Kong and Aden will not be debarred by a tropical climate
from establishing trading places in the most suitable spots.”48
Perhaps the clearest indication of the racialization of labor and mi-
gration in the British political imagination in midcentury is a potential
population movement that never occurred. As early as the apprenticeship
period, West Indians made efforts to attract Europeans to the West Indies.
Of the 2,300 Europeans landed during apprenticeship, some moved on
to the United States, but others abandoned their indenture and flocked
back to the port of Kingston, in debt for the remainder of their contracts.
They suffered from a high rate of illness and death. Many lacked the
agricultural background they had claimed to qualify for assisted migra-
tion. Above all, Jamaican planters found the cost of the Europeans’ main-
tenance to be higher than that of Africans. In 1841, the governor of
Jamaica concluded that their immigration was a disaster and should no

222   

longer be encouraged. A European contingent was recruited from Por-
tuguese Madeira in the 1840s and 1850s. Mortality and morbidity rates
were again very high, and planters were reluctant to employ these la-
borers in the cane fields.49
By the late 1840s, a much larger potential source of migrants opened
up in the British Isles. The great potato blight of 1845–1848 produced a
food crisis of unprecedented proportions in Ireland. One of the most im-
portant remedial proposals suggested by the Russell government was
state-assisted migration. One plan involved the expenditure of £9 million
to subsidize the passage of 2 million Irish migrants to Canada. Successful
objections to mass subsidized migration included “expatriating Celtic pau-
perism” to another part of the empire, spreading the seeds of sedition in
Canada, and creating another sectarian province of Irish Roman Cath-
olics. Meanwhile, throughout the years of the Irish famine, a lively dis-
cussion was proceeding in Parliament and the press about the need for
a massive infusion of labor into the West Indies. Occasionally there were
parallel editorials and letters to the editors on the deficit of food in Ireland
and the deficit in labor in the Caribbean. Australia, the Cape Colony, and
Natal in South Africa were all proposed by MPs as potential areas of
reception. The arguments in favor of Natal were especially intriguing for
the light they cast on the relative significance of racial and economic
variables in the discussion of relief through migration. Irish settlement
in Natal was not quite so threatening to the imperial order as was set-
tlement in Canada. In South Africa, the Irish could be settled either out-
side the “Kaffir” zone or within it, where they could act as a counter-
weight against further “Kaffir outrages.” The new colonists could grow
cotton and indigo, to the benefit of British industry. In three years of
parliamentary discussion, however, the Caribbean was never proposed as
an appropriate destination for the starving peasantry of Ireland—not by
West Indians clamouring for labor; not by Irish landlords, seeking to be
unburdened of their destitute people; not by the British or Irish press;
and not by politicians and administrators in any parts of the empire.50
Yet the economic relation between land-hungry Ireland and man-
hungry Trinidad was as logical as that between the Old World and the
New. The endlessly repeated editorials on the congruence between the
complementary needs of Africa and tropical America never intruded into
the Irish question or vice versa. The most obvious reasons for the dis-
juncture would appear to have been epidemiological and humanitarian.
It was, after all, bad enough that hunger and disease were laying waste
to the Irish peasantry without suggesting that their weakened bodies be
put through the gauntlet of mortality in the tropics. Significantly, the
only connection between the famine and the West Indies was the ex-
tremely bitter comparison made between the £9 million spent for Irish
relief between 1845 and 1850 and the £20 million offered to the slave-

   223

 owners in 1833. The simultaneous crises in Ireland and the Caribbean
may well have combined to reinforce the Whig government’s reluctance
to adopt metropolitan-assisted migrations as policy solutions.
The British saw the future of free European labor unfolding outside
the tropics. The world’s temperate zones were, in turn, the true guar-
antors of the global triumph of freedom over slavery. Merivale’s evocation
of Alexis de Tocqueville’s striking contrast between dynamic Ohio and
sluggish Kentucky was a common example of the general triumph of free
European labor outside of the tropics. The “triumphant progress of free
communities” in North America and Australia was fundamentally su-
perior to both the insecure prosperity of Cuba and Louisiana and the
secure stagnation of the British West Indies.51 The boundary lines of
nature, freedom, and economics converged in the European imagination.
At the beginning of the 1860s, it was possible to observe political
economy trying to come to grips with race—this new, divisive mechanism
for explaining human behavior. Racialization did threaten to diminish the
universality of economics as a generic human science. In 1861 Herman
Merivale deployed differential West Indian outcomes to attack the myth
of the inherently ineffective Negro laborer and the myth of the inherently
defective white employer. Merivale vigorously defended “the negroes—so
commonly represented as destitute of the very capacity for continuous
industry.” Barbadian workers “were as regular in their daily labor as the
operatives of the old communities of Europe.”52 But the very phrase “so
commonly represented” presumed the prevalence of the misrepresenta-
tion. In the midst of the Civil War, the Edinburgh Review was grateful that
Sewell looked to political economy rather than to race to explain the fate
of sugar cultivation in different colonies of the British West Indies.53
Yet the Edinburgh Review registered the increasing significance of ra-
cialization in assessing emancipation, as did journals that had always
been far more hostile to antislavery. The same reviewer who praised Sew-
ell’s assumptions of a universal rationality to explain the performance of
labor criticized him for extending that principle of rational choice beyond
the individual’s choice of occupation. The reviewer could not sanction
Sewell’s recommendation of full freedom for “Africans” in the United
States. In that respect, the Ordeal of Free Labor had underestimated the
differences between Anglo-Saxons, on the one hand, and Celts and Af-
ricans, on the other hand. The “natural” character of the captive African
“did not ill-assort with the condition of ‘involuntary service.’ ” Given the
“submissive element” in his character, his love of place, of praise, of fine
clothing, and of reveling, the African could not be set loose to enjoy the
full benefits of economic, political, and religious freedom. That was an
error already demonstrated by British policy. The United States would
only “repeat the illusions, deceptions, disappointments and losses which
we endured for twenty-five years, for a far a longer period, and on a scale
seven times as great as the experiment of 1833.”54

224   

 Even those who fought most vigorously for the universality of eco-
nomic laws and the equality of human capacities within the economic
realm conceded that economics was only one realm of human behavior.
The Economist might unhesitatingly ridicule an MP who conflated West
Indian laborers with cattle or capital. Yet the same journal casually re-
ferred to the obligations of its own nation to “inferior races” and to the
necessary restraints also entailed on inferiors by such a hierarchical re-
lationship. British tolerance for “race” as a scientific factor in explaining
postemancipation outcomes certainly expanded as the United States en-
tered its own crisis of emancipation. For most of the American Civil War,
Britons were of a divided heart about the fate of Southern slavery and
of a divided mind over the limits of freedom in their own colonies.55
With the ending of slavery in the United States and the steady waning
of the ex-slave colonies in the British imperial economy, the results of
British emancipation rapidly slid from public view and scientific concern.
For half a century before 1865, articles and editorials on “free labor” in
the Times almost invariably referred to colonial slavery and emancipation.
Thereafter the term referred almost exclusively to labor relations in Brit-
ain. The moral dimension of the end of slavery took increasing prece-
dence over its economic results. As decades became generations, the dis-
appointed forecasts of dynamic revival actually enhanced the
retrospective image of the material sacrifice made by Britons in the name
of humanity. A transvaluation was in progress, and attention was focused
less on the great experiment than on the great crusade. The trajectory
was probably best captured in W.E.H. Lecky’s famous verdict on antislav-
ery in his History of European Morals: “The Unwearied, unostentatious,
and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be re-
garded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages in the history
of nations.”56 In 1869 the scars and petitions of planters and capitalists
and the endless debates over the African Squadron were still fresh in
memory as bitter and divisive aspects of political life. Still more recent
and more unmistakable in its negative implications for the great experi-
ment was the explosion of Creole anger and its bloody repression in Ja-
maica’s Morant Bay uprising in 1865. The most essential feature of
emancipation’s experimental success—a peaceful, contented, and civiliz-
ing peasantry—had been jarringly tarnished. Lecky’s adjective “inglori-
ous” hinted at the cost of “perfect” virtue. The experiment, proceeding
from great expectations, had entailed great disappointments.
Only fifty years after emancipation did the British Anti-Slavery Society
retrospectively achieve its dream of consensual approval for the liberation
of Britain’s colonial slaves. As the society and the nation celebrated the
fiftieth anniversary of the transition to freedom, there was a palpable lack
of controversy. The press unanimously and unreservedly hailed the Great
Commemorative Ceremony, the largest antislavery meeting in four de-
cades. The presiding officer was the Prince of Wales, son of the Prince

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 Consort who had opened the Niger expedition rally in London’s Exeter
Hall forty-four years before. The old nemesis of the abolitionists waxed
nostalgic: The “Thunderer” editorialized that the struggle and contro-
versy that accompanied emancipation were long since over. Only mem-
ories survived, “not indeed to divide man from man, as they once did,
but to stir us all, without distinction of party, sect, or creed, to continued
perseverance in the same noble work.”57
The object of the jubilee meeting, noted the Prince of Wales in opening
the proceedings, was “to carry on this civilizing torch of freedom until
its beneficent light shall shed abroad over all the earth.”58 This senti-
mental consensus was not achieved by an appeal to economic and de-
mographic science but to morality, civilization, and Christianity, as well
as to the memory of the Saints. The great experiment was conspicuous
by its total absence as a concept from the proceedings. When “science”
modestly entered the proceedings, it did so in a way that would probably
have astonished not only the old abolitionists but also the MPs who had
hotly debated the wisdom of emancipation for a generation. The central
speech of the evening was delivered by Lord Derby, son of the minister
who had introduced the emancipation bill into Parliament fifty-one years
before. Derby dwelt on the broader causes of antislavery’s historic victory,
depoliticized for the occasion. There was, first, the great humanitarian
and popular movement that had “pervaded all Europe” at the end of the
eighteenth century. Some credit was also due to popular opinion, and
some to the extreme form of overseas slavery, with its whips and gang
labor.
Derby did offer one word of acknowledgment to “an economical
cause” of emancipation, the growing perception that “in the complicated
industrial operations of modern life, intelligence is more necessary than
brute force (Cheers).” Derby tactfully omitted mention of his own
publications and speeches of the early 1850s, when, as Lord Stanley, he
hammered mercilessly away at the implications of Cuban economic su-
periority. Now he lifted his gaze beyond the Caribbean: “The Slave States
of America were never rich as a class [sic]. The great capitalists of Amer-
ica all come from the North (Hear, hear).” The concept of an experiment
in the British West Indies had no more place in the great commemoration
of British achievements than did the French Caribbean slave revolutions
or the American Civil War.
For Derby and his audience, science in reference to the results of
emancipation intruded at only one point: “In the case of the negro, I do
not believe that any expectations have been disappointed, except such as
were pitched unreasonably high. Perhaps we appreciate more justly the
influence of heredity than men half a century ago.” Given their enslave-
ment and the fact that they were “absolute savages” before their captivity
in Africa, “the wonder” was not that “they should come short of a Eu-

226   

ropean standard of civilization, as no doubt they do, but that they should
have done as well for themselves on the whole as they have (Cheers).”
The steady laborers of Barbados and the Jamaican exodus now work-
ing in the unhealthy climate of the Panama Canal disposed of the idea
that West Indians were universally not steady or hardworking. In some
islands, where “torpor” and stagnancy prevailed, “at worst they are quiet
and unagressive and only ask to be allowed to lead their own life [sic] in
their own way (Hear).” Derby certainly did not “expect that the West
Indies will ever be what Australia and Canada are; but I see no reason
why they should not enjoy a very fair measure of prosperity and be happy
in a quieter fashion.” Squatters’ land and few wants explained much in
the West Indies. But any rigorous analysis of the outcome was hardly
necessary. Freedom and a fair chance “in the race of life” were Britain’s
sole obligations, “and whether they win or lose our responsibility is cov-
ered (Cheers).”59
To further rousing cheers, Derby concluded that the descendants of
the freed slaves had gotten and achieved exactly what they deserved. The
metropolis had no further obligations beyond good governance. On these
grounds all Englishmen could come together in jubilant satisfaction.
Derby’s nice disjuncture of “economical” causes (the unprofitability of
slavery) before emancipation and “hereditary” causes after emancipation
precisely captured the consensual mood of the meeting and the approval
of the press. The vigorously antislavery Daily News found Derby’s views
to be thoroughly consistent with the modern scientific spirit.60 Four years
later, exactly 100 years after the launching of abolitionism and 50 years
after the end of colonial apprenticeship, Henry Reeve, former editor of
the Times, saw no need to remind readers “that the prosperity of the
West Indies has perished” as a result of two of the most humane and
enlightened measures of modern policy—emancipation and free trade.
Reeve portrayed the Anglo-Saxon race as going to ruin, the Negroes as
holding the land in idleness, and the coolies as vindicating the dignity of
labor—old familiar themes of the Times, going back 50 years. The special
significance of Reeve’s words in 1888 was that he now published them
as editor of the Edinburgh Review.61 The moral achievement of antislavery
through British altruism was not only separated but also enhanced by
its radical divorce from the economic outcome of emancipation.
The same disjuncture was demonstrated even more clearly in British
antislavery policy. Britons celebrated the jubilee of emancipation on the
eve of the great “scramble for Africa”—the partition of that continent
among the European imperial powers. Britain continued to adhere to the
official policy that European expansion, and its own expansion in partic-
ular, must be linked to the end of the slave trade and slavery. However,
the British never again attempted to follow the precedent of 1833–1838—
mass emancipation with compensation for the slaveholders. In the era of

   227

 burgeoning imperialism in the 1880s, the great experiment was a model
to be avoided. As early as 1833, India had been exempted from the stip-
ulations of the Slave Emancipation Act. When the antislavery movement
began to call for action against slavery in India and Ceylon, at the height
of its influence in the late 1830s, it quickly became apparent that the
number of slaves in India was greater than those already freed by the
emancipation act. Further investigations raised the estimate to ten times
the number of slaves in the British West Indies and Mauritius in 1833.62
The British governments of the 1840s had no intention of applying
immediate emancipation to a vast social entity whose history, economics,
population dynamics, and political structure were so different from those
in the plantation colonies. India was ruled by an extremely small number
of British officials, allied to native princes and landlords in a complex
chain of authority that relied on native soldiers and intermediary agents.
Among India’s slaves were large numbers of impoverished individuals for
whom slavery was an alternative to destitution and starvation for them-
selves or their children. The subcontinent also had a great range of un-
free statuses, from chattel slavery to debt peonage to the occupational
constraints of the caste system. The British government’s respose to ab-
olitionists’ pressure in India bore a closer resemblance to the Mansfield
decision in England in 1772 than to the Slave Emancipation Act for the
colonies seven decades later. In 1843, the government cautiously began
a process of delegalizing slavery. It withdrew by degrees legal sanction
for claims arising out of the slave status.63
Economic and social constraints in India, meant that the initial anti-
slavery legislation had very little immediate impact on the condition or
power of slaves. Both the metropolitan government and the East India
Company desired an imperceptible ending of the institution, as had oc-
curred in medieval Europe. Only in 1860 did it become illegal to formally
own slaves in India. This “slow death for slavery,” including the gradual
withdrawal of legal enforcement and balanced by the strengthening of
employers’ powers of control, became the preferred method of gradual
emancipation in Britain’s expanding possessions during the second half
of the nineteenth century.64
The Indian model offered minimal disruptions of the social order and
of imperial relations with native elites. It also meant that the most con-
servative “abolitionist” agents of government were those chosen to over-
see the decline of slavery.65 The underlying principle of this mode of
emancipation, prevalent throughout the European-dominated areas of
Africa and Asia, was premised on the rejection of West Indian emanci-
pation as a model for imitation. The failure of the experiment seemed so
patent that it was hardly discussed as a policy alternative. Just as the
antislavery jubilee had ignored the great experiment to avoid tarnishing
the glorious image of antislavery, the government ruled it irrelevant, to
avoid adding difficulty and expense to imperial rule. When the British

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Parliament discussed the antislavery implications of imperial expansion
in West Africa as early as the 1870s, members referred to the Caribbean
only as a situation to be avoided. There was no need to have any more
“mawkish philanthropy” or “Negro Parliaments.” Abolitionists also dis-
covered that they had more to worry about than the African slave trade
and indigenous slavery. After the “scramble,” Europeans employed other
brutal forms of forced labor to accelerate rapid economic exploitation of
Africa. Capitalists and bureaucrats disavowed slavery and once again
demonstrated the profitability of coerced labor in the tropics.66
The great experiment also faded very quickly from formal economic
science. The generation of Wakefield, Merivale, Cairnes, Marx, and Mill
became the last to devote substantial attention to slavery. The subject
became the preserve of specialists in non-European cultures. When H. J.
Nieboer published Slavery as an Industrial System at the beginning of the
twentieth century, he located it within the realm of ethnology, the study
of savage life, and of the early history of mankind.67 Nieboer’s authorities
were Cairnes, Mill, Marx, and Merivale. He casually dismissed the theory,
“that in those countries where slaves are employed, it would be more
profitable to employ free labourers, and that it was, in general, pride and
love of power in the master that led to the employment of slaves.” He
agreed rather with the writers of the mid-nineteenth century—that there
were economic advantages to slavery where soil was abundant and where
free laborers were scarce. There, capital without coercion was of little
use, and “every freeman prefers working for himself or not at all.” Mod-
ern slavery was not a display of noneconomic domination but, as Wake-
field and Marx had argued, a makeshift for capitalistic hiring. Nieboer
agreed with Merivale that emancipation injured production in rough pro-
portion to colonial population densities.68
Just as slavery was being fitted into a rational-choice scheme within
an industrial system, it was being reconceived as a profoundly counter-
economic phenomenon by early twentieth-century historians. In the
branch of American historiography that drew its worldview from the
abolitionist tradition, it still seemed vital to moral progress that “right
never comes wrong.”69 Slavery had to have been an offense against good
economics, as well as good morals, at all times and in all places. Success
in slavery was an illusion, as the heirs of their opponents agreed. For
those nourished by the memory of a paternalistic planter class (in the
American South and Brazil), slavery had also been dominated by a non-
economic and counterbourgeois ethos. For both schools the British ex-
periment was something of an anomaly, inapplicable to the major sites
of slavery in the continental Americas.
Only with the breakdown of the walls between the economics and the
history of slavery in the second half of the twentieth century did it be-
come possible to demystify the paradoxes of the fall of slavery. Increas-
ingly, the point of departure for any study on abolitionists’ perspectives

   229

 of New World emancipation had to be that economic progress sustained
coerced labor in a variety of forms throughout antislavery’s long nine-
teenth century. At some level many British abolitionists had long recog-
nized that paradox. They sensed that a theory of moral sentiments lay
beneath Adam Smith’s assessment of slavery. When he wrote, “I believe,
that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that per-
formed by slaves,” they understood his words in the spirit of prophecy.70

230   

 13
 

W hen Colonial Secretary Edward Stanley introduced Brit-

ish emancipation as a mighty experiment in 1833, few
commentators at home or abroad questioned the magnitude of the un-
dertaking, either as wisdom or as folly. Who could deny that the lives of
nearly a million colonial subjects, slaves, masters, and other inhabitants
would be profoundly altered? Certainly no one could begin to fathom the
long-range impact of the act on the progeny of the slaves and tens of
millions more on both sides of the Atlantic. In the half century that
followed, the experiment dwindled in significance. The Caribbean shrunk
from a major center of world history into a relative backwater. In the
next half century following the jubilee of 1884, the concerns of aboli-
tionists and other human rights advocates shifted to other, larger theaters
of human activity. The same phenomenon occurred in historiography. A
current historian, taking an even longer and wider view, has suggested
that a focus on a single abolitionist process, which freed only one-seventh
of the New World’s slaves and under 3 percent of the planet’s coerced
labor in the 1830s, entails “a certain narrowness of intellectual perspec-
tive.”1
After all, Britain’s emancipation was only a single case among many.
It was preceded by a millennial long march of tens of millions from
servitude to freedom in northwestern Europe. It was followed by the free-
ing of tens of millions more in the Americas, Central Europe, the Russian
Empire, Asia, Africa, and the orbit of Islam. One could go still further. If
such a historical world survey reduces the process of British emancipa-
tion to a footnote, what are we to say of the global impact of that process?
Almost 100 years after the end of British colonial slavery, the House of
Lords held an extended debate on slave labor in Soviet Russia.2 This was
merely at the beginning of the Gulag Archipelago, which soon numbered

231
 far more laborers than had worked in the cane and coffee fields of the
Caribbean archipelago a century earlier. Just slightly to the west nearly
8 million slaves were at work in the heart of Europe in 1944, and there
were at least 12 million forced laborers under Nazi control during World
War II, twice as many as in the Americas on the eve of the American
Civil War.3
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there are still tens of
millions of human beings whose bodies are at the disposal of others for
their productive or sexual potential. One may correspondingly margin-
alize even these massive surges of coercion during the past century into
a longer secular process of global human emancipation. Even the tens
of millions who still live under various regimes of coercion do not out-
weigh the dramatic reversal of the ratio between free and unfree people
that Arthur Young calculated 230 years ago. However one deals with any
or all of these massive phenomena, they all appear to dramatically di-
minish the significance of the once mighty experiment.
Thinking in global terms about the numbers enslaved and liberated
over the past two centuries or the last millennium does not definitively
establish the relative significance of any given historical process. From
many perspectives, British antislavery remains a subject worthy of scru-
tiny. In relative terms it may have been the most expensive international
policy based on moral action in modern history. In the course of six
decades (c. 1806–1863), during which Britain pioneered antislavery ini-
tiatives almost unaided by the world’s other great powers, those initiatives
cost metropolitan citizens 1.8 percent of their national income. By com-
parison, current OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and De-
velopment) aid to development, between 1975 and 1996, cost their econ-
omies 0.33 percent of national income. This is less than one-fifth of the
relative burden borne by Britons a century and a half ago. The economic
costs of antislavery do not begin to take into account the price paid by
the British in international ill will, a burden unmatched by subsequent
OECD contributors.4
During the decade immediately after emancipation, the costs of anti-
slavery to Britons was perhaps three times greater than the average for
the six decades after 1806 as a whole. The African Squadron was nearly
trebled, the compensation to slave owners was funded, and the cost gap
between “British” and foreign slave sugar reached its nineteenth-century
peak. It is also important to bear in mind that the great experiment was
undertaken at a point when the British national debt stood at 225 percent
of the gross national product (GNP), compared with less than 65 percent
in the United States today.5 It is hardly surprising that after a decade of
record costs relative to national income, British antislavery policies were
in crisis.
The magnitude of the anticipated costs of emancipation, even before
the passage of the act of 1833, explains why it was necessary to frame

232   

the bill in terms of an experiment. It was only a decade earlier, after a hi-
atus of a generation (c. 1795–1822) that antislavery began to push the
twin ideas of experimentalism and free labor superiority to the fore. As
early as 1787, abolitionists had decided to concentrate their efforts on the
abolition of the slave trade. British slavery itself seemed far too big an en-
tity to tackle. In the wake of the American Revolution, the reluctance of
Parliament to interfere with the property of British subjects overseas con-
stituted a formidable constitutional obstacle to antislavery agitation. In
commercial terms, Britain’s trade with Africa was a small fraction of its
trade with the West Indies. The slave trade was literally a “trade” issue,
more clearly within the purview of the imperial parliament. Its curtail-
ment primarily affected the rate of growth, not the existence, of the slave
colonies. It was purportedly attacking British slavery only at the margin.6
British fixed capital in Africa amounted to a relatively small investment in
coastal factories. By contrast the value of the slave colonies in the 1790s
amounted to upward of £80 million, rising to £140 million or more dur-
ing the twenty years’ debate over abolition. Whereas private capital in the
slave trade (ships and trade goods) could be redirected from Africa into
other areas, including direct trade with slave colonies, the slave gangs,
mills, and fields of the sugar islands could not be so easily redeployed.7
The parliamentary debates over the slave trade and slavery reflected
these differences. Before 1807 abolitionists spent little time on any dis-
cussion of the relative value of free versus slave labor and drew no at-
tention to a potential competitive weakness of British slavery. In their
rhetoric, abolitionists overwhelmingly favored moral arguments, whereas
those defending the trade favored economic arguments. When supporters
of slave trade abolition sought to invoke social science, they did so in
terms of the population principle. Even there, abolitionists favored argu-
ments that supported the potential of plantations to achieve rapid natural
rates of reproduction, as illustrated with reference to North America.
Both abolitionists and West Indian spokesmen anticipated current histo-
riography in concluding that native-born slave populations were generally
capable of a positive rate of population growth, as was already the case
in the American South and Minias Gerais in Brazil. That the deficit was
an antifact of the slave trade was emphasized by abolitionists before 1807
and West Indians from then until 1833. Both groups were capable of
equal scientific sophistication when it suited their arguments.8 Before
1807, the one major deviation into a straightforward challenge to slave
labor came with the launching of Sierra Leone. A consolation prize for
the defeat of slave trade abolition in 1791, Sierra Leone was an experi-
ment by default. By 1800 it had almost vanished from slave trade debates.
Abolitionists steered clear of other appeals to free labor superiority and
to all other suggestions of “experiments” to demonstrate its superiority
over slavery. The Saints neither fully believed in the theory of free labor
superiority nor cared to test it.

  233

 The turn to experimentalism began earnestly in the 1810s and ex-
panded with the shift to agitation for emancipation in the 1820s. Natural
reproduction of slaves, in which the abolitionists had placed so much
hope, seemed to be going nowhere but in reverse. In shifting their agi-
tation toward political intervention to accelerate emancipation, abolition-
ists refocused their attack. Their argument shifted toward a demonstra-
tion of slavery’s reproductive inferiority and free labor’s productive
superiority.
The experimental moment was precipitated by the series of pressures
from below. Nevertheless, however numerous the petitions, however en-
thusiastic the pledges of candidates for Parliament, and however serious
the warnings of slaves’ discontent, the political class in the Reform Par-
liament were not prepared to plunge ahead to emancipation at the cost
of a large portion of British colonial and mercantile capital (including
their own) and a financial shortfall in sugar revenues.9 As the capitalists
most at risk, the West Indians insisted that the odds against success with
a simple declaration of immediate liberation were enormous. They ac-
ceded to the terms of emancipation precisely because it was framed as
an experiment, in which a safety net was a constituent part of the tran-
sition. Their creditors were reassured by the compensation figure.
Wealthy taxpayers were reassured that consumers would foot the cost of
West Indian indemnification and the potentially higher costs of sugar
production. Free traders and taxpayers, of course, were bitterly disap-
pointed, even though they were reassured that the experimental frame
of reference meant that success or failure could be determined by measur-
able changes in prices and production. Slaves, like British sugar consum-
ers and taxpayers, could hardly have been pleased that only one-quarter
of their labor was for wages, but there was no large-scale violence in
1834 to match the violent challenge to slavery three years before.
The experimental format pleased the government and its supporters
most of all. The newly elected Reform Parliament would have at least
one momentous achievement to show for its first session. An experiment
connoted controlled change, with an adequate supply of partially “freed”
labor, with special magistrates, with protective duties to encourage the
production of colonial sugar, and with compensation for holders of pri-
vate property that was underwritten by public income during the tran-
sitional period. The government clearly framed its bill in such a way that
the welfare of the slaves in the British colonies would not be the only, or
even the principal, criterion of experimental success. All of the slave
populations of the societies in the Atlantic world were shrewdly folded
into the experimental equation. The outcome could convince slaveholders
and nonslaveholders in the Americas, the statesmen of imperial western
Europe, and the rulers of Africa that freedom was in their own best
economic interest. Whatever Stanley’s view of the probability of such an

234   

optimal outcome, the abolitionists could hardly refuse it. They were long
since committed to the globalization of emancipation.10
In this sense British emancipation was more of an open experiment
for those slave owners who were not British subjects than for those who
were. Full freedom for all British slaves within a maximum of six years
was the only unalterable element of the experiment. Over the next gen-
eration, British newspaper editors might occasionally snarl that only a
“reopening” of Africa to British planters, by one means or another, could
save the sugar colonies, but only a Carlylean verbosity could suggest
renewed coercion as the final solution to the great experiment.
If revocation was beyond political discussion, the combination of leg-
islative constraints and national promises virtually guaranteed the failure
of the original experiment. Emancipation simply could not simultane-
ously expand the definition of slavery, choke off fresh African and Indian
migrations, maintain both Britain’s free Caribbean labor and its sugar
supply, and match the market price of slave-grown Ibero-American plan-
tations. The first and most definitive casualty of the act’s complex con-
ditions was the accelerated abolition of apprenticeship; the second was
the quarantine of Asian indentured labor, labeled as “slavery-in-disguise,”
in 1838. They were the manifestation of antislavery at the peak of its
popularity and its political prowess. The first sign of the limits of aboli-
tionism in the early 1840s was the British government’s decision to re-
open the flow of indentured servants to Mauritius, coinciding with the
failure of the Niger expedition. The second was the government’s decision
not to extend the principle of immediate mass emancipation to India in
1843. This represented the end of the potential extension of the West
Indian model of emancipation to the East Indies. Even within the orbit
of the British imperium, indentured servitude and a slow death for slav-
ery became the dominant model of economic development and social
change.11
One of the unanticipated results of the experiment was to lower the
threshold to race thinking as an explanatory device. This development
aligned British scientific discourse more closely to that of other Western
colonizing countries after the late 1840s. It did not, however, cease to
make Britain the foremost sponsor of antislavery as a concomitant of
imperial expansion, but failures in Africa from Sierra Leone to the Niger
and beyond reinforced the image of the intractability of tradition. They
also further encouraged the gradualizing of emancipation. Even in West-
ern slaveries, where plantations were epitomes of responsiveness to the
world market, one emancipation after another until the 1880s resulted
in at least temporary declines in staple production. Eastern slavery
seemed even less susceptible to rapid emancipation.
The most important success of the great experiment did not lie where
abolitionists had hoped—in the demonstration effect of its economic or

  235

 reproductive competitiveness with societies of plantation slaves. That part
of the experiment proved to be its weakest and usually its most counter-
productive aspect. The real power of the experiment lay in its imperial
nexus. It was embedded in the most powerful and expansive international
entity in the world. As long as Britain’s power allowed West Indian plant-
ers enough leeway and resources to tap into nonslave labor in the Eastern
Hemisphere, it did not matter whether African-supplied slave labor was
cheaper in large parts of the Americas than Creole free labor or Asian
indentured labor. If the combination of rising British naval suppression
and falling transport costs could keep the sugar of Guiana or Trinidad
competitive with the sugar of Cuba, the planters’ myth of “no sugar
without slavery” was as unaxiomatic as the abolitionists’ alternative of
“wages or the whip.”
The persistence of British antislave trade policy meant that sooner or
later the vital African source of New World expansion could be cut off,
one sector at a time. It is easier to dismiss the impact of British persistence
against the grain of economic interest than it is to imagine the relation
of coercion to freedom without it. A nation with a less ingrained com-
mitment to antislavery as a matter of national honor might well have
cut its losses in the midcentury crisis. It might well have called home its
fleet in 1850, allowed the expanded flow of Africans to the Americas,
and recognized the South in 1861 on impeccable grounds of political and
economic self-interest.12
In the longer and wider view, Edward Stanley was right. The fate of
millions and their descendants on both sides of the Atlantic was pro-
foundly affected by the liberation of 800,000 slaves in the British colonies
in 1833. This was not because the emancipation was a practical economic
success and certainly not because it was based on verifiable economic
theory—far from it. Just before the abolitionist breakthrough in the
1780s, Dean J. Tucker, another political economist, issued a cautionary
assessment of antislavery’s potential, with which pioneer abolitionist
James Ramsay agreed. The Atlantic slave system would never be under-
mined until sugar could be produced more cheaply by freemen than by
slaves.13 That advice was echoed in the press and Parliament for gener-
ations; by the hero of Waterloo; by the radical Joseph Hume; by free
traders Cobden and Bright, demanding an end to the blocked sugar trade;
and by William Hutt, demanding an end to the porous blockade of forced
migration from Africa.
They were all totally wrong. For fifty years after launching their move-
ment, abolitionists moved from victory to victory while sugar and cotton
produced by freemen made little headway against the same commodities
produced by slaves. Antislavery’s victories came without encouragement
from either transatlantic economics or metropolitan economists.
The great experiment was in fact a great improvisation. The true tap-
root of antislavery lay in its successful mass political mobilization around

236   

a fundamentally uneconomic proposition. To secure passage of the Slave
Emancipation Act in 1833, the abolitionists and the government sub-
scribed to a disarming pact with science. It worked for the moment but
almost never again. With the exception of the two minor Caribbean slave
economies (of Denmark and the Netherlands), emancipation never took
the British Caribbean way to emancipation—even in the rest of the Brit-
ish Empire.
The economics of moral action has continued to haunt the history of
abolition to this day.14 The costs of bringing down slavery were heavy.
In turn, they nearly brought down British antislavery. Long after the last
freed person in the British Caribbean died, the descendants were left to
wonder why, in decades of cost accounting, the contributions of the
slaves to the wealth of the empire were never included in the calculus
of emancipation and compensation. There might be one consoling
thought in that omission. If the back wages due to the slaves had been
added to the others entailed in the great experiment, one of the most
morally expensive actions in recorded history, and the inspiration for sub-
sequent human rights mobilizations, might have been postponed for gen-
erations.

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 

Introduction
1. For good recent overviews, see Robin Blackburn, The Making of New
World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (London: Verso,
1997); David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2000); Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story
of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997); John Thornton, Africa and the Africans in the Making of the Atlantic
World, 1440–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, [1992] 1998); Her-
bert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
2. For works with a transatlantic perspective, see, inter alia, David Eltis,
Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987); Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Amer-
icas; Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Com-
parative Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Drescher, From
Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery
(New York: New York University Press, 1999); Robin Blackburn, The Over-
throw of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (London: Verso, 1988); Barbara L. Solow,
ed., Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge, Mass.: W.E.B.
DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991). There have been a multitude of studies
of abolition in national, imperial, and continental frames of reference. For a
recent discussion of slavery as a global process and from a variety of histo-
riographical perspectives, see the “AHR Forum: Crossing Slavery’s Bounda-
ries,” American Historical Review 105:2 (April 2000), 451–484, as well as David
Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press,
1984).
3. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1944). See also Eltis, Economic Growth, 14, Robert W. Fogel
and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro
Slavery, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974); Robert W. Fogel et al., Without
Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, 4 vols. (New York:

239
 Norton, 1989–1992); Laird Bergad, Fe Iglesias Garcia, and Maria de Carmen
Barcia, The Cuban Slave Market 1790–1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995); R. W. Slenes, “The Demography and Economics of Brazilian
Slavery 1850–1888,” Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.,
1975; S. Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977); John R. Ward, British West Indian Slav-
ery, 1750–1834: The Process of Amelioration (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988).
4. The classic statement was in Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of Wealth of Nations, 2 vols., R. M. Campbell and A. S. Skinner,
eds. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1976), book III, chs. 3–5. See also Eltis,
Rise of African Slavery, ch.1. For its reverberations in the historiography of
slavery, see Fogel et al., Without Consent, 409–410.
5. On historiographical shifts in discussions of the relationship between
capitalism and the abolition of slavery, see Thomas Bender, ed., The Antislavery
Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation,
(Berkeley: University of California, 1992); Seymour Drescher, “Review Essay:
Capitalism & Abolitionism,” History and Theory 32 (1993), 311–329; Gert Oos-
tindie, ed., Fifty Years Later: Antislavery, Capitalism and Modernity in the Dutch
Orbit (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1995–1996); Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Empire
and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1833–1874 (Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1999); Drescher, From Slavery to Freedom, 355–398. On
the evolution of the labor relationship in Euro-America, see Stanley L. En-
german, ed., Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom, and Free Labor (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1999). On the age of English antislavery, see David
Turley, The Culture of English Antislavery, 1780–1860; (New York: Routledge,
1991): Clare Midgley, “Slave Sugar Boycotts, Female Activism and the Do-
mestic Base of British Anti-Slavery Culture,” Slavery and Abolition 17:3 (De-
cember 1996), 137–162; Judith Jennings, The Business of Abolishing the British
Salve Trade 1783–1807 (London: F. Cass, 1997). On slave culture and resis-
tance, see Stephen Palmié, ed., Slave Cultures and the Cultures of Slavery (Knox-
ville, Tenn: University of Tennessee Press, 1995); Verene Shepherd and Hilary
McD. Beckles, eds., Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World: A Student Reader
(Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2000), sections VI, X, XI, XVI; Heather Ca-
teau and S.H.H. Carrington, eds., Capitalism and Slavery: Fifty Years Later (New
York: Peter Lang, 2000).

Chapter 1
1. See Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in
Comparative Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), ch. 1; Eltis,
“Slavery and Freedom in the Modern World,” in Terms of Labor, 25–49; Robert
J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and
American Law and Culture, 1370–1870 (Chapel Hill and London: University of
North Carolina Press, 1991), ch. 4.
2. On “English air,” see Helen Tunnicliff Catterall et al., Judicial Cases Con-
cerning American Slavery and the Negro, Helen Tunnicliff Catterall, et al., eds.,
4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1926–1937), I,
1; for France, see Sue Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political
Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996); for the Netherlands, see Gert Oostindie and Emy Maduro, In Het

240    3–10

Land van de overheerser II: Antilllianen en Surinamers in Nederland, 1634/1667–
1954 (Dordrecht: Foris, 1996), 13–16; for colonies “beyond the line” see
Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, ch 2.
3. See, above all, David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western
Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966).
4. Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale: A Facsimilie Reprint of
the English Translation of 1606, Corrected and Supplemented in the Light of a
New Comparison with the French and Latin Texts, Kenneth Douglas McRae, ed.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962) bk. I, ch. V.
5. Jan de Vries, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance
of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997). On the attitude of colonial administrators toward slavery, see C. R.
Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 2–
4, 82–84. On the slave trade, see Johannes Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic
Slave Trade, 1600–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 12–14.
6. See Hilary McD. Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados,
1627–1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989); David Eltis, Rise
of African Slavery, 41ff; Eltis, “Labor and Coercion in the English Atlantic
World from the Seventeenth Century,” Slavery and Abolition (Special Issue) The
Wages of Slavery, Michael Twaddle, ed., 14:1 (April 1993), 207–226.
7. Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1985; and Richard Gray, “The Papacy and the
Atlantic Slave Trade: Lourenço Da Silva, the Capuchins & the Decisions of
the Holy Office,” Past and Present 115 (May 1987), 52–68.
8. M. Postlethwayt, The National and Private Advantages of the African Trade
Considered (1746), (emphasis in the original) quoted in J. Walvin, Black Pres-
ence: A Documentary History of the Negro in England, 1555–1860 (London: Or-
bach & Chambers, 1971), 51–53.
9. There is an interesting parallel here between the economic and legal
relationship of the colonies to their metropoles. Even at the peak of the eco-
nomic value of the plantation complex to the metropolis, the slave laborers
of the North Atlantic empires constituted only a modest portion of their
productive labor forces. See David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, “The Im-
portance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain,” Journal of
Economic History 60 (March 2000), 23–144. Yet it still remains paradoxical
from an economic perspective that so many slave systems were set on the
road to destruction at the moment when their potential was greatest.
10. Robert J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation
in English and American Law & Culture, 1350–1870 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1991), 101, 114–116.
11. On the continuity of penal coercion well into the nineteenth century,
see David W. Galenson, “The Rise of Free Labor: Economic Change and the
Enforcement of Service Contracts in England, 1351–1875,” in Capitalism in
Context: Essays on Economic Development and Cultural Change, in Honor of R. M.
Hartwell, John A. James and Mark Thomas, eds. (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1994), 114–130; and Robert J. Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and
Free Labour in the Ninteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
12. In addition to the references in note 2, see David Galenson, White
Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981); and Galenson, Traders, Planters and Slaves: Market

   10–14 241

 Behavior in Early English America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986).
13. For current evaluations of comparative English plantation productiv-
ity, see Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 218–222. On long-term increasing pro-
ductivity, see Fogel et al., Without Consent, 61–62 and references. Josiah Child,
a merchant and economic writer of the late seventeenth century (1630–1699)
offered an analysis that was echoed for nearly a century:

Whereas Plantations belonging to Mother-Kingdoms or Countries,

where Liberty and Property is better preserved, and Interest of Money
restrained to low a Rate, the consequence is, that every Person sent
abroad with the Negroes and Utensils he is constrained to employ, or
that are employ’d with him; it being customary in most of our Islands
in America, upon every plantation, to employ eight or ten Blacks for
every white Servant; I say in this case we may reckon, that for Provi-
sions, Cloaths, and Household-goods, Sea-men, and all others employed
about Materials for Building, Fitting, and Victualling of Ships, Every
English-man in Barbados or Jamaica creates employment for four men at
home. (A New Discourse of Trade [London: T Sowler, 1698], 190–191,
emphasis in the original)

See also Andrea Finkelstein, Harmony and the Balance: An Intellectual His-
tory of Seventeenth Century English Economic Thought (Ann Arbor: Uni-
versity of Michigan Press, 2000), ch. 8.
14. M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York: Pen-
guin Books, 1980), 91.
15. For England, see Steinfeld, Invention of Free Labor, 55–93; Ann
Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981), 5–9; for France, see William H. Sewell,
Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime
to 1848 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 22–25; for the
United States, see Jonathan A. Glickstein, Concepts of Free Labor in Ante-
bellum America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991); on the
“modernist” transition, see Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A
Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 46–58, 142–73.
16. W. Coats, “Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth
Century,” Economic History Review 11 (1958–1959); 35–51; Howard Tem-
perly, “Capitalism, Slavery and Ideology,” Past and Present 75 (1977), 94–
118; Temperely, “Anti-Slavery as a Form of Cultural Imperialism,” in Anti-
Slavery, Religion and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey (Folkstone,
Eng.: Dawson, 1980), 336–350; Eltis, Economic Growth, 19–23; in a some-
what altered argument, Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 272–273. See also
Stanley L. Engerman, “Coerced and Free Labor: Property Rights and the
Development of the Labor Force,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History
29 (1992), 1–29, as well as note 5 in my introduction.

242    15–16

 17. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 5–6, 42–56.
18. Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in
Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992), 32–33; Joyce Oldham Appleby, “Ideology and
Theory: The Tension between Political and Economic Liberalism in
Seventeenth-Century England,” American Historical Review 81 (June
1976), 499–513; Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-
Century England (Princeton, N.J.:, Princeton University Press, 1978).
19. Malachy Postlelthwayt, The African Trade, The Great Pillar and Sup-
port of the Plantation Trade in General (London: J. Robinson, 1745), 14.
Postlehwayt also emphasized the greater security of slave than free col-
onies in terms of threats to imperial rule (p. 14). For the relative value
added of African slaves over free Europeans in the Americas, see [Arthur
Young] Political Essays Concerning the Present State of the British Empire
(London: W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1772), 20–21.
20. Sir James Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Econ-
omy, 4 vols. (New York: Augustus M. Kelly, [1767] 1967), I, 224–227. For
the Edinburgh Review in the mid-nineteenth century Steuart was the ear-
liest of the systematic writers on political economy. [Nassau Senior] “John
Stuart Mill on Political Economy,” Edinburgh Review 88 (October 1848),
293–339, 294.
21. Steuart, Inquiry into Political Economy, 47–52, 228 (emphasis in
the original).
22. See Eltis, Economic Growth, ch. 1; and most compellingly, Eltis, Rise
of African Slavery, 273–278. For the critical generation between the end
of the American Revolution and British slave trade abolition, see Seymour
Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1977).
23. See Paul Slack, The English Poor Law 1531–1782 (Basingstoke: Mac-
millan Education, 1990), 22–29, 40–45.
24. See (London) Morning Chronicle, September 15, 1785; October 3,
1785, April 3, 1788; November 8, 1788; November 27, 1788; London
Chronicle, September 29-October 1, 1785; October 1–4, 1788; (London)
Public Advertiser, February 19, 1788; Diary, March 26, 1792.
25. [Arthur Young] Political Arithmetic, Containing Observations on the
Present State of Great Britain and the . . . Encouragement of Agriculture (Lon-
don: W. Nicoll, 1774), 190–192; 202–204.
26. See [Young] Political Essays concerning the British Empire, 326ff.
For Arthur Young, the value of colonial staples decreased in proportion
to their distance from the sun and, incidentally, from their proportion of
slave labor. In his usually precise terms, the staple value added by each
inhabitant of the sugar colonies was £8.61; of Georgia and Carolina,
£5.5; of the tobacco colonies, £0.476; of the Northern colonies, £0.125
(p. 326). (For a per capita export estimate see pp. 359–360.)

   16–18 243

 27. Michael Duffy, “The French Revolution and British Attitudes to
the West Indian Colonies,” in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and
the Greater Caribbean, David Barry Gaspar and Patrick David Geggus, eds.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 78–101, esp. 79.

Chapter 2
1. For accounts of the growing tensions aroused in northwestern Europe
by Atlantic crossings of blacks to both Europe and its settler societies, see Sue
Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slav-
ery in the Ancien Régime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Drescher,
Capitalism and Antislavery, ch. 2; Seymour Drescher, “The Long Goodbye:
Dutch Capitalism and Antislavery in Comparative Perspective,” in Fifty Years
Later: Antislavery, Capitalism and Modernity in the Dutch Orbit, Gert Oostindie,
ed. (Leiden: KITLV, 1995), 25–66, esp. 49–50.
2. On British colonial slave resistance in the eighteenth century, see Mi-
chael Craton, Testing the Chains: Slave Rebellions in the British West Indies,
1629–1832 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982); Michael Mullin, Af-
rica in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and
the British Caribbean, 1736–1831 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).
For the discussion of imagined development in Virginia, see Bruce A. Rags-
dale, A Planter’s Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary
America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).
3. Benjamin Franklin, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Man-
kind,” in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, L. W. Laberee, ed. (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961) vol. 4, 229–230.
4. See Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical
Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 142–173. For
further discussion of the philosophical break between antiquity and modern-
ity in the eighteen century, see M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ide-
ology (New York: Viking, 1980), ch. 1.
5. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 7; Eltis, Economic Development, 189–191.
6. Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and
P. G. Stein, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1978), 185.
7. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations, 2 vols., R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, eds (Indianapolis: Liberty
Classics, 1979), 138. See also Charles L. Griswold, Jr., Adam Smith and the
Virtues of Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 198–
202.
8. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 22–23.
9. Ibid., 98, 387–388.
10. John Millar, Observations concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society
(London: John Murray, 1771), 4–13 and passim. See also David Brion Davis,
Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 112–
114; Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics, R. L. Meek, ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973).
11. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 381–427.
12. Ibid., 99, 684.
13. Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, 186–167.

244    18–23

 14. Ibid., 187; Wealth of Nations, 388. In his Lectures, Smith also included
the fear of general insurrection and the fear of a great loss of property as
motives for not freeing slaves. In political terms, manumissions might deprive
a chieftain of some of his subjects and his substance.
15. Smith had a number of opportunities to make this statement in dis-
cussing both profits and methods in the sugar colonies and took advantage
of none of them (see Wealth of Nations, 173, 389, 586). He only noted that
in all European colonies cane was cultivated by slaves. There were opportu-
nities for technological and managerial improvement when slaves could “ap-
proach the condition of a free servant” within the condition of slavery
(p. 587).
16. Ibid., 382–387.
17. Ibid., 388–389. Patterns of slaveholder’s migration choices in the West
Indies are not consistent with most explanations that allot decisive weight to
the satisfactions derived from exercising direct personal power over slaves,
whether brutal or paternal. Successful planters notoriously repatriated them-
selves to Europe, becoming Caribbean “absentees.” They thus chose to settle
where the direct satisfactions of personal power were confined to occasional
visits or when economic difficulties impelled them to return to the islands.
Even Smith’s invocation of the pleasures of power in this paragraph finally
shifts to the power of profit in the West Indies. The configuration of the
paragraph’s arguments are telling.
18. See Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, 70: “A gentleman who farms a part
of his own estate, after paying the expense of cultivation, should gain both
the rent of the landlord and the profit of the farmer. . . . The greater part of
our North American and West Indian planters . . . [own] their own estates,
and accordingly we seldom hear of the rent of a plantation, but frequently
of its profit.” On the profitability of New World plantations, see p. 388.
19. Ibid., 173, 389, 571, 586–587. At one point in his earlier Lectures on
Jurisprudence, Smith observed that “some of the West India islands have in-
deed been cultivated by slaves, and have been greatly improved,” but he em-
phasized that, “they might have been cultivated by freemen at less ex-
pense. . . .” Only the enormous profits of sugar supported the expense.
(p. 523.) When attempting to calculate the advantage, however, Smith con-
fined his comparisons to European countries, ancient and modern (pp. 185–
186, 453–454.)
20. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 893. In an earlier draft, for the Smith argued
that sugar and tobacco colonies could only afford slave labor because of the
“exorbitancy of their profits,” arising from their trade monopolies (see p. 388,
n. 27).
21. See Sydney Checkland, British Public Policy, 1776–1939. An Economic
Social and Political Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983),
17–18.
22. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 586.
23. Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), 51–52.
24. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 587.
25. The French case however, was not unique. In his earlier Glasgow Lec-
tures on Jurisprudence, Smith observed that in British North America, where
the master often worked alongside his slave, he “looks on his slave as his

   23–27 245

 friend and partner, and treats him with the greatest kindness . . .” (pp. 184–
185; 453).
26. See Fred R. Glahe, ed., Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of Nations: A Concordance (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1993). Significantly, one of two references to convicted criminals
in Wealth of Nations concerns the penalties to be given to those enticing
artificers to move out of England in order to practice or teach their trades in
foreign parts. On the first offense, guilty parties were to be fined £500 “for
every artisan so enticed” and to twelve months’ imprisonment. Second of-
fenders were to spend two years in prison (p. 659). Mobility of convicts was
not at a premium in Smith’s work. One early abolitionist cited the presence
of indentured labor in the seventeenth-century colonies in order to refute the
idea that it was impossible to use European field labor in the Caribbean.
Abolitionists were not anxious, however, to discuss the planters’ subsequent
moves to African slave labor. Smith’s reticence to elaborate on gradations and
varieties of labor in the New World sharply contrasts with his treatment of
labor in Europe. In his Lectures on Jurisprudence (191–192) in the early 1760s,
but not in his Wealth of Nations, Smith used the inherited servile status of
Scottish colliers to illustrate the double disadvantage of servility. It inflated
wages and restricted recruitment to the expanding coal industry. Even wages
twice those offered workers aboveground failed to attract new labor. The
emancipation of the colliers in two stages, between 1773 and 1799, was a
shortrun disappointment to the mine owners. Some liberated colliers quit for
half pay on surface jobs or volunteered for military service. Very few moved
in the opposite direction, even at double wages. For contemporary observers,
demographic trends were no more encouraging. In colliers’ families, infant
and child mortality was were so high that deaths periodically exceeded births.
See Robert Bald, A General View of the Coal Trade of Scotland (Edinburgh:
Oliphant, Waugh & Innes, 1812), 73. Scottish emancipation played little role
in the abolitionists’ campaign for emancipation before 1833. See P.E.H. Hair,
“Slavery and Liberty: The Case of the Scottish Colliers,” Slavery and Abolition
21:3 (December 2000), 136–151; For a tangential connection, see Drescher,
Capitalism and Antislavery, 175, n. 39. Transported felons are mentioned just
once in Wealth of Nations (589), in connection with the colonization of Brazil:
“Felons and strumpets,” the colony’s first inhabitants, were taught “some sort
of order and industry.” The culture of sugar cane was attributed to “Portu-
guese Jews,” themselves “persecuted by the inquisition, stript of their for-
tunes, and banished to Brazil.”
27. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 388.
28. Ibid., 13.
29. Ibid., 22
30. Ibid., 16–17.
31. Fogel, et al., Without Consent, 22–26.
32. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 19.
33. Ibid., 172.
34. Ibid., 782.
35. Ibid., 23–24.
36. Ibid., 121. On comparative British-Caribbean wealth per capita, see
Eltis, “Slave Economics of the Caribbean,” 123. On comparative consumption
standards of slaves and British laborers in the age of emancipation, see Ward,
British West Indian Slavery, ch. 6, 286–288, n. 6.

246    27–30

 37. See Smith, Wealth of Nations, 24 and 939. For subsequent evaluations,
see Fogel et al, Without Consent, Technical Papers, II, pt. 5.
38. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 98–99.
39. Ibid., 939. See also Drescher, Econocide, 138–139; and From Slavery to
Freedom, 33–34 n. 49. At the outset of the popular agitation against the slave
trade, an open letter to Granville Sharp invoked Adam Smith in attacking
attempts to even regulate that trade. A “free trader,” the writer suggested
eliminating West Indian sugar protection as a slower but more certain way
of ending the traffic. See Letter to Granville Sharp (London: D. Debrett, 1788),
49–50. For an official appeal by the Jamaica House of Assembly to Adam
Smith’s writings in defense of the slave trade on the eve of its abolition in
1806–1807, see Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP), 1805, X, Papers Respecting
the Slave Trade, 673–674; printed for the House of Commons, February 25,
1805. For other free trade defenses, see Drescher, Econocide, 137–138.
40. See David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ith-
aca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), ch. 13, especially his discussion of
Turgot, 432–434. Steuart’s own work continued to be republished into the
early nineteenth century.
41. Above all, Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, A. L. Macfie
and D. D. Rafael, eds. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1982), v. 2.9. A little-
noticed difference between Smith’s portrayal of Africans in his Theory of Moral
Sentiments (1776) may have arisen out of an American response to the earlier
work. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Smith had compared ordinary
Africans favorably with white colonial slaveholders: “There is not a negro
from the coast of Africa who does not . . . possess a degree of magnanimity
which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving”
(II, 37). Arthur Lee, a Virginian resident in Edinburgh, responded that Amer-
ican slaves lived in palaces compared with the peasants of Scotland: An Essay
in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America (London: Presented for the
author, 1764), 11–15, 20–22, 33–46. A dozen years later, Smith seemed to
reverse both the heroic moral and material valence of Africa in his powerful
opening chapter of Wealth of Nations (1776): “many an African king, the
absolute monarch of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages”
(p. 12). No slaveholder felt the need to rise in vindication of his class as had
Arthur Lee in the decade before.
42. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 99 (my emphasis). The same point is made
again on pp. 387, 684, and, less forcefully, 587.

Chapter 3
1. James Ramsay, Objections to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, with Answers
(London: J. Phillips, 1788), 8; Thomas Clarkson, Essay on the Impolicy of the
African Slave Trade (London: J. Phillips, 1788); Clarkson, The History of the
Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by
the British Parliament, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1808), I, p. 86.
2. Ramsay, Objections to Abolition, 8–9.
3. William Wilberforce, A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (London:
Luke, Hansard, 1807), 144, 210 (emphasis in the original).
4. Seymour Drescher, “People and Parliament: The Rhetoric of the British
Slave Trade,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 20:4 (Spring 1990), 561–580,
esp. 566–567.

   30–35 247

 5. See Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760–
1810 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1975), 255–256.
6. Drescher, Econocide, 21–25; Drescher, From Slavery to Freedom, 102–104.
7. On Franklin, see Leonard W. Larabee and Whitfield J. Bell, The Papers
of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961), 225–
226. Palmer’s Index to the Times Newspaper offers interesting evidence on the
extent to which abolitionism shifted the terms of discussions of free labor.
Before the abolition of the slave trade in 1808, there are no indexed references
to the term free labor. Between slave trade abolition and the end of American
slavery and the transatlantic slave trade in the mid-1860s, all references to
free labor relate to colonial slavery and the growth of sugar. After 1867, items
on free labor deal almost exclusively with metropolitan labor.
8. See D. V. Glass, “The Population Controversy in Eighteenth Century
England,” Population Studies VI (July 1952), 69–91.
9. Joseph Townsend, A Dissertation on the Poor Laws (Berkeley: University
of California Press, [1786] 1971), 40–41; and Townsend, A Journey Through
Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787, 3 vols. (London: C. Dilly, 1791), II, 381–382.
10. Steuart, Political Economy, I, chs. 3, 17, 168–169 (emphasis in the
original).
11. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 99. Smith linked freedom and increasing
population in terms of freedom’s “liberal reward of labor.”
12. Thomas Cooper, Letters on the African Slave Trade (Manchester: C.
Wheeler, 1787), 25.
13. Thomas Cooper, Supplement to the Letters (Manchester: C. Wheeler,
1787). On the quantitative analysis of the slave trade, see David Eltis, Stephen
D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert Klein, The Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
14. Cooper, Supplement, 36.
15. Ibid., 37–39 (emphasis in the original).
16. Ibid., 46.
17. See Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, in The Works of
Thomas Robert Malthus, 8 vols., E. A. Wrigley and David Louden, eds. (London:
W. Pickering, [1798] 1986), I, 121; II, 160.
18. Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 2 vols., Pa-
tricia James, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); see also the
1803 version, with the variations of the 1806, 1807, 1817, and 1826 edi-
tions), I., 397. See also Malthus, Essay on Population, II, 231. Malthus may
also have been worried that his family’s property in Jamaica made the work
even more vulnerable to an antiabolitionist interpretation. See Patricia James,
Population Malthus: His Life and Times (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul,
1979), 125. Malthus’s Essay on Population was invoked on behalf of the slave
trade prior to abolition in 1805–1806 by Robert Heron in his Letter to William
Wilberforce (London, 1806) in 1805, and by William Cobbett in his Political
Register on February 15, 1805, and January 18, 1806. According to Patricia
James, it was probably the last that stimulated Malthus’s final note to the
1806 appendix (see Essay on Population, II, 232). As Barry Higman notes, the
appendix evaded Malthus’s point that the slave trade caused no deficit to
Africa’s population; see Barry Higman, “Slavery and the Development of De-
mographic Theory in the Age of the Industrial Revolution,” in Slavery and
British Society 1776–1846, James Walvin, ed. (London: Macmillan, 1982),
164–194, esp. 177–178.

248    35–43

 19. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (hereafter Hansard), 1st ser., vol. 8
(1806–1807; February 23, 1807), cols. 987–988, 993 (William Wilberforce).
20. Malthus, Essay on Population II, appendix, 231, n. 51 (emphasis in the
original).
21. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 94–97, table 4-2: Male and Child Ratios
of Selected Groups of Migrants Arriving in the Americas, 1638–1800.
22. Malthus, Essay on Population, II, appendix, 231, n. 51.
23. Ibid.
24. [Herman Merivale] “Senior on Political Economy,” Edinburgh Review
66 (October 1837), 76.
25. Cobbett’s Parliamentary History, vol. 29 (1791–1792), April 18, 1791),
col. 267 (William Pitt). See also (April 1792), cols. 337–339, 1231, 1263–
1264.
26. Hansard, 1st ser., vol. 8 (1806–1807; February 5, 1807), col. 658 (Lord
Grenville).
27. The debate over the slave trade fed back into the intensifying metro-
politan debate over Malthus’s analysis of poverty and impoverishment at
home. Popular writers on poverty incorporated antislavery into their polem-
ics. In attacking Malthus’s second Essay on Population (1802), A. Aiken’s An-
nual Review was more concerned with Malthus’s theoretical justification for
abolishing the Poor Laws than its overseas implications. The first step would
be to commute the miseries of poverty for the comforts of servitude, “for . . .
the frequent argument that the Negro-slaves are happier than the poor people
of England, has prepared our legislators; and the poor might be brought to
it as they are to be brought to celibacy—by starving.” If slaves were “more
manageable than servants,” the best policy was to consider them cattle and
create a whole system of slave laws that included castration, among other
penalties. The analogy of the colonial slaves and metropolitan poor by spokes-
men for the slave interest became a weapon for conflating attacks on slavery
with attacks on the right to public relief. Annual Review 2 (1803), 301.
28. Hansard, 1st ser., vol. 8 (1806–1807; February 23, 1807), 950; on
other expressions of assurances of a postabolition population increase, see
pp. 969–970, 994, and (February 5, 1807), col. 658 (Lord Grenville).
29. Ibid. (February 5, 1807), 659, 834.
30. Wilberforce, Letter on Abolition, 103.
31. Drescher, Econocide, 139, 252–253, n. 37 and n. 38. In 1791, the agent
for Jamaica assembled data from seventeen Jamaican plantations for a rebut-
tal of Pitt’s calculations. He separated them from town and “pen” popula-
tions. His estimates tripled Pitt’s annual deficit for sugar estates. They showed
a mean slave population deficit of more than 3 percent per year. As late as
the eve of slave trade abolition, the government acknowledged an average
yearly deficit of 3 percent as an appropriate mortality estimate for newly
settled colonies. A West Indian MP who supported abolition warned his Ca-
ribbean colleagues that they should expect no rapid diminution of the slave
population deficit if Parliament shut down the transatlantic source of British
tropical labor.
32. See Wilberforce, Letter on Abolition, 105–119.
33. See Higman, “Slavery and Demographic Theory,” 171–172. For a sys-
tematic elaboration of the relevant statistics, see Barry Higman, Slave Popu-
lations in the British Caribbean 1807–1834 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1984).

   43–47 249

 34. The quotation is from Wilberforce, Letter on Abolition, 105. See also
Hansard, 1st ser., vol. 2 (June 13, 1804), cols. 658–659. Compare A Short
Review of the Slave Trade and Slavery, with Considerations on the Benefit which
Would Arise from Cultivating Tropical Productions by Free Labour (Birmingham,
1827), 98–99.
35. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 3 (May 24, 1832), col. 54 (T. B. Macaulay).
36. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 3 (April 15, 1831), col. 1415 (Thomas Fowell
Buxton). On the “Progress of population” as an axiomatic indicator of col-
lective happiness, see Blackburn Gazette, October 24, 1832.
37. Ibid., 152–153.
38. Alexander Barklay, A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in
the West Indies, or An Examination of Mr. Stephen’s Slavery of the British West
India Colonies, 3rd ed. (London: Smith Elder, 1828), 330.
39. Compare Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 3 (April 15, 1831), col. 1415 (Thomas
Fowell Buxton), and vol. 13 (May 24, 1832), cols. 88–89 (William Burge).
40. Ibid., vol. 3, cols. 1415–1416 (Buxton).
41. Ibid., vol. 17 (May 30, 1833), cols. 144–157 (Patrick Stewart). Ac-
cording to Stewart’s age-specific mortality rates per million per year, 3756
slaves under 20 years of age, died in rural Rutland (England), 2749 slaves
died on Demerara plantations, 4580 died in London, 6083 died in industrial
Preston, 6313 died in industrial Leeds, and 6113 died in industrial Bolton. On
the frequency of the plantation industrial analogy in the early 1830s, see
Seymour Drescher, “Cart Whip and Billy Roller: Antislavery and Reform Sym-
bolism in Industrializing Britain,” Journal of Social History 15:1 (1982), 1–24.
Stewart did not acknowledge that the colonial slave registrations may have
undercounted infant mortality. Alexander Barklay attempted a statistical re-
buttal of the abolitionists’ most voluminous attack in the opening volley of
the 1823–1824 campaign for emancipation. See James Stephen, The Slavery
of the British West India Colonies Delineated, 2 vols. (London: Joseph Butter-
worth, 1824). As the moving spirit behind the registration policy, Stephen
naturally alluded to the decrease in the slave population that was certified by
the slave registration figures.
42. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 17 (May 30, 1833), cols. 152–153 (Patrick Stew-
art). Stewart referred to the Report of the Select Committee . . . for the Regulation
of Factories, PP, 1831–1832 (706), XV. 1
43. See Higman, “Slavery and Demographic Theory,” 189–190.
44. Wilberforce, Letter on Abolition, 291–292.
45. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 17 (May 14, 1833), col. 1216.
46. William H. Burnley, Opinions on Slavery and Emancipation . . . by T. F.
Buxton, with Additional Observations to the Right Honorable E. G. Stanley’s Plan
(London: James Redgway, 1833), x–xi.
47. See the Whig Morning Chronicle and the Tory Morning Post, both of
June 1, 1833. On current assessments of natural increase among Creoles, see
Higman, Slave Populations, esp. 377–378; Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave
Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 29–30. Al-
ready in 1831 the Quarterly Review predicted that the measurable convergence
of slaves’ sex ratios signified that in the next generation the population would
increase in every colony. Adopting the “liberty through population density”
hypothesis, the reviewer viewed the ending of slavery in a multigenerational
frame of reference. See “The West India Question,” Quarterly Review 45
(1831), 209–251, esp. 231. On the shift from male to female predominance

250    48–53

in the slave colonies, see Barry Higman, Slave Populations of the British Carib-
bean 1807–1834 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 117, (table
S1.1: Slave Sex Ratios, 1816–1834. Only Trinidad and British Guiana still had
more males than females at emancipation.
48. See Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Slave Rebellions in the British
West Indies 1629–1832 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982); Drescher,
Capitalism and Antislavery, ch. 5.

Chapter 4
1. See Seymour Drescher, “Cart Whip and Billy Roller: Antislavery and
Reform Symbolism in Industrializing Britain,” Journal of Social History 15:1
(1981), 3–24. On petitioning, see J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British An-
tislavery: The Mobilization of Public Opinion Against the Slave Trade, 1787–1807,
(Manchester: 1995); Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Aboli-
tion, 1760–1810 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1975); Drescher,
Capitalism and Antislavery; Seymour Drescher, “Whose Abolition? Popular
Pressure and the Ending of the British Slave Trade,” Past and Present 143
(May 1994), 136–166. At the outset of the initial anti–slave trade campaign,
Manchester’s branch approached Dr. James Anderson of Edinburgh with an
appeal to demonstrate the “impolicy” of the slave trade from the perspective
of “the science of political oeconomy.” His published response, Observations
on Slavery with a View to Its Effects on the British West Indies (Manchester,
1789), offered only a theoretical assurance of the axiomatic expensiveness of
slave labor. Anderson declined to engage the question of the profitability of
the slave trade, and he insisted that any alterations in British policy toward
slavery would have to be gradual and cautious.
2. See Lea Campos Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed (New York: W. de
Gruyter, 1984), 154–156.
3. See John R. McCulloch, The Principles of Political Economy (London:
Longman, 1825), and McCulloch, A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and
Historical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation (London: Longman, 1832).
On slavery, see the Dictionary entries: Slavery and the Slave Trade, Havannah,
Port-au-Prince, Sugar, and Sierra Leone. McCulloch’s figures for 1830 showed
that slaves’ labor still accounted for 95 percent of the North Atlantic’s sugar,
much the same as in 1806. The British abolition of the slave trade had done
nothing to alter the share of the world’s sugar grown by slave labor by 1833.
Once the abolitionist tide had receded, in the 1840s, McCulloch became far
more openly dismissive of Adam Smith’s free labor pronouncement. In The
Literature of Political Economy: A Classified Catalogue (London: Longman,
1845), McCulloch stressed the flexibility of slavery and the narrowness of
antislavery ideology. To treat slavery simply and solely as “a crime and an
outrage to humanity” was “to substitute abuse for reasoning, assertion for
inquiry, and prejudice for principle.” In short, as for comparison between the
two forms of labor, there could be a “preponderance of advantages on one
side or the other according to the circumstances” (p. 315). On McCulloch’s
stature in political economy, see the entry John R. McCulloch in the Dictionary
of National Biography, vol. 12 (London: Oxford University Press, 1921–1922),
463–465.
4. See John R. McCulloch, Treatise on Political Economy (London, 1823);
McCulloch, The Principles of Political Economy, 4th ed. (Edinburgh: Adam and

   53–56 251

 Charles Black, 1849), pt. III, ch. II, sect. II, 437–439. In the decade between
1823 and 1833, the discussion of British emancipation reached its greatest
intensity. McCulloch was the Edinburgh Review’s authority on protectionism
and fiscal policy during that period. His articles appeared alongside those of
prominent abolitionists like Brougham and Buxton. Yet his approach to eman-
cipation was decidedly market, rather than legislatively, oriented. There was
only one way to put down West India slavery—to put it into competition with
“cheap free labor” (e.g., from India). [McCulloch] “East and West India Sugar,”
Edinburgh Review 38 (February 1823), 209–223. McCulloch was explicit in
drawing a line between the relative performance of free labor in general and
in intertropical regions. He concluded that slave labor would be found to be
the cheaper of the two, empirically, in growing sugar, and he doubted
whether sugar could be grown in the tropical Americas without the aid of
slavery or some variety of compulsory labor.
5. John Rooke, Inquiry into the Principles of National Wealth (Edinburgh:
A. Balfour, 1824), 374–375 (emphasis in the original). For Samuel Bailey,
cost-benefit analysis was not the way to compare labor expenses. One had to
view the question in terms of “the lapse of ages” to perceive the advan-
tages of free labor. See his Questions in Political Economy (London: R. Hunter,
1823), 90–94. This implied an extended period for the institution’s replace-
ment.
6. Mountifort Longfield, Lectures on Political Economy (Dublin: Richard Mil-
liken, 1834), 71. David Turley affirms that abolitionists increasingly adopted
laissez-faire economic principles in the 1820s, if not earlier. The Culture of
English Antislavery, 1780–1860 (London: Routledge, 1991), 126–130, 148–
149.
7. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, A Statement of the Principles and Objects of a
Proposed National Society for . . . Systematic Colonization (London, 1830), 15–
37. See also Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, G. Lawrence, trans.
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), 345–347, comparing Ohio and Ken-
tucky. However, note Tocqueville’s reservation that the further south one
goes, the less profitable it became to abolish slavery, which was by nature
better suited to growing tobacco, cotton, and especially sugar cane, crops that
needed “continual attention.”
8. Wakefield, Statement of Principles and Objects, 35. See also C. P. Lucas,
ed., Lord Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, [1840] 1912), II, 211–13. See also David Brion Davis,
Slavery and Human Progress, 252–253. The theme of relatively primitive, soil-
exhausting cultivation by free farmers in both Canada and the Northern
United States continued into the 1850s. The wheat-growing and exporting
potential of British North America was seen to be diminished by their waste-
ful methods. See “North American Agriculture,” Economist, May 3, 1851,
475–476.
9. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 2 vols., E. G. Wakefield, ed. (London,
1835), I, 43–50.
10. Ibid., 74–75.
11. [Jane Marcet] Conversations on Political Economy in which the Elements
of That Science Are Familiarly Explained (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, 1816).
Harriet Martineau, A Tale of Demerara: Illustrations of Political Economy (Lon-
don, 1832,) 101.
12. Henri [H. F. von] Storch, Cours d’économie politique, ou exposition des

252    56–59

principes qui déterminent la prospérité des nations, 6 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1815),
I, 187–188.
13. Ibid., IV, 255–261.
14. Ibid., IV, 264.
15. Ibid., IV, 265–281.
16. Ibid., IV, 315.
17. Ibid., IV, 316. On the general contrast between antebellum slavery in
the United States and serfdom in Russia, see Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor:
American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1987), ch. 1.
18. Storch, Cours d’économie, IV, 316–317.
19. See Eltis, “Slave Economies of the Caribbean,” 123.
20. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot et documents le concer-
nant, Gustave Schelle, ed. (Paris: F. Alcan 1913–1923), II, 544–548, 565; III,
373–379; see also, Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics Ronald L. Meek,
ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 37; and Davis, Problem
of Slavery, 427–433. See also Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences,
des arts et des métiers (Geneva, 1776–1779).
21. Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from
Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990).
22. See Daniel P. Resnick, “Political Economy and French Anti-Slavery:
The Case of J.-B. Say,” Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting of the Western
Society of French History, 1975 (n.p.: Western Society for French History,
1976), 177–187, Ruth F. Necheles, The Abbé Grégoire, 1787–1831: The Odyssey
of an Egalitarian (Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1971), 157–164; J. B. Say, An
Economist in Troubled Times. R. R. Palmer, ed. and trans. (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1997), ch. 2.
23. See Say, Economist, 64. Palmer, in emphasizing Say’s anti-slavery at-
titude, writes that as late as 1814, the political economist did not realize that
owning plantations in Virginia entailed slaveholding. For someone who had
been an organizer of the revived Amis des Noirs and a companion of Gré-
goire, this conclusion seems dubious. In his 1817 revision of the Traité
d’économie politique, Say wrote quite casually of slave-grown cotton in Georgia
during the war of 1812.
24. J.-B. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 2 vols. (Paris: Déterville, 1803), I,
bk. I, ch. 28: “Of Colonial Production,” p. 215.
25. Ibid., 219.
26. Ibid., 219–220.
27. Ibid., 221–223.
28. Ibid., 224–225.
29. Ibid., 226–227.
30. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Renouard, 1814), 291.
On the resurgence of the French slave trade in 1814, see Serge Daget, Rep-
ertoire des expéditions negrierès françaises à la traite illégale (Nantes: Société
Française d’histoire d’outre mer, 1988), 1–18.
31. Say, Traite d’économie politique, 3rd ed. (Paris: Déterville, 1817), 277–
283.
32. Say, A Treatise on Political Economy (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees,
1821), 213n.
33. Ibid., 216n., 219n.
34. Adam Hodgson, A Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say on the Comparative

   59–68 253

 Expense of Free and Slave Labour, 2nd ed. (London: Hatchard, 1823), 1. Hodg-
son’s list of supporting authorities were overwhelmingly eighteenth-century
Britons and nineteenth-century foreigners, the latter writing mainly on serf-
dom in Europe (pp. 2–51). Hodgson’s protest was also reprinted in the United
Sates. See Hodgson, Remarks during a Journey through North America . . . (New
York: Samuel Whitney, 1823).
35. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 5th ed. (1826), 360.
36. Ibid., 363. Say’s stronger moral tone may have reflected a small up-
surge in abolitionist agitation and policy in France. See Serge Daget, “The
Abolition of the Slave Trade by France: The Decisive Years, 1826–31,” in
Abolition and Its Aftermath: The Historical Context, 1790–1916, David Richard-
son, ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1985), 141–167; and Lawrence C. Jennings,
French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802–
1848 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 7–17.
37. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 5th ed. (1826), I, 361–362.
38. J.-B. Say, Cours complet d’économie politique pratique, 6 vols. (Paris: Rap-
illy, 1828–1829), II, ch. VI. By the time of his death, Say had traveled far
enough to have his writings presented to the newly formed Société française
pour l’abolition de l’esclavage in its discussions of plans for abolition (April
20, 1835). See Jennings, French Anti-slavery, 64–65. The choice of Say tells
us a good deal about the extreme moderation of the society and of France
in general, in contrast with abolitionists across the channel.
39. See Charles Ganilh, Des Systèmes d’économie politique, 2 vols (Paris:
Xhrouet, 1809), I, 216–226, 255; Ganilh, An Inquiry into the Various Systems
of Political Economy, D. Boileau, trans. (London, 1812), 150; Ganilh, La Théorie
de l’économie politique fondu sur les faits resultans des statistiques de la France et
de l’ Angleterre, 2 vols. (Paris: Déterville, 1815), I, 258, 278, 284–290.
40. Ganilh, Théorie de l’économie, 258.
41. [Herman Merivale] “Senior on Political Economy,” Edinburgh Review
66 (October 1837), 73–102.

Chapter 5
1. See Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and
the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2000), ch. 4.
2. Ibid., 113–114. See also John Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire:
Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Sciences in the Age of Revolution
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 113–114.
3. Drayton, Nature’s Government, 115; Drescher, Econocide, 57–58, 236 n.
10; and above all, Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 1750–1834: The Process
of Amelioration, ch. 4, “New Husbandry.” Sir Joseph Banks, Britain’s most
prestigious naturalist and president of the Royal Society, was skeptically dis-
missive about the possibility of rapidly transforming even the British Carib-
bean into free labor colonies. He was as inclined to patiently await the decline
of British slavery as was his friend Edward Gibbon was to chronicle the mil-
lennial decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Confronted by the unprece-
dented wave of abolitionists’ petitions that swept through Britain in the win-
ter of 1792, Banks preferred a slow death for slavery: “The state of servitude
adopted in this and other European nations is a complex system which in
the end naturally arises out of slavery. We had slaves and no servants in

254    68–74

England 1700 years ago and 1700 years hence the West Indies will be cul-
tivated by free men . . . The motion of it from worse to better is slow but it
is sure . . . let us be contented that we are free here without insisting that all
mankind shall be made free.” John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English
Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1994), 40.
4. See Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 9–12; Thornton, Africa and Africans,
ch. 5. On the pre-Enlightenment era, see “Constructing Race: Differentiating
Peoples in the Early Modern World,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54
(January 1997). On the period under discussion, see inter alia Leon Poliakov,
The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe (New York:
1974), ch. 8; George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European
Racism (New York: 1978); Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas
and Action, 1780–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); Wil-
liam B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks,
1530–1880 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980); Seymour Drescher,
“The Ending of the Slave Trade and the Evolution of European Scientific
Racism,” Social Science History 14: 3 (Fall 1990), 415–450; (reprinted in From
Slavery to Freedom, 275–311).
5. Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), 81; Curtin, “Epidemiology and the Slave
Trade,” Political Science Quarterly 83 (1968), 190–216.
6. See, inter alia, Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, 17–18, 175–177.
7. See Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, 3 vols. (London: T. Lowndes,
1774), 48–56; Barber, African Link, 46–58; Roxanne Wheeler, The Complexion
of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Phila-
delphia: Universtity of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), ch. 4.
8. Barker, African Link, 160.
9. See Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, Vin-
cent Carretta, ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1995). On Equiano’s “African”
identity see Carretta, “Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an
Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity,” Slavery & Abolition 20 December,
1999) 96–106. For a different interpretation of the significance of Equiano’s
book, see Wheeler, Complexion of Race, 260–287. As Barker, African Link, 157,
concludes, “The early stages of abolition pressure revived interest in the the-
ories of Edward Long. But the unfolding controversy circumscribed such the-
oretical racism because the debate over the slave trade never developed into
a debate over the nature of the Negro.”
10. Wilberforce, Letter on Abolition, 54–61; William Wilberforce, An Appeal
to the Religion, Justice and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British Empire in
Behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies (London: J. Hatchard, 1823), 12;
Reverend George Wilson Bridges, A Voice from Jamaica in Reply to W. Wilberforce
(London: Longman, 1823), 17–18; William Sells, Remarks on the Condition of
Slaves in the Island of Jamaica (London: J. M. Richardson, 1823), 25; and the
account of George Thompson’s lecture at Sheffield in the Sheffield Courant,
February 1, 1833. The abolitionists’ own analysis of the significance of West
Indian arguments was best indicated in the amount of space devoted to the
subject in Thomas Clarkson’s History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment
of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, published in 1808, immediately after
the first great victory over the slave interest. Clarkson’s two-volume chro-
nology devoted no space whatsoever to racial arguments as an obstacle to

   74–77 255

 abolition during the two frustrating decades between 1787 and 1807. See
also [James Stephen] “Letter on the Slave Trade,” Edinburgh Review 8 (July,
1806), 358–365.
11. Curtin, Image of Africa, 48–55.
12. Poliakov, Aryan Myth, 181–182, 220.
13. Georges de Cuvier, Le Regne animal: Distribué d’après son organisation
(Paris, 1817), 94; trans. as G. Cuvier, The Animal Kingdom (London: G. Hen-
derson, 1827–1835); See also Curtin, Image of Africa, 235–236.
14. See Curtin, Image of Africa, 229; Seymour Drescher, “The Evolution
of European Scientific Racism,” in From Slavery to Freedom, 275–311.
15. George W. Stocking, Jr., “From Chronology to Ethnology,” in James
Cowles Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Man, G. W. Stocking,
ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), ix.
16. Prichard, Researches, 233. For an extended discussion of the fact that
Prichard dropped this particular conclusion from later editions of his Re-
searches, see Stocking, “From Chronology,” lxv–lxxiii. Researches was published
in 1813, 1826 (2 vols.), and 1836–1847 (5 vols.).
17. Stocking, “From Chronology,” lxvi.
18. Prichard, Researches (1826), I, 241–242; quoted in Curtin, Image of
Africa, 233.
19. See Charles White, An account of the Regular Gradations in Man (Lon-
don, 1799).
20. William Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology (London, 1819).
21. Drescher, From Slavery to Freedom, 292, 297. French racial defenses of
slavery were regarded as being on the same level of absurdity as French
attacks on Adam Smith’s economic principles. See [Henry Broughan] “Exa-
men de l’esclavage,” Edinburgh Review 6 (July 1805), 326–350.
22. “Past and Present State of Haiti,” Quarterly Review 21 (April 1819),
430–460. In Thomas Merton’s popular musical, The Slave (1818, rev. 1826),
the black slave heroine, Zelinada, marries a British captain. Another noble
black tells his audience, “But what land . . . can equal that, which when the
Slave’s foot touches he becomes free!” See Paul Michael Kielstra, “The Politics
of Slave Trade Suppression,” in Britain and France, 1814–48: Diplomacy, Mo-
rality and Economics (London: Macmillan, 2000), 2. Kielstra’s study also abun-
dantly documents the extraordinary difference between British and French
public attitudes toward abolition of the slave trade in the post-Napoleonic
generation.
23. See especially Holt, Problem of Freedom, 50. Expressions of contempt
for blacks continued to appear in every literary format between 1788 and
emancipation, but they had no discernible impact on the course of political
or scientific discussion. See Don Herzog, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower
Orders (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 284–288.
24. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 17 May 14, 1833, col. 1224; vol. 18 (1833),
(May 30, 1833), cols. 145, 230, 318, 329; (June 3, 1833) col. 342; (June 7,
1833) col. 1533.
25. Barker, African Link, 63; Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s
Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1989), ch. 11; Richard B. Sheridan: Doctors and Slaves:
A Medical and Demographic History of the Slavery in the British West Indies,
1680–1834 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), ch. 1; and
Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 19–20.

256    77–82

 26. Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade
(London: Cass., [1788] 1968), ch. V, 49–67.
27. Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the
Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968),
262–264.
28. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves, 125–126 ch. 7; Baker, African Link,
175.
29. Roger N. Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments,
1795–1815 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), 7–8.
30. Wilberforce, Letter on Abolition, 103–110.
31. Stuart J. Woolf, “French Civilization and Ethnicity in the Napoleonic
Empire,” Past and Present, 124 (August 1989), 96–120; Lucien Febvre, “Civi-
lization: Evolution of a Word and Group of Ideas,” in A New Kind of History:
From the Writings of Febvre; Peter Burke, ed., K. Folca, trans. (New York:
Harper & Row, 1973), 219–257.
32. Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, 179.
33. On the continuity of European estimations of African cultural infe-
riority, see William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Re-
sponse to Blacks 1530–1880 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980),
291–292; Curtin, Image of Africa, 479.
34. Drescher, Capitalism and Slavery, 268n.

Chapter 6
1. On the prestige of science in the early nineteenth century, David Brion
Davis discusses the attempt by an abolitionist to forge an antislavery economic
alliance in the decade before British emancipation, when James Cropper of
Liverpool tried to convert most of his East Indian, Liverpool, and Lancashire
associates to the cause. See Slavery and Human Progress, 182–183. Abolitionist
leaders were generally frustrated by their inability to mobilize the bulk of
commercial men, who had no direct interest in the slave system. See Roger
Anstey, “The Pattern of British Abolitionism in the Eighteenth and Nine-
teenth Centuries,” in Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform, Christine Bolt and
Seymour Drescher, eds. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books 1980), 19–42, esp.
25.
2. See, for example, Jonathan Carver, The New Universal Traveler (London,
1779), 607; [Oliver Goldsmith] The Present State of the British Empire in Europe,
America, Africa and Asia (London: W. Griffin, 1768), 332–333. On early visions
of free labor settlements after 1763, see Christopher L. Brown, “Empire with-
out Slaves: British Concepts of Emancipation in the Age of American Revo-
lution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 56:2 (April 1999), 273–306.
3. James Ramsay, Objections to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, With Answers
(Miami, Fla.: [1788] 1969), introduction, 8.
4. James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised
Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 (New York: Africana, 1976);
Mavis Christine Campbell, Back to Africa: George Ross and the Maroons: From
Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1993).
5. Drescher, Econocide, 114–119.
6. Curtin, Image of Africa, 95–97, see also Henry Smeathman, Plan of a
Settlement to Be Made Near Sierra Leone on the Grain Coast of Africa (London,
1786).

   82–91 257

 7. See Granville Sharp, An Account of the Ancient Division of the English
Nation into Hundreds and Tithings . . . Tract III . . . On a Proposal for a Settlement
in Africa (London: Galabin & Baker, 1784), 263–275; Sharp, A Short Sketch of
Temporary Regulations . . . for . . . Sierra Leona 3rd ed. (London and New York:
Negro Universities Press, 1970); see also Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sen-
timents on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human
Species (London: T. Beckett, 1787), 138–141; Christoper Fyfe, A Short History
of Sierra Leone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 43 ff.
8. Drescher, Econocide, 115–117; Parliamentary Register 29 (1791), 575–
853, debate of May 30, 1791.
9. Curtin, Image of Africa, 182, 240–241.
10. Salop County Record Office, Katherine Plymly Diaries 1791–1814, Oc-
tober 20–21 1791; [Mr. Campbell] Reasons Against Giving a Territorial Grant to
Colonize . . . the Peninsula of Sierra Leona (London, 1791), 8–9.
11. See (London) General Evening Post, March 27–29, 1792.
12. See Plymly Diaries, October 20–21, 1791; British Library Add Mss
41262A (Clarkson Papers), letter of Henry Thornton to John Clarkson, De-
cember 30, 1791 (“Duplicate, Private”); Bodleian Library, Oxford, Wilberforce
Papers M.S. Wilberforce, d.15 fol. 19, November 17, 1791. For the related
optimism in the Bulam venture, see PRO 30/8/352, Chatham Papers, fols. 37,
69. On the widespread public perception of Sierra Leone as an experiment in
free labor production, see (London) Diary May 30, 1791; July 18, August 23,
November 1, December 4, 1792; August 16, 1793; (London) General Evening
Post, February 11–14, March 27–29, May 2, 1792; Leeds Mercury, January
21, 1792; Norfolk Chronicle, November 26, 1791; Newcastle Courant, March 3,
17, 1792. Curtin aptly refers to this period as “the first scramble for Africa”
(Image of Africa, 114).
13. Fyfe, Short History of Sierra Leone, 14, 42–43, 72–73, 99–101.
14. PP, 1806–1807 (58), II, 61–69. Sierra Leone: Report from the Committee
to Whom the Petition from the Sierra Leone Company Was Referred, February 3,
1807.
15. See Parliamentary Register 9 (July 5, 1799), 506; 18 (June 11, 1802),
684; new ser. 3 (July 4, 1804), 576; PRO BT6 170 Report of the Court Directors
of the Sierra Leone Company, March 29, 1804 (London: W. Phillips, 1804).
The slave factory on nearby Bance Island also foundered as a result of abo-
litionist policy. See Sheffield City Libraries, Fitzwilliam Papers, F 64–72, Peti-
tions on the Foreign Slave Trade, 1806, (a request for indemnification by
Bance Island investors). See also BL Add Mss, 58,930, Grenville Papers, Cor-
respondence with Windham; Windham to Grenville, May 28, 1806; and
Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats, 130–131. The convergence of slave trade abolition
with the transfer of Sierra Leone to the government’s responsibility had to
remain secret so that it would not be used as an “alma mater” by the anti-
abolitionists. See BL Add Mss, 58,978, Grenville Papers, Correspondence with
Wilberforce, fol. 119, Wilberforce to Grenville, September 20, 1806; 58,978,
Grenville Papers, Correspondence with Auckland, fol. 157 Auckland to Gren-
ville, August 10, 1806; and Christian Observer, 5 (December 1807), 813.
16. See Hansard, vol. 2 (July 9, 1804), col. 962; Parliamentary Register 18
(June 11, 1802), 684ff; June 27 and July 4, 1804); and Hansard, vol. 9 cols.
1001–1005 (July 29, 1807), (debate on the Sierra Leone Company Bill).
17. See Gilbert Franklyn, An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Clarkson’s Essay on the
Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (London, 1789), 207; Cobbett’s

258    91–94

Political Register V (March 24, 1804), 438; Joseph Marryat, Thoughts on the
Report of the Committee of the African Institution (London: J. M. Richardson &
J. Ridgway 1816), 14; Allen and Hanbury’s Archives, Bethnal Green, London,
William Allen’s African Correspondence, Henry Warren Friendly Society of
Sierra Leone to Allen, July 30, 1812; Allen to Paul Cuffee, October 1812;
Warren to Allen, March 12, 1813; PRO CO 267/29, Sierra Leone (1810), fols
154–165.
18. Curtin, Image of Africa, 127. On the colony’s inability to compete with
the slave trade, see PRO CO 267/39 (Sierra Leona/Senegal) Miscellaneous
1814, vol. 2, Africa Committee to Bathurst, June 22, 1814.
19. See William Allen Papers. African Correspondence, Archives of Allen
and Hanberys, Bethnal Green, vol. I, (1812–1814); and Rosalind Cobb Wig-
gins, Captain Paul Cuffee’s Logs and Letter, 1808–1807: A Black Quaker’s “Voice
from Within the Veil” (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996), 405–
413. On Allen as an abolitionist, see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery
in the Age of Revolution 1770–1823 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1975), 242–249.
20. For an illustration of the progressive deterioration of the colony’s
imagined role in Africa, even among sympathetic authors, see the successive
editions of William Guthrie’s generally anti–slave trade textbook, A New Geo-
graphical and Commercial Grammar (London: C. Dilly, 1795) 292; 1801, 823;
1806, 292; 1819, 746; 1843, 653).
21. A long, polemic debate was launched against the company in general
for sanctioning slavery in disguise, and against the Macaulay family in par-
ticular for reaping monopoly profits in Sierra Leone and for stifling trade by
the local inhabitants. See Robert Thorpe, A Letter to William Wilberforce (Lon-
don: F. C. & J. Rivington 1815); William Allen; “African Correspondence,”
p. 75, Henry Warren to William Allen, March 12, 1813; Fyfe, History of Sierra
Leone, 116 ff. On the economic gains to Zachary Macaulay during the early
suppression of the slave trade, see Eltis, Economic Growth, 111, 335, n. 40.
For an extensive sample of the literature of the controversy, see Curtin, Image
of Africa, 275n. 36.
22. Thorpe, Letter to Wilberforce, 111, 119; See Curtin, Image of Africa,
274–275, on the shift away from attempts at plantation development toward
peasant village agriculture and the debate over coerced labor in Sierra Leone.
For the parliamentary dimension, see Hansard, vol. 2 (July 9, 1809), col. 967;
vol. 9 (July 27, 1807) col. 1001; vol. 11 (1811), cols. 740–741; vol. 19 (March
19, 1819), col. 1109. For a careful summary of the controversy over bound
labor in Sierra Leone, see Michael J. Turner, “The Limits of Abolition: Gov-
ernment, Saints and the African Question,” English Historical Review 112
(1997), 319–357.
23. The quotation is from [R. Wilmont Horton] “West India Colonies,”
Quarterly Review 30 (January 1824), 559–587. esp. 572; “The West India
Question,” Quarterly Review, 45 (1831), 209–251; “State and Prospects of
Asia,” Quarterly Review, 63 (March 1839), 369–402, esp. 371; [William Mo-
lesworth] “Sierra Leone: The White Man’s Grave,” Quarterly Review 25 (July
1836), 311–332, esp. 332. Sierra Leone remained fair game for William Cob-
bett’s perennial racial sneers at the peak of antislavery influence, even when
he ran for Parliament during the elections of 1832. Cobbett bowed to “public
opinion” and pledged himself to vote for emancipation. He still felt free, how-
ever, to mock Britain’s West African colony at a mass rally in Manchester,

   94–97 259

 wondering “whether the negroes there will by any means be prevailed upon
to work as hard as you do here” (Manchester Guardian, November 24, 1832).
24. See James Macqueen, The West India Colonies: The Calumnies and Mis-
representations (London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1824); Fyfe, Sierra Leone,
164–165.
25. Kenneth Macaulay, The Colony of Sierra Leone Vindicated from the
Misrepresentations of Mr. Macqueen of Glasgow (London: Cass, 1968), 45–
48.
26. Hansard, 2nd ser. vol. 25 (June 15, 1830), cols. 394–399.
27. Ibid., 399–400; and McCulloch, Dictionary, 994–995. Excess welfare
for blacks was ordinarily not an abolitionist anxiety in relation to Africa or
West Indian slaves. It went against the grain of their preemancipation posi-
tion. Yet it was equally consistent with their fears of postemancipation dis-
incentives to labor. See David Eltis, “Abolitionist Perceptions of Society After
Slavery,” in Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846, James Walvin, ed. (London:
Macmillan, 1982), 194–213.
28. Hansard, 2nd ser., vol. 25 (June 15, 1830), col. 401.
29. See David Patrick Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Oc-
cupation of St. Domingue, 1793–1798 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982);
Michael Duffy, “The French Revolution and British Attitudes to the West In-
dian Colonies,” in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater
Caribbean ed. David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus, eds. (Blooming-
ton, University of Indiana Press, 1997), 78–101. One abolitionist protested,
in vain, against reenslavement. See Duke University Library (Wilberforce Mss),
Granville Sharp to W. Wilberforce, June 4, 1795.
30. Annual Register . . . For 1803 (London, 1805), 335; cited in David Geg-
gus, “British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti, 1791–1805,” in Slavery and
British Society, 123–149, n. 91.
31. The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies (London; J. Hatchard, 1802), 191 (em-
phasis in the original). A decade later, Stephen again publicly rejected the
idea of free labor superiority in the West Indies. See also Geggus, “British
Opinion and Haiti,” in 123–149.
32. Letter, Banks to Wilberforce, November 20, 1815, quoted in Gascoigne,
Joseph Banks, 41. St. Domingue, however, always remained the prime example
of servile revolution. See the parliamentary discussion of the Barbados in-
surrection of 1816 in Hansard, vol. 34 (1816), June 19, col. 1188.
33. “Past and Present State of Haiti,” Quarterly Review 21 (April 1819),
430–460.
34. Hansard, 2nd ser. (1823), col. 264; 3rd ser., vol. 3 (1830–1831), col.
1414. Recent historical demography has tended to confirm the relatively
higher mortality on New World sugar plantations than in other forms of
slave labor. See Higman, Slave Populations, 374–378. See also Stanley L. En-
german and B. W. Higman, “The Demographic Structure of the Caribbean
Slave Societies in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in General History
of the Caribbean, Vol. III, Slave Societies of the Caribbean, Franklin W. Knight,
ed. (London: UNESCO, 1997), 45–104, esp. 91–96; but for the American
South, see Richard H. Steckel, “Work, Disease, and Diet in the Health and
Mortality of American Slaves,” Without Consent or Contract, Conditions of Slave
Life . . . Technical Papers, II, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, eds. (New
York: Norton, 1992), 489–507, esp. 496. Note that James Stephen hoped to
balance free labor’s economic disadvantage by demographic advantage. See

260    97–102

Stephen, The Opportunity, or Reasons for an Immediate Alliance with St. Domingo
(London: J. Hatchard, 1804), 18–21.
35. See David Geggus, “Haiti and the Abolitionists: Opinion Propaganda
and International Politics in Britain and France, 1804–1838,” in Abolition and
Its Aftermath: The Historical Context, 1790–1916, David Richardson, ed. (Lon-
don: Cass, 1985), 113–140. The campaign to abolish slavery briefly gave Haiti
central importance in the debate over emancipation (p. 129). “Haiti” in the
mid-1820s came into play as the sole free black and sovereign polity in the
Americas and “St. Domingue” continued to be invoked as the last word in
massacre and bloodshed. Hansard, 2nd ser., vol. 9 (May 15 1823), col. 264;
vol. 14 (March 7, 1826), col. 1172 and 3rd ser., vol. 1 (December 20, 1830–
1831), col. 1353.
36. Compare [Wilmot-Horton] “West India Colonies,” 572–574; and
[Howard Douglas], “The West India Question,” Quarterly Review 45 (1831),
209–251; with [T. B. Macaulay or Henry Brougham] “State of Haiti,” Edin-
burgh Review 41 (1825), 497–507: Haiti “experimentally” showed the effects
of emancipation in its population profile.
37. See James Macqueen, West India Colonies, 201.
38. [Douglas] “The West India Question,” relying on Makenzie’s Notes on
Haiti, (London: H. Colburn & R. Bently, 1830), concluded that the Rural Code
fell “little short of slavery.”
39. Anti-Slavery Reporter 23 (April 30, 1827), 356. See also The Petition
and memorial of the Planters of Demerara and Berbice on the Subject of Manu-
mission, Examined (London, 1827), 41. Historians of slavery who hypothesized
that British antislavery suppressed public awareness of evils closer to home
may have been looking for evidence in the wrong sector of the economy—
in the emerging labor conditions of the Industrial Revolution. Those “new”
metropolitan ills were persistently targeted by West Indians and urban radi-
cals alike. The increasing number of English women and children pushed
into mines, mills, factories, and workhouses did not go unnoticed. Nor did
the large numbers of men, women, and children pushed from their homes
and fields in Scotland. If the debate over slavery omitted any aspect of met-
ropolitan labor relations, it concerned the mechanisms for enforcing labor
contracts of free-born English agricultural laborers. The most “traditional” of
labor coercions was the least directly targeted abuse in the long debate over
slavery. Significantly, the debate over colonial slavery did not lead to a con-
certed ideological attack against the elaborate provisions in English law to
prevent servants, especially in agriculture, from leaving their masters before
the terms of their service had expired. Even the slave interest’s long litany of
metropolitan ills failed to highlight the penal sanctions available to employers
against laborers in Britain. The tactical reason for their omissions seems clear:
had slaveholders concentrated on those sanctions, abolitionists would have
pounced on the differences between the sanctions and the array of uncon-
tracted powers used by planters against their chattels. Abolitionists would
have challenged West Indian planters to contract their power to match met-
ropolitan legal standards. On the other hand, abolitionists who were seeking
to stress the chasm between overseas slaves and domestic freemen rarely
wanted to call attention to the very ancient fact that some British workers
were still answerable with their bodies for breaching their labor agreements.
40. Wilberforce, quoted by Geggus, “Haiti and the Abolitionists,” 133; and
Clarkson to Z. Macaualay, December 5, 1827, Huntington Mss, Clarkson Pa-

   102–103 261

 pers, MY146. Hodgson, in his Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say, also omitted
reference to Haiti’s economic performance.
41. Hansard, 3rd ser, vol. 18 (June 7, 1833), col. 488.
42. Ibid., cols. 355, 527–529. The Times (June 10, 1833) also editorialized
that St. Domingue’s withdrawal from the sugar market was no satisfactory
model for Britain.
43. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 18 (1833), cols. 329, 527; vol. 17 (May 14,
1833), col. 1217.

Chapter 7
1. Hansard, vol. 9 (March 16, 1807). col. 125.
2. Ibid., 125.
3. Hibbert’s letter of July 8, 1823, quoted in the Times, December 1, 1823.
For similar requests for single-island experiments by an antiemancipationist
sitting in Parliament, see the intervention of Admiral I. Coffin on April 18,
1826, also quoted in the Times April 19, 1826.
4. Wilberforce, Letter on Abolition, 103–253, on population. On economic
efficiency and security, see pp. 253–254 and 321–30.
5. Ibid., 104 (emphasis in the original).
6. Ibid., 254. On the debate over efficiency, see Stanley L. Engerman and
David Eltis, “Economic Aspects of the Abolition Debate,” in Anti-Slavery, Re-
ligion and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey, Christine Bolt and Sey-
mour Drescher, eds. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1980), 284–285; Jonathan A.
Glickstein, Concepts of Free Labor in Antebellum America (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1991); Davis, Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823
346–354; Howard Temperley, “Capitalism, Slavery and Ideology,” Past and
Present 75 (1977), 94–118; “Anti-Slavery as a Form of Cultural Imperialism,”
in Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform, 335–350; Eltis, Economic Growth, 20–24.
7. Wilberforce, Letter on Abolition, 257; Hansard (March 17, 1807), cols.
142–146.
8. Henry Brougham, An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European
Powers, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: D. Wilson, 1803), 2: 60–140, 310–314; and Wil-
berforce, Letter on Abolition, 259.
9. See Howard Temperley, “Capitalism, Slavery and Ideology,” Past and
Present 75 (1977), 94–118; and Thomas C. Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race,
Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992), 33–53.
10. Dean Tucker, Reflections on . . . the Dispute Between Great Britain and
Ireland (Dublin: R. Marchbank, 1785), quoted in F. O. Shyllon, James Ramsay:
The Unknown Abolitionist (Edinburgh: Cannongate, 1977), 77.
11. Drescher, Econocide, 76–83, 114–119.
12. See Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, 243; J. Stephen, Crisis of the
Sugar Colonies (London: J. Hatchard, 1802), 185–189. Stephen’s estimates of
St. Domingue’s production under Toussaint L’Ouverture are still regarded as
reliable. See Mats Lundahl, “Toussaint L’Ouverture and the War Economy of
Saint-Domingue, 1796–1802,” Slavery and Abolition 6 (1985), 122–138. News
of the Trinidad experiment reached the United States in time to be noted in
the debate over the abolition of the American slave trade. The anti-British
Republican editor, Benjamin Franklin Bache, used it as a stick to belabor
hypocrites who would produce mortality among “free labourers” at a rate

262    103–109

“ten times more dreadful” on those islands because of the change from “the
hardy robust and unsusceptible [sic] African to the frail Asiatic.” Quoted from
the Aurora, December 23, 1806, by Matthew E. Mason, “Slavery Over-
shadowed: Congress Debates Prohibiting The Atlantic Slave Trade to the
United States, 1806–07,” Journal of the Early Republic 20 (Spring 2000), 59–
81. My thanks to Van Beck Hall for bringing this article to my attention. On
the results of the experiment, see B. W. Higman, “The Chinese in Trinidad,
1806–1838,” Caribbean Studies 12 (1972), 21–44.
13. Hansard, vol. 19 (April 4, 1811), cols. 710–711.
14. See [James Macqueen] The West India Colonies: The Calumnies and Mis-
representations . . . by the Edinburgh Review, Mr. Clarkson, Mr. Cropper, etc. (Lon-
don: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1824), ch. 6: “Mr. Clarkson and the [Edinburgh]
Reviewer’s statement of the success of free labour by emancipated slaves ex-
amined and refuted,” esp. 165–168. Macqueen regarded the American and
Chinese immigrations as analogous.
15. See Letters on the Necessity of a Prompt Extinction of British Colonial
. . . Plus Thoughts on Compensation (London: Hatchard, 1826), 12–67.
16. Macqueen, West India Colonies, 175n. (emphasis is in the original). One
other remote “experiment” within the British orbit received passing notice by
the Parliamentary Extinction of Slavery Committee in 1832. John McGregor,
the author of a chapter on refugee blacks in a book on Canada [British
America (London: T. Cadell, 1830), ch. xiv] offered ammunition to opponents
of emancipation with his description of “indolence” among the Nova Scotian
blacks. McGregor thought it would require three generations to create habits
of labor. On the prominence given to Clarkson’s experimental arguments, see
Times, May 15, 1823. See also [Brougham] “Negro Improvement and Eman-
cipation,” Edinburgh Review 39 (October 1823), 118–140; “Pamphlets on Slav-
ery,” Westminster Review 1 (1824), 337–369; “Conditions of the Negroes in
Our Colonie,” Quarterly Review 29 (1823), 476–508; [J. R. Wilmot-Horton]
“West India Colonies,” Quarterly Review 30 (1824), 559–587; [Howard Doug-
las] Quarterly Review 45 (1831), 209–251.
17. Dickson, Mitigation of Slavery, xiii (emphasis in the original).
18. Ibid., 118, 125, 134, 283, for quotations in both preceding paragraphs
(emphasis in the original).
19. Ibid., 28; Macqueen, West India Colonies, 213.
20. Macqueen, West India Colonies, 212.
21. For a similar emphasis by a critic of abolitionists, see the Reverend
John Hampden, A Commentary on Mr. Clarkson’s Pamphlet, entitled Thoughts,
etc. (London, 1824), 22–27.
22. [Clarkson] Review of the Quarterly Review (London: Hatchard, 1824),
50.
23. See A Short Review of the Slave Trade and Slavery, with Considerations
on the Benefit Which Would Arise by Cultivating Tropical Productions by Free
Labor (Birmingham: Beilby, Knott & Beilby, 1827), 92.
24. On the Dutch evaluation of the commissioners’ early work, see Public
Record Office, CO 111/87, communication from Gildemeester, Westrick and
Vaillant, of the Dutch Berbice Company, to the Dutch ambassador, forwarded
to Lord Bathurst. The abolitionists believed that they could demonstrate to
slaveholders that gentler treatment could be made to pay (CO 111/78, Trea-
sury minute, July 22, 1811.
25. On the commission reports, see Public Record Office, CO 318/89, Bur-

   109–114 263

 dett and Kinchela, of the Parliamentary Commission to Bathurst, August 18,
1826; and PP, 1825, XXV, 476, Further papers . . . Berbice. The colonial sec-
retary issued a general dispatch to all West Indian governors in March 1831,
ordering the enfranchisement of all crown slaves. For Hume’s indictment of
the Saint’s demographic deficit, see Morning Chronicle, June 8, 1833.
26. See Report from the Committee of Warehouses of the United East India
Company Relative to the Price of Sugar (London, 1792), 19–20.
27. For suppliers of cotton to Britain between 1820 and 1833, see Edward
Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain 2nd ed. (London: H.
Fisher, 1835, 2nd ed. New York: A. M. Kelly, 1966), 309. In 1823, the year
of the gradual emancipation motion, India and Mauritius accounted for 8
percent of British cotton imports, the United States for 74 percent. In the
year of the emancipation bill of 1833, India and Mauritius accounted for 11
percent of British cotton imports, with 78 percent from the United States.
28. See Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, 78–79, 215–217, n. 45–47.
29. The standard argument was that West Indian pamphleteers would
demonstrate widespread slavery in British India by means of official East India
Company documents. The British Anti-Slavery Society would respond by not-
ing that the agriculture of the principal sugar-producing region (Bengal) was
conducted by free labor: “They [the West Indians] might with equal conclu-
siveness prove that corn is grown in Britain by slave labour, because there
happen to be slaves in Russia.” Even Joseph Hume, the gadfly of abolitionists
in Parliament on all questions of free labor superiority, stated from personal
experience that there were no agricultural slaves in Bengal. The Antislavery
Reporter predicted the rapid replacement of slave-grown cane sugar by the
free labor of Bengal etc and elsewhere. See the series of editorials and letters
in the Times, August 8, September 4, October 10, and October 14, 1829.
30. Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 180–182.
31. Hansard, 2nd ser. vol. 9 (May 22, 1823), cols. 444–467, esp. 450.
32. Ibid., cols. 457–459.
33. Ibid., cols. 463–466. Between the beginning of the abolitionist move-
ment and slave trade abolition, India’s share of Britain’s cotton imports
dropped from one-third to one-sixteenth. See Drescher, Econocide, 85.
34. See Short Review of the Slave Trade, 100–103.
35. See Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848
(London: Verso, 1988), 331–380; Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin
America and the Caribbean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 250–
252.
36. See John V. Lombardi, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in
Venezuela, 1820–1854 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1971), 164–165, tables 1
and 2.
37. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 17 (May 14, 1833), cols. 1218–1220 (Stanley).
38. Ibid., vol. 18 (June 7, 1833), col. 462 (Hume); Lombardi, Decline and Ab-
olition of Negro Slavery, 123, sets the slave percentage at around 3–7 percent dur-
ing the period before British emancipation. In 1833 the British set the approxi-
mate number of Venezuelan slaves at around 100,000, 10 percent of
Venezuela’s total population at the onset of emancipation in 1821. Lombardi
sets the Venezuelan slave population at 40 percent less, or 60,000 (p. 35).
39. Hanasard, 3rd ser., vol. 18 (June 7 1833), cols. 462–463. One anti-
emancipationist MP asserted that there were only five or six sugar estates

264    114–119

operating in Venezuela, all using slaves: vol. 18, (May 30), col. 156 (Patrick
Stewart).
40. On Hume’s motion, see ibid, cols. 458–507. See also Morning Chronicle,
June 8, 1833. On the contradictory evidence, see PP. XX, Report from the Select
Committee on the Extinction of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, 1831–
1832, pp. 549–553, printed August 11, 1832. Compare the testimony of Ad-
miral Charles Fleming, July 4, 1832, pp. 205–208, with that of Bryan Adams,
August 3, 1832 pp. 443–449: For the confusion and skepticism about Vene-
zuala, compare the Morning Chronicle’s editorials of May 15, May 30, and
June 1, 1833.

Chapter 8
1. See Roger Anstey, “The Pattern of British Abolitionism in the Eigh-
teenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform, Chris-
tine Bolt and Seymour Drescher, eds. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon 1980), 19–
42; Anstey, “Parliamentary Reform, Methodism and Anti-Slavery Politics
1829–33,” Slavery and Abolition 2 (December 1981), 209–226; Davis, Slavery
and Human Progress, ch. 6; Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, 144–151. In
1823, the duration of British slavery was still estimated in multigenerational
perspective. The editors of the Times (November 21, 1823) anticipated its end
within the lifetime of their children.
2. Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British
West Indies, ch. 12.
3. Globe, January 25, 1833. Five years later, it was reported that most of
Crawford’s laborers continued to work in the fields after they had been freed.
See Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey, The West Indies in 1837, Being the
Journal of a Visit to Antigua, Montserrat, etc. (London: Cass, 1968), 46; Sey-
mour Drescher, From Slavery to Freedom, 418–419.
4. See Anstey, “Pattern of British Abolitionism”; Josiah Condor, Wages or
the Whip (London: Hatchard, 1833); Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 189,
214–222; Holt, Problem of Freedom, 48–53.
5. George Thompson, Speech on British Colonial Slavery . . . at . . . Manches-
ter, 13 August 1832 (London: Hatchard, 1832) (emphasis in the original). In
the course of his formal lectures, Thompson assured his listeners that abo-
lition would greatly increase exports.
6. Grey Papers, 3rd Earl, Slavery Papers, 66, Howick MS Journal, March
16, 1833 ff; cited in Anstey, “The Pattern,” 29 and 38m.42. See especially
Peter F. Dixon, “The Politics of Emancipation: The Movement for the Abolition
of Slavery in the British West Indies, 1807–1833,” D. Phil, Oxford University,
Oxford, 1971, 280–310; for explicit abolitionist threats to initiate their own
motion in Parliament, see (London) Standard, May 14, 1833.
7. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 17 (May 14, 1833), col. 1211.
8. Ibid., vol. 18 (June 3, 1833), col. 350, quoting Buxton in 2nd ser., vol.
9 (1823), col. 265.
9. The parliamentary committee on slavery with the greatest abolitionist
representation was the Select Committee on the Extinction of Slavery
throughout the Colonies (see above chapter 7, note 39). The Lords’ Committee
on the West Indies was more hostile to abolitionism than the House of Com-
mons’. See Dixon, “Politics of Emancipation,” 309. On the acceptance of the

   119–125 265

 experimentalist perspective, see, the Standard, June 5, 1833; Globe, May 11,
June 8, September 3, 1833; Morning Herald, May 30, 1833; Morning Post,
August 31, 1833.
10. Admiral Fleming testified to the Extinction Committee that Haitians
worked entirely without compulsion and that Haiti’s standard of living and
contentment was higher than Jamaica’s. Opponents of emancipation argued
that Haitians would not cultivate cane and that metropolitan labor worked
in worse conditions than those of Caribbean slaves. Fleming also testified that
Cuban free laborers worked in the sugar industry. See Report of the . . . Com-
mittee on the Extinction, 212–213; 227, 503, publicized by Condor in Wages or
the Whip, appendix.
11. Select Committee on the Commercial State of the West India Colonies,
PP, 1831–1832, printed April 15, 1832, summary, 21–22. On the process of
amelioration, see Ward, British West Indian Slavery 1750–1834, passim; Mary
Turner, “Chattel Slaves into Wage Slaves: A Jamaican Case Study,” in Malcolm
Cross and Gad Heuman, eds., Labour in the Caribbean (London: Macmillan
Caribbean, 1988) 14–31.
12. Select Committee, 15–22.
13. See Ralph Davis, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade
(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979).
14. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 19 (July 24, 1833) cols. 1197–1198; 18 vol.
(June 3, 1833), cols. 339–340; vol. 20 (August 12, 1833), cols. 518–519; see
also, Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 214.
15. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 19 (July 26, 1833) col. 1264 (Colonel Torrens);
vol. 18 (June 25, 1833), col. 1172 (Lord Ripon); and vol. 20 (August 12, 1833),
col. 510 (Lord Belmore).
16. See Jamaica Archives B/5/14/6, William Burge Letters, Committee of
Correspondence, Out-Letter Book, March 7 and October 19, 1833. (From
notes of Stanley Engerman, kindly provided to the author.)
17. See J. R. Wilmot-Horton, Speech in the House of Commons 6 March
1828, with Notes and an Appendix (London, 1828), appendix B, 73; Alexander
MacDonnell Considerations on Negro Slavery (London, 1824), 62–68.
18. See the Morning Herald, May 30, 1833; “Prospects of the Coloured
Race,” Westminster Review 20 (January 1834), 168–178; and “Civilization of
Africa,” Westminster Review 15 (October 1831), 506–512.
19. Holt, Problem of Freedom, 33–50. See also the collection of plans for
emancipation and supplementary legislation, PRO CO 320/8, CO 320/9, and
CO 323/55, including manuscript and printed projects, law officers’ opinions
on colonial legislation, vagrancy laws, and so on.
20. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 18 (June 3, 1833), cols. 341–342.
21. Ibid., cols. 349–350. For a parallel view by the Duke of Wellington,
Tory leader in the House of Lords, see vol. 18 (August 12, 1833), col. 520;
ibid., vol. 19 (August 12, 1833), col 357; vol. 18 (June 3, 1833), col. 338; and
vol. 19 (July 30, 1833), col. 136. See also H. L. Malchow, “Frankenstein’s
Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Past and Present
139 (1993), 90–130.
22. See Higman Slave Population, 31, 307, 311, 374–378.
23. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 19 (July 24, 1833), col. 1203–1209.
24. A planter’s witness, when asked to speculate on the time necessary
to reach a natural increase after the end of the slave trade, estimated the
turn-around period at thirty to forty years. See PP, 1831–1832 XX, Commer-

266    125–130

cial Committee Report, February 4, 1832, testimony of Hugh Hyndman, p. 99.
quest. 789.
25. See PP, 1831–1832 “Extinction Committee,” 292, 503; Hansard, 3rd
ser., vol. 9 (July 5, 1833), col. 227.
26. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol 18 (June 7, 1833), cols. 332–336; 338.
27. On criticism of antislavery in the name of the working class, see Cob-
bett’s speech, reported in the Manchester Guardian, September 8, 1832; Sey-
mour Drescher, “Cart Whip and Billy Roller: Anti-Slavery Symbolism in In-
dustrializing Britain,” Journal of Social History 15 (1981), 1–24. Patricia Hollis,
“Anti-Slavery and British Working-Class Radicalism in the years of Reform,”
in Anti-Slavery Religion and Reform, Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher, eds.
(Folkstone, Eng,: Dawson, 1980), 294–315.
28. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 18 (May 31, 1833), cols. 229–230; (June 7,
1833), cols. 472–485.
29. Ibid. (June 3, 1833), cols. 327–330.
30. Ibid. (June 7, 1833), cols. 476–477.
31. Alexander MacDonnell, Considerations on Negro Slavery (London,
1824), 63, 69; Gilbert Mathison, A Critical View of the West India Question . . .
Addressed to the Right Hon. Robert Wilmot Horton (London, 1827), 77–78 (em-
phasis in the original).
32. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 17 (May 14, 1833), cols. 1233–1259.
33. Ibid. vol. 19 (July 24, 1833), col. 1064.
34. Ibid. (July 25, 1833), cols. 1264–1265.
35. Ibid. col. 1264. In Australia, Alexander Harris assessed the cost of
convict labor at about half that of free labor. In terms of efficiency, “between
the fear of being flogged and the hope of getting a little indulgence . . . their
labour was nearly equal.” Supporters of free labor superiority were in the
minority. See A.G.L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies: A Study of Penal Trans-
portation from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia and Other Parts of the British
Empire (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), 221.
36. Hansard, 3rd ser. vol. 18 (June 7, 1833), cols. 459–471.
37. Ibid., cols. 471–491.
38. Ibid. (June 10, 1833), col. 539; vol. 19 (July 24, 1833), col. 1199. On
British emancipation as the world’s showcase experiment for ending slavery,
see also the Manchester Guardian, May 18, 1833.
39. Times, May 15, 1823 (emphasis in the original).
40. Ibid. May 16, May 23, May 28, May 30, June 10, June 12, June 13,
September 3, 1833.
41. See B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 582, 587, 605. At the end of the Napoleonic wars,
Patrick Colquhoun estimated the total value of the British slave colonies at
£145 million. Just before the final wave of abolitionist agitation in 1831, the
Quarterly Review vol 45 (1831) set the value at £140 million. Since slaves
were the principal baseline for calculating the value of West Indian property,
the decline of their numbers entailed a decline in total capital. If one assumes
a value of roughly £130 million in 1833, the compensation fund of £20
million amounted to about 40 percent of the market value of the slaves and
15 percent of the value of the total plantations’ capital. Fogel and Engerman
estimate that British taxpayers, British consumers, and West Indian planters
probably bore the principal economic costs of emancipation. They do not
attempt to break down the shares of each group. See Drescher, Econocide, 23–

   130–136 267

 24, for estimates of West Indian capital before 1812; Quarterly Review 45
(1831) for estimated value at the time of emancipation; and R. W. Fogel and
S. L. Engerman, “Philanthropy at Bargain Prices: Notes on the Economics of
Gradual Emancipation,” in Without Consent or Contract: Conditions of Slave Life
and the Transition to Freedom; Technical Papers, 2 vols., Robert William Fogel
and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. (New York: Norton, 1992), II, 587–605. For
echoes of the debate over compensation in the elite press, see, the Morning
Post, May 31, 1833; Manchester Guardian and Morning Chronicle, May 13,
1833; Morning Herald June 13, 1833; Examiner, June 2, 1833 and June 30,
1833; Westminster Review 18 (1833); Times, May 28, 1833.
42. See Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, 119; 254, n. 50; 263, n. 87.
43. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 19 (July 24, 1833), cols, 1195–1199.
44. Ibid., 1198.
45. Times, June 12 and 13, 1833 (emphasis in the original).
46. See Eltis, “Abolitionist Perceptions of Society after Slavery,” 195–213.
47. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 17 (May 14, 1833) cols. 1231–1232; 1245–1246;
vol. 18 (June 10, 1833), cols. 539, 546; vol. 19 (July 22, 1833), cols. 1068–
1069.
48. Ibid., vol. 19 (June 10, 1833), col. 539.
49. See the Edinburgh Review 46 (October 1827); Westminster Review 11
(1829) and 18 (1833), 263–287; Quarterly Review 45 (1831); Burge Papers,
May 4, June 13, and August 8, 1833; Morning Post, May 15, 1833; Morning
Chronicle, May 13, 1833; Spectator, May 31, 1833; Manchester Guardian, June
18, 1833; Times, July 4, 1833.
50. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 16 (March 6, 1833) cols. 324–331; vol. 18 (June
7, 1833), col. 461. The motion to lower the East Indian sugar duty to the
West Indian level was defeated by a ten-to-one margin.
51. Ibid., vol. 18 (June 4, 1833), col. 331.
52. Ibid., vol. 17 (May 14, 1833), col. 1210; vol. 18 (June 7, 1833), col.
504; (June 10, 1833), cols. 312, 581; (May 31, 1833), col. 232; vol. 19 (August
12, 1833), col. 524; (July 10, 1833); vol. 18 (June 3, 1833), cols. 329, 355.
53. Ibid., vol. 20 (August 1, 1833), col. 259; (August 19, 1833), cols. 754–
756. As soon as Stanley made his opening presentation, the Spectator, May
25, 1833, saw that the emancipation would lead to the indefinite postpone-
ment of liberalization of the sugar duties. See also the Times, July 4, 1833.
The Quarterly Review 45 (1831) had also forecast increased protection years
before the bill.
54. See note 12 above.
55. See the Morning Post, May 31, 1833; Manchester Guardian, June 8,
1833.
56. Times, September 3, 1833.
57. Ibid.
58. Globe, September 3, 1833. In general the press response to Welling-
ton’s protest followed party lines. Compare the (Tory) Morning Post’s dismissal
of “the cockney leader-writer of the Times” and the equally antagonistic Liv-
erpool Standard September 6, 1833 (referring to the “trash” of the “leading
journal”), with that of the Whig Sheffield Courant of the same day.
59. See Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 221; Times, June 13, 1833;
September 27, 1833; January 24, 1834.
60. For continuous press reminders of the uncertainty about potential
increases in productivity or of labor withdrawal, see the Times, October 20,

268    136–142

1832; May 16, May 30, June 10, June 12, June 13, September 3, and Septem-
ber 23, 1833; Spectator, May 18 and 25, 1833; Manchester Guardian, May 18,
1833 (“but who will make this ill-advised experiment?”), Examiner, May 19,
1833; Westminster Review 18 (1833), 121–122. What the press hoped for was
either a projected net balance in favor of efficient free labor or a total Carib-
bean product that would not fall off too much, offset by supplementary
growth from East Indian labor.
61. William A. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and
the Great Experiment 1830–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 119
and n.

Chapter 9
1. Joseph John Gurney, A Winter in the West Indies, Described in Familiar
Letters to Henry Clay of Kentucky (London: J. Murray, 1840), introduction,
113, 240–244.
2. A lecture by Captain Charles Stuart in Berbice, British Guiana, 1839,
PRO CO, 111/165, quoted in Green, British Slave Emancipation, 191 and
note.
3. See W. L. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies
(London: J. Cape, [1937]/1970), ch. IV; Green, British Slave Emancipation, ch.
5; and J. R. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 1750–1834: The Process of Ame-
lioration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 235–236.
4. Alexis de Tocqueville, “On the Emancipation of Slaves,” in Tocqueville
and Beaumont on Social Reform, Seymour Drescher, ed. (New York: Harper &
Row, 1968), 148, 153, 154. Insofar as physical flight indicated a comparatively
desirable environment, the small black migratory flow in the Caribbean was
from the Dutch and French slave labor areas to the British colonies. Eman-
cipation was also perceived as giving a strategic advantage to Britain. During
the Anglo-French war scare of 1840, the French islands were judged to be
at risk. Despite the frequency of industrial disputes, the success of emanci-
pation as an experiment in nonlethal social change was proverbial, at least
until the shock of the Morant Bay uprising in 1865.
5. Kathleen Mary Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Bar-
bados, 1823–1843 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina
Press, 1995), chs. 2 and 3. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 234.
6. Green, British Slave Emancipation, 223–224.
7. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 243–249; Green, British Slave Eman-
cipation, 305–307.
8. Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey, The West Indies in 1837 (London:
Hamilton, Adams, 1838), Pt.1. The planters, of course, vigorously disputed
the figures used by abolitionists both within and outside Parliament to sup-
port assertions that Antigua had actually increased production under free
labor. See, for example, Letter of “a West Indian, Connected with Antigua,”
November 28, 1837, in the Times, November 29, 1837.
9. See Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 233–234.
10. PP, 1836 XV, Negro Apprenticeship, Report, printed August 13, 1836,
8; and Burn, Emancipation, 337–338. For individual colonies, see Ward, British
West Indian Slavery, and Green, British Slave Emancipation.
11. Sturge and Harvey, West Indies, 183–184, 229–231, 243–245.
12. Ibid., 229–231, 243–245.

   142–150 269

 13. See Lawrence C. Jennings, French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the
Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802–1848 (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), ch. 5.
14. Based on a calculation of antislavery titles published each year in
Britain between the 1780s and the 1840s, David Turley identifies quite high
peaks in 1838 and 1840, coinciding with the antiapprenticeship campaign
and the first World Anti-Slavery Convention: The Culture of English Antislavery
1780–1860 (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 50–51. On the overseas
impact of British antislavery in the 1830s, see Christopher Schmidt-Nowara,
Empire and Slavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833–1874 (Pittsburgh: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1999); Joäo Pedro Marques, Os Sons do Silêncio:
O Portugal de Oitocentos e a Aboliçäo do Tráfico de Escravos (Lisbon: Instituto do
Ciências Sociais, 1999), ch. 4; Jordi Maluquer de Motes, “Abolicionismo y
resistencia a la abolición en la España del seglo XIX,” Anuario de Estudiós
Americanos 43 (1986), 311–331; Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian
Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil and the Slave Trade Question, 1807–1869 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970); David R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Brit-
ain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1980).
15. See William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay
1776–1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 308–352. Ironically,
for the 1830s, more American than British antislavery petitions have sur-
vived. See Legislative Papers, 24th Cong., 1 sess., RG 233 (House Petitions),
RG 36 (Senate Petitions), National Archives, Washington, D.C.
16. See Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention Called by the Brit-
ish and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, held in London from Friday June 12 to
Tuesday June 23, 1840 (London, 1841), 334–443 (7th and 8th days). On the
organization and significance of the convention, see above all Howard Tem-
perley, British Antislavery 1833–1870 (London: Longman, 1972), 85–92, 192–
193.
17. Proceedings, 335–336.
18. Ibid., 335–363.
19. Ibid., 396–397.
20. Ibid., 405.
21. Ibid, 405–406. On Turnbull’s role in La Escalera, see Robert L. Pa-
quette, Sugar Is Made With Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict
Between Empires Over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univer-
sity Press, 1988), 132ff.
22. Proceedings, 411–412.
23. Ibid., 412.
24. Ibid., 416–429.
25. See Madhavi Kale, Fragments of Empires: Capital, Slavery, and Indian
Indentured Migration in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1988), 112–113.
26. Richard B. Allen, “The Mascarene Slave Trade During the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries,” ms. presented May 2000 to the workshop in Slave
Systems in Asia and the Indian Ocean. I thank Richard Allen for bringing
this paper to my attention. See also Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Set-
tlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834–1874 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1995), ch. 1.
27. Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, 13–14; Anthony J. Barker, Slavery

270    151–154

and Antislavery in Mauritius, 1810–33: The Conflict Between Economic Expansion
and Humanitarian Reform Under British Rule (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1996)
155–159; Temperley, British Antislavery, 33–34; 74.
28. Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, 14–19.
29. Ibid., 19–21.
30. Barker, Slavery and Antislavery, 153–155.
31. Kale, Fragments of Empire, 12–126.
32. Ibid., 79–108.
33. The Times, an acknowledged weathervane of public opinion, was un-
equivocally supportive of the abolitionists. It fully publicized the abuses of the
“Hill Coolies” in Demerara; it attacked the liberal Whig government for insid-
iously fostering and encouraging the “East India traffic in human beings”
because of the “alleged deficiency of free labour”, described their sufferings
as “worse, it seems, than those of the Africans in the middle passage”; and
it boasted of its modest role in halting the traffic (see Times, July 12, 1838,
4–5; July 13, 1838; July 29, 1839).

Chapter 10
1. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 238–239.
2. Carter, Servants, 14–22; Green, British Slave Emancipation, ch. 7.
3. Green, British Slave Emancipation, 170–173, 190–199, quotation 199.
On the causes of the labor crisis after freedom, see O. Nigel Bolland, “Systems
of Domination After Slavery,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23
(1981), 591–619; William Green, “The Perils of Comparitive History,” Com-
parative Studies in Society and History, 26 (1984), 112–119; Bolland, “Reply to
William A. Green,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26 (1984), 120–
25; Douglas Hall, “Flight from Estates Reconsidered: The British West Indies,
1838–1842,” Journal of Caribbean History 10 and 11 (1978), 7–24; Swithin
Welmot, “Emancipation in Action: Workers and Wage Conflict in Jamaica,
1838–1840,” Jamaica Journal 19:3 (1986), 55–62; Kathleen E. A. Monteith,
“Emancipation and Labour on Jamaican Coffee Plantations,” Slavery and Ab-
olition 21:3 (December 2000), 125–135.
4. [John Barrow] “The Foreign Slave Trade,” Quarterly Review 55 (1835–
1836), 250–285; “State and Prospects of Asia,” Quarterly Review 63 (1839),
369–402. [Herman Merivale] “Colonel Flinter’s Account of Porto Rico,” Ed-
inburgh Review 60 (1835), 328–337; [James Spedding] “Negro Apprentice-
ship,” Edinburgh Review, 66 (1838), 477–522.
5. Herman Merivale, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, delivered before
the University of Oxford in 1839, 1840, and 1841 and reprinted in 1861
(London: Longman [1841] 1861), 300, 303 (emphasis in the original).
6. Ibid., 307–308.
7. Ibid., 332.
8. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 48 (June 3 and June 25, 1839), cols 871, 882,
898; vol. 54, (1840), col. 856.
9. Howard Temperley, White Dreams Black Africa; The Antislavery Expedition
to the Niger (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1991),
57; Temperley, British Antislavery, 149.
10. Temperley, British Antislavery, 148.
11. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 58 (May 7, 1841), cols. 61–62.

   155–162 271

 12. PP, 1840, vol. V, Select Committee on Import Duties Report, 227–228,
James Deacon Hume’s evidence, ques. 1411–1414 (emphasis in the original).
Hume made a number of other telling points. Prior to emancipation “this
country was the mart for sugar and coffee and rum. We produced very largely
beyond our consumption, and we were the chief suppliers of other markets;
we supplied cheaper than other countries . . . [in that] our colonies were not
allowed to send their productions straight to the foreign markets . . . having
produced those commodities for a long series of years at a cheaper rate than
other countries did, I cannot but believe that they would do so again upon
equal terms, whether the equality be the right of slavery and the slave trade to
both competitors or to neither” (p. 228, quest. 1412) (my emphasis). For Hume,
slavery, not fertility, was the decisive difference between the British and the
Spanish sugar islands (p. 227, quest. 1411).
13. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 75 (June 3, 17, 20, and 30, 1844), cols. 181,
990, 1520; vol, 76 (July 2, 1844), col. 168.
14. Ibid., vol. 41 (March 16, 1838); vol. 58 (May 7, 1841), cols. 22–44;
(May 24, 1841), col. 629.
15. Ibid., vol. 58 (May 7, 1841), cols. 45, 73, 78, 84, 101, 208.
16. Ibid. (May 10, 1841), cols. 160–180.
17. Ibid. (May 12, 1841), cols. 321–326.
18. See Ibid. (May 13, 1841), col. 383; (May 14, 1841), col. 449; (May 17,
1841), col. 534; (May 18, 1841), cols. 583–602.
19. Times (May 12 and 17, 1841), Temperley, British Antislavery, 151–52;
Hansard 3rd ser., vol. 58 (May 24, 1841), col. 620; (August 24, 1841), col.
1181; vol. 63 (1842), col. 1181.
20. Thomas Fowell Buxton, The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy, 2nd
ed. (London: John Murray, 1840); see especially the summary in Temperley,
White Dreams, ch. 2.
21. Temperley, White Dreams, ch. 3.
22. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization, 311.
23. “Remedies for the Slave Trade,” Westminster Review, June 1840, 135–
164. The Edinburgh Review, allied with abolitionist leaders for four decades,
described the Westminster Review article as strongly prejudiced. See also “The
Foreign Slave Trade,” Edinburgh Review 72 (October 1840), 192n.) Although
it defended the Niger experiment and its cost, the Edinburgh Review had slen-
der hopes for a positive result and wondered whether there was an exit strat-
egy if it was useless. That was the only part of the experiment it need not
have worried about. The Quarterly Review never mentioned the expedition
before or during the venture. Only in 1847 did the West Indian spokesman
Matthew J. Higgens, alias “Jacob Omnium,” expand on Buxton’s confession
of defeat in the slave trade and refer to the Niger expedition as the “magnum
opus” of Exeter Hall and the African Civilization Society. See [Matthew J.
Higgens] “The Friends of the Africans,” Quarterly Review 82 (1847–1848),
153–175, esp. 154–164. What were proud decades of heroic support for the
Edinburgh Review in 1840 was half a century of “failed experiments” for the
Quarterly Review (p. 156).
24. “Africa and the West Indies,” Spectator, March 21, 1840; Hume in
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 56 (February 11 and 16, 1841), cols. 510, 692–703.
25. Times, September 23, 1840; November 14–30, 1840; (emphasis in the
original). See also Temperley, White Dreams, 62–63.
26. Temperley, White Dreams, 161–162.

272    163–168

 27. For Buxton, see Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention . . .
held in London . . . June 13th to June 20th, 1843 (London: J. F. Johnson, 1843),
244–245, 248. See also James Macwilliam, Medical History of the Expedition
to the Niger, during the Years 1841–42 (London Churchill, 1843).
28. See Jennings, French Anti-Slavery, chs. 6 and 7.
29. Ibid., 176–189.
30. Ibid., see also Seymour Drescher, “British Way, French Way: Opinion
Building and Revolution in the Second French Slave Emancipation,” American
Historical Review 96 (June 1991), 709–734.
31. See William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay
1776–1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pt. VI, “The Annexa-
tion of Texas,” 352–401; Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The
Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana
State University Press, 1989), ch. 3.
32. See Proceedings . . . Anti-Slavery Convention, 296–306.
33. [Charles Buller] “The Republic of Texas,” Edinburgh Review 73 (1841),
241–271, esp. 270.
34. Campbell, Empire for Slavery, ch. 3; William Kennedy, Texas: The Rise,
Progress and Prospects of the Republic of Texas (London: R. Hastings, 1841),
referred to in the Buller article above. See Freehling, Road to Disunion, 355–
452; Justin H. Smith, The Annexation of Texas (New York: Baher & Taylor,
1911), ch. 18.
35. See Freehling, Road to Disunion, 355–452; Justin H. Smith, Annexation
of Texas. See John C. Calhoun to William R. King (U.S. Ambassador to France),
August 12, 1844, in The Papers of John C. Calhoun XIX (Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1990), 568–578.
36. See John C. Calhoun to William R. King, Papers of Calhoun.
37. See [James Macqueen] “The Slave Trade,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Mag-
azine 55 (June 1844), 731–749. It was translated into Portuguese and French
and republished later in Paris by the French antiabolitionist Adolphe Jollivet,
in Documents Americans, Annexion du Texas, Emancipation des Noirs, Politique
de l’ Angleterre (Paris: Bruneau, 1845). For further reverberations, see Papers
of John C. Calhoun, XX, 59, 240, 270, 280, 298. See also “O abolicionistas, e
os factos” (in three parts), Boletim Official do Governo-Geral de Cabo Verde, May
3, 10, and 24, 1845. The American consul at Cape Verde had Calhoun’s letter
to King translated into Portuguese. (I thank Dr. João Pedro Marques of Lisbon
for bringing the article on British emancipation to my attention.) For Brazil,
see Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the
Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999),
18.
38. Times, January 2, 1843.
39. Ibid, January 2 and 3, 1845. For a correspondent to the Times of
January 7, 1845, political economy was not, nor had it ever been, a factor in
the popular pressure for emancipation. It was carried by “classes,” by men,
women, and children “unconnected with trade, commerce and manufac-
tures,” “who knew nothing of its probable commercial effects” and who “re-
fused to listen for a moment to any such considerations.” Calhoun was a
“profligate American” who had “the audacity to say that . . . England acted
on the principle that tropical products could be produced cheaper by free
labour and East Indian labour than by slave labour.” Calhoun, judging others
by himself, “dares to impute to England principles of conduct worthy of his

   168–172 273

 own country alone.” His principles “would disgrace the most savage of those
Indians whom they are cruelly suppressing.” The economics of slavery and
freedom was unworthy even of the uncivilized (letter of “C.,” dated January
1, 1845). Some of the British press simply restated, with a very negative
evaluation, the implication that Calhoun envisioned slavery’s expansion
throughout the Americas. See the (London) Morning Chronicle, January 3,
1845. From the perspective of economic advantage, on the other hand, the
Economist recognized that Texans wanted to maximize their land values by
introducing slave labor and providing an outlet for slave-exporting states,
which would perpetuate slavery and the slave trade for an indefinite period
(August 2, 1845; also May 10). The Economist expected Texas to be a major
competitor in the sugar market as well (August 23, 1845). Calhoun’s statistics
were not challenged in France, whose government was hastily distancing
itself from British attempts to block American annexation. See Smith, Annex-
ation of Texas, 397–406. On Calhoun and the Economist, see Ruth Dudley
Edwards, The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist 1843–1993 (Boston: Hammish
Hamilton, 1993), 42–43.
40. James H. Hammond’s “Letters on Slavery” (January 28 and March
24, 1845), in The Pro-Slavery Argument (New York: Negro Universities Press,
[1852] 1968), 99–174; esp. 121–122 and 142–143.
41. Carter, Servants, 19–22; Kale, Fragments, 85–87. The Times swung in
tandem with the Tory government’s turn-around on Indian migration. It had
initially denounced the transportation of “hill coolies” as “a new slave trade.”
Dispensing ethnic slurs as liberally as denunciations of slavery’s horrors, it
envisioned the Indians as “docile dupes.” Without altering its view of “the
helpless Asiatics” and their exposures to abuse, it now admitted that the
“suffering and mortality attendant on the last experiment [prior to the ban]
was considerably exaggerated.” In view of the fact that the freed blacks were
“refusing employment, except at exorbitant wages,” bringing falling produc-
tion and rising prices, it abandoned the equation of indentures as entailing
horrors as bad as slavery. On those grounds the Times was willing to acquiesce
in the risk of coolie migration to Mauritius, though not, of course, to New
South Wales. Where masters had been allotted convicts, there was every rea-
son to anticipate that coolie labor would degenerate into a “form of slavery”
(July 8, 1843).
42. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 65 (July 26, 1842). The majority was 118 to
24. Within two years, support of the ban had dropped to one-sixth of its
strength when a motion to reopen the trade had been defeated during the
first world convention: 158 to 109, see vol. 54 (June 22, 1840), col. 1407.
43. Proceedings . . . Anti-Slavery Convention (1843), 145.
44. George Washington Anstee alluded to the fact that prior to emanci-
pation, the Anti-Slavery Reporter had upheld the superiority of free labor with-
out “any qualifications” (ibid., 135). Others were furious at the hosannahs to
the market: “What holocausts have been offered on its altars” (Rev. J. Ritchie,
Proceedings, 164), 156–157 (Speech of Lushington). The tabling of the reso-
lution seemed to mark a turning point in public support for the Anti-Slavery
Society’s position on restricting slave sugar imports. After the convention,
John Bright warned Joseph Sturge that Sturge would have been in the mi-
nority had the question reached a division. Bright also advised against any
attempt to make sugar a political issue in any borough in England: “I believe
you would not get ten votes for one side or the other on the propriety or

274    172–174

necessity of denying slave produce.” The validity of Bright’s estimation is
uncertain, but it is significant that abolitionists never attempted to make
sugar the object of a mass petition or a national electoral issue. See British
Library, Add Mss, 43845, Sturge papers, Bright to Sturge, September 1843.
45. Economist, March 23, 1844, 602–603. The Economist vigorously de-
fended the superior value of free over slave labor: “In Antigua, notwithstand-
ing the idleness, and thieving propensities, charged against the peasantry—
the first ten years of freedom, with one-third of the number of labourers, have
given at least as large . . . average crops . . . [as] the last ten years of slavery
with three times the hands. . . . Even slaves will not give more work than they
are paid for (in the shape of keep, & etc.)—nor should they” (emphasis in the
original).
46. This discussion draws on the argument of Pieter C. Emmer, “The
Ideology of Free Labour and Dutch Colonial Policy,” in Fifty Years Later: An-
tislavery, Capitalism and Modernity in the Dutch Orbit (Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), 207–222.
47. Just before he joined Peel’s administration in 1841, William Gladstone
attempted to divide sugar into slave grown and nonslave grown. He an-
nounced his uncertainty about where Java should be classified; between Cuba
and Brazil in the slave category and “Siam, Cochen-China and . . . Manila,
which three last places are the only places whose growths can be certainly
affirmed to be from free labour.” Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 58 (May 10, 1841),
col. 172. It is noteworthy that whereas a consular representative was ap-
pointed at Manila to certify its sugar as the produce of free labor, the Dutch
government “absolutely refuses to sanction . . . any [British] agent in Java.”
Economist, July 13, 1844; May 30, 1845.
48. For an analysis of the Eastern versus Western models of emancipa-
tion, see Martin A. Klein, “Introduction,” in Breaking the Chains: Slavery Bond-
age and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia, Martin A. Klein, ed. (Madison;
University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 3–36. See also Temperley, British
Antislavery, ch. 5, and below, chapter 12.
49. See Temperley, British Antislavery, 160–162; Green, British Slave Eman-
cipation, 229–230 and 415, appendix II, for the record of sugar duties, 1830–
1865.
50. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 88 (July 27, 1846), col. 102.
51. Times, July 20 and 22, 1846.
52. Ibid.
53. Economist, September 16, 1843, July 25, 1846; Times, July 27, 1846.
When Joseph Sturge protested that stolen property, becoming brutally coerced
and overworked labor in cane, should not be allowed to compete with British
free labor, the Economist did not refute the contention that slave-grown sugar
might undersell imperial sugar. It pointed instead to the implications of such
a principle for the cotton industry, and it dared Sturge to make Liverpool
merchants felons for importing cotton. See the Economist, August 1, 1846.
54. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 88 (August 13, 1846), col. 662. There was an
even more striking indicator of changing inhibitions in general discussions
of slavery. Arguments in favor of free labor superiority could be abandoned
when the topic was unrelated to West Indian emancipation or to the sugar
duties. In a remarkable article, “Legislation for the Working Classes,” the
prominent Whig George Cornwall Lewis argued at length that slavery, “like
all other human institutions,” was “neither good nor bad in itself.” He went

   174–178 275

 further than most antiabolitionists in five decades, appealing to the authority
of St. Paul and Boswell. In Baltic Russia, Lewis noted, peasants sometimes
preferred the certainty of slavery to the risks of emancipation; in America,
President Monroe’s slaves had refused freedom; political economist McCulloch
had shown the ineffectiveness of free labor in the tropics; the Broglie Com-
mission in France had shown that British immediate emancipation was a
“disaster.” Lewis concluded that slavery offered the advantages of scale in
labor maintenance, avoiding working-class losses to drunkenness, improvi-
dence, and overpopulation. The remarkable fact was that the article appeared
in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 83 (January 1846), 64–98, allowing Lewis to
observe that no one reading these words in a journal with such antislavery
credentials could misunderstand the heuristic use of such arguments for a
metropolitan subject. No one could misunderstand the fact that less than ten
years after the Emancipation Act, a writer for the Edinburgh Review felt no
qualms about offering such arguments.

Chapter 11
1. Economist, July 25, 1846.
2. Ibid., November 6, 1847.
3. Green, British Slave Emancipation, 229–239.
4. Alan H. Adamson Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British
Guiana (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), 36–37, table 2.
5. Samuel Wilberforce, Cheap Sugar Means Cheap Slaves: Speech of the Right
Reverend the Lord Bishop of Oxford in the House of Lords, February 7th, 1848
(London: James Ridgway, 1848), 4–10. Even before slave trade abolition, the
inefficiency of slave labor and its mismanagement were an axiom of aboli-
tionists’ rhetoric. See William Wilberforce, A Letter, 253–54, sect.: “Waste of
labour whenever slavery Prevails.”
6. Times, February 5, 1848.
7. Daily News, January 22, 1848; (Paris), Le Contitutionnel February 5,
1848; Spectator January 22, 1848; Nonconformist January 26, 1848; Northern
Star, February 12, 1848; Globe, February 9, 1848; Morning Chronicle, January
18, and February 1 and 4, 1848.
8. PP, 1847–1848 vol. XXIII; see also the Examiner, June 10, 1848.
9. PP 1847–1848 vol. XXIII: 23, 254.
10. On Worthy Park, see also Michael Craton, Searching for the Invisible
Man: Slaves and Plantation Life in Jamaica (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1978); Michael Craton and James Walvin, A Jamaican Plantation:
The History of Worthy Park, 1670–1970 (New York: W. H. Allen,: 1970). PP,
1847–1848, XXIII, 612–616, 641–643.
11. See PP, 1847–1848, XXIII, quest. 8945, Mr. Geddes; and, PP 1832,
Select Committee on . . . the West Indies, 15–22.
12. Daily News, February 1 and 11 and May 20, 1848; Spectator, February
12, 1848; Examiner, February 5, 1848.
13. See Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 96 (February 4, 1848), cols. 128–29 (Dis-
raeli) and 160 (Buxton); vol. 97 (March 24, 1848), cols. 917, 990 (Urquart),
and 1000 (Russell). See also vol. 96 (February 4, 1848), col. 125 (Disraeli);
vol. 99 (June 21, 1848), col. 1270 (Higginson); vol. 100 (June 27, 1848) col.
328 (Stanley); 99 (June 19, 1848), col. 871 (Seymer).

276    178–183

 14. Ibid., vol. 96 (February 4, 1848), cols. 85–86 (J. Wilson).
15. Ibid., cols. 87, 93.
16. J. Beete Jukes, Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. Fly (London:
Tand W. Boone, 1847), pp. 173–191.
17. See Ruth Dudley Edwards, The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist,
1843–1993 (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1993), 83; [Matthew James
Higgins] pseudonym, Jacob Omnium, “Is Cheap Sugar the Triumph of Free
Trade?” A Letter to the Right Honorable Lord John Russell (London: J. Ridgeway,
1847–1848), second letter, p. 19; and Stephen Cave, A Few Words on the En-
couragement Given to Slavery and the Slave Trade (London: John Murray, 1849),
18.
18. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 96 (February 4, 1848), col., 88–89.
19. Economist, May 17, 1851; December 6, 1851; January 1, 1853.
20. See David Eltis, “The Slave Economies of the Caribbean: Structure,
Performance, Evolution and Significance,” in General History of the Caribbean,
Vol. III, The Slave Societies of the Caribbean, Franklin W. Knight, ed. (London:
UNESCO, 1997), 105–137, esp. 123.
21. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 96 (February 4, 1848), col. 90. Jamaica, usually
compared to Cuba, had built the first British West Indian railway, 12 miles
long, between Kingston and Spanish Town, before the great crisis of 1847.
See Green, British Slave Emancipation, 217–218.
22. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 96 (February 4, 1848), col 93. (T. Baring).
23. Ibid., col. 117, (J. Heywood).
24. Ibid., vol. 58 (May 24, 1841), col. 625 (Peel); vol. 77 (February 24,
1845), col. 1057 (Gibson), 1084–1085 (Clerk); vol. 88 (August 10, 1846),
cols. 513, 518; vol. 99 (June 19, 1848), col. 1119 (Hawes); vol 96 (February
3, 1848), col. 62 (Wood).
25. Ibid., vol 96 (February 3, 1848), col. 31 (Bentick); vol. 99 (June 19,
1848) col. 818 (Ellice); vol. 100 (July 10, 1848), col. 350 (Bailey). See also
PP, 1847–1848, XXIII, 519; and Eltis, Economic Growth, 145: “The world’s
most advanced industrialized country built the ships, provided the machinery
for processing the sugar on which the slaves were employed and bought much
of the end product.”
26. Laird W. Bergad, Fe Iglesias Garcia, and Maria del Carmen Barcia, The
Cuban Slave Market, 1790–1880 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
55–56.
27. Times, January 27, 1849.
28. Peter Gray, Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish So-
ciety 1843–1850 (Dublin: Academic Press, 1999), ch. 6, “Between the Censure
of the Economists and the Philanthropists: The Whigs and Famine Relief,
1847–1850.” Thomas Holt presents a lengthy and incisive discussion of “The
Irish Analogy” to the problem of freedom in Jamaica in the Problem of Free-
dom, 318–336. Holt investigates the interaction of crises of peasant agricul-
ture with the new political economy of the metropolis in relation to the
“peasant problem.” His analysis pays less attention to the impact of the dis-
similarity between the perceived “population” problems of Ireland and those
of the West Indies. See also Green, British Slave Emancipation, 279–280; Holt,
Problem of Freedom, 201–202.
29. Temperley, British Antislavery, 176–178.
30. Economist, June 30, 1845.

   183–188 277

 31. Times, February 9, March 9, May 29, and June 14, 1848.
32. Economist, February 29, 1848. The journal’s argument was refor-
mulated before the government took a definitive stand in confirming the Af-
rican Squadron.
33. See the Globe, January 14, 1850.
34. Morning Chronicle, March 19 and 20, 1859.
35. Times, March 20, 1850. See also the Daily news, March 16, 1850; and
“H.” [Higgins?] to the Times, January 16, 1850. Times, March 19, 1850; see
also, July 22, 1846; March 28, and May 29, 1848; April 27, and November
16, 1849; August 26, and September 28, 1850; February 22, 1851; September
22, 1852; Spectator, January 29, 1848; July 22, and September 9, 1848;
March 23, 1850; Daily News, February 11, 1848; June 22, 1849; March 19,
1850; Manchester Guardian, March 20, 1850; Westminster Review 53 (July
1850). For the Northern Star, March 23, 1850, the African Squadron was the
supreme instance of folly in a whole history of utopian crochets. Even the
Globe, March 19, 1850, speaking for the Whig government’s resistance to
suppression, acknowledged that Hutt might be correct in theory, if in error
on the moment to end the policy.
36. Daily News, June 22, 1849.
37. Ibid., March 19 and 20, 1850.
38. Globe, January 14, 1850.
39. See Edwards, Pursuit of Reason, 300–310. The following year the suc-
cess of Brazilian abolition enabled the Economist to note that it had shared
the widespread doubts about maintaining the African Squadron until Parl-
merston “put an end to all doubts, and justified a policy that was thought to
be more recommended by a visionary philanthropy than sound political ex-
pediency,” Economist, July 19, 1851. For evidence of the universal recognition
of severe governmental pressure to make the issue a vote of confidence in
Russell and Palmerton, see Leeds Mercury, March 23, 1850; Edinburgh Adven-
turer, March 22, 1850; Glasgow Chronicle, March 27, 1850; Glasgow Courier,
March 23, 1850; Liverpool Standard, April 2, 1850. The generally sympathetic
(Edinburgh) Witness, March 23, 1850, summarized press opinion in a lead
editorial. “A negative opinion on the effectiveness of the squadron had taken
such a hold of MPs, and, it must be presumed, of their constituents, that . . .
it was feared there would be an absolute majority in favour of the motion,
so apathetic and indifferent, if not opposed, have the people of England now
become to a question that was wont to arouse their warmest sympathies or
their strongest indignation.” It was certain that the majority of margin of
78 MPs who supported Lord Russell “is chiefly composed of the Noble Lord’s
usual supporters.” Even the liberal (London) Daily News reluctantly agreed
with Hutt on the futility of further force on the African coast. Its decision
was based less on pacifist antislavery appeals than on the opinion of Dr.
Thomas Thomson, Niger expedition survivor (March 16, 1850). See also Paul
Michael Kielstra, The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France,
1814–48: Diplomacy, Morality and Economics (New York: St Martin’s, 2000).
40. See [Charles Buxton] “Reports on the Slave Trade from Lords and
Commons, 1848–1849,” Edinburgh Review 92 (October 1850), 126–137. Com-
pare Russell’s speeches in Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 109 (March 19, 1850), col.
1181; and vol. 111 (May 31, 1850), col. 578.
41. Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil
and the Slave Trade Question 1807–1869 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

278    188–192

Press, 1970), cites only the Morning Post in support of the government.
Against it was aligned the whole spectrum of elite opinion: Times, Morning
Chronicle (usually a progovernment organ), Daily News, Spectator, Quarterly
Review, Westminster Review, and even the Northern Star, which stated on
March 23, 1850: “No single instance in the whole history of our extravagance
and folly . . . [matches] the reckless and insane manner in which we squander
public money . . . [on] the African blockade squadron.” Philip Curtin consid-
ers the reaffirmation of the anti–slave trade blockade to have been part of
“the last important stand of humanitarian policies.” See The Image of Africa:
British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1964), vii.
42. See Eltis, Economic Growth, 214–215. It should be noted, however, that
in the years before the final British action, the expectations of an eminent
wave of public opinion against the slave trade proved to be highly exaggerated
and repeatedly disappointed. See PRO FO 84/581, 725, 726, 727.
43. Bethell, Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade, 314. The abolitionist prop-
agandists still needed to “show them [the planters] that their true interests
call for free labour.” See FO 84/726 Slave Trade Brazil 1848, fol. 121–132,
from a translation of an article in the (Rio de Janeiro) Monarchista, June 27,
1848, no. 1.
44. Compare the slave trade figures of Cuba in Eltis, Economic Growth,
245, table A.2, with arrivals of indentured servants into Cuba in David North-
rup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1992), 156–157, table A.1. See also “Chinese Emigra-
tion” in the Times, April 22, 1857.
45. Quoted from the more detailed account of Hutt’s closing argument,
in the Economist (July 17, 1858) (emphasis in the original).
46. Ibid., January 11, 1845. On Ireland, see the nuanced analysis in Ed-
wards, Pursuit of Reason, ch. IV, “The Crucible: The Irish Famine.” On the
same tough medicine for the West Indian planters and laborers, see the Econ-
omist, August 15, 1846; June 17, 1848.
47. Economist, July 17, 1858.
48. Ibid., June 28, 1845; February 29, 1848.
49. Ibid., July 17, 1858 (emphasis in the original).
50. Compare ibid., January 11, 1845 and July 17, 1858.
51. Compare Eltis, Economic Growth, table A.8, and Northrup, Indentured
Labor, table A.1.
52. The Economist, June 20, 1857. See also the Times, January 30 and
February 7, 1859; Economist, August 24 and September 28, 1850; January
25 and July 19, 1851; May 21 and December 17, 1853; April 25, May 30,
June 27 and July 20, 1857; May 5, 1859; September 15, 1860; January 19
and February 2, 1861; Spectator, July 4, 1857.
53. Economist, December 17, 1853.
54. Ibid., January 22, 1849.
55. Ibid., December 17, 1853.
56. Times, March 23, 1850. See also the Economist, March 23, 1850.
57. Economist, November 16, 1850; May 21, 1853, referring to James D. B.
De Bow, The Industrial Resources . . . of the Southern and Western States, 3 vols.
New Orlans: Office of De Bow’s Review, 1853).
58. Economist, October 10, 1857.
59. Ibid., September 15, 1860.

   192–198 279

 60. Ibid., December 17, 1853 (emphasis in the original). On the dimen-
sions of Southern expansionism on the eve of secession, see Robert E. May,
The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1973), esp. chs. VIII and IX.
61. Times, November 24, 1857.
62. Ibid., November 24, 1857.
63. Ibid., December 19, 1857. On one point, the Economist concurred with
the Times. It saw no “natural limit to the evil [of slavery] once allowing the
United States to annex Cuba as the first step towards Southward expansion
into the Caribbean.” It was futile to suppose that Southerners would abandon
slavery until it ceased to pay, and it would pay as long as rich land for cotton,
coffee, and sugar remained abundant. If slavery were to spread to the Isthmus
of Panama, “it would have before it an indefinite career” (Economist, July 10,
1858; December 24, 1859).
64. See E. N. Elliot, Cotton Is King (Augusta, Ga.: Abbot & Loomis, 1860),
53–65, 96–107, 117–118, 135–149, 382–390, 646–669. The summary ex-
cerpt was from the Economist, July 16, 1859.
65. [Nassau W. Senior and J.C.B. Davis(?)] “Slavery in the United States,”
Edinburgh Review 101 (April 1855), 151–176.
66. See Paul Finkelman, ed., His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John
Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,
1995), esp. chs. 6, 7, and 8.

Chapter 12
1. According to Eltis, Economic Growth, 245, table A.2, and Evelyn Hu-
Dehart, “Chinese Coolie Labour in Cuba in the Nineteenth Century,” Slavery
and Abolition 14 (1993), 38–54. table 1, Cuban imports to Africa rose by 40%
from 1856 to 1857, and by another 50 to 90% from 1857 to 1858.
2. Quotes from the Times, July 18, 1857 (emphasis in the original). See
also the Manchester Guardian, July 20, 1857.
3. Daily News, July 3, 20, 21, 1857, June 22, 1858.
4. See the Times, October 19, 1858 (letter of Stephen Cave, chairman,
West India Committee, letter dated Liverpool, October 14, and Ibid., October
23, 1858; L.A. Chamerovzow’s letter, dated Oct. 21).
5. Ibid., October 23, 1858, and October 27, 1858 (letter of Charles Buxton,
October 25).
6. Ibid., October 28, 1858. Jamaica’s production had fallen from 67,000
tons in 1833 to 21,000 in 1857; Barbados’s had risen from 19,000 tons in
1833 to 29,000 in 1857; Antigua’s had risen from 6,500 tons in 1833 to
10,000 in 1857. St. Kitts’s had risen from 4,000 tons in 1833 to 4,600 tons
in 1857.
7. Ibid., October 28, 1858.
8. Ibid., October 28, 1858. All quotations in the following five paragraphs
are from this source.
9. Ibid., October 28, 1859
10. [Charles Buxton] “The West Indies as They Were and Are,” Edinburgh
Review 109 (April 1859), 216–236; republished as Slavery and Freedom in the
West Indies (London: Longman, 1860).
11. Ibid., 230. Cuba also received 75 percent as many indentured servants

280    199–208

as the British Caribbean. See Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imper-
ialiasm, 159–60, table A.2.
12. CO167/258, minutes of James Stephen, July 10 1845, quoted in Ma-
rina Carter, “The Transition from Slave to Indentured Labour in Mauritius,”
in The Wages of Slavery, Michael Twaddle, ed., a special issue of Slavery and
Abolition 14:1 (April 1993), 114–130, 124–125. The same pages carry the
census figures for ex-slaves for 1846 and 1851. Compare Higman, Slave Pop-
ulation, 417; and Carter, Servants, 16. For Cotton is King, Buxton’s criterion
of population decreases as a marker of institutional success or failure was
useful as a demonstration of the vitality of U.S. slavery. Buxton’s inclusion
of indentured servitude as the source of increased British colonial output also
drew scornful attention. Servitude demonstrated that abolitionists had to rely
on the “slave trade in disguise” to support their case. The high rate of mor-
tality for coolies laboring in Jamaica also showed that Indian servitude was
“more destructive of human life than slave labor for Cuba.” See E. N. Elliot
Cotton Is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments (Augusta, Ga.: Abbot & Loomis,
1860), 166–120. The combination of post-revolutionary St. Domingue and
the postemancipation British colonies stimulated the conclusion: “No exper-
iment here!” (p. 409).
13. (London) Morning Star, August 2, 1859; see also Leeds Mercury, Au-
gust 4, 1859. These newspapers were generally subdued and repertorial in
their treatment of the meeting.
14. Times, August 18, 1859. An anniversary speaker noted with regret
that Britain’s example had not been followed by the major slaveholding so-
cieties.
15. Ibid., October 20, 1859. The following two paragraphs are from the
same source.
16. H. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization, and Colonies (Longman, 1861),
303, 308 (emphasis in the original). On the impetus of Southern secession,
see R.J.M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 37, 40.
17. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization, 307, 309, 338, 565.
18. Ibid., 307, 311, and note. Of the Niger expedition, Merivale com-
mented that “it failed even more lamentably than its greatest opponents an-
ticipated. But philanthropy is not easily discouraged.”
19. Ibid., 315–337 (emphasis in the original).
20. Ibid., 338–339.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 314–316; 340–341.
23. Ibid., 316–321.
24. Ibid., 343–344.
25. On African slave and indentured migration flows, see Eltis, Economic
Growth, 249, table A.8, Northrop, Indentured Labor, 156–157, table A.1. On
sugar exports, see Deer, History of Sugar, 131 (Cuba), 203 (Mauritius), and
224 (Java).
26. Times, July 16, 1857.
27. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization, 346.
28. Ibid., 345–347.
29. William G. Sewell, The Ordeal of Free Labor in the West Indies (New
York: A. M. Kelly, [1861] 1966), 39–58.

   208–215 281

 30. Ibid., 173ff., esp ch. 27, “Necessity for Immigration,” 292–309.
31. [C. G. Lewis] “Merivale’s Lectures on Colonization,” Edinburgh Review
115 (1861), 53–65; compare with [James Lorimer] “Sewell’s Ordeal of Free
Labour,” ibid., 22–34.
32. Stanley L. Engerman, “Servants to Slaves to Servants: Contract Labour
and European Expansion,” in Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour be-
fore and after Slavery, P. C. Emmer, ed. (Dordrecht: Maritius Nijhoff, 1986),
263–294; and “Comparative Approaches to the Ending of Slavery” in Slavery
and Abolition 21:2 (August 2000) Special issue, Howard Temperley, ed., 281–
300.
33. Economist, October 12, 1861, 1126–1127, review of Java or How to
Manage a Colony (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1861), rejecting the compulsory
“culture system” for India.
34. See the Economist, “The Dangerous Condition of the Rural Population
of Bengal,” April 21, 1860, 418–419, on debt peonage of the indigo culti-
vators. Eight months later it denounced the hereditary debt, kidnapping, and
deporting of ryots to force cultivation (December 1, 1860).
35. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization, 336–337.
36. This perception refers only to comparative levels of violence before the
Jamaican rebellion at Morant Bay. See, Mimi Sheller, “Quasheba, Mother,
Queen: Black Women’s Public Leadership and Political Protest in Post-
emancipation Jamaica, 1834–65,” Slavery and Abolition 19:3 (December 1998),
90–117; Gad Heuman, “Riots and Resistance in the Caribbean at the Moment
of Freedom,” Slavery and Abolition, 21:2 (August 2000), 135–149; Heuman,
‘The Killing Time’: The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (London: Macmillan,
1994). On the long-term perspectives, see Frank McGlyn and Seymour
Drescher, eds., The Meaning of Freedom: Economics, Politics, and Culture after
Slavery (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992).
37. See Pieter Emmer, “Between Slavery and Freedom: The Period of Ap-
prenticeship in Suriname (Dutch Guiana), 1863–1873,” Slavery and Abolition
14: 1 (April 1993), 87–113; Emmer, “The Meek Hindu: The Recruitment of
Indian Labourers for Service Overseas, 1870–1916,” in Colonialism and Mi-
gration, Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery, P. C. Emmer, ed. (Dordrecht:
Martinus Nyhoff, 1986), 187–207.
38. See the Times, July 22 and July 25, 1846; June 8, 1848; August 1,
1849; April 13, and August 26, 1850 (“all for Blackey”); December 9, 1851;
December 29, 1857; May 31, 1859. At low points in the experiment, even
more militantly antislavery newspapers permitted themselves to speak of the
abolitionists’ “maudlin fantastic sympathy” for “pet blacks, kept sleek and fat”
in the colonies (Daily News, February 2, 1848). There were always lively
rebuttals to “excesses” of racialized arguments. See, for example, the Specta-
tor, February 12, 1848.
39. Times, June 8, 1848.
40. Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (London: Chapmen & Hall
1858), also quoted in Holt, Problem of Freedom, 280–281. Carlyle’s first ver-
sion, published in Fraser’s Magazine 40 (December 1849), 670–679, used “Ne-
gro” in the title. The expanded revision, published in 1853, changed “Negro”
to “Nigger.” The change, as Holt suggests (Problem of Freedom, 445, n. 37),
is indicative of the longer, harsher version of 1853. It may also reflect the
fact that Carlyle felt emboldened by the reception of his original work. John
Stuart Mill responded to Carlyle in the next issue of Fraser’s. Mill disputed

282    215–219

the racial caricature, but as a political economist, he did not dispute some
comparative advantage of slave labor in the West Indies. He would not have
done so before Carlyle’s pamphlet either. See Mill, Principles of Political Econ-
omy Toronto: University of Toronto Press, [1848] 1965), 246–247.
41. Economist, September 18, 1852. Philip D. Curtin, Image of Africa, ch.
12, 387. Curtin notes that “despite the erosion of its ideology, humanitarism
was still the philosophy in office throughout the 1840’s.” See also Drescher,
“Scientific Racism,” in From Slavery, 292–302.
42. Northern Star, March 23, 1850. On the impact of rising racism on
opinions about the American Civil War, see Blackett, Divided Hearts, 37–47.
43. Examiner, January 29, 1848.
44. Economist, July 16, 1859.
45. Ibid., June 14, 1851.
46. Times, December 16, 1857.
47. See Drescher, “Scientific Racism,” 440–441. See also Ronald Rainger,
“Race Politics and Science: The Anthropological Society of London in the
1860s,” Victorian Studies 22 (Autumn 1978), 51; Blackett, Divided Hearts, 40–
42.
48. Times, June 19, 1857. Merivale originally wrote on this matter: “No
body of European labourers, transported under this beautiful but treacherous
sky, has ever thriven” (Lectures on Colonization, 322). He left his words un-
changed in the 1861 edition.
49. Green, British Slave Emancipation, ch. 9; Burn, Emancipation, 291–292;
and Mary Elizabeth Thomas, Jamaica and Voluntary Labourers from Africa 1840–
1865 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1974), 15, 40–42.
50. Gray, Famine, ch. 6. See also the Times, March 16; April 7; October
12; and November 10, 11, 12, and 17, 1847; Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 90 (March
15, 1847) cols 1327ff; vol. 93 (June 4, 1847), cols. 93–120; vol 101 (August
10, 1848), cols 1–50; vol. 105 (May 15, 1849), cols. 500–532. The liberal
press in Britain was strongly opposed to the government’s “adding to the
exodus of Irish paupers to the British colonies,” and Irish nationalist opinion
was also hostile to emigration. See Gray, Famine, 30 and note 102; and Han-
sard, ser 3, vol. 105 (May 15, 1849), col. 513 (J. O’Connell).
51. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization, 320, 336.
52. Ibid., 340. On a modern view of British emancipation as a “Decptive
Model,” se also Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 168–226.
53. [Lorimer] “Ordeal of Free Labour,” 22.
54. Ibid, 26–33.
55. The Economist attacked the Times for breeching this taboo in the wake
of the execution of John Brown. See Seymour Drescher, “Servile Insurrection
and John Brown’s Body in Europe,” in His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses
to John Brown and the Harper’s Ferry Raid, Paul Finkelman ed. (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1995), 270–271.
56. W.E.H. Lecky, A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charle-
magne, 2 vols. (London: Longmanss, Green, 1869), I, 161.
57. Times, August 2, 1884. Conservative newspapers also stressed the
theme of national glory and consensus as wholeheartedly as the rest of the
press. See especially the Morning Post, August 1, 1884, and the Standard,
August 2, 1884, both of London.
58. Times, August 2, 1884. All quotations in this and the following two
paragraphs are from the same source and date.

   219–226 283

 59. Ibid.
60. Daily News, August 1, 1884. The Conservative (London) John Bull was
convinced that the British experience with emancipation had demonstrated
the “ruin” that accompanied precipitous liberation. The West Indies also dem-
onstrated that “the negro is disinclined to labour,” not from his previous
condition of servitude, but from a different “disposition” toward improvement
than the white man. See John Bull, December 24, 1859.
61. [Henry Reeve] “The English in the West Indies,” Edinburgh Review 167
(April 1888), 328.
62. See, Suzanne Miers, “Slavery to Freedom in Sub-Saharan Africa: Ex-
pectations and Reality,” in After Slavery: Emancipation and its Discontents How-
ard Temperley, ed., Special issue of Slavery and Abolition 21:2 (August 2000),
237–267; Martin A. Klein, “Introduction,” Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bond-
age and Emancipation in Africa Martin Klein ed. (Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press, 1993), 3–36; R. Dumett, “Pressure Groups, Bureaucracy, and
the Decision-making Process: The Case of Slavery Abolition and Colonial Ex-
pansion in the Gold Coast, 1874,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth His-
tory 9:2 (1981), 193–215. Suzanne Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave
Trade (London: Longman, 1974); Temperley, British Antislavery, ch. 5; and
Temperley, “The Delegalization of Slavery in British India,” 169–187.
63. See Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1965); and Kumar “Colonialism, Bondage and Caste
in British India,” in Breaking the Chains, 112–130; Gyan Prakash, “Terms of
Servitude: The Colonial Discourse on Slavery and Bondage in India,” in Break-
ing the Chains, 131–149.
64. See, Klein, Slavery; Twaddle, Wages of Slavery; Temperley, After Slavery.
65. Paul E. Lovejoy and Jan S. Hogendorn, Slow Death for Slavery: The
Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
66. See Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 218 (March 30, 1874) col. 394; (April 27,
1874), cols. 1205–1208; (May 4, 1874), cols. 1594–1597; vol. 220 (June 29,
1874), cols. 607–608; R. Dumett, “Pressure Groups and Decision-making Pro-
cess,” 193–215; and Temperley, British Antislavery, 267.
67. H. J. Nieboer, Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches,
2nd rev. ed. (New York: Lenox Hill, [1910] 1971).
68. Ibid., 299–313.
69. Buxton, Slavery and Freedom, title page quote.
70. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 99, 385 (my emphasis). It may be notewor-
thy that “slavery” was the only subject about which Smith twice used the
formula “I believe . . . in the end.” Incantation?

Chapter 13
1. Stanley L. Engerman, “Emancipations in Comparative Perspective: A
Long and Wide View,” in Fifty Years Later, Gert Oostindie, ed. (Leiden: KITLV
Press, 1995), 223–241, esp. 224–225.
2. Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 313.
3. See Edwin Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labor System in the
Light of the Archives (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 37, 125–
126; Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Labor in Germany under
the Third Reich, trans. William Temple (New York: Cambridge University Press,

284    227–232

1997); Herbert, “Labour and Extermination: Economic Interest and the Pri-
macy of Weltanschauung in National Socialism,” Past and Present 138 (1993),
144–95.
4. Chaim D. Kaufmann and Robert A. Pape, “Explaining Costly Interna-
tional Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-Year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave
Trade,” International Organization 53: 4 (1999), 631–668, esp. 636–637. It
should be noted that this article incorporates the costs of emancipation and
sugar consumption into slave trade suppression and therefore is an estimate
of antislavery costs in general, not antislave trade costs in particular. Al-
though the meanings of some accounted items are unclear (e.g., supplies to
slave traders), the article also entirely omits one major loss to British capi-
talists, the relative and absolute depreciation of estate values in the British
West Indies between 1808 and the 1850s.
5. Ibid., 639.
6. See Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade, 255–256.
7. Drescher, Econocide, 22–25.
8. See Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 192–218; Herbert S. Klein, The
Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 172–173.
9. Holt, Problem of Freedom, 27–53; Green, British Slave Emancipation, 105–
120.
10. Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 219–223.
11. Temperley, British Antislavery, ch. 5; Klein, Breaking the Chains, 19–27.
12. In assessing the role of various moral and economic issues raised by
antislavery initiatives, one must note that between 1814 and 1850, the sur-
vival of British governments were at stake over some initiatives. Most Euro-
pean ministers could, and did, ignore antislavery to a far greater extent than
their British counterparts. See Kielstra, Politics of Slave Trade Suppression, 262.
13. See Folarin Shyllon, James Ramsay: The Unknown Abolitionist (Edin-
burgh: Canongate, 1977), 77–78; and Josiah Tucker, Reflections on the Present
Matters in Dispute Between Great Britain and Ireland (Dublin: R. Marchbank,
1785), 8–17.
14. On morality and economics in relation to the history of U.S. slavery
and abolition, see Fogel, Without Consent, 388–417.

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Manuscript Sources
Allen and Hanbury’s Archives
Bodleian Library
British Library
Duke University Library
Jamaica Archives
National Archives, Washington, D.C.
Public Record Office, London
Salop County Record Office
Sheffield City Library

Official and Semiofficial Documents

Parliamentary Papers
Parliamentary Register

Newspapers and Periodicals

Annual Review, 1803
Anti-Slavery Reporter, 1827–1829
Aurora, 1806
Blackburn Gazette, 1832
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1844
Christian Observer, 1807
Le Constitutionnel, 1848
Daily News, 1848–1858
Diary, 1791–1793
Economist, 1843–1861
Edinburgh Adventurer, 1850
Edinburgh Review, 1823–1861
Examiner, 1833–1848
General Evening Post, 1792

287
 Glasgow Chronicle, 1850
Glasgow Courier, 1850
Globe, 1833–1850
Leeds Mercury, 1792–1859
Liverpool Standard, 1850
London Chronicle, 1785–1788
Manchester Guardian, 1832–1857
Monarchista, 1848
Morning Chronicle, 1785–1859
Morning Herald, 1833
Morning Post, 1833
Morning Star, 1859
Newcastle Courant, 1792
Nonconformist, 1848
Norfolk Chronicle, 1791
Northern Star, 1848–1850
Political Register, 1804–1806
Population Studies, 1952
Public Advertiser, 1788
Quarterly Review, 1819–1850
Sheffield Courant, 1833
Spectator, 1833–1857
Standard, 1833
Times, 1823–1884
Tory Morning Post, 1833
Westminster Review, 1824–1850
Whig Morning Chronicle, 1833
Witness, 1850

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Appleby, Joyce Oldham. Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth Century
England. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Bacon, Edwin. The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labour System in the Light of
the Archives. New York: New York University Press, 1994.
Baines, Edward. History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain. London:
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Stephen, James. Crisis of the Sugar Colonies. London: 1802
———. The Opportunity, or Reasons for an Immediate Alliance with St. Domingo.
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———. The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated, as It Exists
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Steuart Denham, James. An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy:
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Sturge, Joseph, and Thomas Harvey. The West Indies in 1837, Being the Journal
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Temperley, Howard, ed. After Slavery: Emancipation and Its Discontents. London:
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 
Aberdeen, George Hamilton Gordon,
Lord, 170–171
Abolition
slave trade, 4–5, 25, 35, 43–44, 46–
47, 50, 60, 73, 75, 77, 83, 86,
106, 108, 114, 154, 160, 163,
175, 180, 211–213
slavery, 104, 107, 163
Abolitionism, 3–5, 7, 13, 16, 18, 31,
34, 37, 41, 77–79, 81, 84, 88–
89, 107, 121. See also
abolitionists
Abolitionists, 4–6, 13–14, 21–22, 32–
35, 39, 44, 46–51, 54, 56, 59, 63,
67–69, 71–73, 76–77, 88–89, 92–
93, 96, 99–100, 106–110, 114,
127, 130, 144, 150, 153, 157, 159–
160, 162, 164
An Account of the Regular Gradations in
man, 79
Africa, 4, 66, 73, 78, 90–91, 93, 127,
130, 144, 165, 182, 187–188,
191, 196, 202, 221–222, 228
African Institution, 96
civilization, 217
culture, 49, 75, 79–80, 86
disease, 83
Niger Expedition, 166–168, 209,
218, 226, 235
resistance, 83
sub-Saharan, 9, 40, 75, 86
African Civilization Society, 166–167
299
African Squadron, British, 187–188,
190–191, 195, 197, 202, 219,
225, 232
Afzelius, Adam, 92
Allen, William, 95
Althorpe, John Charles Spencer, Lord,
139–140
America, 12, 151, 173, 188–189, 214
British, 14, 18, 37
Civil War, 4, 217, 221, 224, 226,
231
secession in, 199
War of Independence, 18, 90
Animal Kingdom, 78
Anthropological Society of London,
221
Anti-abolitionists, 41–44, 46–47, 49–
50, 55, 76, 79, 83, 88, 94, 96,
102, 113, 123, 130
Anti-Corn Law League, 174, 204
Antigua, 122, 146–147, 149–151,
181, 204, 212
Antilles, 62, 64
Antislavery, 5, 7, 10–11, 13, 38–39,
49, 51, 55–56, 62–63, 78, 88,
114, 118, 120, 123, 128, 138,
151, 153–154, 158, 161, 172–
173
Agency Committee, 121–122
See also abolitionism
Antislavery Societies, 151, 161, 166,
174, 203–204
 Apprenticeship, 7, 81, 96, 133, 136–
138, 145–147, 149–150, 155–156,
158–159, 163, 169
Argentina, 3, 57
Asia, 4, 66, 165, 227
Australia, 57, 161, 173, 196, 202, 222–
223, 227
Bahamas, 45
Balkans, 75
Banks, Joseph 73, 91, 101
Baptist War, Jamaica, 121
Barbados, 20, 45, 51–52, 82, 111,
131, 134, 147, 152, 154, 169,
180–181, 195, 204–207, 209,
212, 214–216, 227
Barbarism, 78, 84, 104, 134, 205
Barham, Joseph, 108–109
Barklay, Alexander, 49
Bengal, 117, 216, 219
Bentham, Jeremy, 55, 60, 69
Benue, 166
Berbice, 113–114, 205
Berbice Association, Dutch, 113
Bermuda, 45
Bligh, Captain, 73
Board of Trade, British, 73, 162
Bodin, Jean, 10, 11
Bogota, 119
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 62–62, 66, 78,
80, 96, 101
Bory de Saint-Vincent, J.B.G.M., 78
Boston, 23
Boyer, Jean-Pierre, President of Haiti,
101–102
Brazil, 4, 23, 55, 66–67, 69, 70, 114–
115, 118, 126, 139–140, 144, 152–
153, 170, 174, 177, 179, 181,
183–184, 190, 192–193, 195,
210, 216–217
Bright, John, 174, 236
Britain, 3–4, 13, 22, 24, 26, 30, 36–
37, 39, 67–69, 78–80, 90, 109–
111, 115, 136, 144, 146–147,
151, 154, 165, 172, 177, 179,
183, 185, 188, 192–193, 195,
199, 205–208, 211, 219, 219,
228, 232
300 
Broglie, Duc de, 168
Broglie Commission, France, 168–169
Brougham, Henry Peter, Lord, 108,
140, 163, 202–203, 209
Brown, John, 210
Buckingham, James Silk, 131–132,
135, 138–139
Burnley, William, 52
Buxton, Charles, 192, 204–205, 207–
209, 212
Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 48–49, 99,
102, 123, 129–131, 134, 149,
161, 167–168, 183, 188, 192,
211, 212
Calhoun, John, 170–171, 197, 200–
201
Canada, 3, 57, 90, 223, 227
French, 57
Canning, George, 129
Cape Colony, 223
Cape Verde Islands, 171
Capitalism, 25, 57, 196
capital, 58, 60, 64–65, 70, 93, 132,
142, 179, 192
Capitalism and Slavery, 4
Caracas, 131
Caribbean, 4, 17, 19, 22, 25–26, 30,
34, 46, 54, 84, 101, 144, 152,
156, 159, 161, 187, 189, 195–
196, 206–207, 217, 226, 231
British, 11, 20, 34, 73, 83, 115,
129, 145, 149, 154, 160, 163,
165, 177, 182, 192, 201, 216
French, 11, 26, 66, 80, 115, 226
Spanish, 4, 205
Carlyle, Thomas, 219–220
Carolina, 23, 151–152, 219
Caucasians, 75
Cave, Stephen, 203–207, 210
Central America, 116
Ceylon, 116, 228
Chamerovzow, Lewis, 203–204
Chartist Movement, 161, 166, 181,
219
Chemical Society, 95
Chester, England, 93
Chile, 3
Chinese, 109–110
Christophe, Henri, 101
Civilization, 3, 12, 57–58, 60, 81, 85,
87, 96–97, 101, 134, 172, 183,
197, 218–219, 226–227
Clarke, Henry, 40
Clarkson, Thomas, 4, 34, 93, 103,
110, 113, 172
Climate, 16, 26, 28, 48, 50, 84, 86,
134, 197
tropical, 11, 26, 41, 74, 83–84, 86,
118, 160, 192, 222
Cobbett, William, 136
Cobden, Richard, 173–174, 236
Colonial Office, British, 128–129, 132,
142, 155–156, 158, 208
Columbus, Christopher, 74
Condor, Josiah, 131
Congress of Vienna, 7
Cooper, Thomas, 39, 41, 166
Corn Laws, 25–26, 176, 178, 182
Corveé, 18
Cotton, 67–68, 73, 90, 93, 102, 114,
118, 153, 164
Cours complet d’économie politique, 59,
69
Court of Chancery, British, 122
Crawford, Earl of, 122
Cropper, James, 116
Cuba, 55, 68, 102, 126, 139–140,
144, 151, 153, 163, 174, 177, 179–
180, 182–186, 190, 193, 195,
199–201, 203, 207–211, 213–
214, 216–217, 219, 236
Cuffee, Captain Paul, 95
Cuvier, Georges, 78–79
Daily News (London), 180, 182, 191,
203, 219, 227
Demerara. See Guiana
Demography, 6, 20, 36, 40, 53, 88,
107, 119, 197, 200, 212, 221. See
also population
Denmark, 18, 61
Derby, Stanley, Edward Henry, Lord,
123, 226. See also Stanley,
Edward George
Dickson, William, 110–111, 113
Disease, 46, 74, 78, 82–84, 222
Disraeli, Benjamin, 183
Dominica, 45
Dublin, 56
East Indies, 42, 115–116, 235
Economic development, 4–5, 17, 185,
235
Economist, 171, 174–175, 177, 179,
183–186, 188–189, 191, 194–
196, 198, 201, 216, 219–220
Edinburgh Review, 44, 55, 71, 102,
159, 170, 201, 215, 224, 227
Egypt, 183, 196
Emancipation, 3–5, 34, 50, 53, 55, 58,
60, 63, 68–69, 81, 94, 114, 141,
144–145, 156–160, 205, 231–232
British, 7, 107–108, 118, 124, 127–
128, 130, 146–147, 151, 154,
174, 177, 215, 217–218, 231
commemoration, 225
compensation, 137, 142, 154, 167,
171, 176, 182, 217, 227
cost of, 70
Dutch, 217
French, 62–63, 103, 109, 213
impact, 103
Jubilee, 226–227, 231
Encyclopédie, 62
England, 6, 10, 12–13, 59, 73, 76, 91,
131, 167, 172–173, 207, 209–
210, 227. See also Britain; Great
Britian
Enlightenment, 60
Epidemiology, 6, 75, 83
Equiano, Olaudah, 76
Essay on the Principle of Population, 41,
44
Europe, 3–5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, 32,
36, 40–41, 43, 59–60, 71, 75–76,
129, 151, 160, 170, 172, 179,
184, 198, 200, 214, 217, 231–
232
Exeter Hall, 166, 177, 209, 226
Experiment, 8, 17–18, 89–91, 93–94,
106, 125–126, 128, 132, 141–
142, 144, 157, 160, 164
abandonment, 113, 182
 301
 Experiment (continued )
assessments, 112–113, 135, 165,
182, 196, 200, 202, 208–211,
216, 235
Barbados, 111–112
Chinese, 108–110
Demerara, 205–207
experimentalism, 88, 90
Haiti, 100, 102, 104
Sierra Leone, 94–100, 167–168
Tortola, 110–111
Trinidad, 108–110
Venezuela, 118–120
Factory Bill (1833), Report of the
Committee of the House of
Commons, on the Factory Bill, 51
Fleming, Admiral, 103, 119, 130–131,
135
Florida, 89
France, 12, 28, 35, 160, 169, 171, 195
colonies, 26, 62, 66, 68, 69, 84,
101
Louis XVI, 62
Napoleon Bonaparte, 62–63, 66,
78, 80, 96, 101
race, 78, 79, 84
Revolution, 62, 78, 84, 90
slavery, 68
St. Dominigue, 19–20, 62–63, 78,
100–102, 104, 109, 153, 211
Frankenstein, 129
Franklin, Benjamin, 20, 36, 38, 41,
68
Free Labor Association, 173
Free Labor Ideology, 15, 19–34, 54,
68, 72, 106, 108, 138, 152, 174,
185
Free trade, 56–58, 66, 71, 116–117,
139, 143, 162–164, 173–174,
179, 183–184, 186–188, 192,
212
Freedom, 7, 9–19, 21, 25, 34–35, 61–
62, 69, 73, 87, 90, 107. See also
liberty
French Abolitionist Society, 70, 168
French Revolution, see France
302 
Galton, Francis, 221
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne, 78
George III, 151
Georgia, 83, 89, 210
Germantown, PA, 11
Gladstone, William, 130–131, 149,
156, 165, 175
Glasgow, 54
Globe (London), 122, 141, 181
Great Britian, 3, 40, 95, 167, 169
Greece, 197
Green, William, 159
Grégoire Henri, 63, 81
Grenville, Richard Temple, Lord, 45–
46
Grey, Charles, Earl, 123
Grotius, Hugo, 10
Guadeloupe, 104, 109,
Guiana (also Guyana), 46, 111, 134,
174, 180, 212–213
British, 156, 159–160, 175, 213,
215
Demerara, 50–52, 130, 152, 199,
205–206, 213
Gurney, John, 144, 164
Habsburg Empire, 22, 27
Haiti, 19, 62, 66, 69, 78, 80, 100–
105, 118, 120, 131, 135
Rural Code, 103,
Hammond, James, 172
Harpers Ferry, 201
Harvey, Thomas, 150
Havana (also Havannah), 55, 177,
186
Hibbert, George, 42–43, 106–107,
111, 150
Higgins, Matthew James, 184
History of European Morals, 225
Hodgson, Adam, 68, 110
Hong Kong, 222
Hottentots, 77
House of Commons, 42, 45–46, 49,
81, 106, 118, 120, 123–124, 127,
129, 134, 138
Howick, Lord, 45, 132–133, 138, 149,
161. See also Grey, Charles, Earl
Hume, David, 37, 42, 68, 79
Hume, James Deacon, 162–164, 176
Hume, Joseph, 53, 98–100, 103, 114,
119–120, 134–135, 139, 159, 163,
165, 167, 236
Hungary, 61
Hunt, James, 221–222
Huskisson, William, 117
Hutt, William, 187–189, 191–194,
219, 236
Hutton, Richard Holt, 194
Indentured servants, 11, 14, 27, 34,
74, 154–156, 195, 213–215, 217,
222
India, 90, 109, 114, 116–118, 154,
156, 158, 176, 181, 187, 201
cotton, 67–68, 115, 118, 152
indigo, 118, 152, 196, 215
Sepoy uprising, 207, 217
sugar, 118
Indian Ocean, 10, 73, 154, 158
Inquiry into the Principles of Political
Economy, 16
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations, 20–33,
35, 55, 57–58, 65–66, 70, 108
Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavo Vassa,
the African, Written by Himself, 76
Ireland, 48, 58, 61, 123, 177, 187,
191, 223
Irving, Thomas, 162
Jamaica, 20, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 55,
93, 129–130, 134, 146, 150, 152,
161, 163, 180–182, 185, 196,
199, 201, 213, 206–213, 215
Kingston, 15, 222
Morant Bay, 225
slave uprising, 123, 129
Worthy Park plantation, 181
Jamaica Courant, 77
Java, 174, 183–184, 214, 216, 219
Jukes, Joseph Beete, 184,
Kansas, 199
Kennedy, William, 170
Kentucky, 197
Knibb, William, 150
La Plata, 39, 199
Labor
African, 89
agricultural, 27–29, 34, 69, 74,
145, 161
bound, 14, 23, 27, 60, 145, 173
coerced, 3, 13, 16, 18, 22–23, 27,
32, 58–59, 61, 74, 90, 202, 230
Coolie, 181, 200, 206, 208, 213,
215, 227
division of, 28–30, 57–58, 71, 74
European vs. Caribbean, 38
free, 9, 15, 18–19, 27, 31, 54
industrial, 29, 38
and leisure, 64, 133
productivity, 20, 30, 61, 64
self employed, 133
sugar, 66, 90
wage, 16, 23, 27, 58, 64, 133
see also indentured servants;
plantation; slaves; workers
Lancashire, 51
Latin America, 118, 154
Lawrence, William, 80
Lecky, William E. H., 225
Leeds, 51, 93
Leeward Islands, 82
Letters on the African Slave Trade, 39
Liberty, 12, 16–17, 21, 32, 88. See also
freedom
Lisbon, 151
Liverpool, 156, 186, 203
Locke, John, 11
London, 51, 151, 171, 199, 209, 226
London Ethnological Society, 221
London Society of Arts Manufactures
and Commerce, 111
Long, Edward, 75–77, 79
Longfield, Samuel Mountiford, 56, 159
Louisiana, 130, 185, 206, 209–210,
216
Lourenço da Silva de Mendouca, 11
Lushington, Stephen, 103, 134–135,
149, 154
 303
 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 48, 130
Macaulay, Zachary, 97
McCulloch, James Ramsey, 55, 69, 99
MacQueen, James, 97, 99, 110, 113,
200
Madden, Richard, 153
Madeira, 187, 223
Madras, 117
Madrid, 151,
Malthus, Thomas Robert, 7, 41–45,
48–49, 52, 54–55, 76, 102, 129
Manchester, 39, 58, 79, 93, 164
Manifest destiny, 170
Manila, 153
Marcet, Jane, 59
Maroons, 95
Martineau, Harriet, 59
Maryland, 25
Massachusetts, 3
Mauritius, 4, 154–156, 158, 173, 175,
180–181, 183, 187, 205, 207–
208, 213–215
Mediterranean, 9–10, 12
Merivale, Herman, 71, 159–160, 167,
211–214, 224
Mexico, 118, 169
Mill, James, 55
Mill, John Stuart, 219
Millar, John, 22, 54
Minas Gerais, 233
Missouri, 57
Molesworth, William, 161
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat
Baron de, 36
Montserrat, 45
Morant Bay, Jamaica, 225
Morning Chronicle (London), 76,
Morning Herald (London), 128
Mozambique, 32, 156
Napoleon. See Bonaparte
National Association for the
Advancement of Social Science,
203, 205
Navigation Acts, 25, 115
Negro, 7, 49, 75, 77, 79–81, 83, 109,
120, 172, 202, 206, 219–222,
227. See also race
304 
Negro Apprenticeship, 5
Netherlands, 217
New England, 13, 57, 199
New York, 23
New York Times, 215
Nieboer, H. J., 229
Niger Expedition, 166–168, 209, 218,
226, 235
Northampton, 93
Northern Star, 181, 219
Norwich, 93, 161
Nottingham, Samuel, 110
Nova Scotia, 92–93, 98, 110
O’Connell, Daniel, 134, 138, 149, 153–
154, 164
Ohio, 197
Oxford, England, 159, 167, 180
Palmerston, Henry John Temple, Lord,
181, 192
Paris, 51, 62, 151, 168
Parliament
British, 5, 13, 35, 44, 53, 92–93,
97, 120, 127, 130, 135, 139, 142–
143, 161, 188
committee, 68, 122, 125–126, 132,
162–163, 182, 203
debates, 7, 42–43, 115, 121, 124,
131, 162, 165–166
papers, 5, 114, 181
Peel, Sir Robert, 81, 104, 127–129,
133, 139, 163–166, 173–177, 185–
186
Pennsylvania, 11, 90
Philadelphia, 23
Pitt, William, Prime Minister, 45–46
Plantation, 7, 11, 14–17, 25–32, 46,
51, 59, 64–65, 70, 71, 74, 84,
90, 95, 101, 109–111, 115, 122,
131, 142, 144, 158, 186
Planters, 11, 14, 28, 31, 46–49, 53,
55, 63–67, 69, 74, 84, 88, 95,
110, 116, 121, 132, 135–136,
146, 150, 155, 158, 173, 176,
186
Poland, 18, 28, 59, 61, 75
Political economy, 5–6, 20, 32, 38,
44, 54–55, 56, 58, 62–63, 68–69,
71–73, 147, 159, 161, 168, 172,
174, 182, 194, 203, 211, 217,
224
Poor Laws, 18, 37, 49, 71, 90, 136,
194
Population, 36, 48
African, 38–42, 44, 47
Barbados, 51
British, 49, 52
deficit, 46, 49
density, 52, 57, 114, 212
and emancipation, 146
Haiti, 102
man-land ratio, 160, 203, 212–213
population principle, 34–54, 83–84,
98–99, 102, 129, 197, 207–208,
221
reproduction, 45
statistics, 47
U.S., 45, 47–49
West Indian, 44, 46–47, 49
see also demography
Port-au-Prince, 55
Portugal, 11, 195
Postlethwayt, Malachy, 16
Preston, England, 51
Price, Richard, 37
Prichard, James Cowles, 79–80
Privy Council, British, 52
Productivity, 17, 21, 64
Province of Freedom (Sierra Leone),
91–92, 96
Public opinion, 70, 88, 135
Puerto Rico (also Porto Rico), 144,
153, 159, 185
Quakers, 11, 24, 89–90, 95, 116, 164,
166
Quarterly Review, 80, 81, 101, 102,
159, 172
Race, 6–7, 74–75, 78–81, 83, 88, 91,
129, 172, 217, 219, 221
blacks as original humans, 79
debates, 81–82
Racism, 218
and British press, 128–129
in Parliament, 97–99, 128–129
in British politics, 77–83
Ramsay, James, 34, 82
Reading, England, 93
Reeve, Henry, 227
Reform Act of 1832, 121
Researches into the Physical History of
Man, 79–80
Ricardo, David, 55
Robespierre, Maximillian, 63
Royal African Company, 11
Russell, John, Lord, 154, 161–163,
165, 176, 182–183, 189, 191–
192, 195, 223, 236
Russia, 18, 48, 59, 61, 75, 183
Saint Christopher (Kitts), 204
Saint Dominigue (also Saint
Domingo), 19–20, 62–63, 78, 100–
102, 104, 109, 153, 211
Say, Jean-Baptiste, 63–70, 160, 211
Schoelcher, Victor, 213
Scoble, John, 153, 156
Scott, Dred, 199
Senior, Nassau, 201
Sepoy uprising, India, 202, 217
Sewell, William, 215
Sharp, Granville, 91,
Shrewsbury, England, 93
Siam (Thailand), 153
Sierra Leone, 77, 84, 91–100, 107,
109–110, 114, 118, 120, 135, 167–
168, 233, 235
Singapore, 222
Slave emancipation. See emancipation
Slave Emancipation Bill (Emancipation
Act of 1833), 103, 118, 121, 128,
142, 182, 200, 228, 237
Slave trade
Atlantic, 3–4, 12, 21, 31, 39, 41–
42, 44, 47, 49, 54, 82, 89, 96,
107, 140, 151, 166, 186, 221
to Cuba and Brazil, 187, 192, 202,
208
economics of, 30, 55, 67–68
numbers, 39–42, 47
 305
 Slave trade (continued )
and slave traders, 32, 49, 69, 92,
94
and slave uprisings, 153
Slave Trade Abolition Bill (1807), 45,
92, 106, 108
Slavery
Atlantic, 3–4, 28, 33–34, 37, 41,
58, 60–61, 86–87
and botany, 73–74, 91
and cotton forecasts, 153
economics, 57
expansion, 12, 169, 177, 197, 220
gang, 31, 57, 71, 226
Parliamentary Committees, 125–
126, 132–133, 149
peculiarity, 30, 71
and technology, 185–186
Slaves, 16, 41, 154
crown, 113–114
motivations, 26–27, 30, 35
productivity, 28
registration, 47–48
sex ratio, 49–50
transitions, 73, 138, 155
Smeathman, Henry, 91
Smith, Adam, 3, 7, 14, 16, 19–35, 38,
54–55, 57, 60–66, 68–69, 71, 76,
84, 87, 90, 116, 123, 141, 152,
159–160, 163, 165, 182, 207,
230
Soares de Sousa, Paulino José, 193
Societé des Amis des Noirs, 62–63, 77–
78
Somerset case, 75–76, 89
South Africa, 161, 223
South America, 116
South Pacific, 73, 134
Spain, 130, 195, 207
Stanley, Edward George (14th Earl of
Derby), 50, 81, 104, 119, 123–
127, 131–132, 135, 137–139, 158,
163–164, 226, 231, 234
Steele, Joshua, 111, 113
Stephen, James, 101, 109, 113, 208
Steuart, James, 16–17, 19–20, 31–32,
38, 42, 64, 207
Stewart, Patrick, 51, 53, 149
306 
Storch, Henry F. von, 59–63, 65, 68,
152, 196
Stuart, Captain Charles, 144
Sturge, Joseph, 150
Sugar, 34, 55, 58, 93, 145
Beetroot, 184
Bourbon cane, 73
crisis, 173, 218
duties, 127, 138, 173–175, 177,
187, 192, 212
Otahiti cane, 73
Parliamentary Committee (1848),
182
maple, 108
price, 48, 56, 90, 115, 158, 179
protection, 25, 141, 164, 174, 176,
182, 202
slave trade and, 25
supply, 108, 159
Sugar Bill, 1846, 177, 179, 182, 187,
192, 199, 205
Suriname, 177, 217
Tale of Demerara, 59
Texas, 169–171, 173, 201, 210
Theory of Moral Sentiments, 33
Thompson, George, 77, 123, 144
Times (London), 97, 135–138, 141,
166–168, 171–172, 176–177,
180, 182, 186, 188, 190, 194–
195, 197, 201–205, 209–210, 213–
214, 218, 221
Tobago, 25
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 145
Tories, 124, 128, 137–138, 216
Torrens, Colonel Robert, 133–134
Tortola, 110
Townsend, Joseph, 38
Traité de économie politique (Treatise on
Political Economy), 63–69, 211
Trinidad, 46, 52, 119, 129–130, 134,
160–161, 174, 205, 209, 215,
223
Tucker, Josiah, 236
Turgot, A.J.R., 62, 64, 84
Turnbull, David, 153
Two Treatises on Government, 11
United States, 4, 45, 52, 57, 61, 66,
70, 78, 81, 84, 110, 114–115,
129, 144, 151–154, 169–172,
174, 183, 195–198, 200, 210,
213, 215–217, 222, 224, 232. See
also America
University of London, 55
Usselincx, William, 11
Vagrancy Laws, 158
Vassa, Gustavus. See Equiano,
Olaudah
Venezuela, 118–119
Virey, Julien-Joseph, 78
Wages or the Whip, 122–123, 131
Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 56–58,
134, 160, 161
Watson, Reverend Richard, 80
Wellington, Duke of, 127, 140–141
West India Company, Dutch, 11, 175
West India interest, 34, 42, 92, 110,
115, 140, 175, 217
West Indian Regiments, 84, 94
West Indies, 4, 18, 25–26, 42–44, 46–
47, 50, 55, 73, 75–77, 83, 93,
109, 114, 144, 150, 155–156, 158–
159, 164–165, 167, 173, 179,
184, 190, 199, 201, 204, 210,
212, 214–215, 218–219, 222
British, 35, 51, 191, 226
French, 27, 35
Westminster Review, 128, 167
Westmoreland, Earl of, 87, 157
Whigs, 44, 55, 102, 122, 132, 138,
141, 164, 178, 181, 183, 187,
189–192, 224
White, Charles, 79, 84
Wilberforce, Samuel, 180
Wilberforce, William, 42, 44–47, 77,
92, 101, 103, 107–109, 113, 140–
141, 177–178
Williams, Eric, 4
Wilson, James, 183–185, 188, 194
Winterbottom, Thomas, 92
Workers, 5, 13, 16, 17, 20, 22, 31, 64,
133, 144, 176, 217, 219. See also
labor
World Antislavery conferences
(1840), 151–152, 166–167, 169–
171, 176, 215
(1843), 168, 173–174
Wynford, William Draper Best, Lord,
140
Yellow fever, 83
Yorkshire, 51
Young, Arthur, 14, 16, 18–19, 39,
232
 307