Business History Review

Research Article

The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century: A Comment on the Williams Thesis*

Stanley L. Engermana1

a1 Professor of Economics and History, University of Rochester

Abstract

Professor Engerman constructs estimates of relevant data in order to test the assertion that profits from the slave trade provided the capital which financed the Industrial Revolution in England.

Footnotes

* The author wishes to thank Roger Anstey, Nicholas Crafts, Philip Curtin, Nathaniel Leff, Donald McCloskey, and Rudolph Penner for helpful comments, and to acknowledge permission from Professor Anstey, Richard Bean, and K. G. Davies to use as yet unpublished data. This paper was presented at the New Economic History Conference, Britain 1750–1850, held in Cambridge, England (1972).