Importance of the Slave Trade to the British Economy

[MULTIZ321]

Importance of the Slave Trade to the British Economy
From BBC/ History/ Atlantic Slave Trade/ Bite Size/ Education/ Guides/ bbc.com

The British economy was transformed by the Atlantic slave trade. In 1700, 80 per cent of British trade went to Europe from ports on the east and south coasts.

By 1800, 60 per cent of British trade went to Africa and America, sailing from the three main west coast ports - Glasgow, Liverpool and Bristol.

Ports such as London, Bristol and Liverpool prospered as a direct result of involvement in the slave trade. Other ports, such as Glasgow, profited from the tobacco trade. Thousands of jobs were created in Britain supplying goods and services to slave traders.

In a period that saw Britain industrialise, profits could be made by exporting manufactured British goods to Africa and then further profits accrued from imported slave products such as sugar, which became very fashionable with the British people.

The slave trade was important in the development of the wider economy - financial, commercial, legal and insurance institutions all emerged to support the activities of the slave trade. Some merchants became bankers and many new businesses were financed by profits made from slave-trading.

The slave trade played an important role in providing British industry with access to raw materials. This contributed to the increased production of manufactured goods.

The graphic below shows the parts of Britain's economy that benefited from the slave trade...."

Richard

 

[Conan]

https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told/dp/0465049664

A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of slaves
Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians
Winner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize
Bloomberg View Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 2014

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution--the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy.

Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.

 

[pedro47]

Thanks Richard and Conan for sharing this information.

 

[MULTIZ321]

Another good book is "The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870" by Hugh Thomas

Here's a good Book Review from the New York Times by John Thornton: The Business of Slavery


Richard