1. Home
  2. Eric Williams

Eric Williams

Capitalism and Slavery

  • Capitalism and Slavery

  • 'It's often said that books are compulsory reading, but this book really is compulsory. You cannot understand slavery, or British Empire, without it' Sathnam Sanghera

    Arguing that the slave trade was at the heart of Britain's economic progress, Eric Williams's landmark 1944 study revealed the connections between capitalism and racism, and has influenced generations of historians ever since.

    Williams traces the rise and fall of the Atlantic slave trade through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to show how it laid the foundations of the Industrial Revolution, and how racism arose as a means of rationalising an economic decision. Most significantly, he showed how slavery was only abolished when it ceased to become financially viable, exploding the myth of emancipation as a mark of Britain's moral progress.

    'Its thesis is a starting point for a new generation of scholarship' New Yorker

Penguin Modern Classics

1274 Books

Eric Williams (1911 - 1981) was a pioneering historian and politician born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. He graduated with first-class honours from St Catherine's College, Oxford in 1935, and completed a DPhil in History in 1938. His dissertation, 'The Economic Aspects of the Abolition of the Slave Trade,' was published as Capitalism and Slavery in 1944, while he was a professor at Howard University. In 1956, Williams founded the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago's first modern political party. He led the country to independence from the British and became the nation's first prime minister in 1962.

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies to make our website work. If you click 'Accept All’ we will use cookies to understand how you use our services and to show you personalised advertising and other content. You can change your cookie settings by clicking 'Manage Cookies'. For more information please see our Cookie Policy

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.