Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery cover

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Narrator
Bill Andrew Quinn
Length
8 hours 30 minutes
Publisher
Penguin Random House
Catalogue #
15630
Ratings
0 star rating
Synopsis

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.