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• W2000926430 abstract "Reviewed by: West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807 Brooke N. Newman David Beck Ryden, West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Pp. xvii, 332. $80.00 (hardcover). David Beck Ryden's timely and compelling book reexamines the arguments about whether the impetus for the abolition of the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807 came largely from the declining state of the Caribbean plantation economy after the American Revolution. The controversy surrounding the profitability of colonial slavery, including the role played by the overproduction of sugar in Parliament's final decision to abolish the slave trade, is a decades-old historical dispute centered on the writings of the Trinidadian scholar Eric Williams. In Capitalism and Slavery (1944), Williams challenged traditional accounts of abolition that focused the lion's share of attention on social changes within Britain. He argued that, as the Caribbean colonies declined in value after 1783, abolishing the slave trade (and the monopoly held by West Indian sugar producers) became more convenient economically. The diminishing value of the Caribbean colonies, rather than bourgeois humanitarianism, paved the way for the conclusion of the British slave trade, Williams maintained. During the 1960s and 1970s, this decline thesis generally fell into disfavor, as scholars such as Roger T. Anstey and Seymour Drescher argued persuasively for the recovery of the Caribbean economy as a result of the Haitian Revolution. More recent scholarship on abolition has continued this trend, either by deemphasizing economic motivations or by overlooking conditions in the West Indies in favor of metropolitan factors. Ryden's extensively researched study marks a concerted attempt to redirect attention back to the Caribbean colonies during the era of abolition. Departing from arguments critical of the decline thesis or focused solely on Britain proper, Ryden suggests that a deteriorating West Indian sugar-slave economy after 1799 directly influenced Parliament's final decision to abolish the slave trade. Through analysis of a wide range of political, economic, and business data, particularly the manuscript records and publications of the influential London Society of West India Planters and Merchants, Ryden carefully reconstructs the responses of the West Indian proslavery interest to changing sensibilities in Britain and fluctuations in the Caribbean financial system between roughly 1783 and 1807. He provides a skillful reassessment and revision of Williams's thesis and effectively maintains—indeed, even strengthens—the connection between the rapid decline of sugar prices, due to foreign competition, overproduction, and imprudent speculation, and the end of the slave trade within the British Empire. Additionally, Ryden analyzes the assertions made by important abolitionists including James Ramsay, Thomas Clarkson, and Granville Sharp regarding protectionism, West Indian business practices, and slave management, noting that the Society perceived such commentary as evidence of a scheme afoot to undermine their position of privilege within the traditional colonial system. Approximately 1,500 absentee merchants and planters attended Society meetings in London during this volatile period to discuss issues relevant to their interests, the results of which were recorded in Society minute books. Ryden uses these proceedings to significant advantage. His systematic analysis of Society meeting records has revealed, for instance, that the majority of gatherings held during the 1790s and early 1800s concerned tax policy and the abolition question, that [End Page 144] prominent Jamaicans played a central role in the Society, and that those with strong interests in Jamaica formed a highly visible, tight-knit absentee community. Connected through social activities, behavioral patterns, marriages, shared business interests, and a mutual awareness of the importance of white unity, Jamaicans promoted the West Indian interest in London and the antiabolition cause in Parliament. As a group, West Indian absentees spared no expense when it came to educating their own, advertising their cause to the British public, or eliciting support from key political elites; they shared a common goal of protecting both the prosperity of the Caribbean sugar colonies and the self-proclaimed right of merchants and planters to traffic in and own human property. Without the slave trade, West Indians and their supporters argued, land in the Caribbean would decline in value and lie fallow; slaves would pick up on white disunity and attempt to revolt..." @default.
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• W2000926430 date "2010-01-01" @default.
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• W2000926430 title "<i>West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807</i> (review)" @default.
• W2000926430 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2010.0012" @default.
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