Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:46:06.031Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Slave(ry) Trade and the Development of Capitalism in the United States: The Textile Industry in New England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Ronald Bailey
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The significance of the slave trade and slavery-related commerce—what I will call the slave(ry) trade—in contributing to the development of colonial America and the United States has been a persistent theme in the work of Afro-American scholars. Two scholars in particular should be cited in this regard. W. E. B. DuBois (1896: 27) pointed out that slave labor was not widely utilized because the climate and geography of New England precluded the extensive development of agriculture: “The significance of New England in the African slave-trade does not therefore lie in the fact that she early discountenanced the system of slavery and stopped importation; but rather in the fact that her citizens, being the traders of the New World, early took part in the carrying slave trade and furnished slaves to the other colonies.” DuBois’s account of the role of Massachusetts and of Rhode Island, which later became “the clearing house for the slave trade of other colonies,” was similar to what was popularized as the “triangular trade” thesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , Fall 1990 , pp. 373 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1990 

References

Alkalimat, A., and Associates (1986) Introduction to Afro-American Studies: A People College Primer. Chicago: Twenty-first Century Books and Publications.Google Scholar
Anstey, R. (1975) The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Appleton, N. (1858) Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell. Lowell, MA: Proprietors of Locks and Canals.Google Scholar
Asante, M. K. (1987) The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, R. (1979) “The slave trade and the development of capitalism in the United States: A critical reappraisal of theory and method in black studies.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.Google Scholar
Bailey, R. (1986) “Africa, the slave trade, and the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe and the United States.” American History: A Bibliographic Review 2: 1–91.Google Scholar
Bailyn, B. (1986) The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Bean, R. N. (1971) “The British trans-Atlantic slave trade, 1650-1775.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington.Google Scholar
Blaut, J. M. (1989) “Colonialism and the rise of capitalism.” Science and Society 53: 260-96.Google Scholar
Briggs, L. V. (1927) History and Genealogy of the Cabot Family, 1475-1927. Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed and Co.Google Scholar
Bruchey, S. (1967) Cotton and the Growth of the American Economy, 1790-1860. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.Google Scholar
Chamberlain, J. (1963) The Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. (1980) “The historical context of the new economic history.” Journal of European Economic History 9: 185–208.Google Scholar
Coughtry, J. (1981) The Notorious Triangle. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Crouzet, F. (1980) “Toward an export economy: British exports during the industrial revolution.” Explorations in Economic History 17: 48–93.Google Scholar
Curtin, P. D. (1969) The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Curtin, P. D. (1975) “Measuring the Atlantic slave trade,” in Engerman, S. L. and Genovese, E. D. (eds.) Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 107-28.Google Scholar
Dalzell, R. Jr. (1987) Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Darity, William Jr. (1975) “The numbers game and the profitability of the British trade in slaves.” Journal of Economic History 45: 693–703.Google Scholar
Darity, William Jr. (1982a) “Mercantilism, slavery, and the industrial revolution.” Research in Political Economy 5: 1–21.Google Scholar
Darity, William Jr. (1982b) “A general equilibrium model of the eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade: A least-likely test.” Research in Economic History 7: 290–321.Google Scholar
Davis, D. B. (1975) The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, D. B. (1984) Slavery and Human Progress. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, L. E. (1971) “Capital mobility and American growth,” in Fogel, R. W. and Engerman, S. L. (eds.) The Reinterpretation of American Economic History. New York: Harper and Row: 285–301.Google Scholar
Davis, L. E., et al. (1972) American Economic Growth: An Economist’s History of the United States. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Davis, R. (1973) The Rise of the Atlantic Economies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Deane, C. S. (1886) “Report of the council: The connection of Massachusetts with slavery and the slave trade.” American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 2d ser., 4: 177–222.Google Scholar
Deane, P., and Cole, W. A. (1967) British Economic Growth, 1688-1959: Trends and Structure. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dobb, M. (1947) Studies in the Development of Capitalism. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Donnan, E. (1930-35) Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America. 4 vols., Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution.Google Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B. (1896) The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States, 1638-1870. London: Longmans, Green and Company.Google Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B. (1935) Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.Google Scholar
Duignan, P., and Clendenen, C. (1963) The United States and the African Slave Trade, 1619-1862. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Eltis, D. (1983) “Free and coerced transatlantic migrations: Some comparisons.” American Historical Review 88: 251-80.Google Scholar
Engerman, S. L. (1972) “The slave trade and British capital formation in the eighteenth century: A comment on the Williams thesis.” Business History Review 46: 430-43.Google Scholar
Genovese, E. D. (1971) In Red and Black: Marxian Explorations in Southern and Afro-American History. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Gibb, G. S. (1950) The Saco-Lowell Shops: Textile Machinery Building in New England, 1813-1849. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goldin, C. D., and Lewis, F. D. (1980) “The role of exports in American economic growth during the Napoleonic Wars, 1793 to 1807.” Explorations in Economic History 17: 26–47.Google Scholar
Greene, L. J. (1942) The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Greenslet, F. (1946) The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Hammond, M. B. (1897) The Cotton Industry: An Essay in American Economic History. New York: American Economic Association.Google Scholar
Harper, L. A. (1939) The English Navigation Laws. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Heckscher, E. F. (1935) Mercantilism. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Hedges, J. B. (1952) The Browns of Providence Plantations: Colonial Years. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hedges, J. B. (1968) The Browns of Providence Plantations: The Nineteenth Century. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. (1968) Industry and Empire: The Making of Modern English Society. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Huertas, T. F. (1979) “Damnifying growth in the antebellum South.” Journal of Economic History 39: 87–100.Google Scholar
Hughes, J. R. T. (1983) American Economic History. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.Google Scholar
Inikori, J. E. (1976a) “Measuring the Atlantic slave trade: An assessment of Curtin and Anstey.” Journal of African History 17: 197–223.Google Scholar
Inikori, J. E. (1976b) “Measuring the Atlantic slave trade: A rejoinder.” Journal of African History 17: 607-27.Google Scholar
Inikori, J. E. (1982) Forced Migration. New York: Africana Publishing.Google Scholar
Inikori, J. E. (1989) “Slavery and the revolution in cotton textile production in England.” Social Science History 13: 343-79.Google Scholar
Klein, H. S. (1978) The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, N. R. (1986) “Banks, kinship, and economic development: The New England case.” Journal of Economic History 46: 647-67.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. (1899) The Development of Capitalism in Russia. Moscow: Progress Publishers.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, P. E. (1982) “The volume of the Atlantic slave trade: A synthesis.” Journal of African History 23: 473–501.Google Scholar
McClelland, P. D. (1978) “Cliometrics versus institutional history.” Research in Economic History 3: 369-78.Google Scholar
McCusker, J. J. (1970) “The rum trade and the balance of payments of the thirteen Continental colonies, 1650-1775.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
McCusker, J. J., and Menard, R. R. (1985) The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Massachusetts Historical Society (1914-15) Commerce of Rhode Island, 1726-1800. Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 7th ser. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Nettels, C. P. (1962) The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775-1815. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1961) The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
O’Connor, T. H. (1968) Lords of the Loom: The Cotton Whigs and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.Google Scholar
Ostrander, G. M. (1948) “The molasses trade of the thirteen colonies.” M.A. thesis, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Ostrander, G. M. (1973) “The making of the triangular trade myth.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 30: 635-44.Google Scholar
Patterson, H. O. (1979) “The black community: Is there a future?” In Lipset, S. M. (ed.) The Third Century. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press: 244-84.Google Scholar
Patterson, H. O. (1982) Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, E. (1853) History of Rhode Island. New York: J. S. Taylor.Google Scholar
Pitman, F. W. (1917) The Development of the British West Indies, 1700-1763. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Porter, K. W. (1937) The Jacksons and the Lees: Two Generations of Massachusetts Merchants, 1765-1844. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Postlethwayt, M. (1745) The African Trade: The Great Piller and Support of the British Plantation in America, by a British Merchant. London: J. Robinson.Google Scholar
Price, J. M. (1976) “A note on the value of colonial exports of shipping.” Journal of Economic History 22: 704-22.Google Scholar
Price, J. M. (1984) “The transatlantic economy,” in Greene, J. P. and Pole, J. R. (eds.) Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Period. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press: 18–42.Google Scholar
Rawley, J. A. (1981) The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Redlich, F. (1971) “New and traditional approaches to economic history and their interdependence,” in Steeped in Two Cultures: A Selection of Essays, by Redlich, F.. New York: Harper Torchbooks: 339-55.Google Scholar
Reynolds, E. (1985) Stand the Storm: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade. London: Allison and Busby.Google Scholar
Rivard, P. (1974) Samuel Slater: Father of American Manufacturers. Pawtucket, RI: Slater Mill Historic Site.Google Scholar
Shepherd, J. F. (1970) “Commodity exports from the British North American colonies to overseas areas, 1768-1772.” Explorations in Economic History 7: 5–76.Google Scholar
Shepperson, G. (1975) “Comment,” in Engerman, S. L. and Genovese, E. D. (eds.) Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 99–106.Google Scholar
Shipton, C. K. (1963) “Documents and the historian.” New England Social Studies Bulletin 21.Google Scholar
Shlakman, V. (1935) Economic History of a Factory Town: A Study of Chicopee, Massachusetts. Northampton, MA: Smith College.Google Scholar
Sobel, R., and Sicilia, D. (1986) The Entrepreneurs: An American Adventure. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Solow, B. L. (1985) “Caribbean slavery and British growth: The Eric Williams hypothesis.” Journal of Development Economics 17: 99–115.Google Scholar
Solow, B. L., and Engerman, S. L., eds. (1987) British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sutch, R. (1982) “Douglass North and the new economic history,” in Ransom, R., Sutch, R., and Walton, G. (eds.) Explorations in the New Economic History. New York: Academic: 15–40.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1862) Preliminary Report on the Eighth Census, 1860. 37th Cong., 2d sess. H. Exec. Doc. 116.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1960) Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Union for Radical Political Economics (1971) “On radical paradigms in economics” (special issue). Review of Radical Political Economics 3(2).Google Scholar
Wadsworth, A. P., and Mann, J. (1931) The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Walton, G. M. (1968) “New evidence on colonial commerce.” Journal of Economic History 27: 363-89.Google Scholar
Ware, C. F. (1931) The Early New England Cotton Manufacture: A Study in Industrial Beginnings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Williams, E. (1944) Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Williams, W. (1936) “Africa and the rise of capitalism.” M.A. thesis, Howard University.Google Scholar
Wright, Chester (1941) Economic History of the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Writers Project, Works Project Administration (1941) Boston Looks Seaward: The Story of the Port, 1630-1940. Boston: Bruce Humphries.Google Scholar
Zevin, R. B. (1971) “The growth of cotton textile production after 1815,” in Fogel, R. W. and Engerman, S. L. (eds.) The Reinterpretation of American Economic History. New York: Harper and Row: 122-47.Google Scholar
Zevin, R. B. (1975) The Growth of Manufacturing in Early-Nineteenth-Century New England. New York: Arno.Google Scholar