A 1745 London merchant credited the African slave trade as Britain’s foundation of wealth.

Evidence

The more “Negroes imported,” he wrote, the more British goods were made and exported for trade. “The Negro-trade,” he emphasized, was the foundation of “an inexhaustible Fund of Wealth and Naval Power to this Nation.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 274

Categorization

• XREF: Postlethwayt’s own framing — slave trade as ‘foundation’ — is exactly the reframing thesis the reader must distinguish from contested specifics; dovetails with Milgrom’s work on trade institutions as economic infrastructure.