British abolitionism of the slave trade served commercial empire-building

Evidence

In 1827, the Brazilian legislator Cunha Matos had observed: “England aspires to dominate all of Asia, as by means of the settlements and wars that it is undertaking in Africa one must suppose it also aspires to complete dominion over that great region. The countries of both regions have the same commodities and products as Brazil, and as the British must prefer their own territories, they will seek by all means to set up obstacles for us; and to achieve this there is no better way than to deprive Brazil of additional labor: this is the true British policy. I believe with all my heart that Brazil will come to receive cotton and rice from Benguela, wax from China, and sugar from Tonkin: if this does not occur in my time, it will happen in my children’s time, who will perhaps remember my prophecy.” … Some Yankee critics vowed that the British were more interested in securing for British merchants a monopoly of the African trade than in the welfare of the negroes. This was the explanation for the British refusal to destroy the factories along the African coast where all the supplies used in the purchase and transportation of the slaves were stored, for the goods; it was the explanation of the numerous treaties, which were largely of a commercial nature, negotiated by the London government with the African chiefs; it supported the allegation that the British cruisers more frequently made prizes of the slavers after the negroes had been taken on board than before. Other critics attacked the British practice which permitted the negroes liberated by the courts to be bound out to British planters in Guiana and the West Indies for periods of three to seven years. It was hard to see how this system of apprenticeship, which was occasionally extended to three consecutive terms, differed from outright slavery. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2030

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The anti-slavery campaign as imperial economic strategy rather than pure humanitarianism - parallels Eric Williams’ thesis and the materialist reading of abolition.

Related

• British antislavery policy served commercial empire rather than Black welfare (similarity 0.94)
• British anti-slavery rhetoric masked thriving profits in other slave economies (similarity 0.84)
• British abolition targeted Brazil to destroy its competing economy (similarity 0.83)
• British capitalism thrived on Brazilian slavery despite official abolitionism (similarity 0.82)
• Britain profited from American and Brazilian slavery while destroying its own (similarity 0.82)
• Free trade’s gains for Britain came at the British West Indies’ expense (similarity 0.82)
• The slave trade financed Britain’s industrial revolution while underdeveloping Africa’s economies (similarity 0.80)
• Industrial capital dismantled the slave system it had built once slavery became unprofitable (similarity 0.80)
• Sugar’s labor demands pushed the English to enslave West Africans (similarity 0.80)
• Sugar cultivation’s labor hunger drove the English slave trade to Africa (similarity 0.79)
• British industrialists dropped the West Indies once free trade and India paid more (similarity 0.79)
• English capital subsidized both Brazilian independence and slave imports (similarity 0.79)
• British merchant capital drove Brazil’s slave imports and independence (similarity 0.78)
• British slavery followed Iberian and Dutch models in substituting human capital for commodities (similarity 0.78)