West Indian plantation wealth was self-financing through its own profits

Evidence

The money came, in the last resort, from the planters themselves… . The money which was received from one planter was lent again, either to him or to another planter… . Thus it was the planter who was paying, so to speak, for his own enslavement. The profits of the plantations were the source which fed the indebtedness charged upon the plantations themselves. In this sense Adam Smith was wrong: the wealth of the British West Indies did not all proceed from the mother country; after some initial loans in the earliest period which merely primed the pump, the wealth of the West Indies was created out of the profits of the West Indies themselves, and, with some assistance from the British tax-payer, much of it found a permanent home in Great Britain. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 579

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Directly refutes Adam Smith’s claim that colony wealth flowed from the mother country; connects to broader debates on the colonial origins of capital.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how long was the ‘priming the pump’ period, and what were those initial loans’ sources?

Related

• West Indian planter wealth was self-generated, not from the mother country (similarity 0.96)
• West Indies wealth was self-generated from plantation profits, not imported capital (similarity 0.96)

Broader Connections

• West Indian wealth was self-generating, contradicting Adam Smith #corroborates (0.90)
• Slave-created colonial wealth financed British commercial and industrial growth #complicates (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 572