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Slavery Did Not Make Britain Rich, Report Finds

by Will Jones
1 May 2024 7:00 PM

Slavery and colonialism did not make Britain rich, and may even have made the nation poorer, a new study from the Institute of Economic Affairs has found. The Telegraph has more.

The riches of the slave trade were concentrated in a few families while the nation footed the bill for extra military and administrative spending, according to a book by Kristian Niemietz at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

“Profits earned from overseas engagement were large enough to make some individuals very rich, but they were not large enough to seriously affect macroeconomic aggregates like Britain’s investment rate and capital formation,” he said.

Mr. Niemietz argued that that the slave trade had little overall impact on the economy or the country’s ability to industrialise.

He said: “The transatlantic slave trade was no more important for the British economy than brewing or sheep farming, but we do not usually hear the claim that ‘brewing financed the Industrial Revolution’ or ‘sheep farming financed the Industrial Revolution’.”

It comes amid a heated debate over Britain’s imperial past. Caribbean states have demanded reparations from Britain, while more than 100 British families whose ancestors benefited from the slave trade, including former BBC broadcaster Laura Trevelyan, have pledged to seek ways to make financial amends.

By contrast, leading figures including Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, have hit back to argue that Britain’s wealth was not built on imperialism.

She hailed the report as “a welcome counterweight to simplistic narratives that exaggerate the significance of empire and slavery to Britain’s economic development”.

She added: “It was British ingenuity and industry, unleashed by free markets and liberal institutions, that powered the Industrial Revolution and our modern economy. It is these factors that we should focus on, rather than blaming the West and colonialism for economic difficulties and holding back growth with misguided policies.

“The paper argues persuasively that colonialism played a minor role in Britain’s economy, and may have actually been a net negative after accounting for military and administrative costs – a reminder that state overreach is always an expensive endeavour.”

Worth reading in full.

Tags: ColonialismHistorySlave TradeSlaveryWoke Gobbledegook

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18 Comments
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Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

The technique of slavery itself represents a small part of empire in some cases. I think it is more fruitful to discuss the broader issue which is what has been called the central banking warfare model. Resource exploitaton of relatively undeveloped places has been going on forever. The central banking warfare model has only existed for hundreds of years and is at the core of the Anglo-American world view. And then you have the entry of the neocons. All British leaders and potential leaders are neocons, even more so than their American counterparts. This trajectory is fatally flawed in its final stages I would treat it with caution. Thucydides wrote about how the tyranny of empire ultimately comes home to cannibalise its own citizens. And in the post-war years we did quite well out of it and it was easy to turn a blind eye.The time that is coming will not be a forgiving one. Any deficiency in perspective could easily be fatal.

19
-5
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

Exploitation of resources – you mean technical advance and innovation to turn resources into consumer goods?

Why didn’t/don’t the people in ‘relatively underdeveloped places’ do that themselves… forever?

4
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
1 year ago

OT….Interesting segment in UK Column News today regarding ID4Africa movement 2024 and how BMGF is involved (maybe to get vaccine passports from cradle to the grave).
Also THALES Defence & Security is involved and it was from them that we had that disturbing video of a rather hot girl waking up for her smart phone to be reminding her of her mandatory vaccine!
https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/markets/digital-identity-and-security/digital-id

12
-1
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
1 year ago

More from Dave Angel the Eco Warrior:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M662XNAmcM

8
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

It isn’t there the energy fo fuel a system of slavery even. The young folk might not know the names of their slave masters but they know the score. They only have to look at their chance of ever owning a house.Look at how elite soldiers are being trained in drone and robot evasion. The same will apply on a civilian level. The younguns know that they have inherited a debased and raped culture. I have faith in humanity in this regard. Carl Jung was asked at the end of his life, if he was worried that human beings would ever be conquered or subsumed by automation and he said that no, there will always be something in the human spirit that rejects it and I agree with this. Furthermore the bigger the AI threat the bigger the rejection ultimately in my view.

14
-5
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

Off-T

Some genuinely good news for all of humanity from the Philippines were the Supreme Court has rejected GM Golden Rice.

Hopefully the Indian courts will in due course do the same.

https://off-guardian.org/2024/04/29/a-victory-for-farmers-supreme-court-halts-genetically-modified-rice/

17
-8
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Good news for people who will suffer and die as a consequence?

A victory for farmers – but not for consumers. People don’t eat in order to give farmers a job.

1
-3
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  JXB

People also don’t eat to give US-based multinationals convenient patents on everyday items which everyone could use freely, ie, without paying royalties to anyone, before.

3
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Golden rice is genetically modified to increase beta-carotene content, a pigment that converts into vitamin A in the body and helps reduce vitamin A deficiency.

Well we certainly wouldn’t want that would we!

Benefits of Vit A include:

  • helping your body’s natural defence against illness and infection (the immune system) work properly
  • helping vision in dim light
  • keeping skin and the lining of some parts of the body, such as the nose, healthy

Mustn’t let undernourished people get healthy.

Last edited 1 year ago by JXB
2
-1
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
1 year ago
Reply to  JXB

If it’s as successful as the recent emergency, experimental, gene therapy that was, coincidentally, ready for use when it was needed, you can keep it.

Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean that it has to be done.

Just because their intensions were good, doesn’t mean that it will turn out as expected.

2
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

We don’t need a report to tell us this

What makes countries rich or poor is the quality of their human capital- end of

21
-3
sskinner
sskinner
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

“Two things are outstanding in the creation of the English system of canals, and they characterise all the Industrial Revolution. One is that the men who made the revolution were practical men. …they often had little education, and in fact school education as it then was could only dull an inventive mind. The grammar schools legally could only teach the classical subjects for which they had been founded. The universities also (there were only two, at Oxford and Cambridge) took little interest in modern or scientific studies; and they were closed to those who did not conform to the Church of England.
The other outstanding feature is that the new inventions were for everyday use…”
Jacob Bronowski

22
-3
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  sskinner

The amazing thing about the Industrial Revolution was it happened spontaneously in the small towns and villages involving poorer people with little or no education, not people with university degrees, or ‘experts’, and without Government involvement – and no income or corporation tax.

Great advances in science were made by ‘hobbyists’ who dabbled, not credentialed university graduates.

2
0
sskinner
sskinner
1 year ago

Colonialism or slaver cannot drive inventive industrialism, otherwise industrialisation would have happened at anytime during the Babylonian, Assyrian, Mongol, Egyptian, Roman, Mayan, Aztec, Chinese, Russian, Swedish, Ottoman or any other empire, where conquering and slavery was common.
Trevithick or Stevenson owe nothing to any colonialist or any slave as both were self taught and motivated by their own interest.

27
-3
marebobowl
marebobowl
1 year ago

How about addressing the slavery going on right now in the UK.

7
-1
RW
RW
1 year ago

All these black people in the Carribbean are really foreign invaders living on land stolen from the indigenuous people who lived there before them. So, guys, please decolonize yourself out of existence now and compensate the actual victims.

6
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  RW

Under Tort Law, an individual claiming harm must be restored to their condition before the harm took place.

Therefore all descendent who stand in place of their ancestors and claim harm, under Tort must be restored to their original condition and therefore returned naked and impoverished to the West Coast of Africa.

2
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago

Slavery was used to produce raw materials. Raw materials have no value to consumers. There was no more a consumer market for raw cotton than for iron ore or clay back then, or now, for example.

To make raw materials valuable to consumers requires processing to produce things from them in which consumers perceive a value – linen, wool, cotton textiles; refined sugar and sugary byproducts, rum; tobacco products pipe, cigars, cigarettes; cutlery, pots & pans; crockery.

Prices – what the market will pay – and therefore profits, are determined by their perceived value by consumers. That value is the result of manufacturing.

Consumer product manufacture were not done by slaves, but paid labour. Raw materials were a cost to those businesses. Profits taken from sale of raw materials accrued to those few plantation owners in the Caribbean and North America.

Britain made its wealth from manufacturing and selling finished goods, not selling raw materials.

2
0

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