The economic importance of the slave plantation complex to the British economy in the eighteenth century: a value-added approach

• There has been a long-standing debate on how important the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the American plantation complex was economically for early modern Britain. This paper reports quantitative estimates of the value-added of the Triangular Trade and the American plantation complex. The figures are certainly crude, but suggest that the value-added of Triangular Trade alone was equivalent to around five per cent of British gross domestic product by the late eighteenth century. Adding the plantation complex associated with the British market as well as activities in Britain directly dependent on the American plantation complex to the equation, these economic activities together generated a value-added equivalent to more than ten per cent of British GDP. Activity of such magnitude can hardly be dismissed as marginal to the British economy at the time.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Ekonomisk historia (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economic History (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Slavery

plantations

Americas

Britain

Williams Thesis

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)