The slave trade
and the Atlantic economies 1451-187061the purchase of slaves was an important Birmingham industry. The production
of special copper and brass goods for the slave trade, and the employment of
copper in sheathing the bottoms of slave vessels were important activities in
the London, Bristol and Liverpool regions. But the British industry whose
development was most critically influenced by the slave trade was the cotton
textile industry.
Between 1750 and 1776, the proportion of total annual British cotton
exports, by value, which went to the west coast of Africa varied from 30 to
50 per cent.^15 This proportion fell drastically during the American War of
Independence, but recovered after the war, and between 1783 and 1792, varied
from 11 to 32 per cent. After 1792, the faster growth of exports to Europe and
the Americas meant that exports to the African coast formed a diminishing
percentage of total British cotton exports, by value. Thus, in terms of volume,
exports to the African coast were important for the development of the export
sector of the British cotton textile industry. The cotton goods exported to the
African coast were the cheap type for common consumers and this made them
adaptable to mass production by mechanical methods. But, by far the most
important contribution which exports to the African coast made towards the
development of the British cotton textile industry was in terms of exposure to
competition.
In the early years of the industry, its home market was protected, the
sale of East Indian cotton textiles for domestic consumption having been
prohibited in Great Britain early in the eighteenth century. Sales in Europe
remained insignificant until after 1776. In those early years, it was mainly on
the west coast of Africa that the British cotton textile industry faced very
serious competition from similar goods from all parts of the world, in particu-
lar, East Indian cotton textiles. The industry's response to this competition was
very important for its competitiveness from the last years of the eighteenth
century onwards.^16
Thus, as far as the British economy in the eighteenth century is concerned,
the requirements for buying and transporting slaves to the Americas made an
important contribution to development. No similar studies have been made for
the other European countries that performed this same function in the Atlantic
system. But the limited studies of Simone Berbain, Gaston Martin and Pierre
Boulle, show that, at least, for Nantes, Rouen and Montpellier, the slave-
merchants' demand for cheaply produced goods stimulated the growth of
large-scale industry in the eighteenth century.^17 And the export of German
linens to the African coast through British and other European slave-merchants
was an important outlet for the textile industries of Westphalia, Saxony and
Silesia.
The buying and shipping of slaves to the Americas represented just a
part of the greatly expanded world trade in which the Atlantic economies