(^534) NOTES
- On bugs in the Caribbean, see Starkey, Economic Geography, p. 60; on animal
pests, Watts, The West Indies, p. 195. Needless to say, the combination of climate,
pests, and pathogens made for high death rates, of work animals even more than of hu
mans. (I owe these references to Stanley Engerman.) - Parry, Age of Reconnaissance, p. 276. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 55, says this fig
ure is "impossible." On the basis of poll tax returns, he suggests a population of about
10,000 in 1640, equal to that of Massachusetts or Virginia. - Parry, Age of Reconnaissance, p. 276.
- Chaunu, L'Amérique, p. 113.
- Wealth of Nations, Book TV, ch. 7, Part 2.
- Littleton, Groans of the Plantations, p. 20, cited in Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 194.
- Rich, "Colonial Setdement," p. 322.
- Joseph Miller, in his book on the Angolan slave trade, Way of Death.
- Sheridan, "Eric Williams," p. 326, citing Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. vii,
52, 105. Sheridan writes (p. 327) that Williams's book "inaugurated the modern pe
riod of West Indian historiography." - Inikori, "Slavery and the Development of Industrial Capitalism," p. 101.
- Sheridan, "Eric Williams," p. 327.
- Thus Oxaal: "Williams attacked the moral complacency associated with Britain's
understanding of its slave-holding past." He describes Williams (along with James) as
a "marginal, black intellectual whose personal experiences had made him aware of the
hypocrisy behind the metropolitan country's pious self-congratulation over its dealings
with the colonies"—Black Intellectuals, pp. 75-76. - In a review in the American Sociological Review, Wilson Gee criticized Williams for
exaggerating the role of slavery "by claiming that it was almost the indispensable foun
dation stone in the establishment of modern capitalism." Cited by Sheridan, "Eric
Williams," p. 320. - Anstey, "Capitalism and Slavery"; also his Atlantic Slave Trade. Anstey goes on to
estimate the part of slave profits in British capital formation at 0.11 percent—"de
risory." Stanley Engerman, "The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation," plays
with the numbers "under some implausible assumptions" and comes up with hypo
thetical figures, strongly and knowingly biased upward, ranging from 2.4 percent to
10.8 percent over the period 1688-1770, which he says "should give some pause to
those attributing to the slave trade a major contribution to industrial capital formation
in the period of the Industrial Revolution." He also compares the "gross value of
slave trade output" to British national income and comes up with an average of about
1 percent, climbing to 1.7 percent in 1770, too small by itself to explain much. He
goes on to suggest that the contribution of the slave trade itself has to be joined to that
of the plantation system; and that these together were better seen in a dynamic con
text of linkages. - Inikori, "Market Structure," p. 761, n. 52. Inikori estimates profits at 50 percent,
intermittently but over a number of years. This is based on an investment that does not
include debts incurred in the purchase of trade goods: "What the individual slave
trader actually put into the ventures as his investment (the actual cash outlay) was often
less than half of the total outward cost. ..." (p. 775). - On gains to planters, see Sheridan, "The Wealth of Jamaica," and Ward, "The
Profitability of Sugar Planting." There is a rebuttal to Sheridan from a macroeco-
nomic point of view: R. P. Thomas, in "The Sugar Colonies," points in good Smithian
fashion to the overhead costs of empire and the cost to consumers of a protected, mo
nopolistic market in Britain for sugar from British plantations. This, of course, is an old
story: privatize the gains and socialize the costs. Net out, and one finds that the
macroeffects differ from partial results. - Along these lines, cf. Zahedieh, "London and the Colonial Consumer."