Abstract
British statesmen and publicists at most times thought of West Africa as a special region with its own individual problems. When they considered British economic interests and intentions, however, they thought in broader terms. The tropical Atlantic was still conceived as an inter-related economic entity, and with some justice. The flourishing South Atlantic System of the eighteenth century was no longer fully operating, but it was not yet completely dismantled either. Between the 1780’s and the 1830’s, each of the national sectors had undergone its own kind of evolution without destroying the essence of the system—the combination of forced African labor producing tropical staples in America for consumption in Europe. British legislation had cut off the labor supply to the British sector in 1807, emancipated the slaves as of 1838, and tried to impede the flow of labor to the other national sectors through the antislavery blockade. Nevertheless, the greater part of the tropical staples entering world trade was still produced in tropical America, still produced with the labor of slaves, still maintained and expanded by the slave trade from Africa.
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Footnotes
J. R. McCulloch, A Descriptive and Statistical Account of the British Empire, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1854), II, 20.
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The error of comparing money wages was occasionally pointed out at the time. See, for example, African Colonizer, 6 March 1841, p. 158. Wages also differed very markedly from one West Indian colony to another. See P. D. Curtin, “The British Sugar Duties and West Indian Prosperity,” Journal of Economic History, XIV, 157–64 (Spring, 1954), p. 163.
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See H. Merivale, Lectures on Colonisation and Colonies, 2nd ed. (London, 1861), pp. 300–332, for an authoritative summary of these views.
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Curtin, P.D. (1964). West Africa in the South Atlantic Economy. In: The Image of Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00539-0_18
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