A book of unpalatable truths about Britain’s slave trade has become a UK bestseller, almost 80 years after author Eric Williams was told by a British publisher: “I would never publish such a book, for it would be contrary to the British tradition.”
Capitalism and Slavery was first published in the US in 1944. It was published in the UK by the independent publisher André Deutsch in 1964, with a number of reprints over the next 20 years.
Published in a mass-market edition for the first time in the UK by Penguin Random House this week, it has sold what the publisher calls an “astonishing” almost 3,000 copies in its first few days and will appear at No 5 in the Sunday Times paperback non-fiction chart this weekend.
The contentious core of the book by Williams – who was the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago for 25 years until his death in 1981 – was that the abolition of the slave trade was not born out of humanitarian wishes but of economic necessity.
His thesis was that slavery just became economically unviable, and that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was driven more by the Industrial Revolution changing the way that Britain did business rather than any moral desire to stop the practice of slavery in its colonies.
Britain’s role in the slave trade has come under fresh scrutiny in the last couple of years, with organisations such as the National Trust publishing reports into the links between many of the historic properties and stately homes it manages and profits made on the back of slavery in the Caribbean. And a new generation of activism has seen events such as the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol being toppled by protesters in 2020.
Chloe Currens, the UK editor of Williams’s book for Penguin, said on Wednesday: “The publication of Capitalism and Slavery represented a watershed moment in the historiography of empire; it has proven to be a true classic among historians. We’re so excited to see its vital, urgent analysis reach a new generation of readers almost 60 years after it was first released in the UK.”
Although virtually unknown in the UK, Capitalism and Slavery has never been out of print in the US since its first publication by the University of North Carolina Press. It is now on its third edition and between that and the second edition, just a few years ago, has sold 40,000 copies.
While studying at Oxford, Williams, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1911, wrote his thesis on the subject. That formed the basis of Capitalism and Slavery. He took it to Fredric Warburg, a leading publisher of revolutionary texts who had put out all of Stalin’s and Trotsky’s works. Warburg categorically refused. “Mr. Williams,” he said, “are you trying to tell me that the slave trade and slavery were abolished for economic and not for humanitarian reasons? I would never publish such a book, for it would be contrary to the British tradition.”
For Williams’ daughter, Erica Williams Connell, the British publication of Capitalism and Slavery is an “incredible” moment.
Williams Connell is the founding curator of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives and Museum at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago. Speaking from her home in Miami, Florida, she said, “To think that almost 80 years after it was published, Britain is finally discovering Capitalism and Slavery is amazing to me.
“Everyone who has heard about the book finally being re-published in the UK has said the same thing to me: well, it’s about time!”
There have been many rebuttals and affirmations of what has become known the Williams Thesis since it was first published in 1944, and in answer to these, Williams Connell quoted from the foreword of the recent third edition, by William Darity of Duke University in North Carolina, who wrote: “Although scholars of the British Industrial Revolution generally have ignored Williams’s proposition, they only can continue to do so by placing their own intellectual integrity at peril.”
While prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Williams was the only head of state of the British former colonies that gained independence after 1950 to refuse the UK’s “golden handshake” of money – which could only be spent on British-made goods – which Williams said was insufficient reparation and the strings-attached deal insulting. He said in a speech to the London School of Economics in 1962: “The West Indies are in the position of an orange. The British have sucked it dry and their sole concern today is that they should not slip and get damaged on the peel … The offer is quite unacceptable and we would prefer not to have it … it amounted to aid to Britain rather than to Trinidad … I do not propose to accept any concept of the Commonwealth which means common wealth for Britain and common poverty for us.”
His daughter described how a letter he wrote to that effect “dropped like a bomb in 10 Downing Street”.
Williams Connell added: “The battle lasted a full year, and he eventually capitulated, but not without becoming a giant thorn in the British backside!”
• Capital and Slavery by Eric Williams is published by Penguin Modern Classics (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
• This article has been amended. A previous version stated that Capitalism and Slavery had been out of print in the UK since 1964.
