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Williams, Eric.
Capitalism and Slavery.
Publisher: Andre Deutsch Limited, London;
Date of Publication: 1964
Stock Code: 11679
FIRST BRITISH EDITION. Octavo, pp. vi, [6], 3-285, [1]. Publishers’ red cloth with gilt titles to spine in price-clipped printed dust-jacket with photographic portrait of the author to rear. Contents clean and bright with no annotation or inscriptions. Price-clipped dust-jacket nicked & creased, with lightly sunned spine and a patch of loss to spine tip. Very good. Described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as “perhaps the most influential book written in the twentieth century on the history of slavery”, this seminal work is based upon the doctoral dissertation of the author, who became the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Years ahead of its time, the controversial work was denied publication in Britain for twenty years from its first publication in 1944, as it was regarded as undermining the humanitarian movement’s role in the abolition of slavery in 1833, by arguing that the trade was already in decline at abolition, and refuting the traditional view of economic and moral progress of the slave system in the colonies. The work examines the contribution that the triangular trade made in providing the capital behind the Industrial Revolution in England, and the part played by maturing capitalism in the destruction of the system. £150.00