In the Shift

A while ago I likened tackling climate change to the 1st World War.  But an earlier struggle also offers important lessons.

I’m talking about the abolition of strategy in the British Empire.

Postcard celebrating emancipation

Why?

Because it is one of those rare moments in history when ethical arguments eventually trumped economic ones.  At least that’s the argument Seymour Drescher makes in his 2009 book, Abolition.  He says that when Wilberforce and others created the antislavery movement in Britain, slavery was still a thriving economic system.  Neither slave uprisings in Haiti and French Saint-Dominique, nor the need for more skilled labour to work in inceasingly mechanised industries, nor even the shift from mercantile to laissez-faire capitalism made slavery redundant.  In other words, slavery didn’t end for economic reasons: on the contrary, support for slavery crumbled despite its economic justifications.

Now, this is controversial.  Drescher’s latest book and his earlier out of print Econocide are direct refutations of Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery which says that for all the noble efforts of abolitionists, slavery in the Empire ended because of the economic decline of the colonies that had depended upon it.  I’ll leave it to you to decide whether Drescher or Williams gets it right about slavery’s demise – and if you’re interested, David Brion Davis compares their differing points of view in a recent New York Review.

But if Drescher is right it is one of the most compelling examples that humanity can transform incumbent systems even when they are economically viable.