Jennings, Lawrence

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

476 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY try, and in particular the importance of the tobacco colonies as outlets for Scottish products. This is an important theme and his conclusions should be studied with attention, and used as a basis for further research. On the complementary ques-tion of the markets for tobacco, his analysis is disappointingly brief on the markets for Scottish tobacco other than the French, e.g. the Dutch, which in most years took as much as the French, and deserves more attention than it receives here. The original element in this part is the discussion of the sources of capital in Scotland for the tobacco trade which needed considerable quantities of capital, and apparently had no trouble in raising the bulk of its requirements locally, in the west of Scotland, not from banks but from private individuals. The trade acted, therefore, as a mechanism for the mobilisation of capital resources both for use within the trade and for other activities. In the third part, which covers the period of the American War of Indepen-dence, Dr. Devine looks at the ways in which the Glasgow merchants coped with what was potentially a disastrous position with the virtual cessation of the tobacco trade and large unrecovered debts in the colonies. But in fact only a few firms failed and most of these were relatively minor. For, despite the difficulties, the war brought compensatory opportunities of profit to many firms through earnings from govenment service, through clandestine trade via Canada or the West Indies, through boom prices for tobacco (and as is made clear, quite fortuitously the Scots had large stocks on hand in 1775-76). The last part, by far the shortest, deals with the aftermath of the war and the return to normality. Eventually, with patience and perseverence, a large part of the pre-war debt owed Glasgow in the colonies was recovered, some even by way of actions in the federal courts. Dr. Devine is tantalisingly brief in his de-scription of the way in which Clyde firms moved back after 1783 into the Chesa-peake, setting up stores and renewing the export trade in goods from Scotland to the tobacco states. By the mid 1780s, exports of Scottish linen to Virginia and Maryland were back to the level they had been pre-war. Of course relatively little tobacco was imported to the Clyde after 1783, but it would have been interesting to know how much of and for how rong the trade to Europe in American tobacco continued in the hands of Glasgow firms. This is an immensely thorough and lucid · book. Only a few perhaps will ap-preciate the level of application and width of research involved in the preparation of some of his tables. The style is sound, if sober, the analysis rigorous and while his discussion of major issues is never deficient, Dr. Devine's respect for the evi-dence, as befits a Scottish historian, leads him on occasion to that good Scots verdict of "notproven." The presentation is clear, although a graph of tobacco imports and re-exports would have helped, and apart from some mayhem at the end of the bibliography, the text is remarkable free from errata. This work has such strengths that all historians of trade will profit from it and other Scottish his-torians ought to be stimulated to relate this study of the west of Scotland to devel-opments elsewhere in the country. * * * Alastair J. DURIE, University of Aberdeen. Roger ANSTEY . - The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1975. For over three decades now the historiography of British slave trade aboli-tion, under the influence of the works of Eric Williams, has been marked by a COMPTES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 477 decided economic determinist tinge. Williams' publication of Capitalism and Slav-ery in 1944 constituted an effective refutation of the then dominant historical school headed by Mathieson, Klingberg and Coupland which had insisted during the first part of the twentieth century that English abolitionists had been veritable "Saints," men motivated in their struggle against the slave trade by pure altruism and disinterested humanitarianism. Since 1944 most experts on the slave trade have felt obliged to acknowledge Williams' basic premise that much more than benevolent humanitarianism was involved in British slave trade abolition, that the abolitionist movement was successful in ending the British slave trade in 1807 large-ly because basic economic mutations accompanying the Industrial Revolution rendered the British plantation system, and the slave trade itself, less profitable and less important to the British economy. To be sure, the Williams thesis has not gone unchallenged in the last thirty years and there have been piecemeal attacks on it - such as those made during a symposium held at Edinburgh University in 1965 - but it has nevertheless continued to hold sway and retain its influence among historians of the Atlantic slave trade. Seen .in this perspective, perhaps the most noteworthy contribution made in Roger Anstey's new work in his well-documented, exhaustively researched, highly persuasive critique of the Williams thesis and his establishment of a less dogmatic and less simplistic explanation for the success of the British slave trade abolitionist movement. In this sense Anstey's book is a monumental one, a work which amounts to a turning point in slave trade historiography. Well over half of Anstey's long study is devoted to an examination of devel-opments prior to 1807 which made slave trade abolition possible. Tl;le author of-fers chapters linking Enlightenment thought to the slavery question , showing how eighteenth century philosophy stressed justice, liberty, happiness, and the cult of the noble savage, all themes which conditioned opinion for abolition and wore away the underpinnings of slavery. His main point, however, lies elsewhere. Ans-tey argues that the impetus for terminating the slave traffic came not from new intellectual currents but from innovations in the theological sphere: "It was mainly religious insight and zeal... which made it possible for anti-slavery feeling to be subsumed in a crusade against the slave trade" (p. 153). Early aboltionists , members of the "Clapham Sect" such as Wilberforce, Macaulay, Stephen and Sharp, were all inspired by Evangelism, a religious movement whose belief in the providential condemnation of slavery and the redemption of all men through Christ made it a force inimical to all forms of human bondage. These themes of Evangelical theology influenced one important faction of the anti-slave trade league while another segment was moved by the Quaker tenets of faith. Quaker con-cepts of the equality of men before God and the need for brotherly love among all men combined with the Quaker abhorrence of force to render followers of this Sect determined opponents of slavery and the slave trade. Moreover, the close-ness of Quaker communities on both sides of the Atlantic enhanced their opposi-tion to slavery at the same time as it enabled them to undertake the first organized attempts to combat the traffic in slaves. With the founding of the London Aboli-tion Committee in 1787, launched through the efforts of the Quakers and Evangel-icals, anti-slave trade forces had established a powerful lobbying agency to carry on their campaign for abolition. Anstey places great stress upon the importance of the political struggle carried on by the Abolition Committee and its sister organizations against the slave traffic. In fact , he insists that it was ultimately through their efforts in the political sphere that the anti-slave traders were able to effect abolition. Deciding to wage their first battle against the slave trade specifically rather than slavery in general, the abolitionists proceeded throughout the 1790s 478 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY to build up their organizational strength , publish and disseminate propaganda, hold meetings, draw up petitions, lobby in political circles and generally gather votes and support for their efforts to attack the slave traffic through the legislative pro-cess. By the first decade of the nineteenth century abolitionists had even developed a new strategy which called for relegating humanitarian issues to a secondary position while arguing that the slave trade was not in the national interest or even in the true interest of the West Indies. These tactics , along with the increased number of reform-minded ministers who entered the government in 1806-07, enabled the abolitionists to undercut slowly the pro-slave trade faction in Parlia-ment, persuade the majority in the Peers and Commons that abolition would not adversely effect England's well-being, and eventually bring about slave trade abolition by act of Parliament in 1807. Anstey's work provides the first detailed , incisive and comprehensive account of this religious, political , humanitarian cam-paign which finally culminated in abolition. It demonstrates effectively that the struggle against that slave trade owed its success primarily to religious inspiration and political manoeuvring rather than to the decline of the slave trade's economic importance. In the process of developing his general thesis Anstey makes two other orig-inal and important points concerning the final phase of the English slave trade. First of all, while examining the slave trade as an economic phenomenon, he amasses an impressive amount of quantitative evidence which enables him to pro-ject an approximate 10% annual return on investments made in the English slave trade durii:lg the last decades of its existence. Such a projection is extremely sig-nificant , for it shows that the British slave trade was considerably more profitable at the time of its abolition than the Dutch or French slave trades (which had profit margins of about 11/z% and 1-7% respectively), thus countering Williams' assumption that Great Britain acted against the traffic in slaves only when it was no longer lucrative . At the same time Anstey's estimation of a 10% profit level lays to rest once and for all some of the exaggerated statements made by other writers about the immense profitability of the slave trade. Secondly, Anstey shows by other projections that the total sum of investments made by slave traders in the process of English industrialization probably amounted to less than 1% of the total capital invested during this period in British industry. This point too refutes a ma-jor tenet held by Williams, namely that profits from the eighteenth century slave trade had been a major source of capital for English industrial expansion. In calcu-lating both the profitability of the slave trade and the percentage of these profits invested in industry Anstey admits that his figures are only projections, and, as such, subject to error, but his evidence is impressive and apparently as complete as possible in the present state of historical knowledge. In any case, Anstey's sta-tistics and his conclusions alike are more convincing than the generalizations offer-ed three decades ago by Williams, and it appears that in-the years to come the historiography of the slave trade will be as marked by Anstey's contribution as it was in the past by that of Williams. * * * Lawrence C. JENNINGS, University of Ottawa. THOMAS WALTER LAQUEUR. - Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. This excellent book is one of the more unexpected results of E. P. Thomp-son' s inspiration. Mr. Laqueur tells us that he began his work on the Sunday 

Roger ANSTEY. — The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810.

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Roger ANSTEY. — The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810.

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)