Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T09:13:42.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Private Tooth Decay as Public Economic Virtue: The Slave-Sugar Triangle, Consumerism, and European Industrialization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Ralph A. Austen  and
Woodruff D. Smith
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The only group of clear gainers from the British trans-Atlantic slave trade, and even those gains were small, were the European consumers of sugar and tobacco and other plantation crops. They were given the chance to purchase dental decay and lung cancer at somewhat lower prices than would have been the case without the slave trade. [Thomas and Bean 1974: 914]

Although the quotation above represents a radical departure from earlier economic assessments of the Atlantic slave trade, it shares with them an almost universal assumption: that the real significance of the Atlantic sugar triangle lay in its contribution to the productive capacity of Europe. Thus, concluding that only consumers “benefited” is tantamount to reducing the slave trade to economic triviality. This view of import trades has informed historical understanding not only of the factors leading to industrialization in Europe but also of those apparently retarding similar development in the Third World, including Africa and the West Indies (Bairoch 1975: 198–99).

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 95 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1990 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appleby, J. O. (1978) Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Austen, R. A. (1986) “The criminal and the African cultural imagination: Normative and deviant heroism in precolonial and modem narratives.” Africa 56: 385-98.Google Scholar
Austen, R. A. (1987) African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Bairoch, P. (1975) The Economic Development of the Third World since 1900. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Baxa, J., and Brunns, G. (1967) Zucker im Leben der Völker: Ein Kultur- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Berlin: A. Bartens.Google Scholar
Berry, S. (1985) Fathers Work for Their Sons: Accumulation, Mobility, and Class Formation in an Extended Yoruba Community. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Blankaart, S. (1683) Die Bogerlyke Tafel: Om lang gesond sonder ziekten te leven. Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Cameron, R., and Freedeman, C. E. (1983) “French economie growth: A radical revision.” Social Science History 7: 3–30.Google Scholar
Caton, H. (1985) “The pre-industrial economics of Adam Smith.” Journal of Economic History 45: 833-53.Google Scholar
Coelho, P. R. D. (1974) “The profitability of imperialism: The British experience in the West Indies, 1768-1772.” Explorations in Economic History 10: 253-80.Google Scholar
Cranfield, G. A. (1962) The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 1700-1790. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Davis, D. B. (1975) The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
De Vries, J. (1976) The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dufour, P. S. (1685) Traitez nouveaux et curieux du café, du thé, et du chocolat. The Hague.Google Scholar
Dupâquier, J., et al. (1988) Histoire de la population française. Vol. 2, De la Renaissance à 1789. Paris: Presses universitaires de la France.Google Scholar
Eversley, D.E.C. (1967) “The home market and economic growth in England,” in Jones, E. L. and Mingay, G. E. (eds.) Land, Labour, and Population in the Industrial Revolution. London: Arnold: 206-59.Google Scholar
Ewen, S. (1976) Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Felix, D. (1974) “Technological dualism in late industrializers: On theory, history, and policy.” Journal of Economic History 34: 194–238.Google Scholar
Fraser, W. H. (1981) The Coming of the Mass Market, 1850-1914. Hamden, CT: Archon.Google Scholar
Freudenberger, H. (1963) “Fashion, sumptuary laws, and business.” Business History Review 37: 37–48.Google Scholar
Goldsmith’s Library (1698) “On the state of the sugar plantations in America.” Broadsheet Collection, vol. 1, no. 87. London: Goldsmith’s Library.Google Scholar
Hirschmann, A. O. (1958) The Strategy of Economic Development. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Inikori, J. E. (1987) “Slavery and the development of industrial capitalism in England.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17: 739-93.Google Scholar
Jones, E. L. (1973) “The fashion manipulators: Consumer tastes and British industries, 1660-1800,” in Cain, L. P. and Uselding, P. J. (eds.) Business Enterprise and Economic Change. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press: 198–226.Google Scholar
Langdon, S. W. (1981) Multinational Corporations in the Economy of Kenya. New York: St. Martin’s.Google Scholar
McCracken, G. (1988) Culture and Consumption. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
McGee, T. G. (1985) “Mass markets, little markets: Some preliminary thoughts on the growth of consumption and its relationship to urbanization: A case study of Malaysia,” in Plattner, S. (ed.) Markets and Marketing. Monographs on Economic Anthropology, No. 4. Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 205-33.Google Scholar
McKendrick, N., Brewer, J., and Plumb, J. H. (1982) The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. London: Europa.Google Scholar
Mathiez, A. (1927) La vie chère et le mouvement social sous la Terreur. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Mintz, S. W. (1985) Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modem History. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Mitchell, B. R. (1962) Abstract of British Historical Statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. (1977) “Demand versus supply in the industrial revolution.” Journal of Economic History 37: 981–1008.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. (1984) “Demand versus supply in the industrial revolution: A reply.” Journal of Economic History 44: 806-9.Google Scholar
Mukerji, C. (1983) From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (forthcoming) “Institutions, transaction costs, and the rise of merchant empires,” in Tracy, J. D. (ed.) The Rise of Merchant Empires, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Presbrey, F. (1929) The History and Development of Advertising. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran.Google Scholar
Richardson, D. (1987) “The slave trade, sugar, and British economic growth, 1748-1776.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17:739-93.Google Scholar
Rogers, J. W. Jr., (1980) “Subsistence crises and political economy in France at the end of the ancien régime.” Research in Economic History 5: 249–301.Google Scholar
Schama, S. (1987) The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Sheridan, R. B. (1973) Sugar and Slavery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Short, T. (1750) Discourses on Tea, Sugar, Milk, Made-Wines, Spirits, Punch, Tobacco, Etc. London.Google Scholar
Smith, Woodruff (1982) “The European-Asian trade of the seventeenth century and the modernization of commercial capitalism.” Itinerario 6: 68–90.Google Scholar
Sraffa, P. (1960) The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stein, Robert (1980) “The French sugar business in the eighteenth century: A quantitative study.” Business History 22: 3–17.Google Scholar
Stein, Robert (1988a) Personal communication, November.Google Scholar
Stein, Robert (1988b) The French Sugar Business in the Eighteenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. P. (1968) “The sugar colonies of the old empire: Profit or loss for Great Britain?” Economic History Review 21: 30–45.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. P., and Bean, R. N. (1974) “The fishers of men: The profits of the slave trade.” Journal of Economic History 34: 885–914.Google Scholar
Ukkers, W. H. (1935) All about Tea. 2 vols., New York: Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Co.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, I. (1974) The Modern World System, vol. 1. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Williams, E. (1944) Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Winch, Donald (1985) “Economic liberalism as ideology: The Appleby version.” Economic History Review 38: 287-97.Google Scholar
World Bank (1981) Accelerated Development in Tropical Africa. Washington: World Bank.Google Scholar
Zaretsky, E. (1976) Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar