Profitability of Slavery in the British Caribbean

Abstract

Profitability of Slavery in the British Caribbean No one today argues that free labor is an unremunerative economic system. But there are many scholars who claim that the system of slave labor was losing money in the years just preceding its abolition. This article demonstrates the profitability of slavery in the nineteenth-century sugar business. We will show that you cannot bury slavery by praising the superior profitability of free labor regimes. The methodology employed here draws heavily from the work of Conrad and Meyer. We use their method despite the telling criticism leveled at their findings by Genovese.' Although their empirical work was thorough, Conrad and Meyer overstepped the bounds of descriptive studies when they used their results to speculate on long-run historical developments-like the coming of the Civil War. We use their methods while rejecting their historical reasoning. A mere statement of the profits and losses of an economic system cannot summarize the future possibilities contained in any society. But an estimate of the profits of a system can establish one point on which two societies can be compared. We seek to establish such a point between the free and slave labor regimes. In this article, we limit ourselves to a simple description which will show that any differences between the two labor systems does not stem from their abilities to generate an economic surplus. The analysis of Conrad and Meyer was intended to bring the precision of neoclassical capital theory to bear on a frequently discussed historical problem. Specifically, we shall attempt to measure the profitability of southern slave operations in terms of modern capital theory. In doing so, we shall illustrate the ways in which economic theory might be used in ordering and organizing historical facts.2 By comparing the rate of return to a unit of slave capital with the interest rate prevailing in other sectors of the ante-bellum economy, they were able to conclude that slave capital was a remunerative outlet for investment.

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