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The Industrial Revolution and Slave Labor
The Industrial Revolution marks a time of change from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. It began in Great Britain. Most historians place this time between 1760 to about 1820–1840. It is during this time that an unprecedented rise in the number of slaves was seen in Great Britain and other areas, such as Belgium, France, the German states, North America, and so on (Heblich, Redding, & Voth, 2022). According to Bitesize (2022), about 1,428,000 captive African people were hauled across the Atlantic by traders based in British ports between 1761 and 1807. In trying to connect this coincidence, some scholars argue that the Industrial Revolution was only made possible by the use of slave labor. However, this discussion opposes this reasoning by arguing that the Industrial Revolution would have been possible without the use of slave labor.
According to Heblich, Redding, & Voth (2022), the industrial revolution was caused by the emergence of European imperialism, capitalism, the effects of the Agricultural Revolution, and efforts to mine coal. The main facilitator here is human innovation and changing needs and possibilities. As things and production went large scale, a great need for more human labor ensued, and this, in turn, increased the demand for slave labor which was already in existence (Stearns, 2020). This argument makes the industrial revolution to be the cause of the rise in demand for slave labor but not the other way around. However, slave labor facilitated the progress of the industrial revolution, without which, it could have progressed sluggishly but nonetheless occurred. Stearns (2020) report that the industrial revolution led to a great list of demand, such as more products to be exported and more raw materials to be imported that needed more human labor to sustain.
References
Bitesize. (2022). Britain and the Caribbean. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zjyqtfr/revision/6
Heblich, S., Redding, S. J., & Voth, H. J. (2022). Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution (No. w30451). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Stearns, P. N. (2020). The industrial revolution in world history. Routledge.