ABSTRACT
As Blackburn lucidly discusses, the literature lays out three ways in which the Atlantic slave systems could have been of greater importance to Britain's industrial headstart than other economic activities. The first was by providing markets for British goods, the second by generating profits to underwrite the capital stock of the early industrial economy, and the third by supplying cheap raw materials for growing industries (or cheaper food and drink for the workers in those industries). To these may be added a fourth connection, stated by Malthus, that slave-grown products-exotic goods in the context of seventeenth-and much of eighteenth-century Europe-helped stimulate consumerism, among the English in particular.5 This in turn elicited a greater effort, and in effect a greater supply of labor on the part of the average worker, which offset the backward-bending labor supply curve. Thus the Atlantic slave systems meant bigger markets for British goods, larger profits to British investors, more and cheaper raw materials for emerging industrial sectors, and more incentives for British consumers than were offered by domestic industries or other foreign markets.
