Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development

by Joseph E. Inikori

Drawing on classical development theory and recent theoretical advances on the connection between expanding markets and technological developments, this book reveals the critical role of the expansion of Atlantic commerce in the successful completion of England's industrialization from 1650-1850. The volume is the first detailed study of the role of overseas trade in the Industrial Revolution. It revises other explanations that have recently dominated the field and shifts the assessment of African contribution away from the debate on profits.

Genres: Africa, History, Nonfiction, Economics

600 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2002

Reviews

[Davis Kedrosky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll admit that when I picked up this book for the first time, I was expecting a neo-Williams-ite polemic—British industrialization bad, built on the bones of African slaves with profits of American plantations. And it's got some of that. But *Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England* has so much more. The title is pretty misleading—it's actually the first of the 21st century "explaining the British IR" books, in the vein of Mokyr and Allen. Instead of focusing on intellect, invention, and ideas, like Mokyr, or the factors of production, like Allen, Inikori foregrounds international trade. He argues that the Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century furnished Britain with a massive market for cheap cotton goods, driving structural transformation and agglomeration economies in a few key regions, especially the hinterlands of Atlantic ports like Liverpool and Bristol. Prior to the railroad, the main markets for manufacturers were located overseas via these coastal cities, not the agrarian base vaunted by internalist scholars. He sees the British Industrial Revolution first and foremost as a great textile boom, powered by ISI and infant industry protection leading to eventual export promotion. Coal, science, agrarian change, and institutions all get pretty short shrift.

Africans come into the equation primarily through two indisputable channels. First, the slave trade helped to develop Britain's shipping and insurance industries, which had backward (rope, timber, nails) and forward (winning export markets) linkages. Second, the plantation economies of the New World purchased almost all of British cotton exports and vast proportions of the raw imports. Thus Inikori comes to the obvious conclusion that Africans made a major contribution to British industrialization.

But was that contribution indispensable? Inikori doesn't establish that using any kind of counterfactual analysis of progress in shipping without the slave trade or cotton production and import demand in the Americas without slavery. By focusing so heavily upon cotton and light metalware, moreover, Inikori—who assumes that technological change mostly comes through local learning—limits the scope of his arguments to the initial phases of industrialization and assumes that modern economic growth must follow. As the Dutch or the Italians might hint, though, it doesn't. Ignoring science doesn't work. I don't think Inikori's analysis satisfactorily accounts for Portugal or Spain, either.

Nevertheless, this has basically jumped to the front rank of my favorite IR books. It's in tune both with economic theory (even more so than Allen, in many ways), classic development literature, and the old-school histories of the Industrial Revolution dating back to the early 20th century. His historiographical essays in the opening two chapters are the best part of the book and are absolutely essential to understanding how historians have discussed the question of British take-off/exceptionalism, especially in terms of international economics, prior to 1990.

[Tim Naor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is quite simply the best book out there on the causes of the industrial revolution. Massive in scale and scope but with incredible empirical evidence. This filled in lots of my gaps and blew my mind. It’s academic so not a breezy read but I couldn’t put it down for 2 weeks....

[Bernard English · Rating 5 out of 5]

It all seems so obvious after reading it, but I guess that's genius--Joseph Inikori makes the links that were there all along. There is a lot of empirical evidence, historical data, letters, Parliamentary testimony and much else presented to make his case which makes for some dull reading if you are not into that kind of detail and arguments among historians on how to interpret the industrial revolution. Other than that his main point that much of the take-off depended on foreign trade is fascinating and quite convincing. His model is import substitution industrialization (ISI) and he makes the important point that had economists paid closer attention to how Britain industrialized, lots of countries, especially Latin American countries could have developed much faster than the Asian Tigers. However, Latin American countries were focused in the '50s and '60's on generating internal demand, partially inspired by the Soviet Union's (Pyrrhic) economic development and partially because they were soured on exporting after the devastating pullback which occurred after the Great Depression. In any case, you name the industry and Inikori ties it to the African trade or slave trading in a most reasonable way. Here's the laundry list as far as I can remember, in no particular order: brass, copper, nails, shipbuilding, wool but more importantly cotton, indigo, redwood, other dyestuffs, naval stores, sugar, insurance premium profits, gold and silver (yes lots of miners, especially in gold mines, were black), guns (with which to capture more slaves and defend trading ships against other empires) and whatever other industries I can't recall. The point is shipping to Africa was a huge impetus to the shipbuilding industry which in itself boosted lots of other related industries. A key point of his analysis is to chart the different impact on the development of different regions (there was a clear north/south divide) of England, something often overlooked. Awesome analysis with invaluable lessons for countries looking to develop nowadays!

[Jullie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this book even though some parts were quite hard to understand…..Inikori jumps straight into the argument of this book which I really love. I love the range of data he uses to demonstrate his points. The first few chapters were a bit difficult to get through but from chapter 6 it got increasingly better.