[(Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development )] [Author: Joseph E. Inikori] [Oct-2009]

Despite the title, this work stretches beyond the confines of England’s Industrial Revolution and situates Africans as the prime labor force which built the modern world. Based on more than thirty years of research and drawing on a vast array of primary and secondary sources, Professor Inikori has produced a masterpiece arguing for the centrality of Africans not only in the Industrial Revolution, by itself a bold claim, but more broadly in the rise of the Atlantic world economy between 1650 and 1850. In addition, Inikori continues the recent historiographic trend, of which he notes, by placing slavery at the core for understanding the rise of western Europe and the United States. Inikori persuasively argues that Britain’s Industrial Revolution was fueled by international overseas trade centered in the Atlantic that was dependent upon the utilization of enslaved Africans in the Americas. Inikori produces overwhelming evidence for support, including a vast array of quantitative material documenting the pre-eminent position of African labor in the production of strategic materials for the industrial revolution, especially cotton. Drawing on an impressive blend of primary and secondary sources, he provides thorough case studies of key industries linked to the industrialization process and profiles individual firms engaged in this transformation. Following the introduction, each chapter contains helpful tables that present impressive quantitative data and a separate thirty-six-page appendix supplies additional documentary evidence. A chapter outlining the major historiography of the Industrial Revolution traces three major interpretive trends. The first, from 1880 to 1945, and the most recent, from 1985 to the present, stress the role of overseas trade. By contrast, the dominant argument from 1945 to 1985 centered on internal factors, especially English technology. Inikori points out however, that internal factors like technology fail to explain England’s economic growth from 1650 to 1850. In fact, as he demonstrates, to the extent that certain key technologies proved essential to industrialization, like cotton textile production, these were, in turn, dependent upon overseas trade with the slave-based economies of the Atlantic. Inikori moves beyond the profits debate begun by EricWilliams to a more thorough and exhaustive analysis of Williams’s larger point: the centrality of African labor in the making of the Industrial Revolution. Inikori begins by charting the English economy over eight centuries from 1086 to 1850, and dividing this longue durée into two sections, 1086 to 1660 and 1660 to 1850. In the former phase, a combination of population growth and expansion of overseas trade generated important socio-economic changes in the southern counties of England. In the latter period the English economy underwent a structural transformation from agriculture to industrial production. He locates the center of the Industrial Revolution in England in certain regions, which underwent radical alterations, the most important of which was Lancashire between 1660 and 1850, followed by the West Riding of Yorkshire, and finally the West Midlands. Continuing a regional focus, Inikori charts the African impact upon specific Atlantic IRSH 48 (2003), pp. 483–504 DOI: 10.1017/S0020859003001172 # 2003 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis