The Rise of the Planter Class

• Published in: Eighteenth-century studies 2022-09, Vol.56 (1), p.7-12
• Main Author: Rugemer, Edward B
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 17th century; Capitalism; Censuses; Civil rights; Civil rights movements; Colonialism; Political power; Slavery; Social history; White people
• ISSN: 0013-2586; 1086-315X; 1086-315X
• DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2022.0053

Yet this work of social history would make a political argument: the colonial development of the English West Indies during the seventeenth century had led to the "rapid rise of a cohesive and potent master class" that would dominate the islands of Britain's Caribbean Empire by the middle of the eighteenth century. Genovese argued that "the erection of slave plantations" in the West Indies resulted from the mercantilist policies of England and Holland that "were most convenient to the period of the primitive or original accumulation of capital." First published in 1944 and widely reviewed, Williams made a two-pronged argument that: 1) the establishment of slavery in the West Indian colonies had bolstered Britain's capitalist economy and created the wealth that enabled the industrial revolution; and 2) Britain only moved against slavery when the West Indian colonies were in decline, when they became a drag upon British capitalism. The near-simultaneous emergence of the American Civil Rights Movement and the independence movements in the British Caribbean, in which Williams played a critical role, kept Williams's work in the public eye.