Booking is now open for Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery: Debates, Legacies and New Directions for Research — an RHS panel discussion taking place at 17:00 GMT on Wednesday 15 March 2023.

• Dr Heather Cateau (University of the West Indies and University of St Andrews)
• Dr Stephen Mullen (University of Glasgow)
• Professor Harvey Neptune (Temple University, Philadelphia)
• Professor Meleisa Ono-George (University of Oxford)
• Professor Matthew J. Smith (Director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, University College London)

Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery (1944) remains a powerful, provocative and influential work of historical scholarship. For Williams, chattel slavery provided Britain with the capacity to develop commercial and industrial capitalism, and—in turn—the means to power an eighteenth-century industrial revolution.

In this international panel, historians working in the fields of eighteenth-century Caribbean slavery and slave economy, and Anglo-Caribbean society, come together to consider the debates and legacies of Capitalism and Slavery. First published in the UK by André Deutsch in 1964, Williams’ classic text is gaining a new readership following republication as a Penguin Modern Classic in 2022.

Panellists will introduce, and set in context, the scholarly and political work of Eric Williams (1911-1981), as well as review nearly 80 years of responses to Capitalism and Slavery. Our panel considers the value and contribution of the ‘Williams’ thesis’ in contemporary scholarship.

Booking is now open for Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery: Debates, Legacies and New Directions for Research.

More events in the 2023 events programme >