Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition by Bronwen Everill (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition by Bronwen Everill A. Glenn Crothers Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition By Bronwen Everill (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 328. Notes, index. $39.95.) Today, consumer boycotts have become a common feature of progressive and conservative political movements. Bronwen Everill's Not Made by Slaves traces the origins of such campaigns to the abolitionist movement, which, in the late eighteenth century, first attacked the slave trade and later sought to end slavery. Her study identifies two elements of the effort to create a commercial system free from the taint of slavery: free produce, which placed culpability for slavery on the consumer; and legitimate commerce, which sought to induce producers, particularly in West Africa, to abandon the slave trade for alternative sources of income. The commercial abolitionists who led the drive for a more ethical commerce sought to reform capitalism, to end what they considered its greatest moral stain, but in the process their efforts revealed the contradictions that lay at the heart of "ethical capitalism." They embraced tactics that undermined slavery and simultaneously maintained profitability, but these tactics also created new ethical conundrums that opened the campaign to charges of self-interest and hypocrisy. Commercial abolitionists successfully highlighted the moral responsibility of British and American consumers and West African producers for sustaining slavery, but their vision of a reformed capitalism also helped create a global division of labor in which Africa and Asia became economic monocultures exploited by Western manufacturing nations. Everill's most significant insight lies in her analysis of the integral role West Africa played in the campaigns to combat slavery and the slave trade. Envisioning a truly Atlantic world, or at least North Atlantic world, she argues that in response to slavery and the consumer revolution it made possible, West Africans organized consumer boycotts, supported political change, and participated in religious revivals unique to their localities, but [End Page 100] also paralleling those taking place in Europe and the Americas. Across seven chapters, Everill explores the various elements of commercial abolitionists' efforts to end African and European participation in slavery: the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century and consumers' growing sense of responsibility for slavery's centrality in the production of staples like sugar and cotton; the creation of ethical brands recognized as produced by free labor; the crucial function of credit, particularly in West Africa, in promoting legitimate commerce; the role of government contracts and tariffs in promoting abolitionists' goals; and how nationalist concerns shaped reformers' tactics. Commercial abolitionists insisted that ending slave-produced consumption and replacing it with free produce would benefit everyone. Africans would have profitable alternatives to slave trading; consumers would enjoy lower prices because of the presumed efficiency of wage labor; and British and American merchants and manufacturers would profit from ethical trade with Africa. But such arguments ignored the "negative externalities" of capitalism: that the market system always produces winners and losers. The strategies commercial abolitionists employed to promote legitimate commerce and ensure profitability—creating debt-fueled monopsonies in West Africa; countenancing "domestic slavery" and indentured labor in Africa and Asia to lower prices for British and American consumers; seeking government contracts and tariff protection while embracing free trade principles; and, by the 1860s, endorsing an imperial world in which the African and Asian periphery produced agricultural goods for the European and American manufacturing core—revealed the dilemmas created by the drive for ethical commerce. As Everill notes, "resolving the contradictions of ethical capitalism was, and is, nearly impossible" (p. 241). The exhaustively researched Not Made by Slaves is part of a growing effort by historians to explore the rise of consumer activism, but Everill's challenging study ultimately reveals that "ethical capitalism" was (and remains) at heart an oxymoron. [End Page 101] A. Glenn Crothers University of Louisville Copyright © 2023 Trustees of Indiana University