That Unexpected Margin of Capital

Abstract

For many years, a weapon in the armory of those advocating for Eric Williams’s thesis that the profits from slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in Britain has been a speech made by Winston Churchill making that very point. Williams himself referred to the speech in 1942, as did George Padmore in 1953, but neither provided chapter and verse. Subsequently, a whole raft of commentators has followed suit, but always only via a reference to Williams or Padmore. This research note provides the original date and context for Churchill’s words.