Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution

Stephan Heblich, Stephen Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth

No 30451, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We provide theory and evidence on the contribution of slavery wealth to Britain’s economic development prior to the abolition of slavery in 1833. We combine data on individual slaveholders from compensation records, an exogenous source of variation in slavery wealth from weather-induced shocks to mortality of the enslaved during the middle passage, and a quantitative spatial model. Exogenous increases in slavery wealth reduce the agricultural employment share, increase the manufacturing employment share, raise the number of cotton mills, and increase property values. Quantifying our model, we find that slavery wealth raises aggregate income by the equivalent of around a decade of economic growth, and increases local income in places with the greatest involvement in slavery by more than 40 percent.

JEL-codes: F60 J15 N63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-lab
Note: ITI
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30451.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution (2023)
Working Paper: Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution (2023)
Working Paper: Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution (2022)
Working Paper: Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution (2022)
Working Paper: Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30451

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30451

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().