“Free labour ideology” before Adam Smith: free vs slave labour in the British public debate, 1746–1776

Ana Paula Londe Silva

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2026, vol. 33, issue 3, 427-460

Abstract: Historians have long debated whether British abolitionism benefitted from a “free labour ideology”. Most agree that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) was the obvious source for the antislavery discourse postulating the lower productivity and higher cost of slave labour. This paper challenges this interpretation by showing how several writers mobilised the superiority of free labour to criticise colonial slavery and defend specific political agendas for the British Empire before 1776. When Smith published the Wealth of Nations, Anglo-American antislavery writers had already given political meaning to arguments regarding the superior productivity and lower cost of free labour.

Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2025.2509523

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