The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

A.D. 1776 — 1850. and of negroes in the West Indies. 854 LAISSEZ FAIRE to carry out treaty obligations, and to maintain an efficient frontier police. But this system did not work in practice; the homes and farms of British subjects were constantly raided ; the fact that no punishment followed was interpreted by the natives as a sign of mere weakness, and the life of the farmers became intolerable. In 1836 the great emigration of the Dutch began towards regions beyond the Orange River, where they hoped to be able to carry out their own system of dealing with frontier troubles by organised com- mandos. The inability of the Home Government to grasp the actual difficulties of the situation and its susceptibility to the opinions of enthusiasts and doctrinaires, bore fruit in vacilla- tion and mismanagement, and sowed the seeds of bitter hatred between two races that might easily have amalgamated at the Cape as completely as they have done in New York. The newly aroused sentiment, as to the duties of English- men towards African races, gave rise to difficulties, not only in the Dark Continent itself, but in the West India islands, where the planters had been so long dependent on imported labour, The humanitarian movement, for putting down the traffic in slaves, had been aroused by the misery it caused in Africa and in the Middle Passage; but the logical result was an agitation against the existence of slavery in British possessions, and this was headed by Lord Brougham. The British Government paid a sum of twenty millions in com- pensation to the planters when slavery was abolished in 1834. This was of course not a full compensation, as the value of West Indian slaves was said to be forty-three millions’. It might of course appear that the command which the planters had over a resident labouring population would enable them to carry on their operations without a full compensation for the money they had invested in stocking their estates with negroes. But as a matter of fact, and when viewed retrospectively, it is difficult to say that any compen- sation would have made up to the planters for losing control over their hands. There undoubtedly are populations who 1 The compensation appears to have varied from a quarter to a half of the sworn value of slaves of different classes and ages. Accounts, 1837-8. rLvITL. 680.

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