This presentation will assess why Great Britain and the United States approached emancipation differently. In Britain’s case, the willingness of Caribbean sugar planters to accept the Government’s compensation offer derived from a conviction that liberalisation of the national economy was inevitable and would ultimately undermine the economics of West Indian sugar production. In the United States, by contrast, cotton, the staple crop of the southern states, was extremely profitable and as Britain and other European countries industrialized demand was expected to remain strong. Slavery, moreover, was a defining feature of southern society, so that emancipation would seem to have threatened the social position of the region’s most powerful elites. In other words, the Confederate States preferred war to giving up their way of life. The irony is it is arguable whether compensated emancipation stretched out over many years would have drastically altered social relations and/or undermined the region’s economic viability, especially once account is taken of the vast costs of the war, the attendant loss of life, and economic dislocations its created.     

The author was formerly Adjunct Professor, Fordham University (London Study Centre) and Senior Tutorial Fellow, Susses University (Brighton, UK).