In this ambitious book, Bronwen Everill considers the varied, contradictory economic arguments against slavery and the slave trade across the Atlantic World. She expands on studies of the transatlantic free produce movement (most recently, Julie Holcomb's Moral Commerce) to focus more broadly on production, consumption, and trade, or “legitimate commerce” (3). Everill illuminates African, as well as British, American, and to a lesser extent, French, perspectives on how to undermine slavery and create a more ethical global economic system. She also contributes to the scholarly literature on slavery (and antislavery) and capitalism by focusing on consumerist arguments for free labor goods. Abolitionist arguments that free labor was more efficient than slave labor, and their promise of cheaper consumer goods, Everill argues, shifted attention away from other ethical considerations, including the condition of labor.
European and American arguments for a more ethical capitalism developed in conversation with their African trading...
