Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T18:14:02.177Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Capitalism Mistaken? The Economic Decline of Surinam and the Plantation Loans, 1773–1850; A Rehabilitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Extract

Has Europe grown rich because it expanded overseas? According to recent scholarship the answer must be no. During the period between 1500 and 1750 Europe's economy did not provide its inhabitants with a per capita income that was significantly higher than that in other parts of the world. Europe – and only the Western part of it – started to become richer after the Industrial Revolution from 1750 onwards. This far most attempts at linking the expansion of Europe to the Industrial Revolution have failed.

Type
Reactions from Our Readers
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 O'Brien, P.K., ‘Economic Development: The Contribution of the Periphery’, Economic History Review 35 (2nd series; 1982) 118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Davis, L.E. and Huttenback, R., Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire (Cambridge 1986).Google Scholar

3 O'Brien, P.K., ‘The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism, 1846–1914’, Past and Present 120 (1988) 163200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Price, Jacob M., ‘Transaction Costs: A Note on Merchant Credit and the Organisation of Private Trade’ in:Tracy, James D. ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires (Cambridge 1991) 276297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Estaban, Javier Cuenca, ‘Britain's Terms of Trade and the Americas, 1772–1831: Back to Demand as a Dynamic Factor in British Industrialisation?’ (paper delivered at session C- 31 of the Eleventh International Economic History Congress; Milan 12 September 1994).Google Scholar

6 van Lier, R., Samenleving in een Grensgebied: Een Sociaal-Historische Studie van Suriname (Amsterdam 1977).Google Scholar

7 van Stipriaan, Aiex, ‘Debunking Debts: Image and Reality of a Colonial Crisis; Suriname at the End of the 18th Century’, Itinerario 19/1 (1995) 6984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Van Stipriaan, ‘Debunking Debts’, 74.

9 van Zanden, J.L., Arbeid tijdens het Handelskapitalisme: Opkomst en Neergang van de Hollandse Economie, 1350–1850 (Bergen 1991) 95110.Google Scholar

10 Van Zanden, Arbeid tijdens het Handelskapitalisme, 103.

11 Ibid., 105.

12 Gert Oostindie, ‘The Economics of Surinam Slavery’ in: Economic and Social History in the Netherlands, 1–24.

13 Oostindie, ‘The Economics of Surinam Slavery’, 8.

14 Ibid., 11–13.

15 Ward, J.R., British West Indian Slavery, 1750–1834: The Process of Amelioration (Oxford 1988) 35–37, 64–68, 258–261.Google Scholar

16 Adamson, Alan H., Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838–1904 (New Haven and London 1972) 245.Google Scholar

17 van Stipriaan, Alex, Surinaams Contrast: Roofbouw en Overleven in een Caraïbische Planlagekolonie 1750–1863 (Leiden 1993) 338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Müller, M., ‘Tien Jaren Surinaamse Guerilla en Slavenopstanden, 1750–1759’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 86 (1973) 2150Google Scholar; and Craton, Michael, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca 1982).Google Scholar

19 Reese, J.J., De Suikerhandel van Amsterdam I (Haarlem 1908) 205, 210Google Scholar; and Ibid. II (The Hague 1911) 12–13.

20 van de Voort, J.P., De Westindische Plantages van 1720 tot 1795: Financiën en Handel (Eindhoven 1973); Van Stipriaan, Surinaams Contrast, 240–256.Google Scholar

21 Van Stipriaan, Surinaams Contrast, 28 (table 1).

22 Ibid., 133 (table 26).

23 van den Boogaart, E. and Emmer, P.C., ‘Plantation Slavery in Surinam in the Last Decade before Emancipation: The Case of Catharina Sophia’ in: Rubin, V. and Tuden, A. eds, Comparative Perspectives on Slavery in New World Plantation Societies (New York 1975) 205225Google Scholar; and Lamur, H.E., The Production of Sugar and the Reproduction of Slaves at Vossenburg (Suriname), 1705–1863 (Amsterdam 1987).Google Scholar

24 Emmer, Pieter, ‘Between Slavery and Freedom: The Period of Apprenticeship in Suriname (Dutch Guiana), 1863–1873’, Slavery and Abolition 14/1 (April 1993) 101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Siwpersad, J.P., De Nederlandse Regering en de Afschaffing van de Surinaamse Slavernij (1833–1863) (Groningen and Castricum 1979).Google Scholar