Groundbreaking work on slave economy finally back on UK shelves

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Jan 24, 2022, 10:40:44 PM1/24/22
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Nimi Wariboko

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Jan 25, 2022, 6:14:33 AM1/25/22
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Dear Oga Cornelius:
Thanks for sharing this. I really appreciate it. In my undergraduate days(1980-1984) at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria Professors like Claude Ake made us read this great book. As a leader of the Marxist youth movement both at Uniport and in the country, this book was Bible to me. I loved it so much that when I came to Columbia University, New York for my MBA and met a fellow business school student who was from Trinidad and Tobago I immediately became friends with her. She was the closest person I could reach to come into the ambience of the great Eric Williams. I felt I was vicariously meeting him through her. I wanted to discuss the book with the “daughter of the soil,” to know how it felt to come from the land of an excellent thinker who revolutionized how the world thought about slavery and capitalism. Alas, she had not read the book and, in fact, did not know about the basic thesis of the book. I was disappointed, hugely disappointed. She was not aware of the book. 

Thanks, Cornelius for reminding me of this book. I will go back to it. William’s book and Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” were canonical in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Port Harcourt. We also read books by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, two American Marxists. We also read Nigerian and African scholars. But this is a story for another time. 

Blessings,

Nimi Wariboko
Boston University 

On Jan 24, 2022, at 10:40 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:



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Toyin Falola

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Jan 25, 2022, 6:18:03 AM1/25/22
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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Jan 25, 2022, 8:46:04 AM1/25/22
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 Dear Sir,

Until today I had not quite realised how young you are ( until you said you were an undergraduate 1980 - 84) coinciding with my wonderful days lived in the then Rivers State (Melford Okilo & Akaso Cultural Society ) and Imo State (Sam Mbakwe and Dr. Sir Warrior) in Nigeria...

Well, I'll have to consult with my classmates such as dear Omodele Wariboko if I can get hold of him - I know from other classmate dear Charles Macaulay( old youth) that Omodele is around making history , chasing his (Charles daughter), probably in the Philadelphia area , I'll have to consult with them as to the exact date, I think it must have been circa 1960 when after the morning assembly at our Prince of Wales School the Principal Mr. A. Thomas ( fondly known as "Pompey" by us urchins) said he had a special guest that was going to address us that morning and surprise, surprise, introduced the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, Dr. Eric Williams who then spoke to us for about twenty minutes on the theme of Freedom vs the legacy of slavery and the spirit of capitalism . I must say that he got us all fired up - especially the Sierra Leonean Nova Scotians and diverse Creoles who of course were going to have none of that. Around that time and I guess, right up to now it's a special trait among people born in Freetown that we do not allow anyone to push us around, the emphasis being on the FREE and the idea in Deuteronomy 17 :16 , after all those years of slavery in Egypt the Almighty commanded us His people "You shall not return that way any more !"

Sir, who would have dreamed or prophesied the exact history of Sierra Leone from then to now?

Going to take a closer look at this

Please pray for us!  

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jan 25, 2022, 9:00:32 AM1/25/22
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This is what I wrote many moons ago
in appreciation of Eric Williams. I was asked
to do a review of Braudel and contrasted him
with Williams  along the way. I first read
Williams in high school in Trinidad. It was
recommended by my history teacher.
————

 
        Emeagwali, Gloria (2002) "Fernand Braudel. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century. v. 2 The Wheels of Commerce," Comparative Civilizations Review: Vol. 47 : No. 47 , Article 10.

BOOK REVIEWS
Fernand Braudel. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-l8th Century, v. 2 The Wheels of Commerce. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992 printing.



Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th century, is a majestic work completed 23 years ago but first published in English in 1982. The Wheels of Commerce (Les Jeux de /' Echange) is the sec- ond volume in the series and is devoted exclusively to commerce. This text must be seen as one of a series of works written by Braudel and a fairly long line of contemporary scholars on the rise of the West and the evolutionofcapitalism.OthersincludeE.Jones,TheEuropean Miracle (1981); J.M Blaut's 1492 (1992); A.G Frank's Re-Orient (1999) and his earlier work World Accumulation (1978) and Samir Amin's Eurocentrism (1988). Add to these David Landes' Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1998); Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1973) and Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery (1944), the oldest of them all - although Braudel's approximately 2000 footnotes do not include a single reference to Williams—nor Rodney, for that matter. Languages utilized by Braudel in the course of research include French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and English.
So is this text just another Eurocentric tome, an exercise in self- congratulation? What are some of its stylistic and structural tendencies, its conceptual assumptions, methodological orientations and epistemo- logical shifts, if any? Are the facts "like fish on the fishmonger's slab" in Braudel's narrative? Is he an inductive empiricist or a visionary? Does he have an overarching logically consistent scheme and frame- work, or not? Does he produce generalizations or consume them? What is, in Braudel's work, the role of the individual in the socio-historical process? What do the core assumptions of this work imply about the West and the Rest? What is the role of the historian in Braudel's view? As Wallerstein, his disciple and Director of the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton retorts, is he "a preacher to empty pews"—in his views about the unity of the disciplines? Indeed, does he practice what he preaches? A methodological monist or a pragmatist? Is he "too big" or "too little," an issue commented on by Frank recently?
A thoughtful researcher once identified three Poppers. Which of the Braudels shows up in this tome, granted that Popper and Braudel have so much in common. Larger than life figures, they both towered over the 20th century, one of German heritage, the other French. It is impor-
Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2002 1

 Comparative Civilizations Review, Vol. 47 [2002], No. 47, Art. 10
Book Reviews 121
tant to note as well that Popper's Conjectures and Refutations was a ma jor contribution to epistemological studies, areas with which Braudel preoccupied himself throughout his career. Scholars should undoubted- ly reflect on matters such as these in the context of Braudelian Studies. In the discussion which follows, however, we briefly comment on a few of the issues mentioned with a focus on the structure, style and subject matter of the text at hand.1
There are five major segments in the Wheels of Commerce. The dis- cussion includes a focus on (a) the instruments of exchange (b) markets and the economy (c) production (d) domestic capitalism and (e) socie- ty. In each of these segments we have intensive analyses. Markets, storehouses, shops, depots, granaries and stock markets; peddlers, wholesalers and bankers, bills of exchange; fixed and circulating capi- tal, land, money and plantations; and individual firms and joint stock companies are some of the multiple units of analysis. Braudel's work also encompasses larger themes and conceptual issues such as the rise of trading empires and economic policies such as mercantilism, within the five organizational units. Pithy, concise sentence units are not the norm. At its worst, mixed metaphors are juxtaposed with tautological phrases and undigested mistranslations. At its best, elegance and erudi- tion flow from his pen. There is a considerable attention to minute detail—for Europe—whilst arbitrarily chosen, random examples and case studies prevail for elsewhere.
Braudel provides an illuminating discussion of the emergence of various mercantile groups within Europe, their rivalries, colonies and networking systems. Portuguese merchants flocked to Spanish America. Armenian merchants swarmed into Portugal, Spain, Moscow and Amsterdam, often unwelcome and viewed as a threat to local merchants in Marseilles and elsewhere. Networks of Jewish merchants extended around the world, argues Braudel. They were even more successful than the Armenians and far surpassed the Italians "perpetuating a tradition stretching over many centuries."2 With the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal a few years later, Sephardic Jews headed in the direction of the Atlantic seaboard and elsewhere, becoming exceeding- ly rich:
Undoubtedly too they were among the architects of the first colonial fortunes of America in particular with the spread of sugar cane and the Brazilian and Caribbean sugar trade.5
Braudel is generally dismissive of Africa, whilst random conjecture

 Emeagwali: Fernand Braudel. <em>Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Centu
122 C o m p a r a t i v e C i v i l i z a t i o n s R e v i e wNo. 47
and inferences emerge for Japan, China and India. Obscurities are gen- eralized into the norm and abnormalities elevated to universality. Disembodied and disconnected communities are sometimes arbitrarily plucked from the air. His non-European examples are sometimes mis- leading. His discussion of pre-industry is a fitting example of his scanty use of sources for regions outside of Europe-and his inability or unwill- ingness to free himself from prejudices and stereotypes. Armed with two non-representative references, Braudel pontificates on Africa in a rather unsavory way and in absolutist terms, throwing caution to the wind and contradicting much of what we know about the emergence of sustainable and complex metallurgical traditions in the continent. In his words, "Black Africa, with its blacksmiths (who had much in common with witchdoctors) its primitive weavers and potters fitted entirely into Category A." Note that the latter category implies tiny workshops with no more than two apprentices and an absence of division of labor. The works of several scholars on metallurgy and other industries in pre- colonial Africa have proven these pontifications wrong.4 High levels of specialization emerged in various parts of the continent before the 15th century not only in metallurgy but also in textile and food processing. In a similar vein, in his comments on India and China, Braudel arro- gantly asserts that the workforce "did not produce the high quality of tools with which we are familiar in European history," a debatable viewpoint in the light of the works of Needham, Frank and others.
Through his Eurocentric lens Braudel proceeds to discuss the vari- ables associated with the rise of capitalism, which for him includes a mix of values in favor of dynastic continuity and wealth accumulation; profitable marriages which no doubt assisted in the consolidation of property; social divisions alongside social mobility, and what he con- siders the liberating action of long distance trade: "Long distance trad- ing was not everything but it was the only doorway to a superior profit level."5 What was liberating for Europe was no doubt liberating for the whole world, implies Braudel. The genocidal campaigns, which brought about the destruction of populations, exploitative structures, mecha- nisms of impoverishment and processes of dehumanization, are exclud- ed from the narrative. In fact Braudel pontificates as follows:
The obvious first condition was a vigorous and expanding market economy. A whole range of factors, geographical, demographic, agri- cultural, industrial and commercial, contributed to this. It is evident that such development operated world-wide: the population was
Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2002 3

 Comparative Civilizations Review, Vol. 47 [2002], No. 47, Art. 10
Book Reviews 123
increasing everywhere, inside and outside Europe in the countries of Islam, in India, China, Japan, even up to a point in Africa and before long in America where Europe made a fresh start.6
For the millions who lost their lives in the process of capitalist expansion in Native America and elsewhere Braudel sheds not a single tear. There is a major convergence between Eric Williams and Fernand Braudel in the acknowledgement of the centrality of colonial commer- cial activity for the emergence of capitalism. Braudel's triumphalism is, however, in deep contrast to the moral outrage of Williams. Williams successfully identifies the prehistory of Barclays Bank and the slave trading credentials of David and Alexander Barclay.7 Braudel is on the verge of uncovering the primary source of capital of the Bank of France:
Even more fascinating to my mind would be the prehistory of the Banque de France of the families who founded it who all or almost all seem to have had connections with the silver of Spanish America."
Braudel's discussion of the significance of the Jamaican plantation converges with that of Eric Williams:
In fact the balance of trade for Jamaica even calculated in colonial pounds works out at a slight advantage for the island (1,336,000 to 1,335,000 pounds sterling) but at least half of the total for imports and exports made its way invisibly back to England (in freight charges, insurance, commissions, interest on debts and transfers of money to absentee landlords). All in all the net benefits for England in the year 1773 was 1,500,000 pounds sterling. In London as in Bordeaux the proceeds of colonial trade were transformed into trading houses, banks and state bonds. They made the fortunes of certain powerful families whose most active representatives were to be found in the House of Lords....9
The Jamaican plantation was a "capitalist creation par excellence," a "wealth creating machine," "remote controlled" from Seville, Cadiz, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen, Amsterdam, Bristol and Liverpool.10 It was assailed by pillage and piracy and was similar to other plantations in the regions such as those of Saint Domingue. Planters often lost money while middlemen thrived and siphoned the money to the metropolis. For Braudel the narrative is about wealth creation but the exploitation of Africans, the violation of their human rights, and their justifiable quest for liberation merit very little discussion. Braudel glibly cites, in a fash- ion, the Maroon Wars of 1730 to 1739 and the "difficulties and dangers of runaway slaves."11 No enlightened humanism or moralistic outrage

 Emeagwali: Fernand Braudel. <em>Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Centu
1 2 4 C o m p a r a t i v e C i v i l i z a t i o n s R e v i e wNo. 47
emerges from his discourse.
Braudel is too expansive, too impressive, too exhausting and too
exhaustive to be written off with a stroke of the pen. His masterpiece is no doubt a labor of love and a product of passion, no less than an exten- sive intellectual enterprise which has in no small measure contributed to our understanding of the accumulation of wealth and resources and the rise of Europe to hegemonic status between the 15th and the 18th cen- turies. The historian, according to Braudel, must give both micro details and focus on total society. The thousands of humble points of intersec- tion must be brought to the fore, discussed and explained in the context of a comparative method, he posits, but he fails to do this with respect to the regions outside of Europe in his tedious and painstaking analysis. Dialectical interconnectedness between Europe and the rest of the plun- dered world is hinted indirectly by Braudel but not adequately or sys- tematically examined. Europe's debt to Africa and the Caribbean remains only partly recognized. Detailed minutiae are grafted on to an essentially unilinear Eurocentric evolutionary model. European capital- ism was the product of "the patient accumulation of wealth,"12 argues Braudel, and by editorial fiat, swashbuckling piracy and blood curdling episodes of violence, tyranny, despotism and treachery are erased from the annals of global history. European hegemony and the rise of capi- talism are portrayed as an inexorable force presumably destined by the gods:
Capitalism could only emerge from a certain kind of society, one which had created a favorable environment from far back in time without being aware in the slightest of the process thus being set in train or of the processes for which it was preparing the way in future centuries.1 3
But Big History this is, if one contemplates the gargantuan scope of the enterprise, and the Meta theories and Mega philosophies con- fronting any scholar who contemplates the rise of capitalism, and Europe's rise to fame and fortune.14 The boldness of the enterprise must however correlate with a spirit of openness, humility and inter-connect- edness with Africa, Asia and the Americas, from which Europe benefit- ed so bountifully.
Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2002
5
Gloria Emeagwali Eastern Connecticut State University

 Comparative Civilizations Review, Vol. 47 [2002], No. 47, Art. 10
Book Reviews 125
References
1. For Wallerstein's rhetorical question see "Braudel and interscience: a preacher to empty pews" in Review, Journal of the Fernand Braudel's Center, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, 2001, SUNY Binghamton. For Frank's comment on Braudel s "too little" methodology see the archives of H-World, Sunday 10 Dec 1995. See also Maurice Aymard's "One Braudel in Several," Review, Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center. Vol.XXV, No. 1, 2001. In addition to the SUNY Fernand Braudel Center, there is also the Instituto Fernand Braudel de Economia Mundial, Brazil. See also Popper's Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963. See some of Popper's early lectures in M.A Notturno (ed), Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem—Karl Popper, Routledge,
1996.
2. Braudel, Civilization p. 147
3. Braudel p. 159
4. See Gloria T. Emeagwali, "Africa's Indigenous Knowledge
Systems," Keynote paper presented at the Standing Conference of SCECSAL, Gauteng, South Africa, April 2002. Gloria T. Emeagwali (ed) Science and Technology in African History, Edwin Mellen 1992
African Systems of Science, Technology and Art, Karnak, London, 1993;
5. Historical Development of Science and Technology in Nigeria, Edwin Mellen, 1992
Understanding Africa's Past and Present, Africa World Press, New Jersey, forthcoming 2002; Peter Schmidt, Iron Technology in East Africa, Indiana University Press, 1997.
5. See Gunder Frank, ReOrient, Global Economy in the Asian Age, University of California Press, 1998. See also Thomas Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, Monthly Review Press, 1997; Zia Sardar et al., Barbaric Others, Pluto, 1993. Incidentally the phrase "parochial Eurocentrism" was borrowed from Frank. I initially thought of "xenophobic eurocentrism" but eventually considered that too exaggerated a description for Braudel's writings.
6. P. 600
7. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, University of South
Carolina, 1944.
8. Braudelp.150
9. P. 279

 Emeagwali: Fernand Braudel. <em>Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Centu
126 C o m p a r a t i v e C i v i l i z a t i o n s R e v i e wNo. 47
10. P. 273
11. P. 279
12. P. 599
13. P. 600
14. See Emily Eakin, "For Big History, the Past begins at the
Beginning," New York Times, January 12, 2002.
Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2002 7




Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 6:12 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Groundbreaking work on slave economy finally back on UK shelves
 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

biko...@yahoo.com

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Jan 25, 2022, 10:20:54 AM1/25/22
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I met Erica, his daughter, in Trinidad when I hosted a television program on democratic parenting and she joined by phone from Florida to share that her dad was democratic and never cut she tail. Then we met over lunch when she attended a conference on the legacy of the Obeah doctor and she asked if I had visited the exhibition on her father in the University library. I was ashamed to admit that I was yet to do so. When I did as part of the conference attendees, it was amazing to see his desk messy the way he left it just as messy as my own table at work. A film clip of him walking showed that he had what Trinis call the gangsta crawl that they said I have.

The genealogy of Capitalism and Slavery goes from Black Reconstruction in America by Du Bois, through The Black Jacobins by CLR who taught Williams in high school and was the one who suggested the topic of the doctoral research. Manning Marable traced this connection in an interview with me and called the three books the foundational paradigm for Africana Studies.

That he was not offered a job nor a book contract in Europe for such original work goes to show that being rejected is more a reflection on the people discriminating than on scholars who are denied opportunities. Turned out to be a good idea for the builders of empire to reject some head corner stones.

Biko

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BYAPR01MB45202BDE560D48F9E9D820DDDE5F9%40BYAPR01MB4520.prod.exchangelabs.com.

Biko Agozino

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Jan 25, 2022, 10:39:13 AM1/25/22
to bikozino via USA Africa Dialogue Series

Nimi Wariboko

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Jan 25, 2022, 11:09:05 AM1/25/22
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Dear Professor Gloria:

This is an excellent review. 

Nimi 

On Jan 25, 2022, at 10:39 AM, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Gloria Emeagwali

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Jan 25, 2022, 1:05:41 PM1/25/22
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Thank you, Nimi.  I am glad that you
found  the review interesting.

Biko  you are steps ahead
of me.I haven’t  met  the daughter
of Eric Williams. Trinis  got mad at her, and not him, ironically, after her dad said that she would lend the country ten million dollars during an era of recession.

Williams came to my high school in
1968/9 to celebrate an unusual 
feat, namely, the  first time ever that a
student of a government high school
had  won the prestigious National Scholarship.  

That student was me ( not Kamala Harris).😀

Until then   the annual scholarships,  based on A level performance, were dominated by “prestige “ schools run by largely racist Protestants and Catholics. In case you don’t know it, Trinidad was a settler colony
with apartheid overtones in terms of
its educational system etc - though not as 
apartheid- segregationist as the USA.

Williams took great pride in the establishment of non- denominational,
non- religious schools,
and I guess I was the poster child for
their success at the time. 

 I thank him for giving
me the opportunity to attend a school 
free from religious propaganda and 
Bible toting bigotry, much of which
make little rational sense. Several years later, I  was assigned to  one of those 
schools to teach, and my suspicions 
were fully confirmed.


G

Biko Agozino

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Jan 25, 2022, 2:00:03 PM1/25/22
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Youz a poster child still. Trini to the bone. Carry go. And thanks to Williams for introducing tuition-free public education up to high school and to Manning for extending it to university level.

Biko

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jan 26, 2022, 6:04:31 AM1/26/22
to 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ok but don’t put  me in that
ultra nationalist Trini box. That is not
pan Africanist me.

Yes, free public and even university education 
are traceable to Williams -  but I have come
to the conclusion that every generation
 has to fight to retain gains made in the past,
or they lose them.


Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 1:35 PM

Toyin Falola

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Jan 26, 2022, 6:26:05 AM1/26/22
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Gloria:

Your bio connecting public education and scholarship is totally new to me. I now fully understand why you turned down Cornell to work in Central Connecticut, and your passionate support for African education.

There is no week that I don’t thank the members of this site for the knowledge they produce on a daily basis.

biko...@yahoo.com

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Jan 27, 2022, 2:12:12 PM1/27/22
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It have mad or bad nationalists in every country and Williams may have promoted patriotism instead of the W.I. Federation after Jamaica withdrew from the 10 member state (he said that 10-1 leaves naught). But the only country in the world where half the citizens are called Africans officially (the other half identify as Indians), a country that has produced many Pan African giants, deserves some kudos. Ent?

I agree with Falola that you revealed a lot about your forthcoming memoires in this thread. Do you have pictures of your meeting with the Obeah Doctor?

Biko


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