“Free labour ideology” before Adam Smith: free vs slave labour in the British public debate, 1746–1776

2025/06/25 by Ana Paula Londe Silva · 1 voice
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Arts and Humanities · #Historical Economic and Social Studies #European Political History Analysis #Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment

paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09672567.2025.2509523

openalex publication_date 2025/06/25 · openalex created_date 2025/06/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02

Abstract

Historians have long debated whether British abolitionism benefitted from a “free labour ideology”. Most agree that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) was the obvious source for the antislavery discourse postulating the lower productivity and higher cost of slave labour. This paper challenges this interpretation by showing how several writers mobilised the superiority of free labour to criticise colonial slavery and defend specific political agendas for the British Empire before 1776. When Smith published the Wealth of Nations, Anglo-American antislavery writers had already given political meaning to arguments regarding the superior productivity and lower cost of free labour.

Citations

• Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Discussions

• Article: “Free labour ideology” before Adam Smith: free vs slave labour in the British public debate, 1746–1776, by Ana Paula Londe Silva doi.org/10.1080/0967... [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

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