With the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, the British colonies in the West Indies went through significant economic, demographic, social, and political adjustments. The central problem faced by planters revolved around increasing competition from the new sugar zones in the world market, in a situation in which they could not count on the constant replenishment of new enslaved laborers from Africa.
Dave St. Aubyn Gosse's book addresses this issue through a careful analysis of the management of the Jamaican slave plantations between 1807 and 1838. This is a topic that has been extensively explored within the historiography of the British Empire. In the context of Seymour Drescher's argument with Eric Williams, historians such as J. R. Ward, Michael Craton, James Walvin, and B. W. Higman questioned the then-consecrated interpretations of the economic crisis of British slavery at the turn of the nineteenth century, examining the innovative responses...
