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Eric Williams's seminal 1944 book, Capitalism and Slavery, controversially argues that economic factors, rather than humanitarian motives, were the primary drivers behind the decline of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the British West Indies. Williams, who later became the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, challenged the traditional historiography that presented Britain's 1833 Slavery Abolition Act as a purely moral triumph.
Initially rejected by major British publishers for its provocative thesis, the work was first published in the US in 1944, eventually appearing in the UK in 1964, and recently becoming a mass-market best-seller in 2022. Despite ongoing debates among historians regarding its specific economic arguments, especially the "Ragatz–Williams decline theory," the book is widely acclaimed as "perhaps the most influential book written in the twentieth century on the history of slavery." It profoundly reshaped academic perspectives on the subject, inspiring extensive research into the economic impacts of slavery and abolition.