Skip to content

No Reparations UK

  • HISTORYExpand
    • The history they don’t tell you
    • Britain’s role: the full picture
  • WHO PAYS?Expand
    • Who pays? The racial levy problem
    • Narrowing the pool
    • The double liability problem
    • The Windrush dimension
  • THE LAWExpand
    • The legal case that doesn’t exist
    • The government’s weak position
  • CARICOMExpand
    • CARICOM and the ten-point plan
    • Does the money even work?
    • What would actually be fair?
  • SOURCESExpand
    • Sources and further reading
No Reparations UK
Home/Does the money even work?/The empire built on slavery claim/Adam Smith, free markets and the intellectual revolution
In this section
  • Does the money even work?
  • Evidence from existing reparations schemes
  • The empire built on slavery claim
    • Eric Williams and Capitalism and Slavery: the source of the claim
    • What slave trade profits actually represented as a share of GDP
    • The Industrial Revolution's real drivers: coal, capital markets, law
    • Adam Smith, free markets and the intellectual revolution
    • The fungibility argument: other capital would have been used instead
    • The empire's expansion had almost nothing to do with sugar money
  • Caribbean governance and development failure
  • What actually addresses structural inequality
  • The accountability gap
Does the money even work?

Adam Smith, free markets and the intellectual revolution

PreviousThe Industrial Revolution's real drivers: coal, capital markets, lawNextThe fungibility argument: other capital would have been used instead

© 2026 No Reparations UK - WordPress Theme by Kadence WP

  • HISTORY
    • The history they don’t tell you
    • Britain’s role: the full picture
  • WHO PAYS?
    • Who pays? The racial levy problem
    • Narrowing the pool
    • The double liability problem
    • The Windrush dimension
  • THE LAW
    • The legal case that doesn’t exist
    • The government’s weak position
  • CARICOM
    • CARICOM and the ten-point plan
    • Does the money even work?
    • What would actually be fair?
  • SOURCES
    • Sources and further reading