THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

emphasized the dangers of consumption and advocated withdrawal and sacrifice.
Cropper, however, argued that withdrawal from the marketplace would devastate the
British economy and fail to demonstrate the economic and moral advantage of free labor.
Their differing approaches to the marketplace highlight the difference between male and
female activism.
Cropper was an important member of the British abolitionist establishment. An
East India sugar merchant and member of the Liverpool East India Association, Cropper
had substantial economic interests in East India sugar production. Cropper was also a
founding member of the Liverpool Society for the Amelioration and Gradual Abolition of
Slavery and a member of the London committee of the national Anti-Slavery Society. 72
This fusion of economic and humanitarian interests has led historians to present Cropper
as an example of the link between capitalism and abolitionism. Historian Eric Williams
presents Cropper as an important example of an abolitionist motivated more by economic
self-interest rather than humanitarian values. 73 In contrast, David Brion Davis describes
Cropper as a man in whom “the intensity of Quaker Quietism had fused with the
economic optimism of Adam Smith.” Cropper became an abolitionist because he
eschew the marketplace, they fail to exercise the force that drives political economy. For these consumer
activists, individual or coordinated withdrawal, while sometimes necessary, is far less effective than
organizing the consuming power of the market to effect change.”
72 Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 179-191; David Brion Davis, “James Cropper and the
British Anti-Slavery Movement, 1821-1823,” The Journal of Negro History 45 (1960), 241-258; David
Brion Davis, “James Cropper and the British Anti-Slavery Movement, 1823-1833,” The Journal of Negro
History 46 (1961), 154-173.
73
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1944, 1994), 186-187.
77