<論説>一八三〇―三二年英領西インド経済危機と奴隷賠償制度

Abstract

英領西インド貿易は長くイギリス経済の最重要部門であったが、一八一○年代以降は砂糖生産の世界的拡大や奴隷制廃止運動の進展を受けて長期的不況に陥った。その影響は植民地砂糖生産者だけでなく、彼らに融資を行ってきたイギリスの貿易商や貿易商に資産を預けてきた有産階級全般に及んだ。特に一八三〇―三二年砂糖価格暴落は本国の貿易商と投資家に深刻な打撃を与えた。この状況を打開したのが奴隷制廃止法に付加された奴隷賠償制度である。これによって奴隷所有者に奴隷解放の損失補償のため二〇〇〇万ポンドが支払われたが、この賠償金の大半は奴隷所有者が多大な債務を負っていた本国投資家のもとへ還流し、彼らやイギリスの資金運用システム全体を防衛する機能を果たした。本稿では、当時最大手の貿易商会の破産処理の過程を調査し、実際に奴隷賠償金が同社の債権回収や同社への投資家・出資者救済に不可欠の役割を果たしていた状況を明らかにした。

The West India Trade had been the most important section of British economy for almost two and a half centuries since the second half of the seventeenth century. However, it fell into the long-term depression from the late 1810s because of the rapid increase of worldwide sugar production and the pressure from the slave abolition campaign. The depression had serious effect not only on sugar planters in the colonies, but also on West India merchants who financed them or the property class in the mother country, who deposited their money in West India merchants. In 1830-32, the sugar price remained very low and a lot of West India merchants went bankrupt. The crisis must have been destructive to the depositors and the financial system in the mother country. But they could escape from ruin. Why? In this essay, the author investigates the bankruptcy records of one of the greatest West India merchants, Manning & Anderdon (M&A), and demonstrates that only the slave redemption made the sugar planters solvent and enabled M&A to pay a part of their debt to their investors and depositors. The slave redemption was a supplementary provision of the slave abolition act in 1834, by which the British Government paid 20 million pounds to the slave owners in compensation for their losses from the abolition. The planters who were debtors to M&A were almost bankrupt and their estates lost its value. It was only the compensation money that the planters could pay back to M&A and M&A could repay their investors and depositors. From the investigation, the author concludes that the slave redemption saved the property class in the mother country and the British financial system, rather than the planters and the colony. The latters never recovered from the crisis, but the former, though badly damaged from it, recovered to expand their investment elsewhere worldwide in the future.