The Williams Thesis and Studies of Slave Trade Kazuo KOBAYASHI The aim of this review article on British slave trade is to reexamine the Williams Thesis in the context of the studies of global history. The Williams Thesis, which originates from Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery (1944), insists that the profit from the slave trade and slavery financed the Industrial Revolution in England and that after maturing industrial capitalism the slave system came to be destroyed in turn. These arguments had led to enormous literatures and discussions on the profitability of slave trade since the late 1960s. Although many new economic historians have been skeptical about this thesis, by criticizing statistical records and revealing the rate of profit, there has still to be explored the relationship between the slave trade and the Industrial Revolution. However, recently Kenneth Pomeranz argues that fortunate location of coal and the transatlantic trade broke through the ecological constraint of Western Europe in the late 18th century and it led to the different development path from East Asia. Joseph Inikori also stresses that expanding Atlantic commerce played the critical role in the successful completion of England’s industrialization during 1650-1850. As these arguments show, the Williams Thesis has been reassessed positively. Moreover, recent studies on African history demonstrate that Africans were not passive actors but rather active participants in the Atlantic commerce. The demand of the East Indian textile, which was re-exported from Europe, greatly increased by Africans in exchange for African slaves and so forth. This fact would suggest that Asian goods had stimulated the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade, and these trans-regional linkages will give us wider perspective on the "Long Eighteenth Century"