 In Fage's article "Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History", he notes that for West Africans "...there were really few effective means of mobilizing labour for the economic and political needs of the state" without the slave trade.Historian Eric Williams in 1944 argued that the profits that Britain received from its sugar colonies, or from the slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean, contributed to the financing of Britain's industrial revolution.However, he says that by the time of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and the emancipation of the slaves in 1833, the sugar plantations of the British West Indies had lost their profitability, and it was in Britain's economic interest to emancipate the slaves.