 Historical revisionism arrived when West Indian historian Eric Williams, a Marxist, in "Capitalism and Slavery" (1944), rejected this moral explanation and argued that abolition was now more profitable, for a century of sugarcane raising had exhausted the soil of the islands, and the plantations had become unprofitable.It was more profitable to sell the slaves to the government than to keep up operations.The 1807 prohibition of the international trade, Williams argued, prevented French expansion on other islands.