Malachy Postlethwayt

Malachy Postlethwayt (5 May 1707–13 September 1767) was a British economist and lexicographer, famous for his publication of the commercial dictionary titled The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce in 1757. The dictionary was a translation and adaptation of the Dictionnaire universel du commerce of the French Inspector General of the Manufactures for the King, Jacques Savary des Brûlons.^[1]

Postlethwayt also wrote several works defending the slave trade and advocating for its expansion. He was a lobbyist for the Royal African Company and asserted that slave trade was central to British Empire's economic interests. In his first pamphlet, The African Trade, the Great Pillar and Support of the British Plantation (1745), Postlethwayt stated that “our West Indian and African Trades are the most nationally beneficial of any we carry on”. In reaction to those who denounced slave trade, he answered: “Many are prepossessed against this Trade, thinking it a barbarous, inhuman, and unlawful Traffic for a Christian Country to trade in Blacks” but Africans would be better off to “live in a civilized Christian Country” than among “Savages.”^[2]