I would be interested in what others who have read the history of this time would say about the thesis that emancipation in the British and French empires was entirely an economic phenomenon. I would say it was an attempt to rationalise, to paint the decision by the souths slaveholders in a better light. -- That once they came to their economic senses, they too would have emancipated.
It is almost a textbook example of being banal about evil, imo.
I take it that your answer implies as well that the thesis is false -- that substantially moral motives led to French and British emancipation?