Industrial revolutions built on coal and slavery

Jean Baptiste Debret (1826) The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record

The British Empire was built on coal, coal powered the Industrial Revolution, the carbon reserves of UK were on a par with those of Saudi Arabia.

There was though an industrial revolution that preceded that built on coal, the industrial revolution built on slavery, that turned coffee from a luxury few could afford to the second most valuable global commodity after oil.

The legacy of which haunts us today, as we see with Black Lives Matter protests.

And slavery has not gone away. Cocoa from West Africa is harvested by slaves, from which all the big chocolate corporations profit.

Coffee and slavery

Nestle co-defendants in child slavery class action

Toppling of a statue