History and Economics
What the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Contributed to Modern Britain
Lest We Forget
“If we truly cared for peace, would we not remember the victims of British tyranny every 11 November too?” Akala, Natives
Today, the United Kingdom is among the wealthiest countries in the world. We have relatively good health and education systems. Our labor market is well stocked with exciting, interesting, well-paid jobs. We have moderate financial protection if we lose our jobs. We have an okay state pension. We are quite safe to walk the streets at night. Almost all of us have 24/7 water, gas and electricity in our homes. The shelves in our shopping centers are full, and the food in our supermarkets is cheap.
I am not completely naïve. There are large swathes of our country where, upon reading this, people may think not me. We remain among the most unequal of wealthy countries in the world. Overcrowded, overpriced housing beset with damp and mould are common. Those exciting jobs are concentrated in small geographic pockets. And if you spend too much of a low income on bills and shelter, however cheap food is, it will still be too expensive.
But, on balance, and in comparison to many parts of the world, there is a lot of opportunity in the United Kingdom.
To what do we owe this privilege?
The answer, in my opinion, is our past. Lest we forget — the good and the bad.
There is a tendency to focus on the good — our heroes and triumphs. But reality is not so kind. Our modern privilege stems at least as much from genocide, slavery and colonisation.
One of the books that has particularly as shaped my perspective on this is Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams.
Eric Williams led Trinidad and Tobago to independence from the British Empire in 1962 and remained Prime Minister until his death in 1981. Before he became a politician, he was a historian. Capitalism and Slavery is based on his Ph.D. thesis. Published in 1944, it has become a seminal work in economic history.
The core argument of his thesis is:
“The commercial capitalism of the eighteenth century developed the wealth of Europe by way of slavery and monopoly. But in doing so it helped create the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century, which turned round and destroyed the power of commercial capitalism, slavery, and all its works.” Capitalism and Slavery, pg 210.
His story covers over 200 years of economic development in Britain. He argues that monopolistic trade relations and slave labor throughout the 1700s produced the initial accumulation of capital that lit the fire beneath the industrial revolution. But by the late 1700s and early 1800s, this revolution had encouraged the rise of free-market economics — most famously described in The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith in 1776.
With more free-market economics came increased competition among both supply and demand. More people wanted to buy, and more people wanted to sell. The plantations throughout the Caribbean, built on a model of monopoly, could not compete. They became a less profitable and less significant part of Britain’s international trade portfolio. Over time, Britain’s role in both the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and plantation slavery fizzled out. While this fizzling was politically punctuated with two abolitions — one of the slave trade, the other, 27 years later, of slavery itself — Williams’ argues that abolition was primarily about a slow shift in economic interests.
The thesis is full of perspectives that I had never previously been exposed to — about American independence, the abolition of slavery, the death of mercantilism, the birth of capitalism and the development of racism.
In amongst all this, one of Williams’ messages that has stuck with me is how heavily the Britain we know today was moulded by this period in history. That, far from being an abstract series of almost pre-historic events, independent of our current world, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade laid the recent foundations from which our modern Britain grew.
Unless otherwise specified, the information below is paraphrased from chapter three of Capitalism and Slavery.
Shipping
Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow were all completely transformed by ships working the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. Building ships, loading ships, offloading ships, and sailing ships. Owning ships, insuring ships, financing new ships, and legal disputes between ships. Money, money, money, and yet more money.
For example, in 1715 the Lyver Pool was converted into an enclosed dock. This enabled Liverpool to load and offload more ships more efficiently, and it became one of Britain’s leading centres of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Between 1700 and 1771, largely through profit from this trade, the city grew from a sleepy port of 5,000 inhabitants to an international landmark of 34,000 inhabitants with annual dock duties reaching a whopping £648,000.
Cotton
What shipping did for Liverpool, cotton did for Manchester. The value of Lancashire’s exports (largely manufactured cotton goods exported through Liverpool) increased from £14,000 in 1739 to £303,000 in 1779. A third of these exports went to the African coast, generally to be exchanged for slaves. A half went to the Caribbean and Americas, generally to be exchanged for the products of slave labor — more cotton, sugar, indigo, tobacco, etc. And so the cycle went on.
By the late 1780s, Manchester was exporting £200,000 worth of goods to Africa and £300,000 worth of goods to the West Indies — giving employment to 180,000 people.
Sugar refining
Turn crude brown sugar into the refined white stuff and you have something that is much easier to store and transport all over the world. Britain’s first sugar refineries were set up in the early 1600s. By the mid-1750s, mutually supported by the growth of sugar plantations throughout the West Indies, over 120 sugar refineries were up and running throughout England. By 1799 Bristol alone had 20 sugar refineries, and London had 80.
Bristol was Britain’s sugar King. Through close proximity to the coal needed for fuel, it could sell cheaper than London, and its quality was considered superior. It was well supported by loyal markets throughout Ireland, South Wales, and West England.
Glasgow and Liverpool also had a number of refineries, as did Manchester, Chester, Lancashire, Whitehaven, Newcastle, Hull, Southampton, and Warrington.
It would have been perfectly possible to refine the sugar on the plantations. But that would mean less business in England, less shipping, and less trade. Accordingly, the duties on refined sugar imported into England were four times the duties on brown sugar, and refining was banned altogether in the West Indies.
Metallurgy
What shipping was to Liverpool, cotton was to Manchester and sugar was to Bristol, metal was to Birmingham. It was a common saying that the price of a slave was one Birmingham gun. At its peak, Birmingham exported between 100,000 and 150,000 African Muskets a year.
In addition to guns, people wanted fetters, chains, and padlocks. Irons that, when red hot, could brand a human. Iron to bound the casks of goods transported on the ships. Iron bars for use as an international currency. Cutlery, pans, and kettles were exported for use in African, American, and West Indian homes. Brass pans, wrought iron, nails, sugar stoves, and rollers for crushing the cane went to the plantations. Copper sheathing, iron chains, and anchors went to the shipyards. All of these were staple goods in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
And it was not just Birmingham. London, as with all manufactures, was a major competitor. Derby, Bristol, Liverpool, Staffordshire, and Holywell all had their own metallurgy companies as well.
Banking
Large sums of money were needed for every new factory, refinery, furnace and shipyard. Who better to provide this money than those who had already made their fortunes through any of these trades?
Many banks were established during the 1700s by people who had previously been successful through either the slave trade, the plantations, or any of the domestic British industries fuelled by the slave trade and plantation outputs. Such banks sprung up in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, and London.
Barclays Bank was established in London during the early 1700s, and got its name from two brothers who joined as partners after earning their fortune in the slave trade. Lloyds Bank was established in Birmingham in 1765 by an iron trader and a dealer. The Rothschilds started life in Britain in the 1700s with a textiles factory in Manchester, before moving to London to set up their banking empire. The family went on to dominate banking throughout the 1800s. Their legacy lives on today through Rothschild & Co, a multinational investment bank and financial services company.
Overall, the 1700s saw a significant growth in number of banks and the banking services offered. It saw the introduction of clearing facilities, security investments and overdraft protections. By 1784 there were over 100 provincial banks alone, and many more in London. Needless to say, the banking sector has grown into one of the United Kingdom’s strongest assets.
It doesn’t stop there. A list of the contributions of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and, of course, the slaves themselves, to modern Britain could go on and on. Overall, the tonnage of shipping leaving English ports doubled and exports trebled between 1700 and 1781. Imports increased fourfold between 1715 and 1775.
Capital accumulated through the West Indian trade financed James Watt and his steam engine. All of the industries listed above created further demand for their own subsidiary trades such as transport, storage, shop keeping and security. They provided people with the money they used to go out, eat better food, buy fancier clothes and build nicer houses — providing yet more employment, and so on, and so on, and so on.
Today, five percent of England’s school children come from either Black Caribbean or Black African backgrounds. Thirty-three percent of England’s school children are one ethnic minority or another. The family histories of these children often take them down a path through worlds that have recently emerged from British tyranny — be that slavery, colonization, or both.
Imagine an English school child, aged fifteen, who visits her ninety-year-old grandmother in Barbados. This particular ninety-year-old woman, still blessed with her memory, reminisces about the time she spent with her grandmother, who was herself born a slave.
These are not distant and abstract events. They are a part of the lives of the people who shape us, and of the opportunities we ourselves have today.
Our modern identity as a nation is built by the narratives we tell ourselves. We are trying to maintain a society that is composed of people who descend from myriad sides of history. If we are going to function together as a nation, we need narratives that we can all buy into. If we hide or neglect the tyranny, we will never be able to move forward as one.
So I agree with Akala. Be it on November 11th or any other day, in the name of peace, once a year we should remember the victims of British tyranny as well.
