Emancipation Day
To celebrate the emancipation of enslaved Africans throughout the British Empire
On the 1st of August 1834, the youngest of the British Empire’s slaves were freed. Slaves aged six or younger.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, over 12 million people were enslaved and shipped from West and Central Africa to the Americas. Around a quarter of these people were transported on British ships, largely to be sold to plantation owners in British colonies.
These people worked as domestics, storekeepers, nurses and midwives. But mostly, they worked in the fields. They planted and harvested crops. They cleared land, dug ditches, cut and hauled wood, slaughtered livestock, repaired buildings and maintained tools; until they died. They were tortured and raped routinely. They had their bones broken and bodies whipped for such trivialities as letting a pot boil over. Those who fled were often and brutalised and publicly hung. Their children faired the same.
Today, many parts of North America and the Caribbean use the 1st of August to celebrate the emancipation of enslaved Africans throughout the British Empire. This post is a reflection on how slavery and slave trade shaped the Britain we have today.
Unless otherwise specified, the ideas come from Capitalism and Slavery, by Eric Williams.
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The core argument of Williams’ book is that monopoly trade and slave labour in the 1700s enabled the accumulation of capital that ignited the industrial revolution. Then, come the late 1700s and early 1800s, this revolution turned around and rejected both monopoly trade and slave labour.
But, already by this point, the Britain we see around us today had been born. The cities, the industries and the power.
Shipping
Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow were all completely transformed by ships serving the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. People were paid to build and repair ships, to load and offload ships, to clean the ships and to sail them. Companies insured the ships. Financiers owned ships and commissioned new ships. Lawyers settled disputes between any and all of these parties. There was money to be made by everyone.
As one 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. Ships departed from here with British produce, on route to West Africa, then to the Americas, then back to Liverpool to offload their new goods.
Between 1700 and 1771 Liverpool 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. The cotton came from slave plantations. A third of these exports went to the African coast, generally to be exchanged for more slaves. A half went to the Caribbean and Americas, generally to be exchanged for more products of slave labour — 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 annually, 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, supplied by the sugar plantations in 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 local markets in 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 and employment in Britain, less shipping, and less trade. Accordingly, the duties on refined sugar imported into Britain 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.
In an amazing piece of recent research it has transpired that the Cort Process (enabling wrought iron to be made on mass from scrap iron), long attributed to British financier come ironmaster Henry Cort, was actually developed by a team of slaves in Jamaica, then copied (and patented) by Cort. The innovation is considered one of the most important and influential of the era.
Banking
Large sums of money were needed for every new plantation, factory, refinery, furnace, ship and shipyard. A lot of this finance came from those who had already made their fortunes in some aspect of the the slave trade, plantations or related industries. Many banks were established during the 1700s in just this manner — 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 owned a textiles factory in Manchester during the 1700s, before moving to London to set up their banking empire, which was particularly dominant in the 1800s.
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. The slaves were integral to all of this.
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Four years after the youngest of the British Empire’s child slaves were freed, their mothers and fathers followed. In the 1st of August 1838 the forced ‘apprenticeship’ of the remaining slaves came to an end.
Now started their journey of building something from nothing. Out into the hills and the bush they went. Anywhere, away from the plantations. This was birth of communities that eventually become countries.
One of the reasons the imprints of slavery are still so clear around us (albeit not well recognised) is that this was not so long ago.
Imagine an elderly Barbadian lady today, still blessed with her memory. She may tell you about it herself. After all, she heard about it from her mother, whose grandmother, aged five, was one of those who, on August 1st 1834, found that they were free.
