Thread by @ARgeogcurric

1/ THREAD: Economic change & the Atlantic slave trade

#geographyteacher talk about the growth of Britain’s manufacturing industry. We link this to the expansion of cities & explain how the Industrial Revolution created jobs that acted as a pull factor for rural-urban migrants.

2/ However, this is a very selective retelling of a much larger picture. There are vital parts missing from the usual narrative of the Industrial Revolution. In short, many of the raw goods processed in British factories came from slave labour in the United States.

3/ And the reason why UK cities were able to develop and prosper is because they were able to profit from manufacturing these raw goods that were produced by enslaved people.

Here's how.

4/ Bristol

By the late 1730s, Bristol had become Britain’s top slaving port. In 1750 alone, Bristol ships transported approx 8,000 of the 20,000 enslaved Africans sent that year to the British Caribbean and North America.

5/ Slave-produced Caribbean produce such as sugar, rum and cocoa were brought to Bristol where sugar refining, tobacco processing and chocolate manufacturing were important local industries. Thousands of people were employed in these processing industries.
bristolmuseums.org.uk/stories/bristo…

6/ Liverpool

Liverpool overtook Bristol as the dominant slave port by late C18th, accounting for over 60% of the nation’s slave trafficking and more than 40% of Europe’s. This triggered a population increase from only 5,000 in 1700 to 34,000 by 1773. (Andrews, 2021)

7/ The influence can be seen on many buildings in the city centre today.
historicengland.org.uk/research/inclu…

8/ Glasgow

Post 1707, vast quantities of New World tobacco and sugar arrived in Glasgow. This helped trigger significant expansion of local manufacturing. By the end of the C18th, Glasgow had 80 sugar refineries compared to 20 in Bristol.

9/ Glasgow’s trade connections through and around the Atlantic World transformed the C18th city and the lives of its rapidly increasing population.

gla.ac.uk/schools/humani…

10/ Manchester

Wool and cotton goods were in high demand in West Africa. Manchester benefited directly from Liverpool becoming a centre of the slave trade, and a canal was built in 1772 linking the two cities. The Manchester cotton industry boomed, as did its population.

11/ By 1788 the city was exporting £200,000 worth of goods to Africa, the production of which employed 180,000 people.

revealinghistories.org.uk/how-did-money-…

12/ Birmingham

Guns were also a valued commodity & Birmingham was exporting between 100,000 & 150,000 guns a year by the nineteenth century, largely to support the trade. Birmingham also produced the manacles & chains that were used to enslave people.

search.connectinghistories.org.uk/Details.aspx?&…

13/ London

London was a slave port city, however as the country’s financial centre it also profited from insurance companies who insured the voyages and the banks who financed loans and managed debt repayments of slave owners (@kehinde_andrews, 2021)

google.co.uk/books/edition/…

14/ All of the cities above also benefited from the multiplier effect of surrounding industries built up to support the slave ports and factories.

The story doesn’t end there.

15/ After the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, many of the payouts offered as ‘compensation’ to slave-owners was reinvested into British companies and infrastructure.
More information can be found through the work of @LBS_at_UCL
ucl.ac.uk/lbs/commercial/

16/ We can and should do more to teach about this aspect of economic change. We should not continue to (unintentionally or otherwise) obscure the role that the Atlantic slave trade had in the development of UK cities.