The Slave Trade and the Industrial Revolution

Writers: Julia Bard and David Rosenberg

Introduction | Triangular trade | Did slavery finance British industry? | Booming cities and new institutions | Abolition – moral conviction or economic self-interest? | Conclusion | Find out more

Introduction

Sugar cane production in the West Indies. Over three centuries, profits from African slaves enabled British entrepreneurs to invest in technologies that would drive the Industrial Revolution LP Pics

The English trade in slaves started during the reign of Elizabeth I, when, during the 1560s, Sir John Hawkins added captive Africans to the 'goods' he traded in West Africa. Prior to this, Native Americans and white people had been used as slaves but the slave owners believed that Africans were better able to deal with the climate and more resistant to the diseases they would encounter in the British colonies.

With the backing of Queen Elizabeth, Hawkins transported 1,200 Africans across the Atlantic to sell to Spanish settlers in the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The trade grew gradually at first, then gathered pace. By 1680, English plantation owners on the island of St Kitts were claiming that it was as difficult for them to cultivate their plantations 'without negro slaves as for the Egyptians to make bricks without straw'.

Triangular trade >