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

Booming cities and new institutions

For most of the 18th century, Bristol dominated the trade in sugar imported from slave plantations. This was stored on the quays, refined in the city's new refineries and sold to sweeten tea and coffee from the colonies, and to provide cheap calories in the diet of the factory workers. Bristol was transformed from a fishing port to a prosperous city and some areas of it, such as Queen Square, built for Bristol's richest inhabitants, became a showcase for the luxurious homes of slave merchants.

18th century tobacco baron William Cunninghame grew rich enough on the back of slave labour to build an enormous town house in Glasgow – now the Gallery of Modern Art LP Pics

Glasgow's older streets (Buchanan, Ingram, Glassford, Dunlop) commemorate tobacco barons who grew rich on slavery. One of them, William Cunninghame, built a massive townhouse in 1778. Today it is Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art.

Financial institutions were established in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and other burgeoning cities to meet the particular needs of the triangular trade. The slave traders could be away for up to 18 months before arriving back in Britain to sell the produce of the plantations so they needed credit to finance the trip.

David and Alexander Barclay were among 84 Quakers who were engaged in the slave trade (before the Quakers banned their members from slave trading in 1760). The Barclays married into the banking families of Gurney and Freame, and these alliances gave rise to Barclays Bank.

The Bank of England made capital available for slave voyages and the City of London became the financial centre of the slave trade. Sailing across the Atlantic was dangerous in itself and, combined with the desperately harsh conditions of the slave ships, there was a high risk of human and non-human cargo being lost en route. Britain's oldest insurance company, Lloyds of London, underwrote slave ships. One of its underwriters, plantation owner John Julius Angerstein, owned a collection of paintings which later formed the nucleus of London's National Gallery.

It has been estimated that between about 1630 and 1807, Britain's slave merchants made a profit of about £12 million on the 2.5 million African people they bought and sold.

Abolition – moral conviction or economic self-interest? >