November 30, 2023 • 53 mins
Join us as we embark on a thought-provoking journey through the pages of London's history, exploring the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the role that London played.
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(00:02):
Hello and welcome to our London History Podcast where we share
our love of London. It's people, places and history.
It's designed for you to learn things about London that most
Londoners don't even know. I am your host Hazel Baker,
qualified London Tour guide, andCEO and Founder of London
(00:22):
guidedwalks.co.uk. Each episode is supported by
show notes, transcripts, photos and further reading, all to be
found on our website. Click on londonguidedwalk.co.uk
podcast and then select the episode that you fancy.
And if you enjoy what we do, then you'll love our guided
walks and private tours that we offer throughout the year.
(00:46):
So get that cup of tea, put yourfeet up, and let's begin.
The story of the transatlantic slave trade is not one that can
be told without acknowledging London's integral part in this
dark chapter of history. While we explore this topic,
we'll strive to maintain an educated, friendly and
(01:07):
approachable tone, as we always do, and ensure that we remain
neutral in our presentation of facts and narratives.
London, with its bustling docks,financial institutions and
influential individuals, became a central hub for the
transatlantic slave trade duringthe mid 17th century to the
early 19th century. The city's economy, culture, and
(01:32):
society were intrinsically linked to the trade in enslaved
Africans. As we explore this complex
history, we'll shine a light on the key figures who profited
from the trade, as well as thosewho campaigned tirelessly
against the institution of slavery.
Throughout this episode, we'll seek to provide a comprehensive
(01:52):
view examining the economic interests, societal attitudes,
and the eventual abolitionist movement that emerged from
London. Joining me in the studio is City
of London tour guide Ian Mcdermid.
He's a regular on the show and afirm favorite.
So welcome back Ian. We have missed you.
(02:15):
Yeah. Hello, Hazel.
Yes, it's been a while and it's very good to be back.
So thank you very much and. Yes, I'm I'm very, I hesitate to
use the word enthusiastic because of the nature of today's
subject, which is slavery. But it's one that I, and I'm
sure many, many people find absolutely compelling.
(02:38):
Slavery has been a part of cultures for many thousands of
years, but this time we're looking at the transatlantic
slave trade in particular, and the scale of the British
involvement. And it was huge, wasn't it, Ian?
Yes. Well, this is one of the things
about you just putting it in context because slavery was,
sorry, pretty ubiquitous. I mean, you could find it in
(02:59):
most parts of the world though on that .1 of the interesting
things is that actually the one place where it is absent from
the Central Middle Ages onwards to to the beginnings of the
period we're going to talk aboutis, is absent from Northwestern
Europe. And one of the things that's
interesting is the kind of. Alacrity with which the European
(03:21):
Atlantic powers, including Britain, take up the trade.
But anyway, yeah, as you were saying, it's absolutely huge.
So we're talking in terms of thewhole European involvement in
it. And the the big countries we're
talking about are Spain, Portugal, France, the
Netherlands and Britain, though other northern European
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countries are also involved on asmall scale.
And it runs roughly from the early 16th century up until
around 1870. And the figures that I'm going
to be using today, which I'd be very grateful if you would help
put in the bibliography, I'm going to be relying on figures
by David Richardson. So we'll we'll put a little
(04:02):
footnote in saying where those were, where the figures can be
read. But he's working very much in
the tradition of an American called Curtin who first?
Established the huge numbers, I think, of the slave trade back
in the 1960s. According to Richardson's
figures, the for the whole period about 12 millionaire
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transported across from Africa to the Americas.
And of those 12 million, about 10 million make it to the other
side and that. With regard to the British, the
British ship 3.42 million and ofthose 3.42 million, about 2.96
(04:47):
million arrive on the other side.
So it is absolutely massive and the other striking thing about
the British involvement in it isthat compared to the other
European powers. They are involved in this trade
for a relatively short period, so they come late to the
phenomenon. British slaving really gets
(05:10):
going about 1660 and then of course the British are the First
Nation to end it. They pass three important pieces
of legislation. The most important is 18 O
seven. They end the transatlantic
trade. And then in 1833 and 1838 there
are two pieces of legislation which abolish slavery in the
(05:32):
British Empire. And so 1662.
Eighteen O 7 is a shorter periodthan other slaving powers, but
within that period the British are the most efficient, and they
ship more slaves than anybody else.
(05:54):
And a couple of points to a couple of details to put in
about the these figures. One is that the overall
mortality, when I say 3.42 millionaire shipped, 2.96
million arrived on the other side.
That equates to about a 13% mortality rate and the mortality
rate declines over the period. Now, probably, almost goes
(06:17):
without saying, this has got nothing to do with
humanitarianism. It's just that they get a bit
more efficient at shipping what they would regard as their
cargoes, and in particular they're using faster ships which
cut down the the the time of theMiddle passage, as it was known
the. The other thing is that over
this period as a whole, the volume of trading increases
(06:41):
dramatically. Now the figures are very, very
volatile. One of the reasons that they are
volatile is that the slave tradeis very vulnerable to periods of
war and there's quite. A lot of.
Warfare in particular with the French, but also with the
Spanish, and in the earlier period, in the 1660s, the
British are transporting about 6700 a year and that goes up.
(07:06):
To its peak in the 1760s, when the British are transporting
42,000 per annum, 42,000. I mean, that's my hometown's
population. Yeah, I I mean as ever with
these statistics, I mean they'rethey're so I think they're the
most important way of tackling the subject from the beginning.
(07:28):
But I mean it's. It's very difficult to get into
your head to actually try and imagine this, but absolutely,
yes, absolutely vast. And you might remember we had
Michael Bundock on episode 118 talking about Francis Barber
saying that one change in recenthistography has been really to
recognise the important presenceof black people in Britain,
(07:53):
especially London in the 18th century.
It is also the case that there'sbeen re recent re emphasis on
Britain's role in in slavery as well.
Yes, and I think that this in part is a function of the way
(08:14):
slavery is ended in this country.
So you you have the abolitionistmovement, which leads to the
ending of the trade. And once it is ended, the
British become moral crusaders against slavery.
And this occurs, perhaps in its first instance, very early on.
Um, so I was saying earlier thatthey don't actually get round to
abolishing slavery as an institution till the 1830s.
(08:37):
But as early as 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, Castlereagh,
British Foreign Secretary, is instructed by the cabinet to
put. It to insist on a provision in
the treaty that the signatories give a commitment to the ending
of slavery, of slavery. Now this has probably very
little practical effect at all, but in it's interesting because
(08:59):
it's probably the first in instance of a kind of preachy
foreign policy that we would later associate with the
Americans and particularly with Woodrow Wilson after the First
World War, where you're putting kind of Hu well humanitarian
general principles. That are inspired by religion in
part into foreign policy. And I think that one effect of
(09:23):
this is that in the British collective memory it was the
abolition of slavery that was remembered rather than the
institution itself. And one of the things that I
think will inevitably come up intalking about this is how.
Deeply ingrained slavery was in so many aspects of British life.
(09:48):
And what specifically was the role of London in all of this?
Well, London is one of the threebig slaving ports, so people.
Voyages are dispatched from a whole range of ports on Britain,
including small ports and including Glasgow, but they're
three big ones that really dominate the trade and they are
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London, Bristol and Liverpool. And London dominates the trade
in the earlier period, so from about 1660 to about 1730, and
after that Bristol has a brief period of dominance.
And then it's Liverpool. And at its peak, in the period
from 1720 to 1729, London sent out 600 slave ships, which
(10:36):
accounted for 54% of the total slave voyages sent out by
British shippers. And then, as I said at the end
of the well, in the latter period the sort of dominance
moves and at the end of our period when Liverpool is at its
apogee in the 1790s. Liverpool sends out 1011 voyages
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and in that decade London sends out 173 and Bristol 123.
And in that decade London is accounting for about third.
Third Well is accounting for 13%of the total of of voyages.
And the reason the grav, the sort of centre of gravity shifts
to the the western ports. Is partly because Bristol and to
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a greater extent Liverpool, are less vulnerable to French
attacks than London is but also wages are lower in Liverpool the
we'll talk about the costs of slaving that they're
considerable paying for the the crew is one of the big costs and
also they're they're obviously very well positioned for for
(11:49):
Atlantic trade. Though London's importance
relative importance declines as the home for the the voyages,
its position in the overall slave trade remains very
important in in what we might describe as providing ancillary
(12:11):
services. So most of the capital for the
slave voyages comes locally. So we're talking about
partnerships of merchants and. In the latter period, the
Liverpool voyages are largely financed by Liverpool merchants.
But London is crucial in two aspects of the the the kind of
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financing and organization of voyages.
One, London is the centre for the bills of exchange market.
So we are we. I know we've mentioned bills of
exchange in in in other podcasts.
This is the 18th and 19th century money market, the market
for short term debt. And in particular, the money
market facilitates the short term financing of transatlantic
(13:00):
trade. Um, so.
Merchants in the West Indies canissue bills of exchange and they
can pay for things. They can borrow money short term
and they can affect payment in in London.
London is also the centre of theinsurance market, which
obviously is is very important for the the voyages and.
(13:23):
London merchants are also major suppliers of the goods that are
then transported to Africa, which are then exchanged for
slaves. And when we're talking about the
manufacturers going out to Africa, we're talking the most
important ones throughout the period are textiles, and the
nature of the textiles exported varies over the period.
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So to begin with, it's woolen cloth and.
Cottons produced in India, whichthen involves the East India
Company indirectly in in in thiscommerce and then in the later
period you're getting the beginnings of the industrial
revolution and it's cottons produced in Lancashire which are
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then being transported out to toAfrica.
After textiles, the next most important class of goods is.
Metals in general, followed by weapons, and then there's a
whole range of miscellaneous goods.
And within those kind of sundry items, one of the very important
ones is one that you mentioned in an earlier podcast when you
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were doing the mud larking on the Thames and you spoke a bit
about glass beads being found inthe mud and the export of glass
beads to exchange for for slaveswas quite large.
And in the earlier period these glass beads come from Venice.
And then it's something that thethe the Dutch take over and the
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Dutch produce a wider range of beads, they produce them in
different sizes and they producethem in a greater range of of of
colours than the Venetians. So it's quite interesting to
think I remember you mentioning glass beads being dropped in
into the Thames mud, and it's interesting to speculate that
perhaps they may have come from a.
(15:15):
A shipment that was ultimately destined to be exchanged for for
people in Africa. Yes, that was episode 112,
mudlarking Georgian fines. Yes, and actually, sorry Hazel,
I just remembered something veryimportant of is that the London
merchants are also extremely important in handling all of the
sugar that's then brought in andwe cannot really underestimate
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the importance of sugar in the 18th century economy.
By about 1800, sugar accounts for about 2525% of the value of
of total British goods. So it's sugar, but it's also the
all the other goods that they'resending out from the the slave
economies, the next and most important.
One is tobacco, but also things like rum and indigo.
(16:02):
And what was it about sugar thatsent us?
Brit's so crazy for it. Well, I think it's a fairly it's
not just the British. Everybody has a craving for
sweetness and sugar becomes enormously important in all of
Europe. But what I think is unique to
Britain is that. What to me sort of standing back
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appears rather bizarre. That combination of tea with
sugar and that becomes obviouslyabsolutely enormous.
And tea consumption begins as anaristocratic pursuit, but it
rapidly descends throughout the lower rungs of society.
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And becomes absolutely ubiquitous.
And indeed the sugar is probablyan important part of the calorie
intake of a lot of the the the, the labouring poor.
So I mean, it's that common, it's that unique British
institution of drinking sweet tea that really takes off in the
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18th century. So we've been talking so far
about trading in slaves, but what about the plantations as
well? Yeah.
So to give some idea of the scale of this, when slaving is
abolished as an institution in the 1830s, there are 750,000
slaves in British plantations, that is to say, in and around
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the Caribbean. Who are?
Set free by this this legislation.
We need to obviously remember that in the 1770s and early
1780s you have the American War of Independence.
So prior to that the North American colonies were British
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and there you've got plantationsin the 18th century producing
mainly tobacco. So we've got to remember all of
those workers in those colonies that.
Should be kind of added to the the total when considering the
the scale of it and the British involvement in the Americas
begins really in 1609 when they take Bermuda.
(18:16):
Shortly after that, they begin colonizing the North North
American seaboard, beginning with Virginia and Massachusetts.
1625 the British take Barbados and then by the early 1630s
they've taken a few of the Leawood Islands such as Antigua
and Montserrat. And then 1655 is the big one in
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the Caribbean, big one in terms of its size.
Jamaica. And what transforms all of this?
The the the British imperial presence in the Caribbean is the
introduction of sugar and. This looks as though it's
actually a product of Dutch involvement.
So the Dutch had successfully conquered a large amount of
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Brazil. Brazil was a Portuguese imperial
possession. But the Portuguese are
successful in driving the Dutch out and when they they leave,
quite a few of them move. To Barbados in in in particular
and there they introduce Dutch methods of growing sugar and
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also the Dutch I I said earlier the British only really get into
transporting slaves in the 1660s.
The the the Dutch are the kind of big carriers in in this
earlier period and they introduced the the the slaves to
the the Caribbean and it it it'sdramatic because.
The British had about 6000 slaves in the 1640s in the in in
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the West Indies, and that increases to about 80,000 in the
1660s and in the earlier period there you've been used to grow
tobacco. In the 1660s, it's sugar, and
this leads not just to a huge expansion in the slave
population, but the value of theestates in the West Indies grows
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exponentially. And Hugh Thomas, who's one of
the sort of great writers on thetransatlantic slave trade, has a
very good phrase for this. He talks about the Caribbean as
becoming the the archipelago of sugar.
And when it becomes the archipelago sugar, it's the
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British and the French who are the dominant players.
But it's all made possible by the Dutch.
And when we're talking about the18th century, and we're talking
about the fate of the the slavesbeing transported across, around
70% of them are destined for thesugar plantations in in the West
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Indies. In in this period, the North
American colonies are concentrating on tobacco and
tobacco. The plantations are slightly
smaller than they are in the West Indies and it's the sugar
cultivation that is the really harshest part of the slave
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system. It's where the mortality is
highest and in addition to producing sugar they're also
producing the byproduct of sugaris molasses and rum production
is is important but it's obviously the sugar that's the
main thing and. What about the wider economy?
How did that all fit in then? Yeah, well, it's, it's of
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enormous importance. So we've already talked, talked
about tea consumption, and when we're talking about tea, we
shouldn't just be thinking aboutpeople consuming just the tea.
It's not, I mean, that's the most important thing, but
there's also all the paraphernalia that you associate
with tea drinking. So we're saying that it began as
an aristocratic thing and we think of those fine porcelain
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sets, but obviously even poorer house households are buying tea
cups, tea pots and the rest of it.
So huge impact on ceramic industry.
The other big crop after sugar is tobacco and again that has a
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similar kind of trajectory because by the 18th century even
poor people are smoking and coming back to mud locking.
Just think of all those clay pipes, but also think of all the
the retailers of tobacco and theslave economies are producing
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other products as well. They're also producing, as I
mentioned, indigo, but also riceare important and we've got to
think of all of those exports that are going to Africa.
It's a huge part of British trade.
An awful lot of British manufacturers are destined for
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that continent. In the 1940s there was a Marxist
historian, Eric Williams, who postulated that the Industrial
Revolution was actually financedon the the back of the slave
trade. That seems unlikely.
Richardson's looking at this he he he reckons that the typical
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return on a slave trade was around 8 to 10%.
And if you manufacture that by the NUM, sorry.
If you multiply that by the number of voyages voyages made
you, you get a figure that's kind of insignificant in
relation to the amount of capital that would that was
required for investment to get the industrial revolution going.
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So that that looks as though it wasn't the case, but there is
the obvious point that a lot of money was made out of this.
An 8 to 10% return on the slaving voyages wasn't bad.
And then the income of the plantation owners in Jamaica in
good years in the 18th century, plantation owners could get a
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return of about 13%. And obviously if you compound
that, it's huge. The the money that the
plantation owners made was huge,is usually volatile and also
there's a process whereby the smaller estate owners are driven
out and the they become indebtedand basically they're taken over
(24:30):
by the the bigger estate owners.But nevertheless, overall, the
wealth generated by these is fantastic and the one of the
phenomena you get in Britain in the 18th century is that of the
absentee plantation owner. These are people with new money,
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huge amounts of money, and they're attempting to buy their
way into the British elite. London was home to the Royal
Africa Company as well. What was its role?
Yeah, the in the earlier period,which coincides with London's
dominance, Britain, like other European slaving nations, tries
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to organise the slave trade through chartered monopolies.
And the Royal African Company was the most important of the
British companies. But all of the European slaving
states try to set up basically what we might call state-run
monopolies. And this begins in 1660 when
(25:39):
Charles the Second grants 1000 year monopoly of the on the
English slave trade to Africa tothe Company of Royal Adventurers
Trading to Africa. That company is then
reconstituted in 1663. That indicates they got into a
bit of trouble and nine years later its rights were
(25:59):
transferred to the Royal AfricanCompany, again for 1000 years
and the. Royal African Company had some
success in particularly in the 1680s.
It it manages to make some moneyand but in 1698 its monopoly is
ended by Parliament, and Parliament declares trade open
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to all merchants of the British Empire, provided that they pay
10% duty to the Royal Africa Company on their exports to
Africa. And these duties then expire in
1712, after which the Royal Africa Company and its
successor, the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa.
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Their main role is to maintain the forts and factories in
Africa. And to summarise all that, from
1698 onwards the trade is dominated by private merchants
rather than these organised companies.
(27:02):
And the reason that they are so keen to have these organised
companies is because you've the the British state wants to tax
the slave trade and it's felt better.
If you've got a monopoly you cando that.
But also they're concerned with maintaining the forts and
(27:26):
fortifications. And the idea is that if you've
got a monopoly, they can use their monopoly to subsidise now
the the problem with the Royal African Company.
And it's a problem that's suffered by all of the the
European attempts to run monopolies.
Is that they're saddled with costs, the cost of maintaining
these forts and fortifications, and they are indebted.
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The other problem is that through although they have a
monopoly. There are always interlopers,
and the interlopers are just so much more efficient, partly
because they don't have the costs of maintaining these
forts. And even when the RAC has a
complete monopoly, an awful lot of the trade is in the hands of
(28:11):
interlopers. But the problems for them don't
stop there because a lot of the interlopers IE the people
breaking the monopoly are actually employed by the Royal
Africa Company itself. So the the servants as they were
known as the company would do trading on the side for their
own accounts. And so the the these companies
are never a great success and when it's monopoly has ended in
(28:36):
1698, it's kind of really a recognition of.
In a way, what has already become the fact that the a lot
of the traders moved away from the Royal Africa Company.
There are also lots of complaints from plantation
owners that the these companies,including the Royal Africa
Company, are not delivering enough slaves to them.
And again, this reflects the fact that the interlopers, the
(28:58):
private merchants, are just so much more efficient at taking
people across the Atlantic. Royal Africa Company had its
headquarters in Africa House. There's a little bit of debate
about where that was. Peeps says that it was in Broad
Street, but it may be that he was referring to the the ward of
Broad Street rather than the actual street.
So it may well have been just sort of slightly to the the
(29:20):
north of the Bank of England. Now we've already done episode
27 about the South Sea Bubble, but what else can we add to
that? Yeah, well when we did the
podcast we we can basically sum it up by saying there are sort
of three parts of the South Sea Company.
(29:41):
One is an attempt to ship slavesto the Spanish Empire.
The 2nd is an attempt to refinance British government
debt. And then the third aspect to it
is this huge bubble in the shareprice, which bursts in 1720.
So on the slave trading, a lot of people within the British
(30:04):
government get very excited towards the end of the War of
Spanish Succession. They are going to win big
concessions from the Spanish andthe French and the the
concessions that the British getat the Treaty of Utrecht in
1713. They get Gibraltar, they get
Minorca, which are both very important possessions.
(30:26):
And the thing that perhaps that creates more excitement than
those is they get the right to run the aciento.
And the aciento is the monopoly on shipping slaves to the
Spanish Empire. So this is kind of granted to
the British as part of the peacetreaty, and that aciento is then
sold to the South Sea Company. So the South Sea Company begins
(30:50):
as a venture to ship slaves. However, as we've already
mentioned, these chartered companies aren't particularly
efficient. Part of the problem they've got
is that their monopolies are hard to enforce, and the South
Sea Company has the. Added problem is that the
Spanish are never particularly cooperative in facilitating
(31:14):
their trade. So they're important in terms of
the human misery of human slavery because they transport
thousands of slaves. But then as a commercial
success, it's never particularlyviable the slaving part and the
company switches its attention towards the the financial
aspects of it. But one of the things about the
(31:37):
Southeast Company is that it's fairly well documented and by
the time 1770, early 1770, it, it raises money in the so-called
third money subscription. And OK it it's principally
concerned about financial operations at this time, but
it's still shipping slaves and in 1720 the South Sea Company
(32:02):
raises money. Now at this stage it's primarily
focused on its financing operations, but it's still
involved in slaving and we have the lists of the subscribers to
this capital raising and they very extensive the the people
subscribing for it amongst the so-called great and good of
(32:26):
British society. So they comprise most of the
House of Commons, about half of the House of Lords.
Famously Thomas Guy, whose moneythen goes on to found the
hospital. He actually makes money out of
trading South Sea stock. He sells.
He's he begins selling it when the the share price hits £300.
(32:48):
He sells his last shares at 600 lbs.
The share price carries on goingup and hits 1000 lbs before
crashing. Somebody else who got out at a
good time was the Duchess of Kendall, one of the King's
mistresses. But there's also a long list of
very famous British people who lost money on on the shares.
(33:09):
John Gay, the playwright Vanborough Newton, the Duke of
Portland, who had been William the Third's favorite, was ruined
by it. So the subscription lists show
how widespread involvement in slavery was.
And we should see probably come on to this a bit later on, that
(33:34):
investing in slavery in various ways was in a way just an
obvious Ave. for people with money to get some kind of what
we would call portfolio diversification.
And they're all pretty much all wealthy people are dispose,
(33:56):
shall we say, to investing in enslaving.
So we've spoken about the Royal African Company, we've spoken
about the South Sea Company and that both of these go into
decline and that most of the trade is carried on by private
traders. And we're talking typically of
(34:19):
partnerships financing these voyages of maybe 6 merchants and
often sort of kinship ties are important in in in this.
But as mentioned earlier, these voyages would take a
considerable sum to fit out. First of all, you have the ship
itself and one aspect of the ships is that they are of short
(34:41):
duration. A sailing ship would last no
more than about 10 years, and within that time it might make 6
voyages to Africa. In addition to financing the
ship, you've also got to financethe crew and the an English ship
would typically have a crew of about 30.
(35:04):
The the size of the the British ships were limited.
They were typically between 100 and 200 tons, and one of the
limiting factors in their size was that they needed to be able
to work the African coast and also the estuaries of the rivers
fairly easily. But using Richardson's figures
earlier on the big ones I was talking about, and then dividing
(35:25):
it by the total number of voyages, you arrive at an
average of just over 4. 100 slaves per voyage according to
his figures. So I was saying that the voyages
were typically financed by groups of merchants.
Some of the one of the the most prominent London merchants in
(35:45):
the 1720s was Humphrey Morris, who was based in Minsing Lane
and in 17/20 he had eight ships working for him.
And these eight ships were namedafter his wife and daughters.
And he's quite a good example ofillustrating how diverse this
(36:07):
trade was. Normally when you read about it,
it's described as the triangulartrade, and that's a good
description. For a lot of the voyages, so
triangular. Because what would happen is
that the ships would take manufactured goods out from
England to Africa, trade them for slaves who are then taken
across the Atlantic. And then they returned back to
Britain, creating the third leg of the triangle carrying sugar,
(36:30):
but also the other products of the the slave economy.
But what Morris was doing was that he was selling, he was
buying and selling slaves in Africa.
So he would take ships to Africa, he would buy slaves, and
then he would sell them to Portuguese traders further along
(36:50):
the coast. He did send some ships across
the the Atlantic, but he he's a kind of illustration of how how
many diverse elements there werein this trade.
Two of the other prominent merchants in the 18th century
were Richard Oswald and John Boyd who both came from
(37:11):
Scotland. And they are one.
One of the interesting aspects of them is that they form along
with other merchants. They buy Bunts Island.
Bunts Island is an old RAC, sorry, Royal Africa Company,
fought in the mouth of the Sierra Leone River and.
It's got a big holding pen for slaves and they buy that and
(37:34):
they run that as a partnership from from 1747.
And John Boyd, you can still seeevidence of him because he built
himself a fine house just outside London in what is now
Bexley Heath. So Danson House is this 18th
century Palladian mansion, whichwas done up 15 or 20 years ago
(37:57):
by English Heritage and is run by the Council and English
Heritage. You can visit that today.
And it sits within Danson Park, which is a kind of general park,
but you can tell by looking at the park that is actually the
landscape gardens for a house. And Boyd was also very well
known for his collection of master pictures.
And when you when you start looking for the connections with
(38:19):
the slave trade, they are absolutely everywhere.
So for example, if you go round the British Museum, they have a
little section on Han Sloan, whose collection was one of the
core elements within the BritishMuseum.
And a lot of his money came fromhis wife, and his wife was the
(38:39):
heiress of plantations. There's a very good exhibition
currently on at the Bank of England Museum.
Bank of England has a small museum at the end of it.
They've got an exhibition space now.
Dedicated to the connections between directors of the Bank of
England and the slave trade, andthey include Robert Clayton, who
(39:02):
was a director of the Bank of England from 1702 to 1707.
He served on the board of the Royal Africa Company.
And he was also like a lot of these, well, a lot of the
prominent slave traders who we know today via statues, and the
rest of it a philanthropist. So he served as a governor on
(39:24):
Christ Hospital and he was also a benefactor and and president
of Saint Thomas Hospital and there is a statue of him
opposite the houses of Commons sort of hidden away, hidden away
because of modern susceptibilities about slave
trading and not wanting to see these statues as commemorating.
(39:47):
Any longer as being acts of commemoration, but it's an
interesting statue. It's in a rather nice sort of
hidden away part of Saint Thomas's.
You have to sort of go out of your way to sort of find it, and
it's a rather interesting statue.
I mean, they've got information about the slave trade next to
it, but that statue is by Grinning Gibbons.
So it's quite an interesting thing in its own right.
(40:10):
And the as I was saying, you canjust.
Find links anywhere. So, for example, Gibbon, famous
historian, the wealth that allowed him to have the leisure
to write his great work comes from his grandfather, which
comes from slavery and. What about those engaged in
(40:30):
slavery? How did they justify it?
Yeah, well, this is, as indicated earlier, something
that's really fascinating. I think having alluded to the
fact that in England there wasn't slavery between sort of
1100 and the sort of, well, 16thcentury, Hawkins is often cited
(40:52):
as the first person, first English person to be involved in
the slave trade. He sends out three voyages.
He's probably not the first, buthe he then becomes celebrated as
this kind of great hero of English maritime power.
More concretely, the Sovereign Elizabeth the First invests in
his voyages and the alacrity with which he does that is it
(41:14):
sort of speaks volumes. And the fact that the Queen
invests in it, we can divide theperiod up into roughly 2.
So I'm talking about Hawkins that's sort of slightly before
the period that I'm primarily interested in which mentioned
earlier 1660 roughly to until the end of slavery.
And we can divide the period roughly up into the period up
(41:36):
until the 1770s and afterwards. And the the key divide is the
growth of the abolitionist movement.
And once abolitionism gets going, there's kind of
groundswell of opinion now that it it is a contested issue and
there is a acrimonious debate between the opponents of slavery
(41:57):
and the defenders. But in a way, the Defenders
really only come out of the woodwork in response to the
abolitionist movement and one ofthe striking things about the
earlier. Period.
Is the silence on on the subject.
I've mentioned Hugh Thomas's book Who, which I we will list
(42:22):
in the bibliography. So one of the things he he
mentions there is the importanceof Charles the 2nd and James the
Second, when he was Duke of Yorkin the establishment of the
original chartered companies trading in slaves.
And Thomas complaints that the modern biographers of these two
(42:42):
kings make no mention whatsoeverof slaving at all.
Obviously they're very important, but in a way.
The the silence on the part of the biographers is
understandable because there's nothing in the sources, there's
nothing saying, I mean, I'm sorry, there is in the sense
that we can see them being active in promoting the
(43:04):
companies, but there's there's nothing on record from them
saying what they thought about it.
And that silence in itself is probably significant because it
probably indicates they didn't give any thought.
Whatsoever to it and I've mentioned I think William
Beckford, perhaps I haven't, I'mI'm not sure, but William
Beckford was the largest plantation owner in the in
(43:28):
Jamaica in the mid 18th century and he becomes very prominent as
a British politician. And so there's an awful lot
about Beckford. He.
He. He's very important.
He he's a Lord Mayor of London, he's an MP.
He is very vociferous in championing English liberties,
(43:50):
but again he's pretty much silent on on slaves and what he
thought of them. And there is one moment which in
which we can see him kind of well, I was going to say
addressing the issue but actually not addressing the
issue. Granville Sharp, who is one of
the early champions of abolitionism, and he's he's a
great campaigner against the slave trade, but he's also
(44:15):
interested in trying to establish in English law that
slavery is illegal. And again, there's a lot of
debate about this at the time. But one of the things that his
efforts provoke him into doing is to writing this big study of
English common law. And he produces this book which
argues that slavery is a great moral evil.
(44:38):
And it's also illegal under common law.
And he sends this manuscript offto Beckford and Beckford returns
it to him with a terse note. And that's all we've got in
terms of Beckford, who is enormously wealthy, huge slave
owner. That's all we've got.
And I think this, this silence in the earlier period, as
(45:02):
indicated earlier reveals the fact that they just didn't feel
they needed to justify it. It's it's only when people start
attacking it, they they, they they come out.
And I think that the way this works is obviously slaves are
seen as property. And this comes out once the
abolitionist movement gets going.
The big arguments in parliament in it are over property rights.
(45:26):
When it is finally abolished in the 1830s, they compensate the
slave owners. And when the Duke of Clarence,
who is later William the 4th, heleads in the House of Lords, the
opposition to abolitionism. It's all about property rights.
The and we can see the, the, the, the this concept of slaves
(45:51):
as property in in so many aspects.
So you've got these within the colonial assemblies in places
like Jamaica. They they passed local laws
defining what a slave is. We can see it in the way that
slaves are entered, as much as any other cargo would be in the
the manifests of slaving vessels.
(46:11):
And also in the latter period when abolition gets going, there
are a couple of things that are used by the abolitionist
movement which reflect the attitudes of earlier on.
So one of them is the best knownimage.
I think that comes from slaving,which you see in a lot of books
about slave trading, which is that diagram of the Liverpool
slave ship, the brooks, which shows the the slaves arranged on
(46:34):
the decks. And this is published by the
Abolitionists in 1788 and it creates A sensation.
And this is I think even today this is a very arresting image
because it encapsulates the horrors of the so-called Middle
Passage very graphically, just showing the distribution of the
slaves with no room to move whatsoever or manacled.
(46:56):
And as I said when it's published in 1788, it causes,
it's a major piece of propagandafor the abolitionist court, but
it shows how the slave trade wasconducted and it shows these
people being stowed, packed in just like you would pack in any
other cargo. And I suspect that had that been
published 50 years earlier, it wouldn't have created any kind
(47:21):
of sensation. Perhaps also in this latter
period, 1781, there's the famouscase of the Zong, and the Zong
leaves Accra for a voyage acrossthe Atlantic with nearly 450
slaves on board. And as they make the crossing,
(47:41):
the captain, Luke Collingwood throws 133 of these slaves
overboard. And what he does is he selects
the sickly slaves and gets rid of them.
And then later on the owners file an insurance claim for the
loss of their goods in inverted commas and it goes to trial.
(48:07):
And Mansfield who is the judge, fines against the owners.
But the reason that the reason the insurance claim fails is
that the captain claimed that that he was running out of water
and that he did this because there wasn't enough water to go
round. But it's established in the
(48:27):
course of the trial that actually the ship has water when
it arrives in in the West Indies.
And also the reason that the voyage is take taking a bit of a
long time is because of incompetence on the part of the
crew. So what's significant about this
in a way is it reflects the old thinking about slavery.
This is an insurance claim that is dealt dealt with in terms of
(48:50):
its merits as an insurance claim.
And Granville Sharp who I mentioned earlier on he tries to
bring a case of he tries to bring a criminal case against
the crew. By this time the captain is
dead, but he tries to bring a criminal case against the crew
for murder and he gets nowhere. So to that extent the fact that
it's seen as just an insurance basically goods being thrown
(49:15):
overboard reflects the old way of thinking.
What's new is that this create in 1781 this creates again a
sensation and is adopted by the abolitionist cause.
Sharp is there taking notes he employs A shorthand writer to to
to follow the these events. But so both of these are kind of
(49:35):
at the at the cusp, they're in the later period, but I think
they illustrate an an old way ofthinking about slavery.
Also in terms of justifying it. I think we have to imagine that
both the the crews who are transporting the slaves and also
the slave owners are to some extent frightened by the slaves.
(49:57):
And this this may seem a bit extraordinary in that in both
both cases the the the crews, inparticular the captains and then
especially the slave owners havea monopoly of violence.
But at the back of their minds, there's always the fear of the
slave seizing the ship or of a slave uprising.
(50:18):
And I think this explains, well,it doesn't explain why they're
put in barbaric conditions to begin with.
But once you put them in barbaric conditions, it kind of
explains a kind of cycle of violence.
The traders tend to write a bit more about slavery than the
(50:40):
plantation owners do. And when they do, there is this
almost ubiquitous idea that the slaves are better off as slaves
than they are in Africa. And the the way the thinking
goes is that in Africa they are pagans, whereas when they are
slaves in plantations they are owned by Christians.
(51:03):
And also a a typical idea is that the Africans are brutish in
in Africa and in a way they are,they kind of deserve their fate
in in the thinking of a lot of the people shipping them.
There's also a religious justification in that if we go
(51:24):
back into the Middle Ages, European attitudes towards
Africans are fairly complicated.But within them is the idea that
people of African descent are descended from Ham, who is one
of the cursed sons of Noah, and that therefore the the Bible in
effect sentences them to a unpleasant fate.
(51:49):
And then finally, of course, we can see the way black people are
portrayed in portrait, portraitsand literature in the 18th
century, and it is normally donein a rather condescending way.
So there were lots of black servants.
There are almost a kind of fashion accessory and they are
(52:09):
often depicted in the way that you might depict a pet in in a
painting, so that they reflect kind of widespread derogatory
attitudes towards black people. But as I was saying earlier,
this all of this is quite extraordinary given the
background that between sort of roughly 1100 and when the
(52:32):
British and perhaps the time of Hawkins there, there is no
slavery. And and when it ends in around
1100, not only is it ending because of economics, because
surf surfs are cheaper and more productive than the slaves, it
ends because there's a big moralcrusade done by the church
saying that this is, this is wrong.
(52:54):
So one of the interesting thingsabout slavery, I think is the
way that it is very quickly adopted by the the English and
the British when they do take itup.
Just goes to show you how complicated a subject it is.
I think maybe next time we talk about William Beckford.
What do you think? Yeah, that'd be interesting.
(53:15):
He, he's a very interesting figure as as the largest
plantation owner and also ironically and we can talk about
this if we do him as a as a champion of English liberty.
But for the purposes of now, youhave this champion of English
liberty, huge, huge slave owner,and he just obviously doesn't
(53:35):
think about the people who are creating, creating, who've
created his enormous wealth. Thank you very much, Ian.
Now my pleasure, Hazel. That's all for now.
Until next time.
Hello and welcome to our London History Podcast where we share
our love of London. It's people, places and history.
It's designed for you to learn things about London that most
Londoners don't even know. I am your host Hazel Baker,
qualified London Tour guide, andCEO and Founder of London
(00:22):
guidedwalks.co.uk. Each episode is supported by
show notes, transcripts, photos and further reading, all to be
found on our website. Click on londonguidedwalk.co.uk
podcast and then select the episode that you fancy.
And if you enjoy what we do, then you'll love our guided
walks and private tours that we offer throughout the year.
(00:46):
So get that cup of tea, put yourfeet up, and let's begin.
The story of the transatlantic slave trade is not one that can
be told without acknowledging London's integral part in this
dark chapter of history. While we explore this topic,
we'll strive to maintain an educated, friendly and
(01:07):
approachable tone, as we always do, and ensure that we remain
neutral in our presentation of facts and narratives.
London, with its bustling docks,financial institutions and
influential individuals, became a central hub for the
transatlantic slave trade duringthe mid 17th century to the
early 19th century. The city's economy, culture, and
(01:32):
society were intrinsically linked to the trade in enslaved
Africans. As we explore this complex
history, we'll shine a light on the key figures who profited
from the trade, as well as thosewho campaigned tirelessly
against the institution of slavery.
Throughout this episode, we'll seek to provide a comprehensive
(01:52):
view examining the economic interests, societal attitudes,
and the eventual abolitionist movement that emerged from
London. Joining me in the studio is City
of London tour guide Ian Mcdermid.
He's a regular on the show and afirm favorite.
So welcome back Ian. We have missed you.
(02:15):
Yeah. Hello, Hazel.
Yes, it's been a while and it's very good to be back.
So thank you very much and. Yes, I'm I'm very, I hesitate to
use the word enthusiastic because of the nature of today's
subject, which is slavery. But it's one that I, and I'm
sure many, many people find absolutely compelling.
(02:38):
Slavery has been a part of cultures for many thousands of
years, but this time we're looking at the transatlantic
slave trade in particular, and the scale of the British
involvement. And it was huge, wasn't it, Ian?
Yes. Well, this is one of the things
about you just putting it in context because slavery was,
sorry, pretty ubiquitous. I mean, you could find it in
(02:59):
most parts of the world though on that .1 of the interesting
things is that actually the one place where it is absent from
the Central Middle Ages onwards to to the beginnings of the
period we're going to talk aboutis, is absent from Northwestern
Europe. And one of the things that's
interesting is the kind of. Alacrity with which the European
(03:21):
Atlantic powers, including Britain, take up the trade.
But anyway, yeah, as you were saying, it's absolutely huge.
So we're talking in terms of thewhole European involvement in
it. And the the big countries we're
talking about are Spain, Portugal, France, the
Netherlands and Britain, though other northern European
(03:41):
countries are also involved on asmall scale.
And it runs roughly from the early 16th century up until
around 1870. And the figures that I'm going
to be using today, which I'd be very grateful if you would help
put in the bibliography, I'm going to be relying on figures
by David Richardson. So we'll we'll put a little
(04:02):
footnote in saying where those were, where the figures can be
read. But he's working very much in
the tradition of an American called Curtin who first?
Established the huge numbers, I think, of the slave trade back
in the 1960s. According to Richardson's
figures, the for the whole period about 12 millionaire
(04:24):
transported across from Africa to the Americas.
And of those 12 million, about 10 million make it to the other
side and that. With regard to the British, the
British ship 3.42 million and ofthose 3.42 million, about 2.96
(04:47):
million arrive on the other side.
So it is absolutely massive and the other striking thing about
the British involvement in it isthat compared to the other
European powers. They are involved in this trade
for a relatively short period, so they come late to the
phenomenon. British slaving really gets
(05:10):
going about 1660 and then of course the British are the First
Nation to end it. They pass three important pieces
of legislation. The most important is 18 O
seven. They end the transatlantic
trade. And then in 1833 and 1838 there
are two pieces of legislation which abolish slavery in the
(05:32):
British Empire. And so 1662.
Eighteen O 7 is a shorter periodthan other slaving powers, but
within that period the British are the most efficient, and they
ship more slaves than anybody else.
(05:54):
And a couple of points to a couple of details to put in
about the these figures. One is that the overall
mortality, when I say 3.42 millionaire shipped, 2.96
million arrived on the other side.
That equates to about a 13% mortality rate and the mortality
rate declines over the period. Now, probably, almost goes
(06:17):
without saying, this has got nothing to do with
humanitarianism. It's just that they get a bit
more efficient at shipping what they would regard as their
cargoes, and in particular they're using faster ships which
cut down the the the time of theMiddle passage, as it was known
the. The other thing is that over
this period as a whole, the volume of trading increases
(06:41):
dramatically. Now the figures are very, very
volatile. One of the reasons that they are
volatile is that the slave tradeis very vulnerable to periods of
war and there's quite. A lot of.
Warfare in particular with the French, but also with the
Spanish, and in the earlier period, in the 1660s, the
British are transporting about 6700 a year and that goes up.
(07:06):
To its peak in the 1760s, when the British are transporting
42,000 per annum, 42,000. I mean, that's my hometown's
population. Yeah, I I mean as ever with
these statistics, I mean they'rethey're so I think they're the
most important way of tackling the subject from the beginning.
(07:28):
But I mean it's. It's very difficult to get into
your head to actually try and imagine this, but absolutely,
yes, absolutely vast. And you might remember we had
Michael Bundock on episode 118 talking about Francis Barber
saying that one change in recenthistography has been really to
recognise the important presenceof black people in Britain,
(07:53):
especially London in the 18th century.
It is also the case that there'sbeen re recent re emphasis on
Britain's role in in slavery as well.
Yes, and I think that this in part is a function of the way
(08:14):
slavery is ended in this country.
So you you have the abolitionistmovement, which leads to the
ending of the trade. And once it is ended, the
British become moral crusaders against slavery.
And this occurs, perhaps in its first instance, very early on.
Um, so I was saying earlier thatthey don't actually get round to
abolishing slavery as an institution till the 1830s.
(08:37):
But as early as 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, Castlereagh,
British Foreign Secretary, is instructed by the cabinet to
put. It to insist on a provision in
the treaty that the signatories give a commitment to the ending
of slavery, of slavery. Now this has probably very
little practical effect at all, but in it's interesting because
(08:59):
it's probably the first in instance of a kind of preachy
foreign policy that we would later associate with the
Americans and particularly with Woodrow Wilson after the First
World War, where you're putting kind of Hu well humanitarian
general principles. That are inspired by religion in
part into foreign policy. And I think that one effect of
(09:23):
this is that in the British collective memory it was the
abolition of slavery that was remembered rather than the
institution itself. And one of the things that I
think will inevitably come up intalking about this is how.
Deeply ingrained slavery was in so many aspects of British life.
(09:48):
And what specifically was the role of London in all of this?
Well, London is one of the threebig slaving ports, so people.
Voyages are dispatched from a whole range of ports on Britain,
including small ports and including Glasgow, but they're
three big ones that really dominate the trade and they are
(10:10):
London, Bristol and Liverpool. And London dominates the trade
in the earlier period, so from about 1660 to about 1730, and
after that Bristol has a brief period of dominance.
And then it's Liverpool. And at its peak, in the period
from 1720 to 1729, London sent out 600 slave ships, which
(10:36):
accounted for 54% of the total slave voyages sent out by
British shippers. And then, as I said at the end
of the well, in the latter period the sort of dominance
moves and at the end of our period when Liverpool is at its
apogee in the 1790s. Liverpool sends out 1011 voyages
(11:01):
and in that decade London sends out 173 and Bristol 123.
And in that decade London is accounting for about third.
Third Well is accounting for 13%of the total of of voyages.
And the reason the grav, the sort of centre of gravity shifts
to the the western ports. Is partly because Bristol and to
(11:25):
a greater extent Liverpool, are less vulnerable to French
attacks than London is but also wages are lower in Liverpool the
we'll talk about the costs of slaving that they're
considerable paying for the the crew is one of the big costs and
also they're they're obviously very well positioned for for
(11:49):
Atlantic trade. Though London's importance
relative importance declines as the home for the the voyages,
its position in the overall slave trade remains very
important in in what we might describe as providing ancillary
(12:11):
services. So most of the capital for the
slave voyages comes locally. So we're talking about
partnerships of merchants and. In the latter period, the
Liverpool voyages are largely financed by Liverpool merchants.
But London is crucial in two aspects of the the the kind of
(12:35):
financing and organization of voyages.
One, London is the centre for the bills of exchange market.
So we are we. I know we've mentioned bills of
exchange in in in other podcasts.
This is the 18th and 19th century money market, the market
for short term debt. And in particular, the money
market facilitates the short term financing of transatlantic
(13:00):
trade. Um, so.
Merchants in the West Indies canissue bills of exchange and they
can pay for things. They can borrow money short term
and they can affect payment in in London.
London is also the centre of theinsurance market, which
obviously is is very important for the the voyages and.
(13:23):
London merchants are also major suppliers of the goods that are
then transported to Africa, which are then exchanged for
slaves. And when we're talking about the
manufacturers going out to Africa, we're talking the most
important ones throughout the period are textiles, and the
nature of the textiles exported varies over the period.
(13:46):
So to begin with, it's woolen cloth and.
Cottons produced in India, whichthen involves the East India
Company indirectly in in in thiscommerce and then in the later
period you're getting the beginnings of the industrial
revolution and it's cottons produced in Lancashire which are
(14:08):
then being transported out to toAfrica.
After textiles, the next most important class of goods is.
Metals in general, followed by weapons, and then there's a
whole range of miscellaneous goods.
And within those kind of sundry items, one of the very important
ones is one that you mentioned in an earlier podcast when you
(14:31):
were doing the mud larking on the Thames and you spoke a bit
about glass beads being found inthe mud and the export of glass
beads to exchange for for slaveswas quite large.
And in the earlier period these glass beads come from Venice.
And then it's something that thethe the Dutch take over and the
(14:54):
Dutch produce a wider range of beads, they produce them in
different sizes and they producethem in a greater range of of of
colours than the Venetians. So it's quite interesting to
think I remember you mentioning glass beads being dropped in
into the Thames mud, and it's interesting to speculate that
perhaps they may have come from a.
(15:15):
A shipment that was ultimately destined to be exchanged for for
people in Africa. Yes, that was episode 112,
mudlarking Georgian fines. Yes, and actually, sorry Hazel,
I just remembered something veryimportant of is that the London
merchants are also extremely important in handling all of the
sugar that's then brought in andwe cannot really underestimate
(15:40):
the importance of sugar in the 18th century economy.
By about 1800, sugar accounts for about 2525% of the value of
of total British goods. So it's sugar, but it's also the
all the other goods that they'resending out from the the slave
economies, the next and most important.
One is tobacco, but also things like rum and indigo.
(16:02):
And what was it about sugar thatsent us?
Brit's so crazy for it. Well, I think it's a fairly it's
not just the British. Everybody has a craving for
sweetness and sugar becomes enormously important in all of
Europe. But what I think is unique to
Britain is that. What to me sort of standing back
(16:25):
appears rather bizarre. That combination of tea with
sugar and that becomes obviouslyabsolutely enormous.
And tea consumption begins as anaristocratic pursuit, but it
rapidly descends throughout the lower rungs of society.
(16:47):
And becomes absolutely ubiquitous.
And indeed the sugar is probablyan important part of the calorie
intake of a lot of the the the, the labouring poor.
So I mean, it's that common, it's that unique British
institution of drinking sweet tea that really takes off in the
(17:09):
18th century. So we've been talking so far
about trading in slaves, but what about the plantations as
well? Yeah.
So to give some idea of the scale of this, when slaving is
abolished as an institution in the 1830s, there are 750,000
slaves in British plantations, that is to say, in and around
(17:32):
the Caribbean. Who are?
Set free by this this legislation.
We need to obviously remember that in the 1770s and early
1780s you have the American War of Independence.
So prior to that the North American colonies were British
(17:53):
and there you've got plantationsin the 18th century producing
mainly tobacco. So we've got to remember all of
those workers in those colonies that.
Should be kind of added to the the total when considering the
the scale of it and the British involvement in the Americas
begins really in 1609 when they take Bermuda.
(18:16):
Shortly after that, they begin colonizing the North North
American seaboard, beginning with Virginia and Massachusetts.
1625 the British take Barbados and then by the early 1630s
they've taken a few of the Leawood Islands such as Antigua
and Montserrat. And then 1655 is the big one in
(18:40):
the Caribbean, big one in terms of its size.
Jamaica. And what transforms all of this?
The the the British imperial presence in the Caribbean is the
introduction of sugar and. This looks as though it's
actually a product of Dutch involvement.
So the Dutch had successfully conquered a large amount of
(19:04):
Brazil. Brazil was a Portuguese imperial
possession. But the Portuguese are
successful in driving the Dutch out and when they they leave,
quite a few of them move. To Barbados in in in particular
and there they introduce Dutch methods of growing sugar and
(19:26):
also the Dutch I I said earlier the British only really get into
transporting slaves in the 1660s.
The the the Dutch are the kind of big carriers in in this
earlier period and they introduced the the the slaves to
the the Caribbean and it it it'sdramatic because.
The British had about 6000 slaves in the 1640s in the in in
(19:52):
the West Indies, and that increases to about 80,000 in the
1660s and in the earlier period there you've been used to grow
tobacco. In the 1660s, it's sugar, and
this leads not just to a huge expansion in the slave
population, but the value of theestates in the West Indies grows
(20:13):
exponentially. And Hugh Thomas, who's one of
the sort of great writers on thetransatlantic slave trade, has a
very good phrase for this. He talks about the Caribbean as
becoming the the archipelago of sugar.
And when it becomes the archipelago sugar, it's the
(20:34):
British and the French who are the dominant players.
But it's all made possible by the Dutch.
And when we're talking about the18th century, and we're talking
about the fate of the the slavesbeing transported across, around
70% of them are destined for thesugar plantations in in the West
(20:55):
Indies. In in this period, the North
American colonies are concentrating on tobacco and
tobacco. The plantations are slightly
smaller than they are in the West Indies and it's the sugar
cultivation that is the really harshest part of the slave
(21:15):
system. It's where the mortality is
highest and in addition to producing sugar they're also
producing the byproduct of sugaris molasses and rum production
is is important but it's obviously the sugar that's the
main thing and. What about the wider economy?
How did that all fit in then? Yeah, well, it's, it's of
(21:37):
enormous importance. So we've already talked, talked
about tea consumption, and when we're talking about tea, we
shouldn't just be thinking aboutpeople consuming just the tea.
It's not, I mean, that's the most important thing, but
there's also all the paraphernalia that you associate
with tea drinking. So we're saying that it began as
an aristocratic thing and we think of those fine porcelain
(22:00):
sets, but obviously even poorer house households are buying tea
cups, tea pots and the rest of it.
So huge impact on ceramic industry.
The other big crop after sugar is tobacco and again that has a
(22:21):
similar kind of trajectory because by the 18th century even
poor people are smoking and coming back to mud locking.
Just think of all those clay pipes, but also think of all the
the retailers of tobacco and theslave economies are producing
(22:41):
other products as well. They're also producing, as I
mentioned, indigo, but also riceare important and we've got to
think of all of those exports that are going to Africa.
It's a huge part of British trade.
An awful lot of British manufacturers are destined for
(23:03):
that continent. In the 1940s there was a Marxist
historian, Eric Williams, who postulated that the Industrial
Revolution was actually financedon the the back of the slave
trade. That seems unlikely.
Richardson's looking at this he he he reckons that the typical
(23:26):
return on a slave trade was around 8 to 10%.
And if you manufacture that by the NUM, sorry.
If you multiply that by the number of voyages voyages made
you, you get a figure that's kind of insignificant in
relation to the amount of capital that would that was
required for investment to get the industrial revolution going.
(23:47):
So that that looks as though it wasn't the case, but there is
the obvious point that a lot of money was made out of this.
An 8 to 10% return on the slaving voyages wasn't bad.
And then the income of the plantation owners in Jamaica in
good years in the 18th century, plantation owners could get a
(24:10):
return of about 13%. And obviously if you compound
that, it's huge. The the money that the
plantation owners made was huge,is usually volatile and also
there's a process whereby the smaller estate owners are driven
out and the they become indebtedand basically they're taken over
(24:30):
by the the bigger estate owners.But nevertheless, overall, the
wealth generated by these is fantastic and the one of the
phenomena you get in Britain in the 18th century is that of the
absentee plantation owner. These are people with new money,
(24:51):
huge amounts of money, and they're attempting to buy their
way into the British elite. London was home to the Royal
Africa Company as well. What was its role?
Yeah, the in the earlier period,which coincides with London's
dominance, Britain, like other European slaving nations, tries
(25:17):
to organise the slave trade through chartered monopolies.
And the Royal African Company was the most important of the
British companies. But all of the European slaving
states try to set up basically what we might call state-run
monopolies. And this begins in 1660 when
(25:39):
Charles the Second grants 1000 year monopoly of the on the
English slave trade to Africa tothe Company of Royal Adventurers
Trading to Africa. That company is then
reconstituted in 1663. That indicates they got into a
bit of trouble and nine years later its rights were
(25:59):
transferred to the Royal AfricanCompany, again for 1000 years
and the. Royal African Company had some
success in particularly in the 1680s.
It it manages to make some moneyand but in 1698 its monopoly is
ended by Parliament, and Parliament declares trade open
(26:22):
to all merchants of the British Empire, provided that they pay
10% duty to the Royal Africa Company on their exports to
Africa. And these duties then expire in
1712, after which the Royal Africa Company and its
successor, the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa.
(26:42):
Their main role is to maintain the forts and factories in
Africa. And to summarise all that, from
1698 onwards the trade is dominated by private merchants
rather than these organised companies.
(27:02):
And the reason that they are so keen to have these organised
companies is because you've the the British state wants to tax
the slave trade and it's felt better.
If you've got a monopoly you cando that.
But also they're concerned with maintaining the forts and
(27:26):
fortifications. And the idea is that if you've
got a monopoly, they can use their monopoly to subsidise now
the the problem with the Royal African Company.
And it's a problem that's suffered by all of the the
European attempts to run monopolies.
Is that they're saddled with costs, the cost of maintaining
these forts and fortifications, and they are indebted.
(27:49):
The other problem is that through although they have a
monopoly. There are always interlopers,
and the interlopers are just so much more efficient, partly
because they don't have the costs of maintaining these
forts. And even when the RAC has a
complete monopoly, an awful lot of the trade is in the hands of
(28:11):
interlopers. But the problems for them don't
stop there because a lot of the interlopers IE the people
breaking the monopoly are actually employed by the Royal
Africa Company itself. So the the servants as they were
known as the company would do trading on the side for their
own accounts. And so the the these companies
are never a great success and when it's monopoly has ended in
(28:36):
1698, it's kind of really a recognition of.
In a way, what has already become the fact that the a lot
of the traders moved away from the Royal Africa Company.
There are also lots of complaints from plantation
owners that the these companies,including the Royal Africa
Company, are not delivering enough slaves to them.
And again, this reflects the fact that the interlopers, the
(28:58):
private merchants, are just so much more efficient at taking
people across the Atlantic. Royal Africa Company had its
headquarters in Africa House. There's a little bit of debate
about where that was. Peeps says that it was in Broad
Street, but it may be that he was referring to the the ward of
Broad Street rather than the actual street.
So it may well have been just sort of slightly to the the
(29:20):
north of the Bank of England. Now we've already done episode
27 about the South Sea Bubble, but what else can we add to
that? Yeah, well when we did the
podcast we we can basically sum it up by saying there are sort
of three parts of the South Sea Company.
(29:41):
One is an attempt to ship slavesto the Spanish Empire.
The 2nd is an attempt to refinance British government
debt. And then the third aspect to it
is this huge bubble in the shareprice, which bursts in 1720.
So on the slave trading, a lot of people within the British
(30:04):
government get very excited towards the end of the War of
Spanish Succession. They are going to win big
concessions from the Spanish andthe French and the the
concessions that the British getat the Treaty of Utrecht in
1713. They get Gibraltar, they get
Minorca, which are both very important possessions.
(30:26):
And the thing that perhaps that creates more excitement than
those is they get the right to run the aciento.
And the aciento is the monopoly on shipping slaves to the
Spanish Empire. So this is kind of granted to
the British as part of the peacetreaty, and that aciento is then
sold to the South Sea Company. So the South Sea Company begins
(30:50):
as a venture to ship slaves. However, as we've already
mentioned, these chartered companies aren't particularly
efficient. Part of the problem they've got
is that their monopolies are hard to enforce, and the South
Sea Company has the. Added problem is that the
Spanish are never particularly cooperative in facilitating
(31:14):
their trade. So they're important in terms of
the human misery of human slavery because they transport
thousands of slaves. But then as a commercial
success, it's never particularlyviable the slaving part and the
company switches its attention towards the the financial
aspects of it. But one of the things about the
(31:37):
Southeast Company is that it's fairly well documented and by
the time 1770, early 1770, it, it raises money in the so-called
third money subscription. And OK it it's principally
concerned about financial operations at this time, but
it's still shipping slaves and in 1720 the South Sea Company
(32:02):
raises money. Now at this stage it's primarily
focused on its financing operations, but it's still
involved in slaving and we have the lists of the subscribers to
this capital raising and they very extensive the the people
subscribing for it amongst the so-called great and good of
(32:26):
British society. So they comprise most of the
House of Commons, about half of the House of Lords.
Famously Thomas Guy, whose moneythen goes on to found the
hospital. He actually makes money out of
trading South Sea stock. He sells.
He's he begins selling it when the the share price hits £300.
(32:48):
He sells his last shares at 600 lbs.
The share price carries on goingup and hits 1000 lbs before
crashing. Somebody else who got out at a
good time was the Duchess of Kendall, one of the King's
mistresses. But there's also a long list of
very famous British people who lost money on on the shares.
(33:09):
John Gay, the playwright Vanborough Newton, the Duke of
Portland, who had been William the Third's favorite, was ruined
by it. So the subscription lists show
how widespread involvement in slavery was.
And we should see probably come on to this a bit later on, that
(33:34):
investing in slavery in various ways was in a way just an
obvious Ave. for people with money to get some kind of what
we would call portfolio diversification.
And they're all pretty much all wealthy people are dispose,
(33:56):
shall we say, to investing in enslaving.
So we've spoken about the Royal African Company, we've spoken
about the South Sea Company and that both of these go into
decline and that most of the trade is carried on by private
traders. And we're talking typically of
(34:19):
partnerships financing these voyages of maybe 6 merchants and
often sort of kinship ties are important in in in this.
But as mentioned earlier, these voyages would take a
considerable sum to fit out. First of all, you have the ship
itself and one aspect of the ships is that they are of short
(34:41):
duration. A sailing ship would last no
more than about 10 years, and within that time it might make 6
voyages to Africa. In addition to financing the
ship, you've also got to financethe crew and the an English ship
would typically have a crew of about 30.
(35:04):
The the size of the the British ships were limited.
They were typically between 100 and 200 tons, and one of the
limiting factors in their size was that they needed to be able
to work the African coast and also the estuaries of the rivers
fairly easily. But using Richardson's figures
earlier on the big ones I was talking about, and then dividing
(35:25):
it by the total number of voyages, you arrive at an
average of just over 4. 100 slaves per voyage according to
his figures. So I was saying that the voyages
were typically financed by groups of merchants.
Some of the one of the the most prominent London merchants in
(35:45):
the 1720s was Humphrey Morris, who was based in Minsing Lane
and in 17/20 he had eight ships working for him.
And these eight ships were namedafter his wife and daughters.
And he's quite a good example ofillustrating how diverse this
(36:07):
trade was. Normally when you read about it,
it's described as the triangulartrade, and that's a good
description. For a lot of the voyages, so
triangular. Because what would happen is
that the ships would take manufactured goods out from
England to Africa, trade them for slaves who are then taken
across the Atlantic. And then they returned back to
Britain, creating the third leg of the triangle carrying sugar,
(36:30):
but also the other products of the the slave economy.
But what Morris was doing was that he was selling, he was
buying and selling slaves in Africa.
So he would take ships to Africa, he would buy slaves, and
then he would sell them to Portuguese traders further along
(36:50):
the coast. He did send some ships across
the the Atlantic, but he he's a kind of illustration of how how
many diverse elements there werein this trade.
Two of the other prominent merchants in the 18th century
were Richard Oswald and John Boyd who both came from
(37:11):
Scotland. And they are one.
One of the interesting aspects of them is that they form along
with other merchants. They buy Bunts Island.
Bunts Island is an old RAC, sorry, Royal Africa Company,
fought in the mouth of the Sierra Leone River and.
It's got a big holding pen for slaves and they buy that and
(37:34):
they run that as a partnership from from 1747.
And John Boyd, you can still seeevidence of him because he built
himself a fine house just outside London in what is now
Bexley Heath. So Danson House is this 18th
century Palladian mansion, whichwas done up 15 or 20 years ago
(37:57):
by English Heritage and is run by the Council and English
Heritage. You can visit that today.
And it sits within Danson Park, which is a kind of general park,
but you can tell by looking at the park that is actually the
landscape gardens for a house. And Boyd was also very well
known for his collection of master pictures.
And when you when you start looking for the connections with
(38:19):
the slave trade, they are absolutely everywhere.
So for example, if you go round the British Museum, they have a
little section on Han Sloan, whose collection was one of the
core elements within the BritishMuseum.
And a lot of his money came fromhis wife, and his wife was the
(38:39):
heiress of plantations. There's a very good exhibition
currently on at the Bank of England Museum.
Bank of England has a small museum at the end of it.
They've got an exhibition space now.
Dedicated to the connections between directors of the Bank of
England and the slave trade, andthey include Robert Clayton, who
(39:02):
was a director of the Bank of England from 1702 to 1707.
He served on the board of the Royal Africa Company.
And he was also like a lot of these, well, a lot of the
prominent slave traders who we know today via statues, and the
rest of it a philanthropist. So he served as a governor on
(39:24):
Christ Hospital and he was also a benefactor and and president
of Saint Thomas Hospital and there is a statue of him
opposite the houses of Commons sort of hidden away, hidden away
because of modern susceptibilities about slave
trading and not wanting to see these statues as commemorating.
(39:47):
Any longer as being acts of commemoration, but it's an
interesting statue. It's in a rather nice sort of
hidden away part of Saint Thomas's.
You have to sort of go out of your way to sort of find it, and
it's a rather interesting statue.
I mean, they've got information about the slave trade next to
it, but that statue is by Grinning Gibbons.
So it's quite an interesting thing in its own right.
(40:10):
And the as I was saying, you canjust.
Find links anywhere. So, for example, Gibbon, famous
historian, the wealth that allowed him to have the leisure
to write his great work comes from his grandfather, which
comes from slavery and. What about those engaged in
(40:30):
slavery? How did they justify it?
Yeah, well, this is, as indicated earlier, something
that's really fascinating. I think having alluded to the
fact that in England there wasn't slavery between sort of
1100 and the sort of, well, 16thcentury, Hawkins is often cited
(40:52):
as the first person, first English person to be involved in
the slave trade. He sends out three voyages.
He's probably not the first, buthe he then becomes celebrated as
this kind of great hero of English maritime power.
More concretely, the Sovereign Elizabeth the First invests in
his voyages and the alacrity with which he does that is it
(41:14):
sort of speaks volumes. And the fact that the Queen
invests in it, we can divide theperiod up into roughly 2.
So I'm talking about Hawkins that's sort of slightly before
the period that I'm primarily interested in which mentioned
earlier 1660 roughly to until the end of slavery.
And we can divide the period roughly up into the period up
(41:36):
until the 1770s and afterwards. And the the key divide is the
growth of the abolitionist movement.
And once abolitionism gets going, there's kind of
groundswell of opinion now that it it is a contested issue and
there is a acrimonious debate between the opponents of slavery
(41:57):
and the defenders. But in a way, the Defenders
really only come out of the woodwork in response to the
abolitionist movement and one ofthe striking things about the
earlier. Period.
Is the silence on on the subject.
I've mentioned Hugh Thomas's book Who, which I we will list
(42:22):
in the bibliography. So one of the things he he
mentions there is the importanceof Charles the 2nd and James the
Second, when he was Duke of Yorkin the establishment of the
original chartered companies trading in slaves.
And Thomas complaints that the modern biographers of these two
(42:42):
kings make no mention whatsoeverof slaving at all.
Obviously they're very important, but in a way.
The the silence on the part of the biographers is
understandable because there's nothing in the sources, there's
nothing saying, I mean, I'm sorry, there is in the sense
that we can see them being active in promoting the
(43:04):
companies, but there's there's nothing on record from them
saying what they thought about it.
And that silence in itself is probably significant because it
probably indicates they didn't give any thought.
Whatsoever to it and I've mentioned I think William
Beckford, perhaps I haven't, I'mI'm not sure, but William
Beckford was the largest plantation owner in the in
(43:28):
Jamaica in the mid 18th century and he becomes very prominent as
a British politician. And so there's an awful lot
about Beckford. He.
He. He's very important.
He he's a Lord Mayor of London, he's an MP.
He is very vociferous in championing English liberties,
(43:50):
but again he's pretty much silent on on slaves and what he
thought of them. And there is one moment which in
which we can see him kind of well, I was going to say
addressing the issue but actually not addressing the
issue. Granville Sharp, who is one of
the early champions of abolitionism, and he's he's a
great campaigner against the slave trade, but he's also
(44:15):
interested in trying to establish in English law that
slavery is illegal. And again, there's a lot of
debate about this at the time. But one of the things that his
efforts provoke him into doing is to writing this big study of
English common law. And he produces this book which
argues that slavery is a great moral evil.
(44:38):
And it's also illegal under common law.
And he sends this manuscript offto Beckford and Beckford returns
it to him with a terse note. And that's all we've got in
terms of Beckford, who is enormously wealthy, huge slave
owner. That's all we've got.
And I think this, this silence in the earlier period, as
(45:02):
indicated earlier reveals the fact that they just didn't feel
they needed to justify it. It's it's only when people start
attacking it, they they, they they come out.
And I think that the way this works is obviously slaves are
seen as property. And this comes out once the
abolitionist movement gets going.
The big arguments in parliament in it are over property rights.
(45:26):
When it is finally abolished in the 1830s, they compensate the
slave owners. And when the Duke of Clarence,
who is later William the 4th, heleads in the House of Lords, the
opposition to abolitionism. It's all about property rights.
The and we can see the, the, the, the this concept of slaves
(45:51):
as property in in so many aspects.
So you've got these within the colonial assemblies in places
like Jamaica. They they passed local laws
defining what a slave is. We can see it in the way that
slaves are entered, as much as any other cargo would be in the
the manifests of slaving vessels.
(46:11):
And also in the latter period when abolition gets going, there
are a couple of things that are used by the abolitionist
movement which reflect the attitudes of earlier on.
So one of them is the best knownimage.
I think that comes from slaving,which you see in a lot of books
about slave trading, which is that diagram of the Liverpool
slave ship, the brooks, which shows the the slaves arranged on
(46:34):
the decks. And this is published by the
Abolitionists in 1788 and it creates A sensation.
And this is I think even today this is a very arresting image
because it encapsulates the horrors of the so-called Middle
Passage very graphically, just showing the distribution of the
slaves with no room to move whatsoever or manacled.
(46:56):
And as I said when it's published in 1788, it causes,
it's a major piece of propagandafor the abolitionist court, but
it shows how the slave trade wasconducted and it shows these
people being stowed, packed in just like you would pack in any
other cargo. And I suspect that had that been
published 50 years earlier, it wouldn't have created any kind
(47:21):
of sensation. Perhaps also in this latter
period, 1781, there's the famouscase of the Zong, and the Zong
leaves Accra for a voyage acrossthe Atlantic with nearly 450
slaves on board. And as they make the crossing,
(47:41):
the captain, Luke Collingwood throws 133 of these slaves
overboard. And what he does is he selects
the sickly slaves and gets rid of them.
And then later on the owners file an insurance claim for the
loss of their goods in inverted commas and it goes to trial.
(48:07):
And Mansfield who is the judge, fines against the owners.
But the reason that the reason the insurance claim fails is
that the captain claimed that that he was running out of water
and that he did this because there wasn't enough water to go
round. But it's established in the
(48:27):
course of the trial that actually the ship has water when
it arrives in in the West Indies.
And also the reason that the voyage is take taking a bit of a
long time is because of incompetence on the part of the
crew. So what's significant about this
in a way is it reflects the old thinking about slavery.
This is an insurance claim that is dealt dealt with in terms of
(48:50):
its merits as an insurance claim.
And Granville Sharp who I mentioned earlier on he tries to
bring a case of he tries to bring a criminal case against
the crew. By this time the captain is
dead, but he tries to bring a criminal case against the crew
for murder and he gets nowhere. So to that extent the fact that
it's seen as just an insurance basically goods being thrown
(49:15):
overboard reflects the old way of thinking.
What's new is that this create in 1781 this creates again a
sensation and is adopted by the abolitionist cause.
Sharp is there taking notes he employs A shorthand writer to to
to follow the these events. But so both of these are kind of
(49:35):
at the at the cusp, they're in the later period, but I think
they illustrate an an old way ofthinking about slavery.
Also in terms of justifying it. I think we have to imagine that
both the the crews who are transporting the slaves and also
the slave owners are to some extent frightened by the slaves.
(49:57):
And this this may seem a bit extraordinary in that in both
both cases the the the crews, inparticular the captains and then
especially the slave owners havea monopoly of violence.
But at the back of their minds, there's always the fear of the
slave seizing the ship or of a slave uprising.
(50:18):
And I think this explains, well,it doesn't explain why they're
put in barbaric conditions to begin with.
But once you put them in barbaric conditions, it kind of
explains a kind of cycle of violence.
The traders tend to write a bit more about slavery than the
(50:40):
plantation owners do. And when they do, there is this
almost ubiquitous idea that the slaves are better off as slaves
than they are in Africa. And the the way the thinking
goes is that in Africa they are pagans, whereas when they are
slaves in plantations they are owned by Christians.
(51:03):
And also a a typical idea is that the Africans are brutish in
in Africa and in a way they are,they kind of deserve their fate
in in the thinking of a lot of the people shipping them.
There's also a religious justification in that if we go
(51:24):
back into the Middle Ages, European attitudes towards
Africans are fairly complicated.But within them is the idea that
people of African descent are descended from Ham, who is one
of the cursed sons of Noah, and that therefore the the Bible in
effect sentences them to a unpleasant fate.
(51:49):
And then finally, of course, we can see the way black people are
portrayed in portrait, portraitsand literature in the 18th
century, and it is normally donein a rather condescending way.
So there were lots of black servants.
There are almost a kind of fashion accessory and they are
(52:09):
often depicted in the way that you might depict a pet in in a
painting, so that they reflect kind of widespread derogatory
attitudes towards black people. But as I was saying earlier,
this all of this is quite extraordinary given the
background that between sort of roughly 1100 and when the
(52:32):
British and perhaps the time of Hawkins there, there is no
slavery. And and when it ends in around
1100, not only is it ending because of economics, because
surf surfs are cheaper and more productive than the slaves, it
ends because there's a big moralcrusade done by the church
saying that this is, this is wrong.
(52:54):
So one of the interesting thingsabout slavery, I think is the
way that it is very quickly adopted by the the English and
the British when they do take itup.
Just goes to show you how complicated a subject it is.
I think maybe next time we talk about William Beckford.
What do you think? Yeah, that'd be interesting.
(53:15):
He, he's a very interesting figure as as the largest
plantation owner and also ironically and we can talk about
this if we do him as a as a champion of English liberty.
But for the purposes of now, youhave this champion of English
liberty, huge, huge slave owner,and he just obviously doesn't
(53:35):
think about the people who are creating, creating, who've
created his enormous wealth. Thank you very much, Ian.
Now my pleasure, Hazel. That's all for now.
Until next time.
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Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.