Traces of the Transatlantic Slave Economy in the National Heritage Collection
From the 17th through to the early 19th century, Britain played a central role in the transatlantic slave economy, a highly lucrative network of global commerce linking Europe, West Africa and the colonies of North America and the Caribbean. At the core of this inhumane trade was the kidnap and exploitation of enslaved Africans to provide forced labour for the plantation economies of the colonies.
The transatlantic trade formed such a significant part of the British economy that it had a profound impact on the country and its people. Traces of the slave trade can be seen all around us, not only in the landscapes and buildings of West Africa and the Caribbean, but also in the United Kingdom. Much of the wealth from the trade in enslaved peoples, from the plantations, from associated industries and from compensation following abolition, was invested in Britain, and that investment has a lasting legacy in buildings, communities, businesses and institutions across the country today.
English Heritage sites and blue plaques provide examples of many slavery connections: from plantation ownership providing the funds to build houses, to colonial administrators, investors in trading companies, and the many people who consumed the fashionable goods produced by the enslaved. Our research also reveals the presence of black servants, those who tirelessly campaigned for abolition, and even a young woman of mixed heritage who grew up within the British aristocracy.
THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
An early 19th-century diagram of iron shackles produced in Liverpool and used on board slaving ships. (©Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
An early 19th-century diagram of iron shackles produced in Liverpool and used on board slaving ships. (©Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
A whip used on enslaved workers in Barbados. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
A whip used on enslaved workers in Barbados. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
Origins
The transatlantic slave trade has its origins in the mid 15th century, when Portuguese merchants began expanding their trading networks to the coast of West Africa. They, along with the Spanish, dominated the trade until the mid 17th century.
Britain’s early forays into the Atlantic slave economy were mainly linked to privateering – piracy sanctioned by the state. Probably the first to engage in the slave trade was the buccaneer Sir John Hawkins, who sailed to the Caribbean via Sierra Leone in 1554–5 with 300 enslaved Africans, captured from Portuguese merchants, whom he sold in Santo Domingo. His final voyage as a slaver was in 1567.
Sir John Hawkins. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)
Sir John Hawkins. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)
British involvement in the slave trade resumed in the 1640s after the establishment of the first British colonies in the Americas. Virginia was founded in 1607, and then Barbados in 1625. Jamaica was secured from the Spanish in 1655 and became the powerhouse of the British Atlantic slave economy.
European nations developed the transatlantic slave trade in response to demand for labour. Once land was cleared, early colonists divided it up into large estates which were planted with crops such as sugar, cotton and tobacco. These crops were labour-intensive and working conditions on the plantations were harsh in the hot and humid climate.
Colonists saw enslaved Africans as the most practical and profitable solution to labour shortages. For the slavers the trade in human lives was merely a business transaction. Enslaved Africans could be dehumanised as units of labour because of ingrained beliefs in the racial superiority of white Europeans that emerged during the Enlightenment.
It is estimated that over 12 million African men, women and children were transported across the Atlantic, with over 2 million dying during the voyage. Once in the colonies the enslaved faced an unrelentingly harsh existence, with poor food and housing, gruelling work and often brutal and arbitrary punishment.
The images below depict work on Antiguan plantations owned by the father of John Tollemache, the 19th-century owner of the estate that contained Beeston Castle. Romanticised illustrations such as these rarely show the truth of the brutal and dehumanising conditions under which the enslaved were forced to work.
The Triangular Trade
The transatlantic slave trade reached its peak during the 18th century, providing the mass forced labour that made the plantation economies of the Caribbean and North and South America hugely profitable.
During this period British merchants dominated the trade. London’s money and insurance markets underpinned it, enabling the development of a sophisticated system that operated on an industrial scale.
The enslaved were an integral part of a system of triangular trade whereby arms, textiles, metal wares and wine were shipped to Africa to be traded for enslaved people. They were then forcibly transported to the Americas to work on the plantations, and the ships then returned to Europe carrying slave-produced goods.
The British government gave considerable support to the Atlantic trade by providing royal charters to trading companies. The Royal African Company, established by Charles II in 1660, was granted a monopoly over the English slave trade in 1672, creating huge profits for its London merchant backers.
A 1727 engraving of Bunce Island in Sierra Leone. The island was settled and fortified by the Royal African Company in the 17th century and became one of the company’s bases for trading enslaved Africans. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
A 1727 engraving of Bunce Island in Sierra Leone. The island was settled and fortified by the Royal African Company in the 17th century and became one of the company’s bases for trading enslaved Africans. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
Between 1672 and 1740 the company transported around 150,000 enslaved Africans to the Americas, more than any other organisation in the history of the trade. The South Sea Company, founded in 1711, had a monopoly over the slave trade to South America, acquired by Britain in 1713 as part of the treaty ending the War of the Spanish Succession.
At this time the Royal Navy also played a key role in enabling the slave trade, both through seizing territories from European rivals to expand Britain’s colonial possessions, and through offering protection to the ships that carried out the trade. Later, after Britain abolished the slave trade by Act of Parliament in 1807, the Navy was responsible for deterring slave trading by other nations through the patrols of the West African Squadron.
SLAVERY AND BRITISH SOCIETY
The Economy
The transatlantic slave trade had a profound impact on the economy and society of Britain from the 17th century, leaving few corners of the country untouched. Patterns of trade, the expansion of empire, industrialisation and the consumer revolution can all be linked to the enslavement of Africans and their transportation to the New World.
The lives of most Britons during the 18th and early 19th centuries were touched in some way by the transatlantic slave trade, though few would have known its true horrors. Some made great fortunes, others owed their employment to industries serving the slave economy, and many millions consumed the sugar that came from the plantations.
Through slavery and colonial trade Britain was transformed from a middle-ranking country into a global power. In 1700, 80% of its trade was with Europe, but by 1800 60% went to Africa or the Americas.
An 1810 engraving of the West India docks in London, which opened in 1807
An 1810 engraving of the West India docks in London, which opened in 1807
From the start, the commodities produced on plantations in North America and the Caribbean found a ready market in Britain and around the world in a trade increasingly dominated by British merchants, protected by an expanded Royal Navy.
The commerce surrounding the slave trade provided an impetus for the expansion of banking, insurance and commercial institutions such as the stock exchange, which gave Britain a competitive advantage.
It has also been argued by some historians that slavery provided the capital which financed the Industrial Revolution. Though this has been the subject of intense debate, there is no doubt that the slave trade helped lay the foundations for industrialisation.
Personal Investments
One of the most common forms of involvement in the transatlantic economy was share ownership in a slave trading company such as the South Sea Company or Royal African Company. Many of the shares in these companies were owned by the royal family and members of the aristocracy. Merchants, tradesmen, ordinary men and women, and even some servants were also investors.
For instance, the courtier Henrietta Howard of Marble Hill in Twickenham invested in both the French Compagnie des Indes and the South Sea Company. She was given a further £11,500 of shares including South Sea stock by the Prince of Wales (later George II) in 1723 to support her when she left the royal court. These funds paid for the building of Marble Hill and the laying out of its gardens.
Portrait of Henrietta Howard by Charles Jervas, c.1724
Portrait of Henrietta Howard by Charles Jervas, c.1724
At other English Heritage sites we see a different story. Henry Grey, Duke of Kent, of Wrest Park in Bedfordshire, and George Hay, Viscount Dupplin, of Brodsworth Hall in South Yorkshire, both lost a fortune in the financial crash of 1720 known as the South Sea Bubble, putting a stop to their building and landscaping projects.
Slave Trading and Plantation Ownership
Relatively few people were directly involved in the slave trade as owners of or investors in slaving ships. Slave traders were found principally in and around the main slaving ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool. In Bristol men such as Edward Colston, Henry Bright and Abraham Elton made great fortunes, enabling them to buy their way into the respectability of a landed estate.
Smaller ports like Lancaster, Poole and Falmouth had slaving connections and ship owners could be found scattered across the country. Robert, the eldest son of Robert Blachford, an owner of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight before Queen Victoria, had three ships involved in the triangular trade in the 1720s. Letters from his agent reveal details of a number of voyages from West Africa to the Caribbean, including one in 1726 in which only 140 of the 200 enslaved Africans survived the journey, revealing starkly the horrors of the trade.
James Island and Fort Gambia, where Robert Blachford’s agent picked up enslaved Africans to be taken to Jamaica in 1726. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
James Island and Fort Gambia, where Robert Blachford’s agent picked up enslaved Africans to be taken to Jamaica in 1726. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
The banker and merchant Peter Thellusson (1737–97) of Brodsworth Hall owned a share of several slave trading ships including the Lottery, which travelled from London to Grenada via Liberia in 1765–6. It carried 211 enslaved Africans, of whom 39 died during the passage.
Many more people in Britain were absentee owners of plantations in the Caribbean or North America, or had an interest in them as trustees. Men such as Philip Herbert (1584–1650) of Houghton House in Bedfordshire and William Craven (1608–97) of Stokesay Castle in Shropshire were early examples, involved in the establishment of plantations in the 17th century. Herbert, who was 4th Earl of Pembroke, was granted the islands of Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados and Fonseca by the Crown in 1628, but sold them on ten years later.
Plantation ownership was more widespread during the 18th century when Britain came to dominate the trade. In addition to ships, Peter Thellusson owned plantations in Grenada and Montserrat. He also loaned money to other planters in Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Vincent and Trinidad.
In 2021, the installation ‘Liberty and Lottery’ at Brodsworth Hall by world-renowned carnival artist Carl Gabriel explored the connections between Peter Thellusson and enslavement
In 2021, the installation ‘Liberty and Lottery’ at Brodsworth Hall by world-renowned carnival artist Carl Gabriel explored the connections between Peter Thellusson and enslavement
Sir Jeffrey Jeffreys (c.1652–1709) – whose descendants were linked by marriage to the Pratts of Bayham Abbey in Kent – and Sir Godfrey Webster (1749–1800) of Battle Abbey in East Sussex were also West Indian proprietors.
Bankers and insurance agents were also heavily involved in the trade, providing financial backing for slaving merchants and plantation owners. Often they acquired plantations or even shipments of colonial goods when creditors defaulted, as was the case with Thellusson.
The Bank of England, established in 1694, underpinned the whole system of commercial credit, and its wealthy members often owed at least part of their fortune to the slave trade. Peter Isaac Thellusson, eldest son of Peter Thellusson, and Sir Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey were both governors of the bank alongside their colonial trading interests.
Manufacturing and Commerce
Another important aspect of the transatlantic slave trade was the trade in goods produced by enslaved people. Colonial commodities supported a vast network of merchants, wholesalers and manufacturers, linking many more people with the slave economy.
The cotton textile industry, one of the cornerstones of the Industrial Revolution, relied in part on the labour of enslaved Africans for its raw materials. New tastes for colonial goods such as sugar, tea, coffee and tobacco also spawned new industries producing ceramics, tea wares and metal goods. Hardwoods from America such as mahogany and rosewood supplied furniture makers, and shipbuilding was given a substantial boost by the expansion of trade with the Americas.
We find examples of people involved in industries connected to slavery at many English Heritage sites. This includes men such as the cotton manufacturers Richard Arkwright Junior (1755–1843), who bought Sutton Scarsdale Hall in 1824; Walter Evans (1758–1836), who acquired Boscobel House in Shropshire in 1812; and John Harrison of Stott Park Bobbin Mill, who provided spindles for the cotton trade.
Many of the ordinary workers in these industries may not, of course, have been aware of their connection to enslavement in the Caribbean.
Richard Arkwright Junior. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)
Richard Arkwright Junior. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)
Other merchants and industrialists were already linked to the slave trade in other ways, such as Peter Thellusson of Brodsworth, who was a partner in several Wapping sugar refineries, and Sir Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey, who was a tobacco merchant.
Manufacturing also received a boost from supplying goods to be traded in Africa, the Caribbean and the American colonies. Guns and iron pots and pans from Birmingham and the Black Country were exchanged for African captives, while coarse cloth woven in mid-Wales and the West Country clothed the enslaved. Virtually all consumer goods used by white settlers in the Caribbean and American colonies were produced in Britain and shipped over too.
The Foley family of Witley Court were involved in this aspect of the slave economy. Their bar iron and iron and copper wares were exported to West Africa and the Americas through Bristol. They also supplied vast quantities of pig iron to the craftsmen of Birmingham and the Black Country, many of whom served colonial markets.
Witley Court, Worcestershire
Witley Court, Worcestershire
Indeed, the diversification of the British economy during the Industrial Revolution to produce regional manufacturing specialisms was just as much a product of the slave economy as the expansion of the plantation system in the Americas.
These specialisms have left a legacy of distinctive building types: the cotton mills of Lancashire and warehouses of Manchester; the bottle kilns of the Potteries and small workshops of the metal trades in Birmingham. All these industries either relied on raw materials from the colonies, or exported their products to the Caribbean and the Americas.
Family Wealth and Inheritance
Some landowners with no direct involvement in the slave trade benefited from marriage to an heiress whose wealth came from slavery. Judicious marriage had always been a favoured route for restoring family fortunes, and the wealth which slavery generated meant that the daughters of merchants and plantation owners were seen as attractive marriage partners.
For instance, Mary Courten, whose merchant father had interests in the Dutch tobacco colony in Guiana, brought a considerable dowry when she married Henry Grey, 10th Earl of Kent of Wrest Park, in 1641. This helped to improve the fortunes of the Grey family, which had been at a low ebb since the mid 16th century.
Another example is Sophie Aufrere (1749–86), whose father, George, made a substantial fortune trading textiles and arms to the African slaving forts. In 1770 she married Charles Anderson Pelham, later 1st Baron Yarborough. As Sophie was an only child when her father died in 1801, the Aufrere fortune came to Lord Yarborough, whose son acquired Appuldurcombe House on the Isle of Wight in 1825.
Sophia Pelham. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)
Sophia Pelham. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)
Families involved in the slave trade often used marriage alliances to help cement business relationships. Some benefited from the slavery-generated wealth of heiresses over successive generations, a good example being the Websters of Battle Abbey. Sir Godfrey Webster, 4th Baronet (1749–1800), married the Jamaican heiress Elizabeth Vassall (c.1771–1845) in 1786, bringing him three sugar plantations with an income of £7,000 per annum (equivalent to about £500,000 a year in today's money).
Lady Elizabeth Webster, née Vassall, of Battle Abbey
Lady Elizabeth Webster, née Vassall, of Battle Abbey
His grandson, Sir Godfrey Vassall Webster, 6th Baronet, also married a rich heiress, Sarah Joanna Ashburnham, the daughter of William Murray, who owned plantations in Jamaica.
Politics and Colonial Administration
The economic success of the Caribbean and American colonies relied upon effective imperial control exercised by an army of administrators, both in the colonies and back in Britain. They were responsible for upholding law and order, supporting trade and sustaining a system of government in the colonies that perpetuated enslavement.
Government posts in the colonies could be highly lucrative and offered considerable opportunities for bribery and patronage, as wealthy planters vied for influence and favours. Richard Aldworth Neville (later Griffin) of Audley End was Provost-Marshal of Jamaica, responsible for law enforcement on the island between 1763 and about 1816, bringing in a reputed £120,000 (about £12 million in today’s money).
Like many senior officials Neville never visited the Caribbean, preferring instead to delegate his duties to a deputy.
A 1774 engraving of the King’s House and Public Offices in Jamaica. (© Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library)
A 1774 engraving of the King’s House and Public Offices in Jamaica. (© Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library)
An earlier owner of Audley End, Henry Howard, 6th Earl of Suffolk (1670–1718), was First Commissioner of the Board of Trade and Plantations from 1715 to 1718. Commissioners were paid £1,000 per year (equivalent to over £100,000 today) and were responsible for advising the king and Parliament about colonial trade and administration. Their duties included liaising with colonial governors, conducting inquiries and hearing complaints from merchants and colonial agents.
Some holding high office in government benefited financially from slavery through the power to assign colonial governorships. For instance, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, of Kenwood, was Secretary of State in 1761–2, the year in which the islands of Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and Tobago were ceded to Britain along with Florida and Quebec and so had many lucrative positions to hand out.
BLACK PEOPLE IN BRITAIN
People of African origin have lived in Britain for at least 2,000 years, but their numbers increased substantially with the development of the transatlantic slave trade from the 1660s.
By the late 18th century there are thought to have been around 15,000 black people living in England and Wales, predominantly in London and the major port cities, but also scattered across the country in market towns and villages. They were a mix of free and enslaved people working alongside their white counterparts in a variety of occupations.
Many of them were employed in domestic service, and glimpses of them can be found in records from English Heritage sites. Scipio Africanus, whose richly decorated grave of 1720 lies in Henbury churchyard near Bristol, was page to Charles William Howard, 7th Earl of Suffolk, of Audley End.
Another black servant, James Chappell, saved his master, Sir Christopher Hatton, of Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire, and his three young daughters from an explosion at Castle Cornet on Guernsey in 1672.
There are no known surviving images of James Chappell. This portrait of him was painted by Glory Samjolly as part of English Heritage’s 2021 ‘Painting our Past’ project, which invited contemporary artists to portray historical figures from the African diaspora
There are no known surviving images of James Chappell. This portrait of him was painted by Glory Samjolly as part of English Heritage’s 2021 ‘Painting our Past’ project, which invited contemporary artists to portray historical figures from the African diaspora
In reality these ‘servants’ were often unpaid and enslaved, brought from the colonies by absentee plantation owners. Their legal status in Britain remained unclear, as the courts debated whether slavery could exist in a British context. A 1729 judgment by the Attorney-General, Sir Philip Yorke, father of Philip Yorke of Wrest Park, and the Solicitor-General, Charles Talbot, asserted that a slave taken to England remained his master’s property.
Some 40 years later, in 1772, Lord Mansfield of Kenwood ruled in the Somerset case that an enslaved person living in England could not be forcibly removed to slavery in the colonies. This ruling advanced the cause of abolition, but it did not mean an end to slavery in England. Newspaper advertisements show that enslaved Africans were still being bought and sold, and runaways were still recaptured and shipped back to the colonies as late as 1780.
Of course, not all people of African descent living in England were enslaved. Some were sailors or soldiers serving in the British armed forces, recruited in the colonies in response to the huge demand for manpower to police a growing empire. Some were shopkeepers, like Ignatius Sancho, the black abolitionist, who opened a greengrocer’s shop in London’s Mayfair in later life. Others were entertainers, artisans, craftsmen or dockers.
A few, like Dido Elizabeth Belle, brought up at Kenwood by her great uncle the 1st Earl of Mansfield, were part of the landed elite and lived a privileged lifestyle that the enslaved in the Caribbean could scarcely have imagined.
At Portchester in Hampshire during the Napoleonic Wars, over 2,000 black prisoners of war, originally captured in the Caribbean where they were fighting for the French, were held at the castle. While most left for France or returned to the Caribbean after their internment, several stayed in the local area and started new lives there.
Portchester Castle, Hampshire
Portchester Castle, Hampshire
The grave of Scipio Africanus in St Mary’s churchyard in Henbury, near Bristol. (© Steve Taylor ARPS / Alamy Stock Photo)
The grave of Scipio Africanus in St Mary’s churchyard in Henbury, near Bristol. (© Steve Taylor ARPS / Alamy Stock Photo)
Dido Belle. (© By kind permission of the Earl of Mansfield, Scone Palace, Perth, Scotland)
Dido Belle. (© By kind permission of the Earl of Mansfield, Scone Palace, Perth, Scotland)
ABOLITION
A portrait of the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano and the title page of his autobiography. (© Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library)
A portrait of the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano and the title page of his autobiography. (© Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library)
Ottobah Cugoano’s blue plaque at 80–82 Pall Mall, London
Ottobah Cugoano’s blue plaque at 80–82 Pall Mall, London
A Call for Change
From the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved Africans resisted their oppression through strikes and rebellions, as well as various forms of passive resistance including damaging equipment, working slowly or running away. The instances of runaway slaves became so frequent that draconian laws were imposed on many Caribbean islands to try to curtail them. The enslaved also worked hard to preserve their African culture through music, dance and religious beliefs as a means of survival.
In Britain, the importance of transatlantic slavery to the economy, and the powerful planter lobby in Parliament, meant that the road to abolition was slow and tortuous. Slavery had been condemned as un-Christian by Quakers and evangelicals from the late 17th century, and in the 1760s secular thinkers such as Granville Sharp took up the cause, criticising enslavement as violating the rights of man.
The campaign to abolish the slave trade gained momentum as the 18th century wore on, influenced by international events such as the French Revolution, and a growing number of slave rebellions in the Caribbean colonies, most notably Haiti.
In 1787 activists such as Thomas Clarkson and George Fox formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade to argue the case for abolition. They attracted a number of influential backers, such as the potter Josiah Wedgwood, who produced a ceramic cameo of a kneeling man in chains with the slogan ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’
An 18th-century engraving of the famous 'Am I not a man and a brother' cameo. (© Wellcome Collection licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0)
An 18th-century engraving of the famous 'Am I not a man and a brother' cameo. (© Wellcome Collection licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0)
There were also a number of influential black abolitionists, including Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano, who had direct experience of enslavement. Equiano published an autobiography and travelled widely around the country talking about the evils of the slave trade.
Cugoano had been freed in 1772 as a result of the Somerset case, and together with Equiano and other educated Africans living in London founded the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group which was the first black political organisation in Britain.
In 2020 a blue plaque to Cugoano was unveiled by English Heritage at a house in Westminster where he had lived and worked.
The Long Road to Political Reform
The abolitionists found support in Parliament from William Wilberforce and others, including Sir William Dolben and Charles James Fox. After a long campaign the Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807, ending the slave trade in the British Empire. The Act was to be enforced by the Royal Navy’s West African Squadron, which patrolled the coast of West Africa intercepting slave ships attempting to cross the Atlantic.
A slaving schooner captured by the Royal Navy in 1857. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
A slaving schooner captured by the Royal Navy in 1857. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
The journey towards abolition had been so arduous because many in Parliament argued against it, including some of those with connections to English Heritage sites. William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, who owned Bolsover Castle, opposed abolition when he was Secretary of State for the Home Department, responsible for colonial affairs, from 1794 to 1801. As Prime Minister in 1783, he refused to act when petitioned over the Zong massacre case by Granville Sharp – an incident that caused a public outcry when over 130 enslaved Africans were murdered by the crew of a British slave ship and insurance claimed on their lives.
Henry Dundas, who had family links to The Grange at Northington in Hampshire, helped delay the course of abolition by over a decade when, as Home Secretary in 1792, he added the word ‘gradually’ to William Wilberforce’s motion.
Others in Parliament associated with English Heritage sites, however, supported the cause of abolition. Henry Bathurst of Apsley House in London pressed colonial legislatures to improve the conditions of the enslaved when President of the Board of Plantations in 1807–12.
A later owner of Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington, was on good terms with Wilberforce and had books by the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in his library. He tried to persuade the French to renounce slavery in 1814, though as Prime Minister in the 1820s he supported a more gradual approach to abolition to protect the West India interest.
The 1807 Act abolished the British slave trade – the transportation of enslaved Africans to the Americas in British vessels – but not slavery itself, which continued to grow in the Caribbean colonies until the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Under this Act enslaved people in all parts of the British Empire apart from India, Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) and St Helena were freed.
The Act came into force the following year, but the formerly enslaved were simply re-designated as ‘apprentices’, so in practical terms their servitude continued until these apprenticeships ended in August 1838.
Slavery, of course, continued in the United States until the American Civil War of 1861–5, and was not entirely eradicated from the Caribbean until the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba freed their enslaved people in 1873 and 1886 respectively.
Following abolition, plantation owners were compensated by the British government for the loss of their enslaved workforce. The bill for compensation amounted to £20 million. Depending on whether calculations are based on inflation or change in income, this amount is equivalent to between £2 billion and £17 billion today. At the time the bill amounted to around 40% of the Treasury’s annual income – such a proportion would be over £100 billion today. The money borrowed by the government to compensate slave owners was not paid off until 2015.
Research suggests that 5–10% of Britain’s elites were sufficiently involved in slavery to appear in the compensation records, and several had ties to English Heritage sites. Among those to benefit were William Ward of Witley Court and the trustees of the estate of Peter Thellusson of Brodsworth Hall.
The Whitney Plantation in Jamaica, for which William Ward of Witley Court received compensation when slavery was abolished. Romanticised images such as this rarely showed the true conditions of enslavement. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
The Whitney Plantation in Jamaica, for which William Ward of Witley Court received compensation when slavery was abolished. Romanticised images such as this rarely showed the true conditions of enslavement. (© Public domain licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 www.slaveryimages.org)
William Murray, the father of Sarah Joanna Ashburnham, was awarded over £10,000 compensation in 1835 for people he had enslaved. The wealth Sarah inherited from her father greatly enriched Sir Godfrey Vassall Webster of Battle Abbey when she married him.
The enslaved, in contrast, received no compensation for their incarceration and brutal treatment. Many continued to live and work on the plantations where working conditions remained harsh and wages were low.
Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire
Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire
Apsley House in London. Owners Henry Bathurst and the Duke of Wellington both showed an interest in the plight of the enslaved during their careers
Apsley House in London. Owners Henry Bathurst and the Duke of Wellington both showed an interest in the plight of the enslaved during their careers
FURTHER READING
Online Resources
Black Presence: Asian and Black History in Britain 1500–1850 (The National Archives and the Black and Asian Studies Association)
Colonial Countryside (National Trust)
Early Caribbean Digital Archive (Northeastern University)
East India Company at Home, 1757–1857 (University of Warwick and University College London)
Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade (Michigan State University)
Legacies of British Slave-ownership (University College London)
Remembering 1807 (Antislavery Usable Past)
The Slave Trade and Abolition (Historic England)
Slave Voyages (Emory Center for Digital Scholarship)
The Transatlantic Slave Economy
K Dian Kriz, Slavery, Sugar and the Culture of Refinement: Picturing the West Indies, 1700–1840 (New Haven, CT, 2008)
D Eltis and D Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (London, 2010)
P Gauci, Emporium of the World: The Merchants of London 1660–1800 (London, 2007)
S Haggerty, Merely for Money? Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815 (Liverpool, 2012)
C Hall, N Draper, K McClelland, K Donington, R Lang, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2014)
D Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, 1995)
K Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2001)
W Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2013)
M Sherwood, After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade since 1807 (London, 2007)
J Walvin, Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery (London, 1992)
M Wills and M Dresser, ‘The Transatlantic Slave Economy and England’s Built Environment: A Research Audit’, Historic England Research Department Report 147/2020 (accessed 31 March 2021)
N Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economy, 1660–1700 (Cambridge, 2010)
Colonies and Empire
D Armitage and M Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (London, 2009)
T Burnard, Britain in the Wider World, 1603–1800 (Abingdon-on-Thames, 2020)
S Haggerty and S Seymour, ‘Imperial careering and enslavement in the long eighteenth century: the Bentinck family, 1710–1830s’, Slavery & Abolition, 39:4 (2018), 642–62
E Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (Princeton, 2011)
Slavery and Industry
RC Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009)
JE Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 2002)
A Leonard and D Pretel (eds), The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy (London, 2015)
J Walvin, Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste, 1660–1800 (New York, 1997)
J Walvin, Sugar: The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity (London, 2017)
Slavery and the Country House
L Brown, ‘The Slavery Connections of Marble Hill House’ (English Heritage, 2010)
L Brown, ‘The Slavery Connections of Northington Grange’ (English Heritage, 2010)
D Cannadine and J Musson (eds), The Country House: Past, Present, Future (London, 2018)
M Dresser and A Hann (eds), Slavery and the British Country House (English Heritage, 2013)
M Kaufmann, ‘English Heritage Properties 1600–1830
and Slavery Connections’ (English Heritage, 2007)
J Moody and S Small, ‘Slavery and public history at the big house: remembering and forgetting at American plantation museums and British country houses’, Journal of Global Slavery, 4:1 (2019), 34–68
S Seymour and S Haggerty, ‘Slavery Connections of Bolsover Castle (1600–c.1830)’ (English Heritage, 2010)
S Seymour and S Haggerty, ‘Slavery Connections of Brodsworth Hall (1600–c.1830)’ (English Heritage, 2010)
SD Smith, Slavery, Family and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648–1834 (Cambridge, 2006)
Abolition
CL Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006)
V Carretta, Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (Athens, GA, 2005)
R King, S Sandhu, J Walvin, J Girdham, Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters (London, 1997)
The Black Presence in Britain
K Chater, Untold Histories: Black People in England and Wales during the Period of the British Slave Trade, c.1660–1807 (Manchester, 2009)
G Gerzina (ed), Britain’s Black Past (Liverpool, 2020)
I Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Abingdon-on-Thames, 2008)
M Kaufmann, Black Tudors: The Untold Story (London, 2017)
N Myers, Reconstructing the Black Past: Blacks in Britain, 1780–1830 (London, 1996)
D Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (London, 2017)
Public History and Slavery
C Bernier and H Durkin (eds), Visualising Slavery: Art across the African Diaspora (Liverpool, 2016)
K Donington, R Hanley, J Moody (eds), Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery: Local Nuances of a ‘National Sin’ (Liverpool, 2016)
Built with Shorthand
