Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The Transatlantic Slave Trade's Hidden Economy
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the ships, the rebellions, the laws. But I realized we haven't really dug into the money behind it all. The slave trade wasn't just a moral catastrophe — it was also a massive financial engine, with banks, insurers, and investors who made fortunes off human misery. Luna: I guess I never thought about the business side. Like, who was actually writing the checks? Lucas: Exactly. And it's a web that stretches from Liverpool to London to Lisbon to Rio. Take Liverpool, for instance. By the 1740s, it had overtaken Bristol as Britain's number one slave trading port. There were merchants there who built entire empires on this trade — names like Thomas Leyland, who was mayor of Liverpool and a major slave trader, or William Davenport, who financed dozens of voyages. Lucas: And these weren't just shady operators on the fringes. They were respectable businessmen, often deeply involved in local politics and philanthropy. They funded churches, schools, civic buildings. The wealth they accumulated helped fund the Industrial Revolution. Manchester's cotton mills were fed by slave labor in the Americas, and the profits from that flowed back into British infrastructure. Luna: So the whole industrial boom was built on that? That's a heavy thought. Lucas: It really is. And it's not just factories. Think about insurance. Lloyd's of London, the big insurance market, has roots in the slave trade. Shipowners would insure their 'cargo' — enslaved people — against loss at sea. If they were thrown overboard, the insurance company paid out. That's exactly what happened in the Zong massacre, which we talked about earlier. The owners tried to claim insurance for the enslaved people they'd killed. Luna: And the courts sided with them at first, didn't they? Lucas: They did. It was Granville Sharp's campaign that eventually brought it to light and helped turn British public opinion against the trade. But the point is, this was a business like any other. And some of the most established institutions in Britain were in on it. Barclays Bank, for instance — one of the big high street banks today — has acknowledged that its founders were involved in the slave trade. A branch in Liverpool was founded by a family that owned slave ships. Lucas: Even the Bank of England got involved indirectly. The Bank financed government loans, and the government was heavily invested in the slave colonies. When the British government compensated slave owners after abolition in 1833, they borrowed £15 million from the Bank of England to do it — that's about £17 billion in today's money. And it was used to pay people like the descendants of the Beckford family, who had huge plantations in Jamaica. Luna: Wait, that's a massive amount. And it went to the owners, not the enslaved. Lucas: Exactly. That's the part that's so hard to swallow. The enslaved people got nothing. In fact, they were forced into an 'apprenticeship' system for four more years. And the compensation created a whole class of absentee landlords in Britain who lived off the proceeds of plantations they never visited. Lucas: Let's go back a bit further, though. The Royal African Company, chartered in 1660, had a monopoly on the English slave trade for a while. It was founded by the Duke of York, who became James II. They built forts on the West African coast, like Cape Coast Castle, and they shipped tens of thousands of people across the Atlantic. The company's shareholders included the king himself, and it paid dividends of up to 25% in some years. Luna: So even the crown was directly profiting. Lucas: Absolutely. And the same was true in other countries. The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French — they all had state-backed trading companies. The Dutch West India Company, for instance, was a military and commercial powerhouse. They captured the slave fort at Elmina from the Portuguese in 1637, and they ran the trade in the Caribbean for decades. Lucas: But the British dominance came later, after the Royal African Company lost its monopoly in 1689. That opened the trade to independent merchants, which is when places like Liverpool really took off. They were more efficient, more ruthless, and they undercut the old monopolies. Luna: And they made a fortune, clearly. Lucas: They did. Some historians have estimated that Liverpool's slave trade generated profits of around £200,000 a year at its peak, and that's just a fraction of the overall Atlantic economy. The trade in sugar, tobacco, cotton, coffee — all produced by enslaved labor — was worth far more. That's why Britain fought so hard to keep its Caribbean colonies, even after the American Revolution. Lucas: And the financial instruments they created — things like bills of exchange, marine insurance, joint-stock companies — were the building blocks of modern capitalism. You could say the slave trade helped invent the modern banking system. Luna: That's a chilling thought, that our financial system has that in its DNA. Lucas: It is, and it's something we should confront. But we also need to remember that it wasn't just Europeans. African kingdoms participated too. Dahomey, which we talked about, sold captives to Europeans. The Aro Confederacy, same thing. They, too, grew wealthy from the trade, and it's a complex legacy. Lucas: But the scale of the European involvement, and the fact that it was so deeply woven into the rise of the nation-state and the global economy — that's what makes it so significant. You can't understand the history of capitalism without understanding the slave trade. Luna: And it's not just history. There are calls for reparations now, aren't there? Lucas: There are. Some argue that the descendants of enslaved people should be compensated, either financially or through programs like education and health care. Others say it's too long ago, that no one alive today is responsible. But the economic disparities we see today, in the Americas and in Africa, are partly the legacy of that system. So it's a live question. Lucas: And before we go further, I want to take a quick honest second. You know, a few listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making this many of these. We don't run ads, so it's just us and the support we get. Luna: Yeah, and it makes a real difference. It keeps the whole thing going. Lucas: Right. And if you've been with us through these conversations, that support is what keeps the lights on. But let's get back to the money trail, because there's one more piece I want to mention. Lucas: So the profits from the slave trade didn't just sit in vaults. They were reinvested in all sorts of ventures — shipping, banking, industry, real estate. The Wedgwood pottery company, for example, produced the famous anti-slavery medallion, but they also used slave-grown cotton in their products. Even abolitionists weren't entirely free of the taint. Luna: That's a tough irony. Lucas: It is. And it shows how pervasive the system was. It wasn't just a few evil men; it was a network of interests that touched almost every part of British society. Lucas: One figure that stands out is Olaudah Equiano, who we've mentioned. He bought his freedom and then became a leading voice for abolition. He wrote a best-selling autobiography that exposed the horrors of the middle passage. But even he, at one point, owned enslaved people himself — he was a plantation overseer in Central America. It's a reminder that the system was so entrenched that even its critics were caught up in it. Luna: That's a powerful detail. Lucas: It is. And it brings us back to the question of how we reckon with this history. We can't undo the past, but we can acknowledge it, and we can think about how it shapes our present. Maybe that's the first step.