The forgotten slave traders who shaped Britain
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Who were the 13,000 investors that financed Britain’s trans‑Atlantic slave trade?
Britain's transatlantic slave trade violently transported some 3.2 million enslaved African men, women and children. But who financed it and what impact did they have back home? Since 2021, historian William A. Pettigrew has led a team that has helped identify around 13,000 investors in the trade, whose influence reached into all aspects of British politics, industry, culture and philanthropy. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, he speaks to Eleanor Evans about how their activities helped shape modern Britain and why their role has largely disappeared from the national story. Plus, he reveals the work behind a new register of the traders that means their involvement can be traced in more detail than ever before.
Professor William Pettigrew, thank you so much for joining me on the History Extra podcast. Since 2021, you have led the most comprehensive research and analysis ever undertaken into Britain's involvement with the transatlantic trade of enslaved African people. There's a BBC Two TV series, Finding Britain's Slave Traders, which is shortly out and it's based on your team's findings. And your book is soon with us as well. For our listeners, can you tell me about the scope of this project?
Yeah, as you said, what we've tried to do is to provide as comprehensive as possible an analysis of all of the known investors based in Britain, not all of them were British, but based in Britain, who financed Britain's contribution to the transatlantic trade in enslaved African people, which amounted to roughly the transportation of 3.2 million enslaved African men, women, and children. That led us to a list of We identified roughly 13,000 investors across the period from the 1560s, so the Tudor period, to abolition, the abolition statute being 1807. So it's a long period in British history, and an especially formative one.
There are lots of tensions therein in this project. And one perhaps we should address early on is the tension between surfacing these some 13,000 individuals, fleshing them out, as it were, and placing them in their context at the same time when little can be known about the identities of the more than 3 million people, as you say, that they had a hand in trafficking. Can you talk to me about this aspect?
Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, one of the tensions from the outset was this difficulty in reconciling the fact that, in a way, what we're doing in identifying and analyzing these 13,000 individuals is sort of humanizing a group of individuals who were prepared to dehumanize over 3 million people, treating them as objects and financing their violent transportation to the hellish life of the plantation. So we're well aware of that and sensitive to it. But both in the show and in my book, what we've tried to do throughout is to juxtapose those two groups. The 3.2 million enslaved people transported by the 13,000, they didn't have varied lives. They had their lives utterly destroyed. Whereas what we've discovered about the 13,000 is that they did have varied lives.
Many of them became specialist traffickers, enslaved African people, but most of them did not. And one of the things that's interesting about this cohort of people, although we trace them across the 1560s to 1807, a very long period in time, they are a large group of people to analyze from an academic point of view, but they're a tiny proportion. of the British population across that period. But what we've really honed in on is that actually they're not a cohort of people that's typical. These are individuals who have a kind of outsized influence on the development of Britain. That's partly about chronology because, and this is often forgotten, The slave trade and Britain's contribution to it takes place in a really key phase in British development.
Basically connecting the English Reformation to the Industrial Revolution. There is no more formative period in British history than that. And what we've been able to show is that this 13,000 cohort of investors in the slave trade... were actually key to various aspects of that story, key to the development of British society, key to the development of the British economy, key to the development of modern British politics and the development of the English constitution, but also to culture and the provision of welfare.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who were the 13,000 investors that financed Britain’s trans‑Atlantic slave trade?
0:06–4:35
2
How did early‑modern elites like John Hawkins, the Lord Mayor and Queen Elizabeth I support the trade?
4:35–8:54
3
Why did the slave‑trade profits spread from London to regional ports such as Bristol, Liverpool and Lancaster?
8:54–12:04
4
In what ways did slave‑trade wealth fund British cultural institutions like the Old Vic, theatres and charities?
12:04–16:07
5
How did women investors use shares in the Royal African Company to protect their assets and gain financial independence?
16:07–20:04
6
What evidence links slave‑trade capital to the development of Britain’s canals, navy supply chains and the Industrial Revolution?
20:04–24:40
7
Why is it important to confront the hidden role of the slave trade in Britain’s national narrative today?
24:40–28:41
8
How can listeners explore the Register of British Slave Traders and the new BBC series to learn more?
28:41–32:08