British (and Irish) Slave ownership: database

chasm

Last Sunday the UK Independant newspaper did an article on the abolishment of slavery and the compensation awarded to the slave owners, this was to coincide with the launch of an internet database that has been realeased for public use.

"Among those revealed to have benefited from slavery are ancestors of the Prime Minister, David Cameron, former minister Douglas Hogg, authors Graham Greene and George Orwell, poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the new chairman of the Arts Council, Peter Bazalgette. Other prominent names which feature in the records include scions of one of the nation's oldest banking families, the Barings, and the second Earl of Harewood, Henry Lascelles, an ancestor of the Queen's cousin."

Link to article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-colonial-shame-slaveowners-given-huge-payouts-after-abolition-8508358.html

Link to database:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

slaveowners with Irish address' :
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/

Just searching through the Ireland address' at the moment because there was a couple of surnames that caught my eye.

tac foley

Mr Cameron et al are indeed VERY long-term benficiaries of the slave trade, which was ended in the UK in 1807.

There can be very few institutions either in England or Ireland under British rule that did not benefit from the use of remote slavery in one form or another. Almost every item of clothing on the backs of every man, woman and child in these islands was made from raw material picked by slaves, and the sugar in your tea likewise.

May I be so bold as to ask why you have not mentioned the Dutch, French and Americans with regard to their rather longer history of slave ownership?

tac

pedroeibar1

tac foley wrote: »

Mr Cameron et al are indeed VERY long-term benficiaries of the slave trade, which was ended in the UK in 1807.

There can be very few institutions either in England or Ireland under British rule that did not benefit from the use of remote slavery in one form or another. Almost every item of clothing on the backs of every man, woman and child in these islands was made from raw material picked by slaves, and the sugar in your tea likewise.

May I be so bold as to ask why you have not mentioned the Dutch, French and Americans with regard to their rather longer history of slave ownership?

tac

Tac,
I would hope that you are just expressing yourself badly. What is your point? The info is available on citizens of these islands form records in these islands. UCL spent three years drawing together 46,000 records and have disseminated the data, FREE. Why should they bother with the antics of other nations? I for one am grateful to them because it is of historic interest. It is a reasonably good site and is far better than anything the Irish Govt has done for the €*&%## 'Gathering' for all their BS!

It is 'Red Top' style reporting when the London Indo tries to make a big deal about what somebody’s ancestor did. It shows a total lack of comprehension of history, of what ancestry and genealogy are about and with that level of bias and innuendo it is IMO highly unprofessional reporting.

I do not believe myself to be ‘special’ as a result of what one of my ancestors did in a war, parliament, charity, rebellion, or whatever. Nor do I judge them, because they were what they were in a different era, they did what was done in the times that were in it and got on with life, including the creation of it that ended up with ME. Why should anyone have a hang-up over an ancestor owning a few slaves?

Personally, I’ll have to wait to see, the records are not yet up for my kinsman in Antigua in the 1700’s, sugar plantation owner. He died, young, yellow fever, I have yet to research how/when the estate was sold, but it is still there today. And if they do have records that go back that far and if they do find some details I will be very pleased:)

chasm

tac foley wrote: »

Mr Cameron et al are indeed VERY long-term benficiaries of the slave trade, which was ended in the UK in 1807.

There can be very few institutions either in England or Ireland under British rule that did not benefit from the use of remote slavery in one form or another. Almost every item of clothing on the backs of every man, woman and child in these islands was made from raw material picked by slaves, and the sugar in your tea likewise.

May I be so bold as to ask why you have not mentioned the Dutch, French and Americans with regard to their rather longer history of slave ownership?

tac

Why would i ? I quoted a small bit from the article as i thought it might be of more interest than just posting a link to the database , if you don't like the article you could always write to the UK indo or the journalist and take it up with them.

jonniebgood1

tac foley wrote: »

There can be very few institutions either in England or Ireland under British rule that did not benefit from the use of remote slavery in one form or another.

What institutions benefited from the use of slavery Tac?

The main benificiaries of the slave trade were private families with interests in colonial enterprises that relied on hundreds of slaves as their workforce.

tac foley

I'm sorry that I seem to have touched a nerve here somehow - gentlemen, please read your PM.

I have nothing to contribute to this thread.

tac

pedroeibar1

tac foley wrote: »

I'm sorry that I seem to have touched a nerve here somehow - gentlemen, please read your PM.

I have nothing to contribute to this thread.

tac

Tac,
I received your PM and it is your decision if you want to post it publicly. I still believe that you have a skewed view on this topic and miss the point. It is simple – the topic is about historic data, it showed how many people on these islands owned slaves. There was a mass of data on what happened at emancipation, it was collated, processed and posted by UCL. The data did not extend to owners in Belgium, the US or wherever, so frankly, trying to drag ‘them’ in is totally irrelevant. If you do, FWIW, in the early 1800’s one of the biggest slave-owners in North America was an Irishman, Pierce Butler. Slavery was nothing new to the Irish; they were at it for centuries, that is how a guy named Patrick ended up over here in 432.

Fratton Fred

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

What institutions benefited from the use of slavery Tac?

The main benificiaries of the slave trade were private families with interests in colonial enterprises that relied on hundreds of slaves as their workforce.

It depends how you define institutions I suppose.

Cork city did well as did waterford, thanks to merchants there servicing the slave ships. Irish traders also profited very nicely from the triangular trade.

Interesting article in the journal http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/irish-slave-traders-joe-oshea-murder-mutiny-mayhem-646357-Oct2012

jonniebgood1

Fratton Fred wrote: »

It depends how you define institutions I suppose.

Cork city did well as did waterford, thanks to merchants there servicing the slave ships. Irish traders also profited very nicely from the triangular trade.

Interesting article in the journal http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/irish-slave-traders-joe-oshea-murder-mutiny-mayhem-646357-Oct2012

An institution in this case I would take to be an organisation or company.

pedroeibar1

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

An institution in this case I would take to be an organisation or company.

Probably none of those around 200 years later - even if one was, it's ownership/ancestry would be very diluted.
Apologies seem to be big business, everyone is at it, even the Africans themselves
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/18/africans-apologise-slave-trade

Peregrinus

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

What institutions benefited from the use of slavery Tac?

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

An institution in this case I would take to be an organisation or company.

The Church of England received compensation on the emancipation of slaves which it owned in (I think) Barbados. From memory, they had been left a plantation, plus associated slaves, and they kept it running and used the profits to support a bible college. (The college still exists; I think it's now a teacher training college.)

The East India Company both traded in and employed slaves, though it has to be said that this was a minor part of it's overall activities. And it also has to be said that in time it abolished slavery in the parts of India that it controlled. For most of its existence the Royal Africa Company existed largely for the purpose of paticipating in the slave trade. The infamous South Sea Company traded in slaves before it dawned on them that there was more money to be made in financial speculation. The Guinea Company traded in slaves, though this wasn't its main activity.

Very few companies which exist today also existed at the time when the slave trade was legal, so finding a company which itself owned slaves will be difficult. But a great many business which exist today were initially capitalised with funds amassed through slave trading or through the use of slave labour.

Barclay's Bank's main line of business, in the early days, was extending credit to the Liverpool slave trade. The same would be true of other, now largely forgotten banks, which have merged into todays existing banks. (Barclays did in fact end up owning slaves directly as well, when creditors defaulted on their loans and mortgages were exercised over plantations and their stock-in-trade, including the slaves. No doubt other banks also found themselves in this position from time to time. But the bulk of the profits that banks made out of slavery were not through owning slaves themselves, but through advancing capital to people who did.)

The British textile industry was heavily dependent on the slave trade. That didn't involve mill-owners owning slaves; it involved British-manufactured textiles being shipped to West Africa and exchanged for slaves, who where then shipped to American and the Carribean and exchanged for sugar, which was then brought back to the UK and sold, which is how the textile-producers got paid. Plus, a number of British textile producers had large and lucrative contracts for clothing slaves.

All Souls College, Oxford didn't, I think, own any slaves directly, but it received a very substantial endowment which represented, basically, the accumulated profits and capital value of a large slave plantation owned by the donor - the Codrington Library bears his name to this day. Other Oxford and Cambridge colleges would have benefitted similarly, if perhaps not on the same scale, and it's not impossible that some of them did own slave plantations directly as part of their endowments (which were considerable), but I don't know of any specific cases.

And of course lots of churches and charitable and civic institutions in towns like Bristol would have been paid for by wealthy locals whose money came from slave labour. Again, it's not impossible that some of them became slave-owners themselves, through legacies, or that they acquired an interest in slave-owning partnerships.

The bottom line is that Britain would probably have been a wealthy country even without any involvement in the slave trade or slave economies, through the production of food and wool, and its growing industrial base. But the link with slavery played a large part in leveraging Britain's natural wealth and turning the country into what was, in the 18th century, a global economic superpower. The industrial revolution relied on massive capital investment which was substantially fuelled with money earned in the slave economy, and most British economic and financial success stories of the time were very little removed from the slave trade, connected with it if not through their activities then through their source of investment capital.

Seanchai

Very interesting guy was talking with Seán Moncrieff yesterday or the day before about the abolition of slavery. Two points he made:

1) Large parts of the British economy had a massive vested interest in the maintenance of slavery via their need for cheap raw materials from the slave plantations to supply the British textile industry. I had forgotten that, and the support which the (officially neutral) British government gave for the Confederate side as a result.

2) In the US slavery actually continued long after it was abolished. The 13th Amendment didn't abolish slavery entirely as it had a clause "except as a punishment for a crime". What happened, therefore, is that black people would be found guilty of a crime, given a fine they could never pay and as a result the fine was transferred into a sentence of slave labour. Very enlightening history. Anybody know if slavery is still legal in the United States under the above condition?

Seanchai

Ironically, under the Alabama Claims agreement between the US and Britain the former was given damages by the latter because it had built warships for the Confederacy.

Any chance that the United States will be open to similar claims for the damage its weapons are doing across the world?

Peregrinus

Seanchai wrote: »

. . . In the US slavery actually continued long after it was abolished. The 13th Amendment didn't abolish slavery entirely as it had a clause "except as a punishment for a crime". What happened, therefore, is that black people would be found guilty of a crime, given a fine they could never pay and as a result the fine was transferred into a sentence of slave labour. Very enlightening history. Anybody know if slavery is still legal in the United States under the above condition?

The Thirteenth Amendment provides that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Slavery is the condition of being owned, so that you can be bought and sold; involuntary servitude is the condition of being obliged to work without your own agreement.

The “except as punishment” language was inserted so as not to abolish sentences of “hard labour” – prison sentences which included an obligation to do work, which were then common in the US and many other countries (and indeed are still not uncommon). And it may well be that freed slaves found themselves doing forced labour again, after being convicted of a crime and sentenced to hard labour. As far as I know, the courts have always treated the "except" language as applying only to involuntary servitude, not to slavery, which is absolutely forbidden.

So prisoners were never, sofar as I know, sentenced to be slaves. did this matter? Yes, they could not be sold. And their children were not born into slavery. Plus, so far as I know, a sentence of hard labour was always for a fixed term; you couldn’t get hard labour for life. So – if you lived – you would eventually be freed again.

Prison work programmes still exist in the US, but I don’t know whether they are mandatory, or whether prisoners have to volunteer for them.

pedroeibar1

Peregrinus wrote: »

Prison work programmes still exist in the US, but I don’t know whether they are mandatory, or whether prisoners have to volunteer for them.

It depends on the State; most prisons in the US are privately run on a 'for profit' basis. Generally prisoners are 'obliged' to work and if they refuse they lose privileges and remission of sentence, so it can be seen as coercion. Periodically labour leaders speak out on the topic, as the minimal labour cost of prisoner-workers drastically undercuts union rates. There is a good article on what is happening with prison ‘slave labour’ here

Excerpts:

Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 14 prison factories, more than 3,000 prisoners manufacture electronic equipment for land, sea and airborne communication. UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor, with 110 factories at 79 federal penitentiaries.

and

Major corporations profiting from the slave labor of prisoners include Motorola, Compaq, Honeywell, Microsoft, Boeing, Revlon, Chevron, TWA, Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer.
IBM, Texas Instruments and Dell get circuit boards made by Texas prisoners. Tennessee inmates sew jeans for Kmart and JCPenney. Tens of thousands of youth flipping hamburgers for minimum wages at McDonald’s wear uniforms sewn by prison workers, who are forced to work for much less.

Bullrush

http://www.businesspost.ie/#!story/Home/News/New+database+sheds+light+on+Ireland's+slave+trade+connections/id/19410615-5218-513d-e15c-762701279266

Not something you think about, that Ireland was connected to the slave trade. This must have required one of those "mental reservation" type deals from the people involved. They accepted that slavery was wrong, yet they still had to be able to profit from it. You would have thought the slaves would get the compensation!

jonniebgood1

Threads merged as they are similar, altered original name to reflect both.
Mod

laoch na mona

18th century Ireland was a different sort of place you had the landed gentry which ran the show while rich Catholics and protestants who were not gentry dabbled with enlightened ideas and wanted their say in elections while the mass of the poor simple survived got up to a bit of whiteboyism now and then

so saying Ireland benefited is an oxymoron there was no Ireland to benefit the rich did of course but they were largely an extension of the british gentry

Peregrinus

Ireland wasn't hugely connected with the slave trade, by comparison with Britain - not because we were any more virtuous, but because were were poorer. The "triangular trade" started with the British textile industry producing goods which could be exported to West Africa and (in effect) exchanged for slaves; Ireland produced few such goods. Plus, British navigation laws strongly advantaged British ports over Irish ports. And the Irish landed gentry, while prosperous compared to the peasantry, were mostly not prosperous enough to go out and buy slave plantations in Barbados (unless they also had income from interests in Britain, which of course many of them had.)

So I suspect we will find that comparatively little of the compensation paid on the emancipation of slaves went to Irish slaveholders, as opposed to British slaveholders - certainly much less than the relative populations of the two countries might suggest.