This article is a contribution from our recent collaboration with pupils at Cedar Mount Academy.
The transatlantic slave trade, also known as the Euro-American slave trade, was the process by which slave traders transported enslaved Africans to the Americas, mostly through the Caribbean. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, there was a regular slave trade that used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, which lasted until the end of European imperialism. Many of those who were transported as slaves through the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa who had been sold by other West African slave traders to Western European slave traders. Others had been caught directly by the slave traders in coastal raids that the slave traders themselves conducted.
As early as the late eighteenth century, there was evidence of Africans and Caribbeans in Manchester. Some of these people were what is known as ‘lascars’ (a lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland, or other land east of the Cape of Good Hope). In spite of Manchester’s close association with the slave trade, it was part of a growing campaign against slavery and participated in the fight against slavery. Some of the abolitionists were former enslaved Africans such as William Wells Brown, Henry Box Brown, Frederick Douglass, and James Watkins.
The Industrial Revolution in Greater Manchester was driven by the direct and indirect profits generated from slavery. In the northwest of England, cotton was the most important commodity, especially in the development of the towns of Bolton, Oldham, Manchester, and Rochdale, as well as in the growth of the textile industry. In 1807, the British removed most of the slave trade from the country, which culminated in the abolition of slavery by the British government in 1838. There was a system of American slavery that provided cotton to the nation until 1865. In the words of the Caribbean historian Eric Williams: “In Manchester, it is this tremendous dependence on the triangular trade that was the key to its success.”.Due to the transatlantic slave trade, Manchester has accumulated a great deal of wealth, which can be seen in the grand buildings that now stand in this city some examples can be seen in and around Mosley Street, Piccadilly Street, Portland Street, as well as in the many vast warehouses that can be found there. It was also necessary to develop new transport links to make it easier for raw cotton and processed goods to be transported within the region as well as to Liverpool, the port of export. The Bridgewater and Rochdale Canals and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway were the most significant.