Global Threads

Throughout the entire transatlantic slave trade, the Royal African Company transported more captive Africans to the Americas than any other institution. Growing conflict, combined with the English domination of West African markets, led to enslaved Africans replacing gold as the primary export. The final six years of the 17th century were marked by the Komenda Wars, a series of battles won by the English and their African allies. The opening up of the trade allowed slave raids by African trading partners to proliferate. The number of captives shipped by Britain trebled following the 1698 Act.

This Act was one of many from across the British colonies which served to control enslaved people and further strip their humanity by depriving them of adequate clothing. It forced them to wear cheap, low-quality cloth, much of which was imported from England and Wales. The fabric wore hard against skin due its tough and unforgiving texture. Despite this, it was used to make a variety of garments such as trousers and skirts. After abolition, those later freed from the shackles of slavery described the fabric as “needles sticking one all the time.”

The northern textile industries trace their origins back centuries, where spinning and weaving were done at home at night and during the winter to provide extra income. As global markets grew, more landless rural people were drawn into the “putting out” system, becoming reliant on income from wool manufacturing. By 1770 wool was the largest industrial sector in Britain, with power increasingly in the hands of merchants, who built trading halls in towns like Wakefield, Leeds, Penistone, and Halifax. More people became dependent upon textile production for income. British woollen cloth production grew by 800% between 1700 and 1800.

This cloth style was named for the West Yorkshire town of Penistone where local sheep breeds produced coarse but hard-wearing wool. This object is the only known surviving example of the British-made textiles that clothed millions of enslaved people across North America and the Caribbean, bringing huge wealth to Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire. The Fitzherbert family owned Turner’s Hall, a sugar plantation in Barbados. The records where this object was found show that large quantities of Penistone were sent to this estate and also reveal the names of the 140 people they enslaved who were forced to wear this material.

The 1793 invention of the cotton gin, mechanising the cleaning of cotton, fuelled transformation on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1800, cotton had overtaken wool as Britain’s largest textile industry. In 1803 the United States almost doubled in size when it “purchased” the right to the Louisiana Territory from France. This land was rich in valuable resources. It was also the ancestral home to many thousands of Indigenous Americans. The subsequent spread of plantation slavery across the continent allowed the U.S. to dominate the world market. By 1860, raw cotton accounted for 61% of total U.S. exports.

The largest major slave revolt to take place in Barbados took place over 3 days in April 1816. The rebellion was named for an enslaved driver named Bussa who organised it with a group of male and female enslaved leaders. Planned in response to the brutal conditions of life on Barbadian plantations, the rebels hit back at enslavers by burning cane fields and destroying property. 50 freedom fighters died in battle and 70 were executed in the field by the time British authorities regained control. Whilst it was ultimately unsuccessful, the revolt created grave doubts about whether slavery could persist.

By the 1850s, 75% of Lancashire’s cotton imports were supplied by plantations in the United States. This expansion had been made possible through the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of five Indigenous nations from south-eastern states by the United States government. The Trail of Tears refers to the state-sanctioned removal of around 100,000 Indigenous Americans from their ancestral homelands, with an estimated 15,000 deaths occurring along the 5,000 mile journey. Although removals took place throughout the 1830s, the term is sometimes applied specifically to the 1838-9 displacement of the Cherokee which resulted in the deaths of a quarter of the population.

After decades of abolitionists rallying support in parliament and through wider protest, the Abolition Act of 1833 replaced slavery with enforced “apprenticeship”. In 1838, full emancipation was finally granted to over 800,000 people in the British Empire. Despite freedom, those that were formerly enslaved were not entitled to compensation, backpay, or land. Instead, enslavers kept the land and were compensated £20 million for their loss of human property. The UK finished paying these debts in 2015. A recent report by the University of West Indies calculated that Britain may owe £18.8 trillion in reparations for the economic impacts of slavery.

The Indian Rebellion took place across North and Central India and Bengal during 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company which exercised political and sovereign power over much of South Asia. These revolts were a retaliation against the harsh land taxes and reforms imposed on millions and the alienation of local elites from decision-making. The eventual outcome of these rebellions was that the Company was dismantled and replaced with the British Raj. A Proclamation of Governance was issued that generations of independence campaigners would force into reality and allowed industrial development to be fostered.

Following the victory of the northern states, June 19th 1865 finally marked an end to slavery in the United States. War and Emancipation also permanently shifted global textile markets. Opening two months earlier, Blackburn Cotton Exchange would barely be used for the trade it was built for.

For the four million formerly enslaved, freedom brought new struggles. Many were forced into an exploitative system of tenant farming known as sharecropping which allowed the U.S. to retain its status as the world’s leading cotton producer. African Americans were widely discriminated against through new “Jim Crow” laws, which enforced racial segregation.