Research Finds Slave-Trade Wealth Embedded in Britain’s Financial System

Historians compiling the Register of British Slave Traders found that the scale of the financial system’s involvement was greater than previously known or acknowledged. The Bank of England, the central bank owned by the government since its nationalisation by Clement Attlee’s Labour administration in 1946, had dozens of financiers involved in its foundation who were also significant investors in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans, the research found.

Dr Michael Bennett of the University of Sheffield, who has carried out extensive research on the Bank’s historical involvement in enslavement, found that 24 directors were investors in the trafficking of enslaved African people. Four were among the London elites who were founding directors of the Bank in 1694. The other 20 held office at Threadneedle Street over the next century. Nine of the 24 were also governors of the Bank.

The last of the 24, Christopher Puller, was a shipper of weapons for the slave trade and co-owner of a 1786 voyage that trafficked enslaved people from the Gambia to Jamaica, according to the register. Puller was a director for 11 years before he died in 1789.

Bennett also researched the founding subscribers to the Bank of England and found that at least 30 invested in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans. At their head were the king and queen of the day, William III and Mary II, who held shares in the Royal African Company. Bennett said it was clear that wealth generated from the slave trade formed part of the Bank’s initial capital.

“Slave traders and their wealth were firmly embedded within Britain’s, especially London’s, private banks and financial corporations during the 17th and 18th centuries. They shaped the development of the financial system,” Bennett said. “Banks and other institutions, like insurers, provided the financial services that supported, and made great wealth from, the transatlantic slave economy. The Bank of England supported this system throughout, and directly provided financial services to the slave trade. Its clients included the Royal African Company and the South Sea Company.”

An archetypal example in the register is John Rudge, the MP for Evesham. He was a director of the Bank between 1699 and 1740, and governor in 1713-15. Rudge was also a shareholder and assistant, or director, in the Royal African Company and deputy governor of the South Sea Company.

The register’s findings add to research by historians behind the Legacies of British Slavery archive at University College London, which documents owners of enslaved people on plantations. That research found that 16 past governors of the Bank of England and 26 directors had a financial interest in the ownership of enslaved people and plantations in the period before abolition in 1833. The Bank itself, and the Treasury, were centrally involved in paying out £20m, equivalent to £23bn today according to one calculation, in “compensation” to enslavers under the abolition legislation. Nothing was paid to the people who had been enslaved and trafficked.

The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 prompted several high street banks and financial institutions to acknowledge their historical involvement in slavery. Dr Nicholas Draper, who led the Legacies of British Slavery research, was also a lead investigator for the register and discovered many more historic slave traders who were founders of private banks and other financial organisations.

Research by Bennett after the Black Lives Matter protests found that the Bank of England had owned 599 enslaved people on two plantations. An exhibition at the Bank in 2022 included the names of the enslaved people. Most of the men, women and children listed had European names such as Pierre, Catherine and Alexandre, with no information about the country from which they were taken. The Bank also acknowledged and apologised for past governors and directors having been involved in the slave trade.

Humphry Morice, a longtime director and governor from 1727 to 1729, was also an MP and defrauded the Bank to fund his trafficking operations. In an article published on the Bank’s website, Prof Matthew David Mitchell described Morice as “the biggest London-based trafficker of enslaved human beings from Africa to the British colonies in America.” Morice was responsible for equipping about 110 ship voyages between 1704 and 1732, transporting more than 30,000 enslaved men, women and children to Jamaica, Barbados, Virginia and elsewhere in America, Mitchell wrote. “This was his principal commercial activity, and it is for this that he must chiefly be remembered.”

While the Bank has acknowledged this history and apologised, the Treasury has not publicly done so, according to The Guardian.