Britain’s railway exists as a legacy of slavery
September 11, 2020 8:17 AM   Subscribe

 
Capital is a fascinating thing; it provides labor increased power in creating new wealth, yet it is already a form of wealth. Same but different!

An ounce of gold or pound of silver does not know how it got added to your accounts, but it gives you this power nonetheless.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:58 AM on September 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


The canal system in the UK was also funded largely by the slave trade.

Bristol, London and Liverpool had ports that thrived on the slave trade, and by the second half of the 18th century it is estimated that around three-quarters of all European slaving ships left from Liverpool.
One reason for the dominance of this Lancashire port could be that it was served well by canals and rivers. Textiles from Lancashire and Yorkshire, salt from Cheshire, pottery from Staffordshire and metal goods (horrifically including chains and guns) from the Midlands were all transported along the inland waterways to Liverpool – from where they became part of the trade triangle.

The International Slavery Museum is located in Liverpool’s Albert Dock
posted by Lanark at 9:26 AM on September 11, 2020 [3 favorites]


Gareth recently was a guest on WTYP. The man knows railways.

Fascinating read, it's sad that this fact has been unacknowledged until recently. I'd go further and say that Britain and indeed Europe's fortunes are inextricably linked with the slave trade, just as the disadvantages experienced by colonised nations are. And this is not some obscure historical fact; as Gareth mentions, the debt incurred in paying off these slave owners was only repaid in 2015.

At the other end, I'm reminded of a bit John Green posted recently about the railways built by Britain in Sierra Leone (YT: Why Are Poor Countries Poor?). Spoiler: the railways we built were not some act of philanthropy; they were built to expedite the extraction of mineral wealth.

Here in Liverpool the legacy of the slave trade is all around, if you know what to look for. The tombstones in Toxteth Park cemetery are some of the most ostentatious and phallic monuments I've ever seen, and they all date from the city's heyday, as does the house I'm writing this from. That heyday was 100% the result of the slave trade, and it's subsequent decline was a part of that. But the end of slavery and payment of reparations (albeit to slave-owners rather than the damned enslaved) didn't cancel out that historical dividend: on the contrary, that benefit remains to this day. The grand libraries and other public buildings in Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and elsewhere still stand, and the museums STILL refuse to return artefacts looted from all around the world.

I think it's a mistake to think of this as the past. There are after all still people living in slavery today, and instead of nation states looting artefacts and mineral wealth, that task now falls to enormous corporations instead.
posted by Acey at 10:48 PM on September 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


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