The short version
- The Global Threads project connects the wealth of Manchester’s political and business leaders to the enslavement of Africans in the Caribbean.
- Hugh Hornby Birley, who led the charge at Peterloo, benefited from family ties to slave-trading voyages and plantation estates.
- Sir George Philips, a founder of the Manchester Guardian, owned a Jamaican plantation, highlighting contradictions in liberal reform movements.
A new historical analysis has brought to light the deep financial connections between Manchester’s industrial elite and the transatlantic slave trade, reshaping the understanding of the city’s role in 19th-century global capitalism. The Global Threads research project, a public history initiative, examines how the wealth that empowered local leaders was derived from the exploitation of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. This work suggests that the struggles for political representation in Manchester were not isolated domestic issues but were inextricably linked to colonial coercion and imperial profit.
The study focuses on two prominent figures associated with the Peterloo massacre of 1819: Hugh Hornby Birley, the yeomanry commander who ordered the charge against peaceful protesters, and Sir George Philips, a key benefactor of the Manchester Guardian. Both men were members of the Portico Library, an institution that served as a hub for Manchester’s business community. The research indicates that their social standing and economic power were sustained by family investments in slavery and colonial enterprises, challenging the notion that liberal reformers and reactionary authorities operated within separate moral or economic frameworks.
Birley’s connection to the slave trade is traced through his family’s financial ties to Daniel Backhouse, a Liverpool merchant who funded numerous voyages trafficking Africans. Records show that Backhouse’s company profited from over 27,000 enslaved people transported between 1773 and 1807. Some of these individuals were sent to St Lucia, where they worked on sugar estates such as Rabot. The Birley family continued to benefit from these connections even after emancipation in the British Empire, later supporting the Confederate States during the American Civil War to protect their cotton interests.
Sir George Philips presents a similar contradiction within the liberal movement. While he helped establish the Manchester Guardian as a response to the violence at Peterloo, advocating for press freedom and political reform, he simultaneously owned the Success plantation in Hanover, Jamaica. This dual role underscores the complex relationship between British liberalism and colonial exploitation. The project highlights how Philips and his peers described their economic system as transatlantic, relying on both domestic industrial growth and overseas labor extraction.
The Peterloo massacre occurred when approximately 60,000 people gathered at St Peter’s Field to demand political representation. At the time, only a small fraction of men in Britain had voting rights, while workers faced high bread prices due to protective tariffs on grain. The yeomanry, composed largely of Tory businessmen, charged into the crowd, resulting in deaths and injuries. Authorities blamed the protesters, but contemporary critics, including abolitionist Robert Wedderburn, condemned the violence as state-sanctioned murder.
Wedderburn, a Jamaican-born preacher, argued that the forces oppressing British laborers were the same ones enslaving Africans. His own family was embedded in the plantation economy; his uncle owned several estates in Jamaica where people trafficked from regions such as Old Calabar worked under brutal conditions. Wedderburn’s perspective offered a radical critique of the era, linking the disenfranchisement of Manchester workers to the dehumanization of enslaved people across the Atlantic.
The Global Threads project aims to weave together these disparate narratives to show how colonialism influenced domestic politics. By examining the lives of Birley, Philips, and Wedderburn, the research illustrates that slavery was not a distant abstraction but a present reality that shaped local power dynamics. The violence at Peterloo can be seen as part of a broader pattern of coercion used to maintain economic hierarchies built on racialized labor.
This reassessment of Manchester’s history has implications for how public institutions remember and interpret the past. The Portico Library, located near the site of the massacre, is being re-examined in light of its role in facilitating information exchange among elites whose wealth depended on slavery. Understanding these connections provides a more comprehensive view of the origins of modern capitalism and the ongoing struggles for equality.
As historians continue to uncover these links, the narrative of British industrialization becomes more nuanced. It is no longer sufficient to view the rise of Manchester’s textile industry as solely a story of technological innovation and domestic labor disputes. The global context, including the suffering of enslaved Africans, must be integrated into any accurate account of this period. This approach encourages a deeper reflection on how historical injustices continue to influence contemporary social structures.
The findings from Global Threads contribute to a growing body of scholarship that seeks to decolonize historical narratives. By highlighting the interdependence of local and global economies, the project challenges readers to reconsider the foundations of modern society. It serves as a reminder that the fight for justice in Manchester was part of a larger, transatlantic struggle against exploitation and oppression.
Sources behind this briefing
Go to the original reporting
- The Guardian World↗Study explores links between 19th-century Manchester workers and enslaved Africans in Caribbean
