Slavery and the City of London

PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES

Freedom has been central to the identity of the City of London for centuries. But from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth centuries, the African Slave Trade and Plantation Slavery in the Americas were key to London’s banking, insurance, shipping, manufacturing, commodity trades with Europe, gold and silver supply in London, and later merchant banks like Barings, Schroeder and Kleinwort. 

The City also benefited from the end of Slavery, as compensated emancipation liberated a flood of liquid capital and provided a £500,000 per annum income stream to its funders.