The City of London and slavery: evidence from the first dock companies, 1795–18001

Abstract

Through analysing the composition of the founding shareholders in the West India and London Docks, this article explores the connections between the City of London and the slave economy on the eve of the abolition of the slave trade. It establishes that over one‐third of docks investors were active in slave‐trading, slave‐ownership, or the shipping, trading, finance, and insurance of slave produce. It argues that the slave economy was neither dominant nor marginal, but instead was fully integrated into the City's commercial and financial structure, contributing materially alongside other key sectors to the foundations of the nineteenth‐century City.