In little more than a century, Manchester grew from a small market town into the world’s first industrial city. While the factors behind this transformation were complex, what’s clear is how integral systems of racial slavery in the Americas were to British industrialisation: the raw materials they produced, the market demand they created and the capital they generated for reinvestment. These two worlds are connected by an ironclad thread.
The Manchester Guardian’s founder and early backers were thoroughly embedded, leading members of the city’s industrial elite. Much of their wealth and platform were built on profits derived from cotton importation, the textile industry and, in one case, plantation ownership.
This interactive is an attempt to explain those connections and their wider impact to raise awareness of an often neglected part of history.
By its nature, it can only tell part of an immensely complex and harrowing story that spans centuries. It is therefore unable to truly do justice to all the lives and communities affected by these historical calamities.
