Slave-trade wealth was embedded in Britain’s financial system, research finds

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The Bank of England and the British financial system were for centuries deeply involved in the enslavement and transatlantic trafficking of millions of African people, according to new research on Britain’s slavery history.

Research by historians compiling the Register of British Slave Traders has found that the scale of the financial system’s involvement in enslavement is greater than previously known or acknowledged. The Bank of England, the central bank owned by the government since nationalisation by Clement Attlee’s Labour administration in 1946, had dozens of financiers involved in its foundation who were also significant investors in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans.

Dr Michael Bennett of the University of Sheffield, who has conducted extensive research on the Bank’s historical involvement in enslavement, has found that 24 directors were investors in the trafficking of enslaved African people. Four were among the London elites who were founding directors of the Bank in 1694. The other 20 were in office at Threadneedle Street over the next century.

The last, Christopher Puller, was a shipper of weapons for the slave trade and co-owner of a 1786 voyage that trafficked enslaved people from the Gambia to Jamaica, according to the register. Puller was a director for 11 years before he died in 1789. Nine of the 24 were also governors of the Bank.

“Slave traders and their wealth were firmly embedded within Britain’s, especially London’s, private banks and financial corporations during the 17th and 18th centuries. They shaped the development of the financial system,” he said. “Banks and other institutions, like insurers, provided the financial services that supported, and made great wealth from, the transatlantic slave economy.