The Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1780-1865: An insight into key historical members benefitting from transatlantic slavery

Abstract

Britain’s involvement in transatlantic slavery has been a growing focus of research and public debate in recent years. In 2020 a project was commissioned by the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society to look into links between its early members and transatlantic slavery, concentrating on the period from 1780 to 1865. A significant presence amongst learned societies worldwide, the Lit & Phil, while proud of the fact that many of its founders were abolitionists and reformers, had historically not been so transparent about members who supported slavery or profited from trading in slave-produced goods.

The research, which was carried out by scholars at the University of Central Lancashire, found that a significant number of early Lit & Phil members profited to varying degrees from links to the slave-based economies of the Black Atlantic. These members contributed to the transatlantic slave trade by stimulating demand for slave-produced cotton as enormous wealth flowed into Manchester through the scaled-up industrial capacity of its mills. They range from engineers James Watt, Richard Roberts, Sir William Fairbairn and Joseph Whitworth; to mill owners Peter Drinkwater, Robert Owen, James McConnel, John Kennedy, George and Adam Murray, and Samuel Greg; to slave-produced goods traders John Birley and Sir George Philips. Some were more directly involved in financing slavery and owning slaves, such as Benjamin Heywood, who invested in slave voyages, and George Hibbert, a plantation owner and anti-abolition campaigner.

In detailing how these individuals and their families and networks were connected to the transatlantic slave trade, this report addresses a longstanding gap in the information available on Lit & Phil members’ positions with respect to slavery during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its publication is evidence of the Lit & Phil’s willingness to enter into further dialogue about increasing diversity and inclusion within its own membership and engage more actively with contemporary demands for acknowledgement of their historical links to transatlantic slavery within a community that is still marked by racial prejudice and inequality.