The British Financialization of American Slavery

FAIN: FT-291793-23

John Martin Handel
University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)

Research and writing leading to a book on the British financial sector’s engagement with American slavery following British abolition in 1833. 

In 1833, Britain passed the Slave Emancipation Act and over the next five years gradually ended slavery throughout its empire. At the same time, British financiers and bankers began to re-invest their capital in slave societies throughout the world, especially in the U.S. South. Working alongside Southern planters, British bankers engineered new financial instruments that were backed by mortgaged slaves and sold them to British investors at home. During the age of abolition and reform, Britons ironically became slaveowners in new ways through London financial markets. Even though Britain may have abolished slavery, British finance capital continued to profit off of, and propagate slavery beyond the borders of Britain's formal empire.