Swansea and the Slave Trade: A Deep and Complex Relationship.
- HI-M62 – Cally Barlow
In the first half of the eighteenth century, Swansea District established
itself as a significant European smelting centre, which later transcended to international importance after 1750. 31 Between the 1770s and 1840s, Swansea’s industrial centre continually manufactured approximately one-third of the world’s smelted copper. 32 The discovery of copper ore reserves in Cornwall in the
1680s and the development of a new smelting method that was reliant on coal
meant that substantial volumes of copper could be produced domestically, thus
enabling Swansea’s smelters to compete with the smelting centres of central Europe and Scandinavia that utilised wood and charcoal. 33 The decline in Cornish
supplies and the alteration of tariff restrictions in the 1820s broadened the
export market beyond the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea and enabled foreign ores to be imported from countries such as Cuba, Chile, and Spain. 34 With these
developments, Swansea became “Copperopolis,” the centre of a global mining
and processing network that mobilised labour, technology, and capital across
31 Louise Miskell and Chris Evans, Swansea Copper: A Global History (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2020), p. 1; Stephen Hughes, Copperopolis: Landscapes of the Early Industrial Period in Swansea (London: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales, 2000), p. vii. 32 Christopher J. Schmitz, World Non-ferrous Metal Production and Prices, 1700-1976 (London: Frank Cass, 1979) cited in Miskell and Evans, p. 1. 33 Roger Burt, ‘The Transformation of the Non -Ferrous Metal Industries in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, The Economic History Review, 48.1 (1995), 23- 45 (p. 24) cited in Ceri Straw, ‘Swansea Copper and the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Bigger Picture?’ (unpublished MA thesis, Swansea University, 2009), p. 55; John Morton, ‘The Rise of the Modern Copper and Brass Industry in Britain, 1690 - 1750’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Birmingham, 1985), p. 148. 34 Chris Evans and Olivia Saunders, ‘A World of Copper: Globalizing the Industrial Revolution, 1830-70’, Journal of Global History, 10 (2015), 3-26 (pp. 3-4); Edmund Newell, ‘“Copperopolis”: The Rise and Fall of the Copper Industry in the Swansea District, 1826-1921’, Business History, 32.3 (1990), 75-97 (pp. 78-80) cited in Evans and Saunders, p. 9; Joanna Greenlaw, The Swansea Copper Barques and Cape Horners (Swansea: Joanna Greenlaw, 1999), p. 23.
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