at least, Bristol sales were rather insignificant compared to those in London. 67
From the 1730s onwards, India consumed an increasing amount of Swansea
copper that was often in the guise of “Japanese” copper, which were red coloured ingots favoured in the Asian market. 68 It was the demand from Asia that
stimulated the expansion and development of many Swansea copperworks; the
establishment of Middle Bank and Upper Bank copperworks in the 1750s and
the transferral of smelting operations at Llangyfelach to a new site at Upper Forest led to a surge in output. 69 Accordingly, British copper production increased from two thousand tons in the early 1760s to four thousand tons by the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. 70 This growth would not have been possible if the African and Caribbean markets were the only consumers of copper. 71 Stephen Hughes emphasised that other markets actually dominated;
the 11 tons of slave goods produced for Lockwood, Morris & Co. in 1768 was
outweighed by those manufactured for the domestic market and the East India Company. 72 The copper supplied for the domestic market was more than five
times the amount produced for the slave trade, while the copper provided for
the East India Company amounted to approximately 73 tons, which suggests that these were the main markets for copper. 73 This does not mean that trade with
Asia did not indirectly facilitate the slave trade, however, as some of the copper
67 The National Library of Wales Archives, ‘Llangyfelach Copper Works. The produce of copper ore and the copper wrought therein, 1733. Papers re: copper and lead smelting in Llangyfelach, 1727- 1733’, MS1501A cited in Miskell and Evans, p. 51. 68 Michael Faraday in Wales: Including Faraday’s Journal of His Tour through Wales in 1819, ed. by D. J. Thomas (Denbigh: Gwasg Gee, 1972), p. 36; and John Scoffern and others, The Useful Metals and their Alloys, including Mining Ventilation, Mining Jurisprudence, and Metallic Chemistry Employed in the Conversion of Iron, Copper, Tin, Zinc, Antimony and Lead Ores; with their Application to the Industrial Arts (London: Houlston and Wright, 1866), p. 551 cited in Miskell and Evans, p. 75; and H. V. Bowen, ‘Wales and the Making of British India during the Late Eighteenth Century’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 22 (2016), 90- 109 (pp. 105-7). 69 Miskell and Evans, p. 55. 70 John C. Symons, ‘The Mining and Smelting of Copper in England and Wales, 1760-1820’ (unpublished MA thesis, Coventry University, 2003), p. 73 cited in Miskell and Evans, p. 57. 71 Miskell and Evans, p. 51. 72 Hughes, p. 45. 73 Ibid.
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