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

Dozens of early directors and founding subscribers of the Bank of England were directly invested in the transatlantic slave trade, a new study of the Register of British Slave Traders reveals. Historian Michael Bennett identified 24 Bank directors who financed the trafficking of enslaved Africans, including four of the original 1694 founders and twenty who served over the next century. Among them was Christopher Puller, a weapons shipper and co‑owner of a 1786 Gambia‑to‑Jamaica voyage, who sat on the board for eleven years until his death in 1789. Nine of the twenty‑four also held the position of governor, underscoring how deeply slave‑derived wealth was woven into the institution’s leadership. The research shows that the Bank itself supplied financial services to major slave‑trading enterprises such as the Royal African Company and the South Sea Company, embedding the slave economy within Britain’s nascent financial system.

The findings expand earlier work by the Legacies of British Slavery project at University College London, which documented that 16 former Bank governors and 26 directors owned enslaved people or plantations before abolition in 1833. The British Treasury and the Bank later disbursed roughly £20 million—equivalent to about £23 billion today—to compensate slave owners after the 1833 emancipation act, while no compensation reached the formerly enslaved. Bennett’s research, prompted by the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, uncovered that the Bank owned 599 enslaved individuals on two plantations, an fact displayed in a 2022 exhibition that listed the enslaved people’s European‑styled names but omitted their origins. The Bank has publicly acknowledged and apologized for the involvement of past governors and directors, whereas the Treasury has remained silent, reflecting the government’s broader reluctance to discuss reparations or admit culpability for centuries of trafficking.

The revelations are intensifying calls for governmental accountability from Caribbean and African nations, as the newly documented connections increase pressure for formal acknowledgment and possible reparative measures. The Bank of England, while noting its thorough exploration of these links in the 2022 exhibition and expressing gratitude for Bennett’s collaboration, has not indicated further action beyond the apology. In contrast, other media institutions have responded more proactively; the Scott Trust, owner of the Guardian, launched a ten‑year restorative‑justice programme after its own research exposed the newspaper’s founder’s profits from slavery. The broader discourse now situates the Bank’s historic entanglement with the slave trade within a larger reckoning over Britain’s financial legacy and the ongoing debate over reparations and historical responsibility.

⚡ Effects Interpreter