The British iron industries boomed on the back of slavery - chains, padlocks, fetters, the metal used in ship construction (slave ships were sheathed with copper), and hundreds of thousands of firearms that were shipped to West Africa to exchange for African slaves. In addition, all the tools used on the slave plantations were manufactured in Britain. Matthew Boulton developed extensive business dealings with the plantations from his factory at Soho in Birmingham.
Along with James Watt, Boulton developed new steam engines that were sold to the sugar plantations, which used steam power to replace the traditional wind, water or horse power - and so needed fewer slaves. Although Boulton was an abolitionist, there were many iron manufacturers in the Midlands who objected to the abolition campaign, who argued that their business depended on the trade to and from Africa (for slaves) and with the slave plantations. Soho metal industry supplied the equipment for the slave ships, and exports to Africa and the plantations.
Commercial interests conflicted with principles. Matthew Boulton and James Watt were businessmen and were keen to do business with West Indian slave owners. This is despite the fact that from 1776 the Society of Friends (Quakers) in England and Pennsylvania had officially required its members to free their slaves. They explored the prospect of selling steam engines to slave plantations in the Caribbean and in 1783 Boulton had entertained Mr Pennant, a notorious slave owner who owned huge estates in Jamaica and sought steam engines for his plantations there. In the Boulton & Watt collection, there is a printed map of the City of Kingston, Jamaica, by Major John Bonnet Pechon, Engineer, 1809. [Ref: MS 3147/5/1479]
In 1790 Samuel Galton recommended to John Dawson, a Liverpool-based slave trader, that he should contact Boulton and Watt and about supplying steam engines for Dawson’s sugar works in Trinidad. The latter wrote to Boulton and Watt on 9 November 1790:
"Sirs, I have been considering of the conversation Mr Galton & I had respecting the merits of the Steam Engine as I am going to have some Sugar Works erected in the Island of Trinidad & wish to have your Ideas & the opinion of experienc'd people how far it would be practicable to erect them on that plan: the want of Wind & Water the principle on which they are at present work'd, retards the progress so very much, particularly in crop time, That if an engine could be invented with a certainty of answering the purpose, the Rolers so contriv'd that if possible to have a greater effect in the pressing of the Cane than what is at present used but I must observe to you that without wood fire will answer the same purpose as coal, the undertaking would be very hazardous, Coals could not be laid in at that island for less than 71/6 pr Chaldron, the duty being 15/6.
I shall thank you to give me every information of the practicability of this scheme for could it be made to answer, a large field would be open in that quarter of the Globe, the King of Spain having granted a loan of a million Dollars to the Inhabitants of Trinidad for the purpose of erecting Sugar Works & purchase of Slaves which I am to have the supplying of. Should be happy to give every encouragement in the introduction of such a plan with yourself & I can engage the Governor will do the same.
Your reply will oblige Sir
John Dawson"
Boulton and Watt’s reply to Dawson does not survive, but their partnership supplied steam engines to plantations in the West Indies.
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