Episode 53 - Slave Wealth and British Industry: the case of Edward Protheroe

Bristol History Podcast

This week I spoke with amateur historian Steven Carter to discuss his research on how profits from the slave trade were fed back into British industry. Focussing on Edward Protheroe - a feted coal industrialist in the Forest of Dean in the early 19th century - Steven has traced how a substantial amount of the Protheroe family wealth was derived first from the slave trade and later from the labour of enslaved people on sugar plantations. During our chat we discussed the surprising and sometimes obscure ways that profits from the transatlantic slave trade and slavery-reliant industries were channelled back into the British economy.