United Kingdom

During the eighteenth century, Liverpool was the slave-trading capital of the United Kingdom. The port city controlled 80 percent of the British slave trade (nearly 40 percent of the European trade). In addition to its strategic geographic location, the construction of the first commercial wet dock in the nation, known as the Old Dock, made Liverpool a hub for shipping. Slave ships made in Liverpool carried more than 1.5 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. The city also excelled in the production of iron and cotton goods, which were used for trade in West Africa to purchase enslaved people. Liverpool’s legacy during the slave trade also contributed to the establishment of Europe’s oldest Black community (Liverpool-born Blacks). Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, enslaved people, fugitives, sailors, domestic servants, and children of African leaders built communities that profoundly shaped the economic, social, and cultural life of the city. While racial slavery was officially abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833, Liverpool continued to play a predominant role in trade and manufacturing between Britain and its overseas colonies.

Interviews conducted in Liverpool for The Unfinished Conversations Series trace the lasting impacts of the slave trade in the present day while highlighting the multi-generational struggles of Liverpool’s Black community. Community members testified to the whitewashing of British history and offered family histories that reveal a dynamic Black consciousness movement in Liverpool. Interviewees also spoke about structural racism and the lack of access to employment, education, and health care amongst the city’s vibrant Afro-Diasporic community. The interviews suggest that reckoning with the history and contemporary legacies of the slave trade can lay the foundation for celebrating and uplifting Liverpool’s Black history.