Rereading Rembrandt: how the slave trade helped establish the golden age of Dutch painting

Sailko/The Mauritshuis/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Detail from Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting Two African Men.

The Conversation

February 01, 2025

The so-called golden age of Dutch painting in the 1600s coincided with an economic boom that had a lot to do with the transatlantic slave trade. But how did the slave trade shape the art market in the Netherlands? And how is it reflected in the paintings of the time?

This is the subject of a new book called Slavery and the Invention of Dutch Art by art historian Caroline Fowler. We asked about her study.

What was Dutch art about before slavery and what was the golden age?

The earliest paintings that would be called Dutch were predominantly religious. They were made for Christian devotion. In the 1500s, major divisions in the church led to a fragmentation of Christianity called the Reformation.

In this new religious climate, artists began to create new types of paintings, studying the world around them. They included landscapes, seascapes, still lifes, and interior scenes of their homes. Instead of working for the church, many painters began to work within an art market. There was a rising middle class that could afford to buy paintings.

Historically, this period in Dutch economic prosperity has been called the “golden age”. This is when many of the most famous Dutch painters worked, such as Rembrandt van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer.

Their work was made possible by a strong Dutch economy built on global trade networks. This included the transatlantic slave trade and the rise of the middle class. Although artists did not directly paint the transatlantic slave trade, in my book I argue that it is central to understanding the paintings produced in the 1600s as it made the economic market possible.

In turn, many of the types of painting that developed, like maritime scenes and interior scenes, are often obliquely or directly about international trade. The slave trade is a haunting presence in these images.

How did this play out within Dutch colonialism?

The new “middle class” consisted of economically prosperous merchants, artisans, lawyers and doctors. For many of the wealthiest merchants, their prosperity was fuelled by their investments in trade overseas. In land and plantations, and also commodities such as sugar, salt, mace and nutmeg.

Slavery was illegal within the boundaries of the Dutch Republic on the European continent. But it was widely practised within Dutch colonies around the world. Slavery was central to their trade overseas – from the inter-Asian slave network that made possible their domination in the export of nutmeg, to the use of enslaved labour on plantations in the Americas. It also contributed in less visible ways to Dutch economic prosperity, like the development of maritime insurance.
What was the relationship between artists and Dutch colonies?

In the new school of painting, artists would sometimes travel to the Dutch colonies. For example, Frans Post travelled to Dutch Brazil and painted the sugar plantations and mills. Another artist named Maria Sibylla Merian went to Dutch Suriname, where she studied butterflies and plants on the Dutch sugar plantations.

Both depict landscapes and the natural world but don’t directly engage with the profound dehumanisation of slavery, and an economic system dependent on enslaved labour. But this doesn’t mean that it’s absent in their sanitised renditions.

Among the sources that I used to think about the presence of the transatlantic slave trade in a culture that did not overtly depict it were inventories of paintings and early museum collections. Often the language in these sources differed from the painting in important ways. They demonstrate how the violence of the system emerges in unexpected places.

One inventory that describes paintings by Frans Post, for example, also narrates the physical punishment meted out if the enslaved tried to run away from the Dutch sugar plantations. This isn’t depicted in the painting, but it is part of the inventory that travelled beside the painting.

These moments reveal the profound presence of this system within Dutch painting, and point to the ways in which artists negotiated making this structure invisible in their paintings although they were not able to completely erase its presence.

How do you discuss Rembrandt’s paintings in your book?

Historically, studies of the transatlantic slave trade in early modern painting (about 1400-1700) have looked at paintings that directly depict either enslaved or Black individuals.

One of the points of this book is that this limits our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade in Dutch painting. A focus on blackness, for example, precludes understanding how whiteness is constructed at the same time. It fails to recognise the ways in which artists sought to diminish the presence of the slave trade in their sanitised rendition of Dutch society.

One painting that I use to think about this is Rembrandt van Rijn’s very famous work called Syndics of the Draper’s Guild. It’s a group portrait of wealthy, white merchants gathered around a table looking at a book of fabric samples.

Although there aren’t enslaved or black individuals depicted, this painting would be impossible without the transatlantic slave trade. Cloth from the Netherlands was often exchanged for enslaved people in west Africa, for example.

In my book, I draw attention to these understudied histories to understand how certain assumptions around whiteness, privilege, and wealth developed in tandem with an emerging visual vocabulary around blackness and the transformation of individual lives into chattel property.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

I hope that readers will think about how many of our ideas about freedom, the middle class, art markets, and economic prosperity began in the 17th-century Dutch Republic. As this book demonstrates, a central part of this narrative that has been overlooked was the transatlantic slave trade in building this fantasy.

This is in many ways an invention that traces back to the paintings of overt consumption and wealth produced in the Dutch Republic – like Vermeer’s interiors of Dutch homes.

My aim with this book is to present not only a more complex view of Dutch painting but also a reconsideration of certain dogmas today around prosperity and the art market. The rise of our current financial system, art markets and visible celebration of landscapes, seascapes and interior scenes are all inseparable from the transformation of individual lives into property. We live with this legacy today in our systems built on racial, economic and gendered inequalities.

Caroline Fowler, Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program, Clark Art Institute, and lecturer in Art History, Williams College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yale.eduglc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/capatlism_and_slavery.pdf

Capitalism and Slavery

slavery and the slave trade in providing the capital which financed the ... ERIC WILLIAMS. CHAPTER. I. 2. 7. Preface. CONTENTS. The Origin of Negro ...

Michiel de Ruyter, Dutch with English subtitles

 

Dutch Golden Age: Johan de Witt speech from the film Michiel de Ruyter, Dutch with English subtitles

THE SLAVE TRADE IS THE ORIGIN OF CAPITALISM

Some Facts About London’s Role in Insuring the Slave Trade

By Guy Faulconbridge | June 19, 2020 INSURANCE JOURNAL


London is facing up to its role in insuring the slave trade as part of a sweeping global reassessment of history and racism.

This reappraisal was triggered by the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while detaining him.

For centuries, London has maintained a pre-eminent role in financing global trade and on Thursday the Lloyd’s of London insurance market apologized for its “shameful” role in the 18th and 19th Century Atlantic slave trade.

About 17 million African men, women and children were torn from their homes and shackled into one of the world’s most brutal globalized trades between the 15th and 19th centuries. Many died in merciless conditions.

By the late 18th Century, Britain was the leading slaver nation, carrying about 40% of Africans transported between 1761 and the abolition of the trade in 1807.

Update: Lloyd’s of London Apologizes for Its ‘Shameful’ Role in Atlantic Slave Trade

Lloyd’s grew to dominate the shipping insurance market, a key element of Europe’s global scramble for empire, treasure and slaves, who were usually in the 18th Century included in insurance policies in the general rate for ship cargo.


Other major traders were Portugal/Brazil, with about 32% of the market, and France, with about 17%. American and Dutch ships were also involved, with around 6% and 3% respectively.

How important was slavery to British maritime insurance?

There is a lack of documentary evidence from the time, but historians have estimated that the slave and West India trades combined accounted for 41% of British marine insurance in the 1790s.

(For more information: Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade.)

“Between a third and 40 percent of London marine insurance in the 18th Century was accounted for by the slave trade and by the movement of slave grown produce across the Atlantic,” said Nick Draper, former director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership.

“Those ships bringing sugar to Britain had a valuable cargo and the ships themselves were valuable and often coming through enemy waters because Britain was at war for long periods.”

Who were the big players?

There were three main marine insurers in the 18th Century: London Assurance, Royal Exchange and Lloyd’s of London.

“Lloyd’s had the dominant insurance business – probably had 80-90 percent of the market,” said Draper.

“By 1807 when the slave-trade was abolished, it was relatively unimportant to marine insurance and by the 1830s when slavery was abolished the sugar economy in turn had become less important. We were shipping then huge amounts of raw slave-grown cotton, for example, back to the UK from the American south.”
How did it work?

Slaves were seen as cargo by the insurance market of the time and generally included in the general insurance rate.

Often slaves were termed as a “parcel” whose value was determined by ethnicity, size, height, age, gender and health.

Slaves were also classified by underwriters as “perishable goods,” alongside cattle. Underwriters and courts dealt with slave losses arising from revolt as the equivalent of damage and losses caused by livestock panicking during a tempest.

“Most insurance policies for the slave trade excluded the death of enslaved people from disease or insurrection – they were insuring the ship against the perils of the sea,” said Draper. “But they were not insuring so that people were disembarked at the other end in a healthy condition.”

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Alexander Smith)

Photograph: Black Lives Matter protest in London on June 6, 2020 during the coronavirus lockdown.

Related:
Update: Lloyd’s of London Apologizes for Its ‘Shameful’ Role in Atlantic Slave Trade


Copyright 2020 Reuters. Click for restrictions.

It Could Be Your Daughter: White Slaves to Baby Prostitutes

Kate D'Adamo

Abstract

Human trafficking is one of the most pressing issues of our time, impacting diverse communities in multifaceted ways in every country across the globe. Despite this level of priority and complexity, the popular discourse around human trafficking remains focused on a single narrative. This focus has narrowed our understanding of the issue and stifled our ability to combat it. This paper seeks to analyze the rhetoric on human trafficking in the United States as both cultural myth and propaganda. Through the review of both documentary and fictional media representations of the human trafficking narrative, we create a composite “perfect victim” over three distinct eras. As with any persistent cultural myth, the details of this narrative shift with evolving cultural fears while the ultimate moral of the story remains the same. By unpacking these details, we can better understand the cultural fears of each era and explore why each story captivated the media. Also explored are the advocacy groups which promulgate these narratives,and with them their legislative agendas, which have consistently done more to hinder female migration and further criminalize “sexual immorality” than end exploitation.

BEYOND TRAFFICKING AND SLAVERY
'White slavery': the origins of the anti-trafficking movement
A nineteenth century drive to protect the morality of white women created the concept of ‘human trafficking’, and its legacies live on in border control systems and slavery-based campaigning.
Laura Lammasniemi

In the Grip of a White Slave Trader by the National Vigilance Association, 1911. Provided by author.

Anti-white slavery associations, such as International Bureau for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, stemmed from anti-white slavery organisations in England and were also active in continental Europe. Their campaigns resulted in the Agreement for the Suppression of the ‘White Slave Traffic’ 1904 (the 1904 Agreement) and later, the International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic 1910.

Are The Famous Five Heroes ?. Elu Valentine Elbow Park School 

October 7, 2009. The Persons Case. The Famous Five refers to five 

women from Alberta: Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, 

Henrietta Muir Edwards and Irene Parley.

EMILY MURPHY WROTE AN ANTI DRUG ANTI WHITE SLAVE TRADE

BOOK THE BLACK CANDLE, NOTE THE CHINESE OPIUM PIPE

A COMMON TROPE TO COVER DRUG USE IN THOSE DAYS

  Anti-Chinese Policies
Probably no immigrant group has been as heavily managed as the Chinese. Sought out as cheap contract labour, they were recruited to meet finite economic and infrastructural goals. While some Chinese arrivals saw themselves as  — temporary immigrants who would return to their country of origin once they’d amassed some money — many more were in for the long haul. This was not part of Ottawa’s plan and so steps were taken to limit immigration and thus encourage return migration.

The  was the main instrument used by Ottawa to regulate Chinese arrivals down to 1923. Some 81,000 people found the wherewithal to pay this fee before it was abolished, even though it rose from $50 in 1885 to $500 in 1903. In this respect, the Head Tax initiative was a failed attempt to stop Chinese immigration. It was, however, a money-maker: It is reckoned that the Head Tax pulled in $22 million for Ottawa, which equates to more than $300 million in 2015 dollars. Not everyone in the Euro-Canadian community supported the Head Tax, though for reasons that we might now consider discomfiting. A group of Euro-Canadian women argued that reducing the Head Tax would attract more immigrants, some of whom could be employed as houseboys and cooks. The Lib-Lab Member of the BC legislature, Ralph Smith, supported this idea and one local newspaper chided him that he was worried that “his gallant wife should have to roast her comely face over the kitchen fire every day because the Chinese Head Tax makes it impossible for him to get a Chinese cook.”[7] The rate of Chinese immigration varied because of the tax and global events and, like much human movement during World War I, numbers fell. After the war, immigration resumed. By this time, however, there was growing fear among the White community of the opium trade and allegations that young Euro-Canadian women were being lured into the sex trade, what was called at the time “White slavery.” Emily Murphy — a leading figure in first wave feminism, the suffrage movement, and counted among the Famous Five — wrote a series of highly popular pieces on the drug trade and its connections with Chinatown. The Black Candle (as it appeared in book form) was one of several diatribes against the Chinese community, one that catalyzed a revision of immigration legislation.

The 1923 Chinese Immigration Act terminated legal Chinese immigration and remained on the books until 1947. This complete ban on arrivals from a specified country was uniquely and exclusively applied to the Chinese. Prejudice might stand in the way of other groups but no others were treated this way in law. What immigration occurred between 1923-1947 was illegal and much of it involved reuniting spouses and family members. The 1923 Act, introduced on the 1st of July and thus coinciding with Dominion Day, was commemorated in the Chinese community as Humiliation Day in the years that followed. (For more on this topic, see Section 5.12.)

Limits on immigration is one thing; limits on immigrants is another. Chinese populations were contained (sometimes by choice but usually by civic regulations) to small urban areas — Chinatowns. They were forbidden, in Vancouver, from purchasing homes and opening stores outside of a few blocks of the city core. Like members of some other ethnic/racial/visible groups, they were also forbidden for years from attending post-secondary institutions and specifically from pursuing degrees through the University of British Columbia School of Pharmacy, a restriction that echoed  associations between the Chinese community and drug trafficking. Many of these constraints would survive into the 1970s and early 1980s.

http://www.begbiecontestsociety.org/IMMIGRATION.htm

https://search-bcarchives.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/heathen-chinee-in-british-columbia-amor-de-cosmos-and-caricature-of-chinese-man

https://www.blackgate.com/2016/05/12/blogging-sax-rohmers-the-insidious-doctor-fu-manchu-part-seven-karamaneh/

 

MURPHY ACCUSING ASIANS OF PROMOTING DRUG USE CONFUSING

OPIUM WITH POT, LEADING TO THIS

IMMIGRATION WAS THE CONTRADICTION 

MEN NEEDED WIVES BUT WOMEN WHO WENT WEST WERE THEN CONSIDERED WOMEN OF LOOSE MORALS LEADING THEM TO FALL VICTIM OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE

http://www.begbiecontestsociety.org/IMMIGRATION.htm

Trafficked White Slaves and Misleading Marriages 

in the Campaigns Against Sex Trafficking, 1885-1927

Federal History, 2019

Jessica Pliley

Publication Date: 2019

Publication Name: Federal History

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kitaj-44-fighting-the-traffic-in-young-girls-p04495

AND WHO POPULARIZED THE MYTH OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE NONE OTHER THAN THE SALVATION ARMY 

... Fighting the traffic in young girls; or, War on the white slave trade; a complete and detailed account of the shameless traffic in young girls ..

by

 

Bell, Ernest Albert, 1865- 

https://archive.org/details/fightingtraffici00bell/page/n5/mode/2up

MODERNIST ISLAMOPHOBIA BEGAN WITH THE MYTH OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE WHICH FINDS ECHO'S TODAY IN WAR ON CHRISTIANITY CONSPIRACY THEORIES 

IT WAS THE REASON THOMAS JEFFERSON WENT TO WAR WITH THE BARBARY PIRATES DESPITE HIS AVOWED PRINCIPLE OF NON INTERVENTION BY AMERICA OR ITS NAVY

https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Forgotten-Africas-European/dp/0340895098

In the summer of 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and 52 of his comrades were captured at sea by the Barbary corsairs. Their captors - fanatical Islamic slave traders - had declared war on the whole of Christendom. Thousands of Europeans had been snatched from their homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis and Sale in Morocco to be sold to the highest bidder. Pellow was bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco, who bragged that his white slaves enabled him to hold all of Europe to ransom. The sultan was constructing an imperial pleasure palace of enormous scale and grandeur, built entirely by Christian slave labour. Thomas Pellow was selected to be a personal slave of the sultan and he would witness first-hand the barbaric splendour of the imperial Moroccan court, as well as experience of daily terror. For 23 years, he would dream of his home, his family and freedom. He was one of the fortunate few who survived to tell his told. Drawn from unpublished letters and manuscripts written by slaves and by the padres and ambassadors sent to free them, this shocking and extraordinary story reveals a disturbing and forgotten chapter of our history.

MEANWHILE THE IMAGE OF WHITE SLAVERY REMAINS IN THE POPULAR IMAGINATION AS HETEROSEXUAL MALE SEX FANTASY THE EXACT SAME IMAGERY THAT HAS EXCITED ANTI WHITE SLAVE TRADE ABOLITIONISTS AS WELL

JEWS PLAN TO FIGHT WHITE SLAVE TRADE; NYT 1910

 Sadie American Explains at London Convention Work Done to Check Evil. 

GATHERING A NOTABLE ONE

 Chief Rabbi Adler, Lord Swaythling, 

Leopold do Rothschild, and Claude Montefiore Among Those Present.
Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
April 10, 1910


Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
April 10, 1910, Section S, Page 4
LONDON, April 9 -- Miss Sadie American, the President of the Council of Jewish Women of New York, was present at the three days' convention of the Jewish International Conference held in London this week under the Chairmanship of Claude Montefiore. Others present included Chief Rabbi Adler, Lord and Lady Swaythling, Lady Battersea, and Leopold de Rothschild. VIEW FULL ARTICLE IN TIMESMACHINE »


This book recounts the events involving Raquel Liberman, an impoverished immigrant to Argentina that was forced by circumstances into prostitution, and the powerful Zwi Migdal, which controlled the recruitment and deployment of Jewish prostitutes in Argentina while maintaining mutually profitable relations with corrupt politicians and policemen. Liberman's story is presented as an example of individual courage and determination in the face of the violence and corruption of the prostitution business. Her struggle with the Zwi Migdal and triumphant public victory over her oppressors was widely publicized in newspapers and magazines, and was a political cause celebre in its time. This book gives readers an intimate view of how the affair caught the public imagination, and was interpreted and transformed by the artistic imagination.




The Nation of Islam's Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews has been called one of the most serious anti-Semitic manuscripts published in years. This work of so-called scholars received great celebrity from individuals like Louis Farrakhan, Leonard Jeffries, and Khalid Abdul Muhammed who used the document to claim that Jews dominated both transatlantic and antebellum South slave trades. As Saul Friedman definitively documents in Jews and the American Slave Trade, historical evidence suggests that Jews played a minimal role in the transatlantic, South American, Caribbean, and antebellum slave trades.Jews and the American Slave Trade dissects the questionable historical technique employed in Secret Relationship, offers a detailed response to Farrakhan's charges, and analyzes the impetus behind these charges. He begins with in-depth discussion of the attitudes of ancient peoples, Africans, Arabs, and Jews toward slavery and explores the Jewish role hi colonial European economic life from the Age of Discovery tp Napoleon. His state-by-state analyses describe in detail the institution of slavery in North America from colonial New England to Louisiana. Friedman elucidates the role of American Jews toward the great nineteenth-century moral debate, the positions they took, and explains what shattered the alliance between these two vulnerable minority groups in America.Rooted in incontrovertible historical evidence, provocative without being incendiary, Jews and the American Slave Trade demonstrates that the anti-slavery tradition rooted in the Old Testament translated into powerful prohibitions with respect to any involvement in the slave trade. This brilliant exploration will be of interest to scholars of modern Jewish history, African-American studies, American Jewish history, U.S. history, and minority studies.

https://www.amazon.com/Jews-Slaves-Slave-Trade-Perspectives/dp/0814726399/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_0/133-5071818-3219929?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0814726399&pd_rd_r=0a893419-a663-4387-9be1-714b586ca23b&pd_rd_w=IIgUD&pd_rd_wg=cJYog&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=TCC2VST4MVHRPV0F40WE&psc=1&refRID=TCC2VST4MVHRPV0F40WE

In the wake of the civil rights movement, a great divide has opened up between African American and Jewish communities. What was historically a harmonious and supportive relationship has suffered from a powerful and oft-repeated legend, that Jews controlled and masterminded the slave trade and owned slaves on a large scale, well in excess of their own proportion in the population.
In this groundbreaking book, likely to stand as the definitive word on the subject, Eli Faber cuts through this cloud of mystification to recapture an important chapter in both Jewish and African diasporic history.
Focusing on the British empire, Faber assesses the extent to which Jews participated in the institution of slavery through investment in slave trading companies, ownership of slave ships, commercial activity as merchants who sold slaves upon their arrival from Africa, and direct ownership of slaves. His unprecedented original research utilizing shipping and tax records, stock-transfer ledgers, censuses, slave registers, and synagogue records reveals, once and for all, the minimal nature of Jews' involvement in the subjugation of Africans in the Americas.
A crucial corrective, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade lays to rest one of the most contested historical controversies of our time.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-universal-cause-history-of.html

' WHITE SLAVE' TRADE IS NOT ORGANIZEDSo Says the Rockefeller Grand Jury's Presentment, at Last Filed with the Court. NYT ARCHIVE June 29, 1910

                                               

Lloyd's of London to invest $65 million following slavery report


Wed, November 8, 2023

Lloyd's of London logo at City of London financial district


By Carolyn Cohn

LONDON (Reuters) -Lloyd's of London will invest 40 million pounds ($49.6 million) in regions affected by the transatlantic slave trade, it said on Wednesday, after a report showed the commercial insurance market had strong links to the trade.

Lloyd's will also spend around 12 million pounds on a programme to improve recruitment and progression for Black and other ethnic minority employees in the commercial insurance market, including bursaries for Black university students, it said in a statement.

Lloyd's formed part of a sophisticated network of financial interests that made the slave trade possible, according to research published by Black Beyond Data, based at Johns Hopkins University.

The research was funded by the Mellon Foundation, and Lloyd's said it had no editorial control over the findings.

The 335-year old insurance market apologised in 2020 for its role in the 18th and 19th century slave trade.

"We've asked ourselves how we could have the greatest impact," Lloyd's Chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown told Reuters. "We can't change the wrongs of the past, but we can make a difference today."

Lloyd's said its Central Fund will invest $25 million in a bond administered by the African Development Bank and $25 million in a bond administered by the Inter-American Development Bank. The bonds will support the UN Sustainable Development Goal of "reduced inequality".

The Lloyd's market is made up of nearly 50,000 people, and Lloyd's wants one in three new hires to come from ethnic minorities. The figure was 17% in 2022.

Historians estimate between one and two-thirds of the British marine insurance market was based on the slave trade in the 18th century.

Alexandre White, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, said the Black Beyond Data team had examined material from the Lloyd's archive, including ledgers where insurers recorded policies for ships leaving Liverpool as part of the trade.

"Lloyd's played a central role in the underwriting of marine insurance pertaining to the slave trade," he said.

The Black Beyond Data research showed at least one third of all slaving voyages leaving Britain in 1807, for example, came through Lloyd’s for the underwriting of particular legs or the whole voyage.

The research also showed that Joseph Marryat, Lloyd's of London chairman from 1811 to 1824, had enslaved people, White added.

"There's no way to compensate for the damage that has been done - too much has happened," said Junior Garba, co-founder of Equity, which provides recruitment and mentoring services for minority groups in the insurance sector. Garba added that Lloyd's initiatives were "a good starting point".

The Church of England earlier this year committed 100 million pounds to address the "shameful" wrongs of its links to slavery.

The United Nations has said countries should consider financial reparations among measures to compensate for the enslavement of people of African descent.

African and Caribbean entities have called for reparations, and the European Union has hinted at them. Some U.S. senators also support reparations.

($1 = 0.8135 pounds)

(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; editing by Sinead Cruise, Jan Harvey, Elaine Hardcastle)

Why Lloyd’s of London’s slavery reckoning is just the start for the City

Adam Mawardi
Wed, 8 November 2023 

Lloyd's Building in the City of London

More than 300 years ago, auction-goers gathered around a candle in Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House, a popular meeting place for sailors, merchants and ship owners near the banks of the River Thames.

Up for sale was a 220 tonne ship with 12 guns, named James and Frances. Bidding began once the candle was lit and stopped after it had burnt an inch.

In 1701, the James and Frances embarked on its voyage, from London to Africa and then on to Jamaica. It was carrying 162 enslaved Africans – 32 of whom died during the journey.

The candle auction is just one of many examples of the deep involvement that the institution now known as Lloyd’s of London had in the transatlantic slave trade between the 17th and 19th centuries.

The insurance marketplace, one of the City’s most historic institutions, was involved in auctioning or insuring ships that ferried hundreds of thousands of enslaved people.

The true scale of this historic stain on its reputation has been unearthed by researchers at John Hopkins University, the first to be given access to the 300-year-old institution’s huge archive of letters, newspaper adverts, certificates and other documents.

Lloyd’s had already apologised for its historical links to the slave trade in 2020, when outrage over the death of George Floyd prompted a public reckoning about the treatment of black people past and present by major institutions.

However, the John Hopkins research lays bare just how intimately involved the institution was in the slave trade.

Slavery was “critical to the members” of Lloyd’s as a major source of insurance business, researchers found. Senior figures from the past were also enslavers and absentee owners of slave plantations themselves.

Historical documents provided by Lloyd's to researchers at John Hopkins University have revealed the extent to which the institution was involved in the slave trade

“Insurance was an important innovation, mostly in the late 17th and 18th centuries, and it allowed slave traders to manage risk in a very efficient way,” says Sean Kelley, a transatlantic slave trade expert and professor at the University of Essex.

“If that insurance had not been available – and it wasn’t, after it became illegal in 1807 – slave traders would have had to devise other ways of managing risk that were less efficient.”

Bruce Carnegie-Brown, Lloyds of London’s chairman, apologised again on Wednesday as John Hopkins published its findings.

In an effort to atone for its links to slavery Lloyd’s – a marketplace that handles more than £46bn worth of premiums per year – has promised to spend £52m on racial equality initiatives, including plans to support black and other ethnic minority people in work and education.

“I don’t think we can undo the wrongs of the past, but we can take action to address the impacts which are still seen today,” Carnegie-Brown said in a statement.

But rather than resolving the matter, the seven-figure sums threaten to reignite the issue of the City’s links to slavery, raising questions about which institutions will be next and whether they are prepared to pay for the past.

Lloyd’s is not alone: many other British institutions played a part in the slave trade, although the links are not always straightforward.

Bruce Carnegie-Brown, Lloyds of London’s chairman, said institutions with link to slavery can ‘take action to address the impacts which are still seen today’ - Paul Grover

Although Barclays takes its name from David Barclay – a Quaker who campaigned for the abolition of slavery in the late 18th century – the bank became linked with the Colonial Bank in 1918 and Martins Bank in 1969, institutions that both had links to slavery.

Directors of banks that went on to become part of Royal Bank of Scotland – today known as NatWest Group – also owned slaves and provided loans to plantation owners, according to a database maintained by University College London.

Manuel Barcia, professor of global history at the University of Leeds, puts it simply: “Almost any institution that goes back hundreds of years is likely to have some kind of involvement.”

“You have decisions that were being taken in European capitals that lead to the death and enslavement of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.”

Preparing a single slave ship for voyage would often have involved a range of different parties, including banks who had extended credit to the merchants, lawyers who drew up the contracts and, of course, the captain and crew.

“You get a sense of this by just looking at the accounts that some of these slave traders kept,” Kelley explains. “There’s a major spread effect that flows out from all this.”

Many British companies were quick to offer their apologies for historical links to slave trade at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Greene King, one of the UK’s largest pub chains, promised to make a “substantial investment” in ethnic minority groups in 2020 in recognition of the fact that its founders profited from slavery and argued against its abolition in the 1800s. It has since renamed pubs with racist connotations, including the Black Boy.

Meanwhile, London-based magic circle law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer said it was taking a deeper look into its past, having repeatedly expressed “regret” that one of its founding members acted as a trustee for several slave-owners in the West Indies.

A spokesman said: “We are working to understand our history so that we can acknowledge and learn from it, in addition to the independent historical research we are funding on the role of the City of London and its ecosystem in relation to the transatlantic slave trade.”

Both Barcia and Kelley say one of the most important things businesses can do to help is be fully transparent.

Barcia argues companies should also speak to the descendants of slavery to understand how it has impacted them – and then try to make a tangible difference, perhaps through scholarships and other initiatives aimed at boosting opportunity.

In this vein, Lloyd’s says it will fund diversity initiatives and charities supporting disadvantaged black people and ethnic minorities. It promises to help provide them with more opportunities for employment and places to study at university.

Mark Lomas, head of culture at Lloyd’s, says: “We’re aware that no one can properly atone for the past.

“But what we have done is set out a framework that we believe will make sustainable change over a long term period.”

Lloyd’s will be hoping its initiatives can help it move on from its shameful past. But the proposals have been met with criticism in some quarters.

“This is PR: giving an apology, making some commitments, but this is not serious,” says Kehinde Andrews, a professor of black studies at Birmingham City University.

“You’re talking about massive amounts of wealth that they owe back to people.”

Laura Trevelyan donated £100,000 to the island of Grenada in recognition of her family’s historic links to the slave trade there - David Levenson

Calls for direct reparations to the descendants of slaves have been growing, given impetus by BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan’s decision to donate £100,000 to the island of Grenada in recognition of her family’s historic links to the slave trade there.

Lloyd’s has so far resisted calls from Caribbean nations to pay direct reparations to the descendants of slaves, arguing that a lack of documentation makes it “impossible” to identify all those affected.

But the disagreement underscores how difficult these issues are and how hard it is to move on from the past.

British ships just like the James and Frances carried hundreds of thousands of slaves to the Americas and the wounds from this abhorrent practice are still visible hundreds of years on.

Ultimately, money alone is unlikely to solve the problem.

“It is a matter of levelling the field and listening to the descendants of these people,” Barcia says. “That is the most important thing we need to do.”

Glc.yale.edu

https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/capatlism_and_slavery.pdf

Capitalism & Slavery 

slave planter, in the picturesque nomenclature of the South, is a "land-killer." This serious defect of slavery can be counter- balanced and postponed for a ...

HISTORY: THE STORY OF SINDH’S AFRICAN SLAVES

Dr Muhammad Ali Shaikh 

Published August 17, 2025

DAWN

A 19th-century engraving depicting an Arab slave-trading caravan transporting enslaved Africans slaves: although the Indian Ocean slave trade had existed for a long time, it grew considerably in India and other Indian Ocean regions from the late 17th to the mid-19th century | Wikimedia Commons

Before British rule in Sindh, especially during the 18th and 19th centuries, Karachi was a hub of the slave trade in the region.

In his 1890 book Kurrachee: Past, Present and Future, the British politician Alexander F. Baillie wrote: “Slavery was an institution; as also was the slave trade. Not only were many slaves kept in the town, but Kurrachee was a great depot for supplying the up-country districts.”

During this period, Karachi’s slave market was part of a large Arab-led Indian Ocean slave trade, with Muscat in Oman serving as its centre. When Oman took control of the Swahili coast of East Africa and the nearby Zanzibar archipelago, the slave trade became even more intense. The practice involved raiding parties, mostly composed of local Africans, capturing villagers and handing them over to their Arab patrons, who sold them in the famous slave market on the island of Zanzibar.

Another source of slaves was the spoils of war between tribes, which brought not only gold, silver and other valuables taken from the enemy after the conflict, but also their men, women and children, who were sold in slave markets worldwide. Besides economic gain, this also served as a way to demonstrate power and control.

While the transatlantic slave trade dominates global memory, few know that Karachi was once a thriving hub for ‘black ivory.’ Under the Talpurs, slaves were taxed, categorised and sold — some for as little as sixty rupees. Even after the British abolished slavery, the trade persisted in the shadows…

In this network, slaves destined for Sindh from Zanzibar first arrived in Muscat and were then shipped to Karachi for sale. The local name for these African slaves was ‘Sheedi’.

The slave trade in Karachi reached its peak in the 1830s. This surge was due to the fact that, by then, the British had established control over a large part of the Indian Subcontinent, where they had banned or discouraged the trade. During this period, Sindh, still under the Talpurs, and its port of Karachi, became a hub of the slave trade.

According to Commander Thomas Greer Carless, a British naval officer known for his role in surveying and mapping the coast of Karachi in the 1830s, more than 1,500 slaves arrived in Karachi from Muscat in 1837. Although Sindh was annexed by the British in 1843, the trade in slaves, nicknamed ‘black ivory’, continued for several more decades, though secretly. Writing in his book in 1890, Baillie reported that, in that year, about 25 people were brought to Karachi by slave traders but found no market to sell them.An illustration from the book Slave-catching in the Indian Ocean by Philip Howard Colomb, published in 1873. The book details the British naval campaign to suppress the East African slave trade in the late 19th century

‘BLACK IVORY’ FOR SALE

There were many categories among the slaves. While in most parts of the world, including the transatlantic slave trade, there was higher demand for healthy men to work on agricultural fields under tough conditions, the demand in the Karachi market was primarily for girls and women, who made up about three-fourths of the turnover.

Among males, Sheedi boys were a favoured ‘commodity’ for Karachi’s fishermen, who regarded them as highly intelligent and quick learners, with the potential to become intrepid sailors. Older males were in demand in the upcountry districts for work in agriculture, as the advent of Talpur rule in Sindh in 1783 had led to the distribution of large tracts of land to Talpur notables and other Baloch tribes.

The price for such slaves ranged from sixty to one hundred rupees, depending on “their strength and appearance,” Baillie noted. The locals usually preferred younger slaves over older ones, as there was a higher chance of a mature person fleeing in a flat country such as Sindh.

Another category of slaves brought to Sindh was called ‘Hubshees’, who came from Abyssinia [Habsha] or modern-day Ethiopia. They were seen as a higher class and were imported in smaller numbers, mainly mature females. Their price ranged from Rs170 to Rs250 in Karachi’s market, depending on appearance.

Exceptionally attractive female Hubshee slaves could sell for up to Rs500. Understandably, this class of slaves was bought exclusively by the elites for their households. Sometimes, locals also sought Hubshee boys, but their import depended on a confirmed order and their price was about one hundred rupees.

Yet another group of slaves was brought in from the Makran coast, known as Makrani in local languages. A genetic study of the Makrani population in Karachi, conducted by Romuald Lasso-Jadart et al and published in 2017 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, states “the Makranis are the result of an admixture event between local Baluch tribes and Bantu-speaking populations from eastern or southeastern Africa; we dated this event to 300 years ago during the Omani Empire domination.”

The next class of slaves was not imported but produced locally. It consisted of children born from the union of local Sindhi men and slave women from any of the above categories, with the child considered an extension of their slave mother. These children were called “Gaado”, meaning mixed or combined in the Sindhi language (Baillie has misspelled it as ‘Guddo’, which can be attributed to his unfamiliarity with Sindhi phonetics).

The highest class consisted of the offspring of Sindhi men and Gaado women. These children, born in the palaces and houses of the ruling Talpurs, were given the title of “Qambrani” after Qambar, the most favoured, faithful and freed slave of Hazrat Ali (AS) from earlier Islamic history.

The slave trade in Karachi was a significant source of taxation and income for the Talpur dynasty, which charged five and a half rupees on each slave sold in the town. Members of Karachi's Sheedi community, descendants of Africans brought to India as slaves, during the festival at the Mangho Pir shrine in Karachi in April 2018 | AFP


SOCIAL STATUS AND ROLE IN SOCIETY

Most European travellers and authors visiting Sindh during the 18th and 19th centuries praised the treatment of slaves. In a world where slaves faced oppression and cruelty, Sindh was a relatively peaceful place for them. Because of this, many enslaved people in Karachi disliked manumission [being freed], as it could put them into the brutal hands of those outside Sindh.

For instance, Ballie remarked: “The great cruelty of tearing them [slaves] from their parents [by Arab traders] in early childhood was undoubtedly perpetrated on these unfortunate classes but, in their new homes, they do not appear to have suffered any ill-treatment… They were treated as inmates and lived so comfortably that manumission, which was rarely practised, except for religious motives, would have been to them an evil rather than a benefit.”

Another eyewitness, Edward Archer Langley, who served as a British political agent in Khairpur State, wrote in his 1860 book, Narrative of a Residence at the Court of Meer Ali Moorad: “These slaves were treated as inmates of the family and lived so comfortably that emancipation was to them rather an evil than a benefit. In some cases, they rose to distinction and, as confidential servants of the princes, exercised much authority over their inferiors.”

Another English traveller named T. Postans, who visited Sindh in the early 19th century, also discussed the topic in his 1843 book, Personal Observations on Sind. He wrote: “Slavery in a very mild form exists in Sindh: the natives of Zanzibar are brought to the country when very young and are sold to the wealthier classes; but in Sindh… the term slavery does not imply a state of cruel or degrading bondage. Slaves are treated with great consideration and often become the most influential members of a family.”

The primary roles of slaves included serving as soldiers in the army, palace guards, horse-keepers, grass-cutters, day labourers and helpers to various local craftsmen, such as carpenters and blacksmiths. Another major area where they played a significant role was as domestic servants for large landowners and wealthy merchants.

The British explorer and army officer Richard Burton, known for his travels and explorations, provided a vivid description of how slaves in Sindh lived in his 1851 book, Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of Indus. He wrote: “Their [African slaves] great delights are eating, drinking, music, and dancing… On several occasions, I have seen them dance so long and so violently that more than one performer has been carried off quite insensible.”

Describing the celebrations at Karachi’s Mangho Pir, he wrote: “At a well-known place of pilgrimage near Kurrachee, called Mager-Pir, their dances are more ceremonious and systematic: they are performed under a tamarind or other tree, and an offering of incense is made.”

In this environment, many slaves earned significant fame and recognition. One of the most notable examples is Hosh Muhammad, also known as Hoshu Sheedi, who came from a slave background. His role as part of the Sindhi army against British forces during the 1843 war is highly praised. His famous slogan, “Mar vesoon par Sindh na desoon” [I may die but I will not forsake Sindh], became a proverb.

Another notable example is writer Muhammad Siddiq Musafir, born in 1879, whose father, Gulab Khan, was brought as a slave from Zanzibar via Muscat. Musafir gained recognition as an educator and scholar, having authored over a hundred books and several articles. He died in 1961 and is still regarded as a laureate par excellence in Sindh.

POST-EMANCIPATION SCENARIO

It might be called an irony of fate that the British, against whom Hoshu Sheedi and other African-origin slave soldiers had fought so fiercely in 1843, abolished slavery in Sindh after their victory and freed all the slaves from bondage. In these circumstances, many slaves chose to stay with their former masters, albeit in new roles such as servants and labourers.

Others, in addition to those whose masters could no longer afford them due to their financial hardships under British rule, went ahead to establish their residential communities in villages and towns. In this venture, mutual help, unity and solidarity were their main tools for survival. They found employment as field labourers, domestic servants and craftsmen. In the 20th century, as the British cracked down harder on slavery, Sheedis chose to become tractor drivers and mechanics, unlike traditional poor Sindhis who served as haris or peasants in agricultural fields.

“The sheedis maintained many of their African customs and traditions, the chief among which was the beating of the call-drum (shaped like a kettle-drum) called mugarman or maseendo, and singing songs and hymns in a language peculiar to them, possibly an admixture of Arabic and Swahili,” observed Dr Feroz Ahmed of Howard University in his 1989 research article ‘Africa on the coast of Pakistan.’




In the case of Karachi, Lyari became the most preferred destination for many newly freed slaves because the settlement already had a significant number of former slaves of Sindhi merchants. This transformed Lyari into a large area of irregularly constructed houses, lacking civic amenities. Over time, due to upheavals in the coastal regions of Balochistan, more slaves and non-slaves moved eastward, with some settling in the eastern part of the Makran coast and others in Karachi’s Lyari. As a result, “the Baghdadi sector [neighbourhood] of Lyari, in particular, received a heavy concentration of Black people,” wrote Dr Ahmed.

“Those who had come from Makran were called Makranis, those who came from the state of Lasbela were called Lasis, and those who immigrated from Kutch as a result of famines were called Kutchis. However, for many outsiders, the word makrani became synonymous with the people of African origin,” Dr Ahmed explained.

They adapted to the new conditions of their lives and took up work as dock workers, porters, donkey cart drivers, as well as fishermen and boat crew in Karachi. Some of them, familiar with agricultural jobs, moved to Malir, where they began working on farms.

Today, centuries after their ancestors’ enslavement and forced removal from Africa, most of their descendants are poor and live in poverty-stricken conditions in Lyari. Despite this, they have kept vital aspects of African culture alive in Karachi and throughout Sindh. One of their proud cultural legacies kept alive is the Sheedi dance, with or without the Mugarman drum, which is performed not only at numerous shrines in Karachi and Makran, but also at wedding ceremonies.

While these are undoubtedly important cultural and social legacies of people of African descent in Karachi, I believe the most significant legacy is the socially and culturally liberated Black women of Lyari. As Dr Ahmed rightly noted, it was the women of Lyari alone who could sing and dance in the streets about the victory of their favoured political party in elections, when no one else could even imagine this kind of celebration.

The writer is the president of Citizens’ Education and Empowerment Society and a former university vice chancellor. He can be reached at drshaikhma@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 17th, 2025