Consumerism and the British Infrastructure of the Slave Trade

Consumer goods changed everyday choices

Consumerism concerns the growing importance of buying and using goods in everyday life. It is different from trade itself: trade describes goods being exchanged, whereas consumerism concerns the place of purchasing and consumption in people’s lives. During 1688–c.1730, overseas commerce widened the range of goods available in Britain and changed tastes in clothing, household furnishings and drinks.

These goods came through different trading networks. Sugar and tobacco connected British markets with plantations in the Caribbean and Americas that used enslaved labour. The East India Company brought cotton textiles from India and tea from China. Overseas trade and colonial expansion were connected, but not every imported product came from a British colony or was produced by enslaved workers.

How imported cotton became fashionable

Indian cotton textiles provide a clear example of consumerism’s emergence. During the later seventeenth century, the East India Company promoted these fabrics for clothing, curtains and furniture coverings. They offered colour, durability and versatility; cotton clothing was also light and easily washed. Their relatively low cost compared with other imports helped them attract buyers across a wide social range, rather than only the wealthiest households.

Calico was a type of cotton cloth that could be plain or printed. By the turn of the eighteenth century, South Asian calicoes accounted for roughly a quarter of Britain’s textile imports. A household choosing cotton curtains or a consumer buying a printed cotton gown was participating in a market shaped by distant producers and overseas merchants. Fashion and household comfort helped sustain demand, rather than purchases being limited to basic necessities.

Tea also became part of changing consumption habits, although its importance grew gradually. It rose from about 1.13% of the East India Company’s traded goods in 1700 to 10.22% in 1740, beyond this study’s endpoint. Tea drinking could connect different trading networks in a single household: Chinese tea might be sweetened with sugar produced by enslaved people on Caribbean plantations.

Consumer demand created winners and losers

Demand for imported goods offered opportunities to merchants and businesses that transported, sold or processed them. In Bristol, imported plantation sugar required refining, while tobacco was processed into products such as smoking tobacco and snuff. Consumption therefore connected overseas production to work in Britain, not simply to profits for shipowners.

However, cheaper or fashionable imports could compete with established British products. Woollen and silk weavers regarded Indian cotton as a threat to their livelihoods. Consumers’ preference for cotton could benefit importers while reducing demand for the fabrics those weavers produced. Consumerism’s economic impact was therefore uneven: expanding choice for purchasers did not necessarily mean greater prosperity for every producer.

Purchases became a political issue

The conflict over calico shows how consumer choices could lead to political action. Weavers protested against cotton imports during the 1690s. In 1700, Parliament restricted imports of printed calico, but plain cotton continued to arrive. This encouraged a printing and dyeing industry in England, showing how restrictions could redirect commercial activity rather than simply end demand.

Weavers continued to fear competition. In 1719, protests broke out in London and other towns, including Norwich. Some protesters attacked women wearing calico and tore their clothes. Women consumers became targets because protesters blamed their purchases for the weavers’ difficulties; that accusation did not justify the attacks.

In 1721, Parliament tightened restrictions on calico, including its wearing and use. This was a wider political consequence of consumerism: arguments about imported fashions became arguments about employment, protection for British manufacturing and the government’s responsibility to maintain order. The interests of consumers, importers and domestic producers did not always agree.

Slave ports were centres of organisation

Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade depended on more than ships and their crews. Merchants needed goods to trade, money to finance voyages and commercial experience. Ports brought these resources together, making them centres from which the transportation and sale of enslaved Africans could be organised.

London, Bristol and Liverpool were the principal British ports associated with this trade. Their importance changed over time, so they should not be treated as equally dominant throughout 1688–c.1730.

London was the leading British slaving port in the seventeenth century, with control over the trade until 1698. Bristol subsequently grew in importance and overtook London in the 1730s, around the end of this depth study. Liverpool overtook Bristol in the 1740s: its later dominance should not be projected backwards into the earlier period.

Smaller ports also participated

The slave trade was not confined to those three cities. Smaller British ports also took part in Atlantic trading in enslaved people, sugar or tobacco. However, many withdrew because they lacked the larger ports’ access to goods, cargoes, finance and experience. These advantages help explain why activity became concentrated in major ports.

Withdrawing from voyages did not necessarily end a town’s connection with slavery. In the wider slave-trade economy, the herring fishing fleet from Bridgwater in Somerset, for example, supplied dried fish to feed enslaved people on Caribbean plantations. This was indirect involvement: the fishing fleet supplied the plantation economy rather than itself transporting enslaved Africans.

Inland businesses supported the trade

Living away from the coast did not prevent participation. Merchants from Birmingham and Bath invested in slaving voyages departing from Bristol. Their money helped finance voyages, linking inland wealth to port-based activity.

Manufacturing provided another connection within the wider slave-trade economy. Manchester supplied cotton cloth, while Birmingham supplied guns and metal goods to traders in the port cities. These products were used as trade goods by slave traders. A manufacturer could therefore supply the trade without owning a slaving ship or joining a voyage.

Employment encouraged the defence of trading interests

A dated example from this study’s period demonstrates the connection between economic involvement and politics. In 1713, Bristol’s City Council petitioned the government against the prospect of the London-based Royal African Company regaining control over trade with Africa. The council argued that Bristol’s African and Caribbean commerce supported employment in shipyards and in manufacturing wool, iron, tin, copper and brass, including goods exchanged for enslaved Africans.

The petition shows civic leaders defending access to trade by presenting it as essential to local livelihoods. It also demonstrates why the trade had supporters beyond the merchants who organised voyages: workers and suppliers could depend on related business. Nevertheless, this was an argument made by the council, and the slave trade was only one part of Bristol’s commerce.

Together, these connections reveal an economic network rather than an activity limited to sailors. Merchants organised voyages; investors provided finance; manufacturers supplied trade goods; and provisioning communities supported plantations. Consumers buying slave-produced goods provided another indirect connection. British involvement could therefore be direct or indirect, without every British person participating, benefiting equally or having the same responsibility.