Exploring attitudes towards abolition

Here, Chris tells us about his research into three cousins whose lives intersected with Atlantic slavery.

The origins of this book came about by chance. In 2005, while reviewing a book on 19th-century Merthyr Tydfil, I came across a newspaper cutting reporting that miners and blacksmiths were leaving the town to work in Cuba's copper mines. Intrigued, I began investigating and discovered El Cobre, a major mining settlement run by the British-owned Cobra Company.

What surprised me most was that this powerful British company, established at a time when Britain had abolished slavery across its Atlantic empire, relied heavily on enslaved labour. By 1840, the Cobra Company was probably the largest single slave enterprise in the western hemisphere. The discovery led me to question a familiar assumption: that Britain's abolition of slavery reflected a deep and enduring national commitment to anti-slavery principles.

In the 1830s, many Britons believed their country was uniquely destined to lead the world away from slavery. Some drew that conviction from their Christian faith; others from a belief that slavery was incompatible with a modern industrial economy. Yet as my research progressed, it became clear that this narrative was far too simple. British capitalism continued to sustain slavery across the Atlantic world long after emancipation, while not all Victorian Christians shared the abolitionist zeal that has come to dominate popular memory.

My research led me to Charles Pascoe Grenfell, a key figure behind the Cobra Company, and then to two of his cousins. Together, their lives offered a way of exploring three important relationships in 19th-century Britain: slavery and capitalism, slavery and Christianity, and slavery and nationalism.

Charles Pascoe Grenfell's story revealed how British wealth and investment remained deeply connected to slavery. Despite emancipation in Britain's colonies, companies backed by British capital continued to profit from enslaved labour elsewhere, particularly in Cuba.

His cousin, a Royal Navy officer who later became a clergyman, opened up a different perspective on Christianity and slavery. While evangelical campaigners such as Wilberforce opposed slavery, they did not represent the whole of Victorian Christianity. Influential Anglo-Catholic movements such as Tractarianism were often indifferent to emancipation and, in some cases, openly hostile to anti-slavery activism. His life highlights the uncomfortable reality that Christianity was far less united against slavery than we often assume.

A third cousin, George St Leger Grenfell, illuminated the relationship between slavery and nationalism. An adventurer and Confederate supporter during the American Civil War, he was not merely comfortable with slavery but actively fought to defend it. His career challenges the idea that opposition to slavery was an intrinsic part of British national identity.

Through these three intertwined lives, the book presents a Britain that was far less certain, and far less virtuous, than abolitionist legend suggests. Contrary to popular assumptions, slavery was not a declining institution in the 19th century. It continued to expand in Cuba, Brazil and the United States, supported in part by British capital, commerce and culture.

As we mark Black History Month, it is important to remember that the end of slavery in Britain did not mark the end of exploitation. Across the British Empire, plantation owners increasingly turned to indentured labour, particularly from India, creating new systems of coercion that reshaped societies across the Caribbean for generations. Rather than disappearing, forms of unfree labour evolved, reminding us that Britain's relationship with slavery was far more complex, and far longer-lasting, than many traditional accounts suggest.