by Levant Mine, Cornwall. The Levant Mine operated from the late 18th century until it closed in 1930, mining tin and copper from the bottom of the seabed. Credit – Peter Thompson – Heritage Images/Getty Images
men May 2024, British Secretary of State for Business and Trade Kemi Badenoch claimed that Britain had been enriched by national “ingenuity and industry” rather than transatlantic colonialism and slavery.
His statement flew in the face of mounting historical evidence to the contrary, notably the infamous Legacies of British Slavery database. In fact, the British transatlantic slave business developed an entire infrastructure that shaped many British institutions and communities: transport, ports, docks, customs houses, warehouses, counting houses and all their employees. It included plantation ownership and management, financial services and more. And that doesn’t even include the reinvestment of slavery profits in British industry.
Cornish copper mining, generally considered part of Britain’s national story of “intellect and industry”, reflects the economic impact of the slave system on rural life and the physical landscapes of Britain during the industrial revolution. From the 18th century, the industrial revolution was a change from an agricultural economy to an economy dominated by machine-based industry during a period of technological change in which copper played a distinctive role, beginning in Cornwall.
Read more: What Was Revealed When British Officials Calculated How Much Colonial Life Was
Surrounded on three sides by the sea, Cornwall is the most south-westerly county in England. Today, holidaymakers love its mild climate, dramatic coastlines and secret coves. Once a maritime center for shipping, world trade and communication, the county has a mystical existence with its history of smuggling and piracy.
Cornish copper mines were intensively worked starting in the 1680s. Copper has special properties. It conducts heat easily, is malleable, and can be combined with alloys to make brass (using zinc) and bronze (using tin, which was also abundant in the region). Visit any antiques fair in Britain today and you’ll find an abundance of copper pots, pans, kettles and coal scuttles.
The copper extracted by Cornish miners was widely used across the Atlantic. Once mined in Cornwall, Cornish copper was mostly smelted in Wales. But this bright orange metal was not only made into kettles and coal scuttles.
By the late 1720s, global demand was so great that more than half of Britain’s copper and brass was exported. British workers made products specifically designed for trade along the West African coast. One such item was a two-legged copper rod, designed for winding around arms and legs. According to a Swedish traveler at the time, these flexible rods were called “Negros” at the time. Another was “manilis,” or bracelets, made at metal works in the Welsh town of Swansea. These two decorated items were then in great demand along Africa’s Gold Coast, used as currency by European slavers to pay local slave traders for captured Africans.
By the following decade, copper exports to West Africa amounted to 20 tonnes per year, shipped by the Royal African Company and private slavers.
Large quantities of Cornish copper were also used on sugar plantations in the West Indies, used as cane-crushing rods, for boiling kettles, copper coolers and acres. In 1732 only one estate was wanted in St. coppersmith.
Read more: How the World Got Into Sugar
Copper was also used for British vessels, which helped make wooden ship hulls last longer. In 1779, the Royal Navy covered its entire fleet in copper and, two years later, three-quarters of British slave ships had their hulls wrapped in copper sheets. This encouraged sailing times of up to 12 days, which lowered the risk of supply shortages, rebellion and sickness. From the noisy point of view of the slaveholders and their investors, slavery increased profits by reducing deaths on the Middle Passage.
By 1824, the Parish of Gwennap, in South Cornwall, produced more than a third of the world’s copper. As a result, it was once called the richest square mile in the world. The nearby town of Redruth was the heart of the copper business where smelters bid for copper ore. Further east was Truro, where wealthy copper investors and sharecroppers were among polite society.
For many workers, the situation was different. The village of Gwennap is dominated by the church of St. Wenappa, which once served 10,000 parishioners from the surrounding mining community. These mining families lived in relative poverty and worked in dangerous conditions, setting explosives to extract copper ore from the rocks. Accidents and deaths were common. Families argued with the environmental degradation caused by the mining industry.
What paved the way for this copper boom was the advancement of steam power. James Watt’s famous steam engine from 1776 was originally designed to pump water out of deep copper mines. This new steam technology continued to power the nation’s cotton mills in the second half of the industrial revolution from this period and well into the 19th century. British industrialists imported raw cotton picked by enslaved people in the southern United States. British factory workers produced finished cotton cloth in East Lancashire factories. Wages supported the families of copper and cotton workers, and profits added to the British economy.
To suggest, as Badenoch did, that colonialism and slavery were not central to the history of British wealth and power is to overlook the impact of colonial trade and slavery on British labor history. For years, British historians similarly argued that the profits of slavery were partly due to the industrial revolution, an argument made by Eric Williams back in 1944, in his book. Capitalism and Slavery. New evidence from sources such as the Legacy of British Slavery database means that economic historians tend to agree.
Read more: Inside Barbados’ Historical Push for Slavery Reparations
Even today, if you walk through these old Cornish places there is plenty of food for thought. Standing on the green edges of the disused Gwennap pit, you’ll see flocks of yellowfins enjoying a green, green setting that was once scrubbed of vegetation, the air filled with toxic fumes as workers harvest the copper that would build the wealth of the nation and line the pockets of the wealthiest families. When the world market was flooded with copper in the mid-19th century and the market crashed, copper mining disappeared from Cornwall. But all around, the landscape is still defined by the remains of these mines, with old spoil heaps, engine houses, and abandoned brick chimneys looming over the green.
On the coast, pink daisies line the lane to a gloomy thatched-roof old inn on the edge of the sea. Beyond that is who stretches out from the western tip of England and would lead to the American continent far beyond, where so much of the precious mineral entered the old circuit of empire and slavery.
Walks in the countryside are an opportunity for quiet reflection.
As one walks through South Cornwall, one can see how heated conversation about this sensitive history is on a regular basis. In Britain historians of empire are usually told that they are undoing the nation’s history by linking the British countryside to the transatlantic slave system. But we can’t acknowledge—let alone talk about—the uncomfortable parts of this history if we don’t know in detail what happened.
Most nations have a history they would rather forget, and Britain is no exception. But by reclaiming rural and local histories that explain and explore the legacy of slavery and colonialism, we can better understand Britain and its place in the world.
Corinne Fowler is the author The Countryside: Ten Country Walks through Britain and the Hidden History of Empire (Writer, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by Corinne Fowler. Originally published in Great Britain in 2024 by Allen Lane as Our Island Stories. Adapted from the book AN TÍTH: Ten Country Walks through Britain and the Hidden History of the Empire by Corinne Fowler, published by Scribner, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC. Printed with permission.
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