The Pro Slavery Petition

There had previously been an Exchange on Market Street, a street away, from 1729 to 1792.^[3] It was funded and owned by Sir Oswald Mosely, one of Manchester’s key aristocratic land owners to act as a place where merchants could conduct their business, but also was used by other tradesmen to sell their wares and host various community events, such as performances. It also hosted manorial governance functions such as holding private magistrate meetings in the closed-off upper section.

The open lower level, accessible to the public, earned a reputation for being less respectable than the upper class space above. It gained the nickname “Penniless Hill” reflecting on its poor image and this less than reputable character meant many businessmen disliked the space, leading to its closure^[4]. When founding their new commercial building, the founding directors of 1804 wanted to ensure it would be a room that remained private to the middle and upper classes of Manchester, unlike that of the previous Exchange.

The Pro-Slavery Petition

In 1806, as the plans for the first building by the new Exchange corporation were underway, at least ten members of its governing committee signed a petition opposing the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill, which sought to ban the trade of enslaved people across the British Empire.^[5] These men – B.H. Green, William Myers, George Philips, William Douglas, John Leaf, William Fox, John Pooley, John Leigh Philips, John Barton, and Joshua Barnsley – actively and publicly campaigned to preserve this brutal and highly profitable trade. This underscores a stark and often overlooked truth: the Manchester Exchange was founded and funded by individuals who sought to uphold and expand the transatlantic slave trade.

This finding challenges the dominant abolitionist narrative often associated with Manchester, which celebrates the thousands of Mancunians who signed anti-slavery petitions. While these efforts were undoubtedly significant, the petition signed by half of the Exchange’s first committee reveals the city’s divided reality. The leaders who shaped Manchester’s economic and civic landscape were working against abolitionist goals, instead prioritizing their financial interests and the continued trafficking and exploitation of enslaved Africans.

The profits from slavery were integral to Manchester’s rise as the world’s first industrial city. The transatlantic slave trade fuelled the cotton industry, providing the raw materials that drove Manchester’s mills, factories, and wealth. As noted in Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery, the industrial revolution and the city’s infrastructure were built on the foundations of slavery, with one-third of Lancashire’s exports being used in the slave trade to west Africa and half being sold to the plantation colonies in the Caribbean and North America until 1770.^[6] This duality between public abolitionist support and private profiteering reflects the complexities of Manchester’s relationship with slavery.

Connections to the Transatlantic Slave Trade

The founding committee members of the Manchester Exchange were deeply embedded in the transatlantic slave economy, with ties through plantation ownership, cotton manufacturing, and trade in slave-produced commodities. Their collective wealth and influence were rooted in this system, which shaped their political and economic actions after the Abolition of Foreign Slave Trade Bill was successfully passed in 1807.

By focusing on a few of these men’s individual roles, motivations and connections to these economies, we can understand their staunch support for preserving and expanding access to slave-produced goods, something they carried on through the institution of the Exchange.

One prominent example is George Philips, the first chairman of the Exchange. From about 1805, Philips was a partner in Boddington, Sharp and Philips, a firm that owned the Success estate in Hanover, Jamaica ^[7].

This estate relied on the forced labour of enslaved people to produce goods for the global market, highlighting Philips’ direct involvement in plantation slavery. Philips also went on to be one of the first backers of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, showing how this wealth generated from his plantations was used to help support and grow key Manchester institutions.

Similarly, John Barton leveraged his wealth from the cotton trade to secure political and economic influence in Manchester. He was part of the family business Henry and John Barton & Co., a company begun by his father Henry Barton.^[8] Henry Barton and his brother George Barton were one of the early fustian manufacturers in Manchester. Fustian, a blend of cotton and linen, used the raw materials of slave-produced cotton. At Henry Barton’s death in 1818, he left an estimated personal estate of £160,000 (16 million in today’s currency), making him one of the richest men in Manchester.^[9]

John Barton inherited this wealth and continued his family’s trade as cotton merchants, generating enough wealth from the trade to purchase land in the countryside and become influential in other Manchester institutions including Manchester Royal Infirmary of which he was a benefactor.^[10] It was this influence he brought to the Exchange, using it to further the interests of Manchester’s cotton merchants.

“Duties on the Importation of Cotton Wool”

John Barton’s influence can be seen in a key Manchester petition to Parliament asking to repeal the duties on cotton wool importation, where he was specifically named and thanked.^[11] In 1815, a newspaper article thanked several men for successfully appealing to the government to repeal these cotton duties and also shows the importance of the Exchange as a space for political organising by Barton and the wider commercial elite – with meeting taking place in the Exchange Committee Room. ^[12]

These duties reduced cotton merchants’ profits by raising the cost of importing raw materials from countries outside the British Empire, particularly affecting trade with the United States. American upland cotton, prized for producing cheap, high-demand materials, was highly desirable for British manufacturers.^[13] However, the U.S.’s monopoly on this cotton, combined with the tariffs, made maintaining production levels more challenging. The committee therefore pushed to make it easier for them to interact with the transatlantic slavery economy, even after the Abolition bill had been successfully passed in 1807.

Not only did they succeed in repealing these duties, but they also celebrated their achievement, as reflected in the language of the notice praising the committee members for their ‘ability and perseverance.’^[14] This statement, published by the Exchange and its committee in a newspaper, was intended to broadcast their victory to all Manchester citizens and therefore underscores the institution’s pride in deepening its ties to, and profits from, the transatlantic slave economy.

Notably, the committee used the rhetoric of free trade to advocate for the repeal of these duties. This evidence complicates the history one of the most important movements in Manchester’s history.

Free trade would later become the cornerstone of the ascendent political philosophy of Manchester Liberalism championed by John Bright and Richard Cobden. Their successful Anti-Corn Law League promoted free trade to reduce government intervention in international commerce and lower food prices for the working classes.

We see here however, how free trade’s roots are as a core Manchester ideology are traced to the Exchange and its early committee who developed the platform to push for unregulated access to plantation economies, in particularly in the United States, exposing the deep entanglement with the transatlantic slavery economy across Mancunian political and economic life.

William Myers and South Carolina Rice

While cotton was the central import in Manchester, committee members like William Myers also highlighted the Exchange’s broader ties to plantation economies. Myers potentially had familial connections to the cotton trade through the prominent Myers family of Liverpool^[15], with his nephew William Myers (1783 – 1850) being in partnership with William Ewart (a prominent slave-owner in his own right)^[16], as well as reportedly owning a plantation in Antigua^[17]. However, Myers also had his own connections to plantation economies and enslaved labour, as we discover through newspaper evidence showing that William Myers and Nephew Co., cotton merchants, imported 70 casks of rice from Charleston, South Carolina in 1807^[18].

This rice was grown on South Carolina plantations, the only region in North America with the wetlands needed for its cultivation. Drawing on traditional African methods, such as hand-processing with mortars and pestles^[19], enslaved West African women – valued for their expertise – played a key role in production. Their knowledge created a unique dynamic, as enslavers relied on their skills.

On these plantations, the task labour system introduced in the 1730s allowed enslaved people some limited opportunities, such as tending personal gardens or selling goods at markets after completing their daily tasks. This contrasted with the gang labour system, which demanded continuous work from dawn to dusk^[20]. However, by the early 19th century, the scope of this agency had significantly diminished due to the increasing numbers of enslaved people brought in for labour-intensive rice cultivation^[21].

Although women were highly valued, the growing demand for rice resulted in harsher labour conditions aimed at maximising profit that forced enslaved people – both women and men – to hand-process millions of pounds of rice withing a few months^[22]. It is in this period that William Myers imported rice. In fact, it was the very same year he was signing his name on the anti-abolition petition, and playing a key financial and organising role in the foundation of the Exchange corporation.

The Legacies of the Founding Exchange Committee

The story of the Exchange corporation’s founding committee and their first building reveals a complex and often troubling narrative of the city’s entanglement with the transatlantic slave trade. The institution that would go on to be the biggest commercial room in the world was fundamentally founded and funded by men who actively lobbied to continue and deepen the profits of their business through the suffering of millions of people.

By examining the roles of key figures like George Philips, John Barton, and William Myers, it becomes clear how deeply embedded Manchester’s industrial and civic progress was in the profits of slavery. This duality between public support for abolition and the private profiteering of key institutions underscores the complexities of Manchester’s history. It challenges us to look beyond dominant narratives and confront the uncomfortable truths about the foundations of Manchester’s economic and industrial success. By doing so, we not only gain a fuller understanding of the past but also reflect on how its legacies continue to shape the present.