Uncovering the History of the Building

The Royal Exchange Theatre is an extraordinary spaceship-like module that opened on 15 September 1976. It was a radical act performed by a group of ambitious artists who saw the potential in The Royal Exchange’s empty ‘Great Hall’. Their vision was to create a producing theatre for the city, a space in which artists could be commissioned, theatre would be created and ultimately shared with the people of Manchester. And so the Royal Exchange Theatre was born, and the hall was given a new life as an artistic and civic space for the city.

While reclaiming this space was a radical act, we must acknowledge how this grand empty building came to be here in the first place. The Royal Exchange was one of the most important locations in the history of global capitalism. The building’s very existence is a testament both to the colossal profits of a global cotton economy based upon slavery, forced migration, colonialism, and industrial labour as well as the hubris and self-projection of The Royal Exchange’s founders, funders, members, and patrons. From this room Manchester’s businessmen, industrialists, financiers, and politicians had discussions and made decisions and deals that directly impacted millions of lives across the globe and transformed landscapes and environments across whole continents and regions.

With this in mind the Royal Exchange Theatre have been working in partnership with students from the University of Manchester’s Emerging Scholars programme to research the history of the Royal Exchange building and to share their findings here.

The Emerging Scholars Programme was launched in 2022 and brought together a dynamic team of History MA students to advance collective understanding of how profits from the transatlantic slavery economy funded the cultural and educational development of the University of Manchester and the wider city region. Emerging Scholars is a part of the Race, Roots & Resistance Collective (add in a link to their webpage), an organisation dedicated to anti-racist research and action in the places we live, study and work as well as strengthening pipelines for a new generation of diverse researchers to enter the academy.

These five blogs take us back to the formation of the very first Exchange in 1809 and explore how the building was created and who the people were behind its continued development. The students have also recovered, through these histories, the stories of the lived experience and resistance of enslaved Africans and Maroons.

Dr Kerry Pimblott, Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Manchester and a founding member of the Race, Roots & Resistance Collective said this about the partnership:

“Since 2021, our Emerging Scholars have been working to surface new and previously under-represented stories related to Manchester’s emergence as the world’s first industrial city, particularly those linked to global systems of enslavement, colonialism and resistance. Our partnership with the Theatre has enabled the Scholars to advance this important research by focusing on the institution that stood at the very heart of the Cottonopolis’s relationship to these global networks: the Manchester Royal Exchange. We hope you will take the opportunity to read the Scholars’ preliminary findings and perhaps visit the Theatre as part of one of the new tours. We believe that centring such accounts not only strengthens our understanding of Manchester’s past but raises important questions about the legacies of this history in the present and how reparative action can help shape more just futures.”

Here at the Royal Exchange Theatre we are dedicated to uncovering more about the building’s past. We are delighted to say that we are continuing our partnership with the Emerging Scholars programme and are working with a new group of students to continue the in-depth research into the history of this building we now occupy.