Welsh Woollens and Transnational Anti-Slavery Radicalism after Abolition

This project explores the connections between the decline of the woollen industry in Wales after the abolition of slavery (1833-38), rural worker movements in Wales (e.g., the Swing Riots of the 1830s, Chartism in the 1840s) and wider abolitionist and anti-slavery movements in the UK and the Caribbean.

Summary

The Welsh economy in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was tied to relations of racial capitalism – from producing woollens to clothe enslaved Africans on Caribbean plantations, to selling coal for global colonial expansion. Falling demand for Welsh woollens following the abolition of the slave trade and chattel slavery in British territories resulted in high pauperism and emigration rates in mid-Wales (Evans 2010). Through a focused case-study of former centres of woollen production in mid-Wales between 1650-1850, you’ll examine interconnected transnational histories of enslavement, exploitation and racial capitalism.

The project is designed to increase public understanding of this colonial history in communities beyond the university. You’ll gain hands-on experience of the heritage sector through training and collaboration with Amgueddfa Cymru-Museum Wales, Comisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru-Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and Eryri National Park Authority. These opportunities will challenge you to develop inclusive and innovative approaches to presenting your project findings.

Aims

While scholarship has addressed the use of the ‘slave’ analogy by proponents and critics of the New Poor Laws (Shilliam 2018), this project examines the transnational connections between racialised paupers in Wales and anti-slavery ideology to usurp the dominant trope of the ‘slave’ metaphor. Using local and national records and sources related to the Welsh woollen industry, you’ll examine interconnected transnational histories of enslavement, exploitation and racial capitalism.

A second aim of this project is to increase public understanding of Wales’s role in Atlantic slavery and its afterlives. Local Welsh history therefore serves as a ‘way in’ to this colonial history with potential to reach wider audiences and communities beyond the university.

Research questions

You’ll shape your project in collaboration with heritage sector partners Amgueddfa Cymru-Museum Wales, Comisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru-Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and Eryri National Park Authority. During the course of your PhD studies, you’ll have opportunities to complete an internship at the Royal Commission’s National Library of Wales site, undertake relevant training, and contribute entries to the national collection, Coflein, the online database for the National Monuments Record of Wales. Working in collaboration with the National Museum you’ll benefit from access to their collections. You may also be supported through mentoring or training in inclusive methodologies and creative public engagement as well as participation in the museum’s doctoral training programme, relevant to future careers in the heritage sector. These opportunities will challenge you to develop sensitive, inclusive and innovative approaches to presenting your project findings.

Sources/materials

• Chase, M. (2013). Chartism: A New History. Manchester University Press.
• Cunliffe, M. (2008). Chattel slavery and wage slavery: The Anglo-American context, 1830-1860. University of Georgia Press.
• Evans, C. (2010) Slave Wales: The Welsh and Atlantic Slavery 1660-1850. University of Wales Press.Furlong, R. D. (2019). ‘White Slaves’ as ‘Black Slaves’. Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, (17), 109-127.
• Hammond, C. (2023) Woven Histories of Welsh Wool and Slavery – Hanesion Cysylltiedig Gwlân Cymru a Chaethwasiaeth. Common Threads Press. https://www.commonthreadspress.co.uk/products/woven-histories-of-welsh-wool-and-slavery
• Mays, K. J. (2001). ‘Slaves in Heaven, Laborers in Hell: Chartist Poets' Ambivalent Identification with the (Black) Slave.’ Victorian Poetry, 39(2), 137-163.
• Scriven, T. (2022). ‘Slavery and Abolition in Chartist Thought and Culture, 1838–1850’. The Historical Journal, 65(5), 1262-1284.
• Shilliam, R. (2018). Race and the Undeserving Poor: From Abolition to Brexit. Agenda Publishing.
• Williams, A and May J ‘From workhouse to foodbank: Racial Capitalism and the making of British welfare’. Antipode