Six degrees of separation - slave trade edition

[tom p]

One of my grandmothers was a Powell of Birmingham - Shotgun makers who supplied the army, the East India Company and the slave traders, in addition to supplying the run of the mill pheasant-slaughterers. The other branches of the family were farmers, doctors and coal miners.

We might be related.
Although my brummie Powells didn't make shotguns, maybe a generation or two back there's a common ancestor

[Brightonian]

One of my grandmothers was a Powell of Birmingham - Shotgun makers who supplied the army, the East India Company and the slave traders, in addition to supplying the run of the mill pheasant-slaughterers. The other branches of the family were farmers, doctors and coal miners.

We might be related.
Although my brummie Powells didn't make shotguns, maybe a generation or two back there's a common ancestor

Enoch?

[JQH]

One of my grandmothers was a Powell of Birmingham - Shotgun makers who supplied the army, the East India Company and the slave traders, in addition to supplying the run of the mill pheasant-slaughterers. The other branches of the family were farmers, doctors and coal miners.

We might be related.
Although my brummie Powells didn't make shotguns, maybe a generation or two back there's a common ancestor

Enoch?

Lol!

[dyqik]

Is it a coincidence that the British decided that slavery is wrong and should be abolished just at the time when an alternative source of power made a fundamental change to the need for manpower to get stuff done?

I think its very unlikely that it was a coincidence. To start with from the late 18th century on enormous wealth was being created by the industrial revolution. The relative political influence of the sugar industry was reduced.

At the very least, investment in the development of steam power has been retconned by Neal Stephenson as an abolitionist action, and I suspect he based that on _something_ historical.

Similarly, there's elements of the power* struggle this created in the division between Southern slave-farming states and North-Eastern industrial abolitionist states in the US.

*Not a pun, but an analogy that probably goes back to the forming of the concept of motive power.

[dyqik]

Did we already know that it was wrong but couldn’t contemplate ending slavery for economic reasons?

This, and also the inability to end slavery due to the political risk from newly freed slaves, was definitely the case in the early US, with Jefferson and other founding fathers. Jefferson believed that slavery was wrong (at least before he ran for President, anyway), and wrote a section in a draft of Declaration of Independence condemning the King for "imposing" it on the Colonies. In later writings he always anticipated that slavery in the US would have to be abolished, but couldn't see a way to do it without giving political power to former slaves that he imagined would be a threat to the white Americans. He envisioned freeing slaves but then deporting them to somewhere else, like Liberia or Sierra Leone. His proposal to abolish slavery in the western US territories failed in 1784 by a single vote in Congress, but he did manage to get slavery abolished in the Northwest Territory.

Jefferson also owned slaves, and famously allegedly had children with one of his slaves. Relations of Sally Hemings were the only slaves of the 600 or so he owned that he freed.

[dyqik]

The other data point is that Britain and the USA soared economically after the end of slavery. If the slave system had been generating big economic growth it might be expected that its end would cause a road bump. There's no evidence of that, although of course it could be swamped by other factors like technological change. Slaves didn't disappear - they were still people doing labour - and there are plenty of other ways to exploit humans and get their labour for bargain-basement prices, as seen with the wage-earning but powerless workers of the 19th C in Britain's factories.

In the US, with slavery ending with the Civil War, and then the subsequent reconstruction, there's definitely a massive conflating factor of the Civil War. Particularly that the Civil War meant government debt financed industrialization in the North, with arms factories etc. being built to fight the war. The railways were also heavily developed during the war to transport war materials, and other similar developments that maybe sort of preshadow the post WWII boom in the US in 1950s building off of the investments of the war years.

During the Reconstruction era, there was heavy investment in the railways in the South, to provide an economic replacement for slave labor.

[bolo]

Jefferson also owned slaves, and famously allegedly had children with one of his slaves. Relations of Sally Hemings were the only slaves of the 600 or so he owned that he freed.

At this point I think you could safely drop the word "allegedly." Based on DNA and other evidence, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation stated in 2018 that the Jefferson-Hemings relationship is a "settled historical matter." Wikipedia has a decent account of the debate.

[dyqik]

Jefferson also owned slaves, and famously allegedly had children with one of his slaves. Relations of Sally Hemings were the only slaves of the 600 or so he owned that he freed.

At this point I think you could safely drop the word "allegedly." Based on DNA and other evidence, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation stated in 2018 that the Jefferson-Hemings relationship is a "settled historical matter." Wikipedia has a decent account of the debate.

Yeah, the allegedly is being very cautious there.

[Fishnut]

I just heard about this book on twitter, Slave Wales: the Welsh and Atlantic slavery, 1660-1850. It's available on JSTOR but my uni doesn't have access. If anyone does have access I'd really appreciate a copy

[nekomatic]

I have ancestors called Hawkins from the Bristol and Somerset areas.

Hmm, so do I.

My mum has done loads of the genealogy stuff but I never retain anything she tells me about it.

[Tessa K]

I have ancestors called Hawkins from the Bristol and Somerset areas.

Hmm, so do I.

My mum has done loads of the genealogy stuff but I never retain anything she tells me about it.

It's a fairly common name in that area but my lot were prolific breeders so we may be distantly related. I've done my tree so if you do get any details from your mum, let me know.

[bmforre]

Jefferson famously wrote to John Holmes about slavery:
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html

this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.

[Chris Preston]

I have ancestors called Hawkins from the Bristol and Somerset areas.

Hmm, so do I.

My mum has done loads of the genealogy stuff but I never retain anything she tells me about it.

I have Hawkins ancestors who lived at the Horringtons in the middle 18th Century.

[Tessa K]

I have ancestors called Hawkins from the Bristol and Somerset areas.

Hmm, so do I.

My mum has done loads of the genealogy stuff but I never retain anything she tells me about it.

I have Hawkins ancestors who lived at the Horringtons in the middle 18th Century.

I don't remember those villages coming up in my tree but my lot were near Wells so we may share a little DNA.

[Lydia Gwilt]

One of my grandmothers was a Powell of Birmingham - Shotgun makers who supplied the army, the East India Company and the slave traders, in addition to supplying the run of the mill pheasant-slaughterers. The other branches of the family were farmers, doctors and coal miners.

We might be related.
Although my brummie Powells didn't make shotguns, maybe a generation or two back there's a common ancestor

THat's quite possible, but I don't really know a lot about that side of the family - except my great grandmother was a tremendous cricket fan and broke her leg running for a (horsedrawn) bus to Edgebaston sometime around 1900

Enoch?

Great FSM, I do hope not! Couldn't be an ancestor anyway.

[Chris Preston]

Hmm, so do I.

My mum has done loads of the genealogy stuff but I never retain anything she tells me about it.

I have Hawkins ancestors who lived at the Horringtons in the middle 18th Century.

I don't remember those villages coming up in my tree but my lot were near Wells so we may share a little DNA.

West and East Horrington were part of the parish of St Cuthbert's Wells, so highly likely.

[Tessa K]

I have Hawkins ancestors who lived at the Horringtons in the middle 18th Century.

I don't remember those villages coming up in my tree but my lot were near Wells so we may share a little DNA.

West and East Horrington were part of the parish of St Cuthbert's Wells, so highly likely.

Yes, I looked it up. My lot lived all over Somerset at different times but were definitely in the Wells area. The Hawkins were my mum's mum's family.

[Bird on a Fire]

Blimey, is everyone on scrutable related?!

Wonder how far back we'd have to go to find a most recent common ancestor of the forum...

[Woodchopper]

Blimey, is everyone on scrutable related?!

Wonder how far back we'd have to go to find a most recent common ancestor of the forum...

About 6 000 years of course ...

... I'll get my coat.

[Lew Dolby]

No - much more recently. Anyone alive in, say, 1200 (in England, at least) who's got descendants alive today is an ancestor of all of us (unless you're a recent immigrant or totally descended from recent immigrants)

[Martin Y]

IDK what my ancestors did pre 20th century but so much of Glasgow's wealth in the 1700s flowed in through a handful of tobacco oligarchs and so much of Paisley's in the 1800s was based on cotton weaving that the chance of being more than a degree or two away from slave produce is slender. I guess the lot who were Ayreshire lead miners might have been at a distance. But if you count the people who dug the coal to run the glassworks that made the bottles that carried (French?) brandy from Bristol to West Africa to trade for slaves, there's no place to hide.

I realise that leg of the triangular trade is least familiar to me: which goods were traded for slaves? What goods were in demand and which markets were they traded on into? Even if most of the wealth ended up in Britain, were similarly lavish lifestyles created for the few on the slave coast?

[shpalman]

No - much more recently. Anyone alive in, say, 1200 (in England, at least) who's got descendants alive today is an ancestor of all of us (unless you're a recent immigrant or totally descended from recent immigrants)

Totally descended from Slovak immigrants, me. I expect there weren't many Slavs in the UK before the 20th century.

[Gfamily]

No - much more recently. Anyone alive in, say, 1200 (in England, at least) who's got descendants alive today is an ancestor of all of us (unless you're a recent immigrant or totally descended from recent immigrants)

Totally descended from Slovak immigrants, me. I expect there weren't many Slavs in the UK before the 20th century.

There may have been 'Brits' who had made their way in earlier centuries to Slovakia though, left behind after wars etc.

[Tessa K]

Blimey, is everyone on scrutable related?!

Wonder how far back we'd have to go to find a most recent common ancestor of the forum...

I suspect it's more a case that if your family is from a certain area with a certain surname it's more likely. My ancestors bred like rabbits, as many people's did, which ups the chances. Some of mine emigrated to Australia and America (because of poverty) so my genes are over there too.

[Grumble]

No - much more recently. Anyone alive in, say, 1200 (in England, at least) who's got descendants alive today is an ancestor of all of us (unless you're a recent immigrant or totally descended from recent immigrants)

Totally descended from Slovak immigrants, me. I expect there weren't many Slavs in the UK before the 20th century.

One branch of my ancestors came from that general area, with the surname Huss. They came over around the time of the Reformation. I think that name’s Czech rather than Slovak though. There’s a Huss Lane in Longeaton named for that branch, where they were farmers, though disappointingly it’s a light industrial area these days, not some bucolic idyll.