Plantation Economy

Who Profited from the Slave Trade? Following the Money Across the Atlantic

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Herman Moll's 1711 map of the region covered by the South Sea Company's slave-trading contract.

When Britain abolished slavery it paid £20 million to the owners and nothing to the enslaved. But the profit of the slave economy ran through a much longer chain — ships, insurers, banks, refiners, the state, consumers. Following the money, and where it can still be found.

The Dutch East India Company: The Corporation That Governed Like a State

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Andries Beeckman's painting of the Dutch East India Company headquarters at Batavia.

Chartered in 1602 with the right to wage war, coin money, and execute people, the VOC was the first modern corporation and, for two centuries, a sovereign power with shareholders. Its financial innovations built the stock market; its monopoly strategy produced a genocide.

Sugar: The Crop That Built Fortunes and Destroyed Lives

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William Clark's 1823 aquatint of a sugar-plantation mill yard in Antigua with enslaved workers.

A luxury became a working-class staple in a century, produced by a labour system so lethal the enslaved population could only be maintained by constant imports. How sugar drove Atlantic slavery, prefigured the factory, and left its mark from the teacup to the clinic.

British India: How a Trading Company Became an Empire

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Francis Hayman's painting of Robert Clive meeting Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey.

The East India Company arrived to trade and left ruling a subcontinent. From Plassey to the Raj to 1947 — how a corporation conquered India, and why “Britain looted India” and “Britain built modern India” are both too simple.

The Columbian Exchange: The Biological Revolution That Created the Modern World

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A botanical illustration of maize, a staple crop carried worldwide in the Columbian Exchange.

The transfer of crops, animals, and diseases between the Americas and the rest of the world after 1492 reshaped diets, populations, and landscapes on every continent — and in places mattered more than any treaty. How it worked, and why it was never a fair exchange.

The Atlantic Slave Trade: How Human Beings Became Cargo in a Global Commercial System

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The 1788 diagram of enslaved people packed aboard the slave ship Brookes.

About 12.5 million Africans were loaded onto ships over three and a half centuries, and about 10.7 million survived the crossing. How the trade worked as a capitalised, insured business — and what the records can and cannot tell us.