British workhouses were intimately bound up with slavery and imperialism throughout the early modern period, new research from Cardiff University finds.
Published in the journal Antipode, the article questions the widespread understanding of the British workhouse as a solely domestic mechanism for managing poverty and labour during the rise of industrial capitalism.
Instead, the research reveals that the British workhouse was deeply enmeshed in the global systems of slavery, colonialism and racial exploitation that defined the Atlantic world between the early eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.
Drawing on extensive archival material, the authors trace the movement of people, money, and disciplinary practices between Britain and its colonies. They show how workhouses were often funded by slavery-derived wealth, used to produce goods for colonial trade, and administered by figures involved in both Poor Law institutions and slave-owning enterprises.
The study introduces the concept of the workhouse-plantation nexus, illustrating how workhouses and colonial plantations were constitutively interlinked —through shared finances, ideas, infrastructures, and administrative networks.
Dr Andrew Williams, based at Cardiff University's School of Geography and Planning, said: "We can't tell the story of British welfare without acknowledging its deep entanglement with empire and slavery."
Attention has been given to the big charitable legacies tied to the transatlantic slave trade, but this research highlights the more subtle and everyday ways in which the state management of poverty in Britain was inextricably underwritten by slavery-derived wealth and colonial exploitation.
One of Britain's first workhouses was established in the slaving port of Bristol in 1696. The success of Bristol's workhouse, unlike earlier failed attempts, was largely due to the substantial financial support from its benefactors, many of whom were prominent slavers. Edward Colston, whose statue is now part of a permanent protest exhibition at the M Shed Museum in Bristol, was one of those benefactors.
Its founder – John Cary MP – was a wealthy sugar merchant and staunch advocate for the slave trade, with direct family and business ties to Caribbean slave plantations. The research revealed Cary was also co-owner of the slave ship Mary that trafficked 243 enslaved Africans to the Americas in 1700.
Beyond these financial ties, the workhouse directly supported the slave economy: inmates produced goods like linens, woollens, and oakum (used for caulking slave ships). The very building that housed the workhouse had previously served as a sugar refinery, processing sugar from slave plantations. Workhouse inmates, 'vagrants' and the undeserving poor in Bristol and elsewhere were transported to Britain's colonies to relieve costs of poor relief and serve as an amendable source of indentured labour.
The research also uncovers that as early as the 1720s, Liverpool's burgeoning demand for poor relief led to the procurement of lodgings from individuals deeply embedded in the slave trade. Notably, Bryan Blundell, a prominent tobacco merchant, privateer, and slave ship owner responsible for trafficking more than 6,000 enslaved Africans, rented 36 cottages to house the poor.
Liverpool's first workhouse, built in 1732, was constructed by Blundell's Blue Coat Charity School. Its subsequent overseers and superintendents, including John Brookes and Charles Goore, were highly influential civic figures who also amassed fortunes through their direct involvement in the slave trade and slave-produced goods.
Joseph Brooks, son of John Brookes, who himself was a prominent slaver, oversaw the construction of a new 'House of Industry' in the city between 1769 and 1772. His nephew, Joseph Brooks Junior, alongside being Bailiff of Liverpool in 1784 and 1802, was involved in 43 slave voyages and owned the infamous slaving ship Brooks.
The research also sheds light on the overlooked ideological connections between British workhouses and transatlantic slave plantations, revealing how these institutions were envisioned as interconnected systems vital for the expansion of Britain's mercantile empire.
John Locke, a founding member of the Board of Trade and Plantations, envisioned workhouses as systematically organising 'surplus labour' to produce goods for mercantile expansion. Locke, influenced by John Cary and other workhouse founders, had responsibility of designing measures to 'improve English trade, assist English plantations and devise methods for employment of the poor'.
Co-author Professor Jon May, Queen Mary University of London said: "Our findings challenge conventional understandings by showing how integral the workhouse and plantation were to Britain's mercantile strategy. Locke and his contemporaries saw these institutions as symbiotic, providing both productive labour and new markets for manufactured goods, all under the guise of 'improvement'."
Dr Williams added: "In recent years there has been a false equivalence made between the horrors of chattel slavery and the harsh conditions endured by paupers in the British workhouse—as too of white indentured servants transported overseas, or forced child 'apprentices' in Britain's cotton mills, factories, and mines. In some quarters, the suffering of British paupers is used to dismiss notions of 'white privilege' and downplay the need for slavery reparations.
"Our research shows how workhouses and plantations were interconnected but it is clear that these systems should never be seen as comparable. Transatlantic chattel slavery was distinct in nature and impact: its permanence, hereditary status, brutal racialisation and sub-humanisation, sexual violence, forced reproduction, and an unparalleled scale of over 12.5 million enslaved Africans forcibly transported to the Americas, a stark contrast to the 320,000 indentured servants. Consequently, its profound legacies continue to impact Black lives in ways fundamentally different from those of white descendants of other labour systems.
"This article contributes to wider conversations in historical geography, Black Geographies, and the politics of memory — offering a vital new perspective on the making of Britain's welfare institutions and their enduring racialised legacies.
