MORNING SERIAL
AFTER Britain took control of Trinidad from Spain in 1797, it was a Welshman from Haverfordwest, Thomas Picton, who was appointed the island’s governor. Under his rule, any of the island’s ten thousand slaves who rebelled were dealt with viciously, and he was even successfully tried for having used torture to extract a confession from a thirteen-yearold charged with robbery.
Other Welsh families had significant investments in plantations and made huge profits from them, even if they never saw a slave first hand. The development of the copper, iron and slate industries in Wales all owed something to profits made in Caribbean plantations. Notably, the Penrhyn slate quarries were developed with family money made through slavery.
Welsh industrial jobs were thus created on the back of slave labour. Even rural workers benefited indirectly from this evil since a major market for their cheap wool was slave plantations.
British imperialism enabled the growth of Welsh industries in other ways too. It was the military and political tensions that sprang from British overseas expansion that provided much of the initial impetus for the Welsh metal industries since iron was needed for cannons and copper for the bottom of ships. The coal industry centred on exports and it was British imperial power that ensured access to global markets. Vast numbers of Welsh jobs were thus made and sustained by Empire.
It could be argued that everyone in Britain, no matter how humble or what their nationality, benefited directly from Empire, even if only because it gave them access to cheap and sometimes exotic foods to eat and drink. But Empire was also a cultural concept; it affected how people thought and gave the British a sense of superiority, power and even, sometimes, destiny. Historians argue over how true this was for the working classes but, like a sense of Welshness, it was there in the backdrop of life and people’s minds.
> Wales: England’s Colony? by Martin Johnes is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com