Dr Michael Bennett

My in-progress book manuscript tells the story of the Caribbean sugar boom, a period of remarkable economic expansion and social change which began in Barbados during the 1640s. The sugar boom was a pivotal moment in world history: social and economic developments in mid-seventeenth-century Barbados are a vital part of the origin story of plantation slavery in the British empire and the United States and are also important for understanding the rise of London as a hub of world commerce and finance. The book’s specific contribution is to analyse the role played by London merchants in financing the initial development of plantation slavery in Barbados during the 1640s and to explore the significance of transatlantic slavery to social and economic developments in England in the second half of the seventeenth century.

More broadly, I am interested in the role of slavery and colonialism in the making of the City of London as a centre of world commerce and finance during the long eighteenth century. This is reflected in my ongoing research into the Bank of England’s links to historical slavery between 1694 and 1888.

I also have a secondary research interest in the history of English trade and colonialism in the Indian Ocean world. I have published several book chapters and a journal article on the English East India Company’s relationship with slavery and unfree labour in the south Atlantic and Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.