Short Wave - Black Metallurgists, Iron And The Industrial Revolution

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

The ability to create wrought iron cheaply has been called one of the most significant innovations in the British Industrial Revolution. It's known today as the Cort process, named after British banker Henry Cort, who patented the technique. But Dr. Jenny Bulstrode, a historian at University College London (UCL), found that Cort stole the innovation from 76 Black enslaved ironworkers in Jamaica.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave. From NPR. The ability to create wrought iron cheaply has been called one of the most significant innovations in the British Industrial Revolution. For most of the 18th century, British ironware is largely poor quality. It's brittle, it breaks easily, it even crumbles. But Dr. Ginny Bolstrowd says that by removing impurities from iron, British industrialists were able to increase the strength of the metal. And she says that this process became known as the court process because of the English businessman who popularized it, Henry Cork. And it gave way to all sorts of innovations in building frames, ships, engine boilers, you name it.

So Britain in the 18th century, in the 1700s, is more of an iron trader than an iron producer. There's this idea of Britain as the land of iron. But that's really what comes out of this process, actually. The process was considered by leaders in the British government to be, quote, more advantageous to Britain than 13 colonies. But Jenny's latest research shines a light on how the iron process that once made Britain a superpower did not originate there. Courts stole it from a foundry of enslaved metallurgists in St. Thomas, Jamaica,

a place that Dr. Choray-Warmington says isn't known for this work. It is one of the parishes that many would see has fallen into, not disappear, but has not been given the proper acknowledgement that it deserves. She's a Jamaican expert in development and reparations in post-colonial states. What has happened with St. Thomas, and Jenny mentions it, in the paper, is that because of its locality and the resources in which it inhabits a lot of, a lot of resources were extracted from this parish. And Jenny says that it's precisely because these metallurgists were not European,

that they were able to make this huge innovation. These are people who are very sophisticated in their science of metal working and they do something different with it than what the Europeans have been doing because the Europeans are kind of constrained by their own conventions. Now, Jenny and Choray are partnering to make this history known. Our society, our people, has helped to build a global north for centuries. It is time for us to be recognized. It is time for repair, for all.

or intellect to be recognized and acknowledged. Today on the show, we meet the black metallurgists who stolen discoveries revolutionized the world and hear about how these researchers are bringing attention to their legacy today. I'm Regina Barber. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. So, Jenny, before this process was introduced, iron in Britain, was very brittle. How does this process that was created by black metallurgists in Jamaica change that? This process takes scrap iron and poor quality iron that's brittle, it breaks easily, it even crumbles,

and you bundle it together. You heat those bundles of iron in a specially designed kind of furnace, and then you feed the heated metal batch through grooved rollers. And what you produce is a metal with a tensile, elastic strength. And this process not only does this cheaply, but on an industrial scale. And that's really important. So then this guy, Henry Court, comes to Jamaica and hears about it. Who is he? Like, why is he there?

Court was a banker who went into the iron industry thinking he'd make a quick profit. By 1781, he was facing bankruptcy with a yard piled high with scrap-on. and in his words, no way of working it up without making a loss. And that's where his cousin, a merchant who shipped between Jamaica and Lancaster, told him about a foundry in Jamaica operated by 76 black metallurgists who were turning scrap iron into wrought iron and making a profit equivalent to £7.4 million sterling a year. Now, court was a well-connected man.

He had been banker to the King of England's brother, Within a few months, he'd laid out massive sums of money. Jamaica was put under martial law, the foundry destroyed, and its machinery and equipment packed up and shipped to Portsmouth, England, where court operated. It's very possible that some of the black metallurgists were also taken to Portsmouth. They were described as perfect in every branch of the art and science of working metals. So they may well have been essential to this process, and it's theft, in fact. Wow. So who exactly did Henry Court steal this process from?

So he stole this innovation from 76 black metallurgists in Jamaica, and we know some of their names. Devonshire, Mingo, Mingo's son, Friday, Captain Jack, Matt, George, Jemmy, Jackson, Will, Bob, Guy, Kofi, and Quasi. And we know these men were enslaved and likely born in Africa, abducted from some of the most important ironworking civilizations in world history, except Quasi, who was likely of Akan heritage, but born in Jamaica and a windward maroon. And in the Jamaican foundry, they worked together to apply new African and Jamaican ideas to old European technology. This is amazing. Choray, can you tell us anything more about these iron workers? No, I don't have anymore. And, you know, unfortunately, the records here for densely.

Africans is very limited. And so we don't have that much more to see aside from, you know, where we suspect they come from, the areas on African continent where they come from. And that's one of, you know, one of the saddest parts of, you know, at least Caribbean history, that we have such difficulty in tracing, you know, the legacies and the history of these individuals. Right. And what has been the response to learning this information in Jamaica today? Well, we had two different kind of responses. You have historians who are very vocal, who have said, you know, this is a new. We as historians are fully aware that, you know, enslaved Africans have been innovating, have been developing and have produced an amazing,

well, produced an amazing industrial complex. And it's because of their intellect and their knowledge why sugar production and colonialism, the slavery was so successful for the Europeans. But then when you also look at the general public, there is also shock and disbelief because there is a lack of this information permeating through the education system and public knowledge. And so that is where the disconnect happens.

Okay, so I have to say, I was really surprised to hear this history. I didn't know anything about this iron process or the black metallurgists. Why do you think more people need to know this story? We need to start thinking about black intellect and back innovation in a new way. One of the issues that we discover and we realize when we talk about slavery and colonialism is this idea that, you know, that's constantly told you that, you know, colonialism happened

and slavery happened because, you know, the Europeans needed to help civilize the African continent. they needed to make them less barbaric and give them skills that would allow them to develop their own ways of life. Actually, when you look at it, they were the leaders in innovation and industry prior to slavery and colonialism. It gives our ancestors recognition and acknowledgement, and it gives us identity, gives us a sense of purpose. So we need to be able to tell a story, a new story of the black and enslaved. Afrikaans, that is of hope that represents them as human beings, that represents them as pathfinders, as heroes, as innovators, rather than just bodies on a plantation. For you two, what kind of change do you hope to see come out of this research?

I hope that people will be talking to experts like Shiree about what this means for education, for development, for reparations. I hope that it will be experts like Shirey taking this conversation forward. And I hope that this conversation will be going into schools. We'll be speaking to school children who are thinking about careers in science and technology and engineering and medicine. We know that black academics and black students are consistently under-acknowledged for their achievements. They are consistently not given credit for the work that they do at the level that

their white peers are given. I hope that this story will be part of changing the narrative around innovation to change that. I think for us, when it comes at the grassroots level, we need to look at how history is taught in our schools. We need to involve more of these stories, more of these histories in how we as a Caribbean community teach history, the black and brown students, and to give them an opportunity to see where the true identity of their ancestors came from. Thank you, Shire, thank you, Jenny, both of you for coming and sharing this story with us today. Thank you so much for having us. It was a real privilege. Thank you so much for allowing us to share this story.

This episode was produced by Carly Rubin and Burley-Murley-Rubin. McCoy, edited by managing producer Rebecca Ramirez and fact-checked by Britt Hansen. Robert Rodriguez was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Anya Grenman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.