Researchers Identify 1,000 Women Who Invested in Slave Trade

Researchers have identified more than 1,000 women who invested in the transatlantic slave trade, specifically through the Royal African Company and the South Sea Company. The findings, published in the Register of British Slave Traders, challenge the historical narrative that women were passive beneficiaries or focused primarily on abolition.

These investors included royalty, nobility, shopkeepers, and cowherds. They acted as brokers and supplied trade goods, using the resulting profits to secure financial independence or support their families. By the time the Royal African Company dissolved in 1752, women constituted approximately 10% of its shareholders.

Lila O’Leary Chambers, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and other historians from University College London compiled the data. The research highlights a contradiction where British women used slave trade profits to protect their own kinship ties while financing the destruction of African families. Many of these investors used their wealth to endow schools and universities that still exist today.