[ Wrought iron process that drove British industrial revolution
success and colonialism was appropriated from black metallurgists,
historical records now suggest.]
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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IRON METHOD ‘WAS TAKEN FROM JAMAICA BY
BRITON’  
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Hannah Devlin
July 5, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Wrought iron process that drove British industrial revolution
success and colonialism was appropriated from black metallurgists,
historical records now suggest. _

The Cort process transformed Britain with structures such as
Temperate House at Kew Gardens in London., Photograph: Facundo
Arrizabalaga/EPA // The Guardian

 

An innovation that propelled Britain to become the world’s leading
iron exporter during the Industrial Revolution was appropriated from
an 18th-century Jamaican foundry, historical records suggest.

The Cort process, which allowed wrought iron to be mass-produced from
scrap iron for the first time, has long been attributed to the British
financier turned ironmaster Henry Cort. It helped launch Britain as an
economic superpower and transformed the face of the country with
“iron palaces”, including Crystal Palace, Kew Gardens’ Temperate
House and the arches at St Pancras train station.

Now, an analysis of correspondence, shipping records and contemporary
newspaper reports reveals the innovation was first developed by 76
black Jamaican metallurgists at an ironworks near Morant Bay, Jamaica.
Many of these metalworkers were enslaved people trafficked from west
and central Africa, which had thriving iron-working industries at the
time.

Dr Jenny Bulstrode, a lecturer in history of science and technology at
University College London (UCL) and author of the paper, said: “This
innovation kicks off Britain as a major iron producer and … was one
of the most important innovations in the making of the modern
world.”

 

Henry Cort acquired the machinery from the Jamaican foundry, shipped
it to England, and patented the technique.  (Photograph: Science &
Society Picture Library/SSPL  //  The Guardian)
The technique was patented by Cort in the 1780s and he is widely
credited as the inventor, with the Times lauding him as “father of
the iron trade” after his death. The latest research presents a
different narrative, suggesting Cort shipped his machinery – and the
fully fledged innovation – to Portsmouth from a Jamaican foundry
that was forcibly shut down.

The Jamaican ironworks was owned by a white enslaver, John Reeder, who
in correspondence described himself as “quite ignorant” of iron
manufacturing, noting that the 76 black metallurgists who ran the
foundry were “perfect in every branch of the iron manufactory”,
and, through their skill, could turn scrap and poor-quality metal into
valuable wrought iron.

Some of these workers are named in records, and include Devonshire,
Mingo, Mingo’s son, Friday, Captain Jack, Matt, George, Jemmy,
Jackson, Will, Bob, Guy, Kofi and Kwasi.

Their innovation came after the workers introduced the use of grooved
rollers into the foundry to mechanise the formerly laborious process
of hammering out impurities from low-quality iron. The same kind of
grooved rollers were used in Jamaican sugar mills.

“It’s like a mechanical alchemy,” said Bulstrode. “You’re
taking essentially rubbish and turning it into something of very high
value through this process.”

By 1781, the Jamaican ironworks was turning an impressive profit of
£4,000 a year, equivalent to about £7.4m today. Meanwhile, Cort was
facing bankruptcy, after taking over a client’s ironworks in 1775
and laying out substantial sums to win a Royal Navy contract to
process its scrap iron, before realising he stood to make a huge loss.

The paper, published in the journal History and Technology
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traces how Cort learned of the Jamaican ironworks from a visiting
cousin, a West Indies ship’s master who regularly transported
“prizes” – vessels, cargo and equipment seized through military
action – from Jamaica to England. Just months later, the British
government placed Jamaica under military law and ordered the ironworks
to be destroyed, claiming it could be used by rebels to convert scrap
metal into weapons to overthrow colonial rule.

“The story here is Britain closing down, through military force,
competition,” said Bulstrode.

The machinery was acquired by Cort and shipped to Portsmouth, where he
patented the innovation. Five years later, Cort was discovered to have
embezzled vast sums from navy wages and the patents were confiscated
and made public, allowing widespread adoption in British ironworks.

Bulstrode hopes to challenge existing narratives of innovation. “If
you ask people about the model of an innovator, they think of Elon
Musk or some old white guy in a lab coat,” she said. “They don’t
think of black people, enslaved, in Jamaica in the 18th century.”

Dr Sheray Warmington, an honorary research associate at UCL, said the
work was important for the reparations movement: “It allows for the
proper documentation of the true genesis of science and technological
advancement and provides a starting point for how to quantify and
repair the impact that this loss has had on the developmental
opportunities of postcolonial states, and push forward the discourse
of technological transfer as a key tenet of the reparations
movement.”

_[HANNAH DEVLIN is the Guardian's science correspondent, having
previously been science editor of the Times. She has a PhD in
biomedical imaging from the University of Oxford. Hannah also presents
the Science Weekly podcast
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* England
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* Great Britain
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* Industrial Revolution
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* British colonialism
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* British empire
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* capitalism
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* Iron and steel production
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* Jamaica
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* Caribbean
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* Racism
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* colonialism
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* slavery
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* reparations
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* wrought iron process
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