Glasgow’s Ties to the Transatlantic Slave Trade

For this project, I investigated how Glasgow’s early economic growth was directly linked to the transatlantic slave trade, particularly through the profits generated by the tobacco industry. Many of Glasgow’s prominent merchants built their wealth on the backs of enslaved people who worked on plantations in the Americas, and the city’s prosperity expanded rapidly during this period. The legacy of these profits is still visible today, including in street names that have been renamed in recent years because of their associations with enslavers and the trade in human lives.

To explore this history visually, I collected historical maps showing Glasgow before and after the impact of the slave trade. I carefully aligned these maps by tracing the River Clyde onto tracing paper, allowing me to reveal how the city’s urban growth corresponded to the wealth generated by slavery.

My experimentation spanned a variety of media, including acrylic paint, oil paint, papier-mâché, tracing paper, 3D modeling, and video editing in Premiere Pro. A key part of my experimentation was inspired by the scarred back of the enslaved man known as “Whipped Peter.” I created textures on paper that mimicked scar tissue, symbolising the violence of slavery, and then painted a depiction of an enslaved person’s back. Onto this surface, I projected and composited a GIF of Glasgow’s expanding maps, evoking how the city’s prosperity was built over the literal and metaphorical scars of enslaved people.

This layered approach was intended to confront the viewer with the uncomfortable truths behind Glasgow’s growth, encouraging reflection on how its history is inseparably tied to the suffering of enslaved individuals.