Birmingham guns and the slave trade
Birmingham never sent out a slave ship. It made something the slave ships needed: cheap muskets, packed by the hundred thousand for the African coast. This is the town that armed the trade, and later the town where women began the fight to end slavery.
Key facts
- What Birmingham made: cheap "Africa guns" or trade muskets, built from parts made in small workshops and put together by contractors
- Scale: by 1754 one firm, Farmer & Galton, was making 25,000 to 30,000 Africa guns a year. A Board of Trade estimate put Birmingham's exports to the African coast at more than 150,000 guns a year
- The Quaker problem: in 1795 the Society of Friends told Samuel Galton Jr to stop making guns or leave. He defended himself in print and kept going
- 1789: some Birmingham manufacturers petitioned Parliament for the slave trade, arguing the local economy would collapse without it
- 1825: the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves was founded on 8 April, the first women's anti-slavery society in the UK
- After 1807: the guns kept going to Africa. Between 100,000 and 150,000 Birmingham guns a year were still exported in the first half of the 19th century, now traded for palm oil
Africa guns: what the ships carried
A slave ship leaving Liverpool, Bristol or London did not sail with money. It sailed with goods to trade on the African coast: cloth, iron and copper bars, brass pans, beads, spirits, gunpowder and guns. Cloth was the biggest part of most cargoes. Guns were smaller by value, but they were in steady demand, and Birmingham became their main maker.
During the 18th century millions of firearms went from Britain to Atlantic Africa. The demand for cheap guns helped move the gun trade out of London and into Birmingham, which was then a growing manufacturing town and not yet a city. Gunpowder came with them. One study found that about 12 percent of all British gunpowder made before abolition went to Africa.
The Africa gun was a cheap product. Gunmakers called the trade the "African market" and made guns to a price, not to a standard. Some burst when they were fired. That was well known at the time, and it is part of the story: African buyers were sold the worst guns Britain made.
The gun–slave cycle: what historians argue about
Some historians, most of all Joseph Inikori, have argued that guns fed a cycle. The guns sold on the coast armed wars and raids, those wars produced captives, and the captives were sold for more guns. Other historians say guns were one trade good among many and that African states fought for their own reasons. The honest answer is that both views have evidence behind them. What no one disputes is that Birmingham's workshops depended heavily on a trade in human beings, and the gunmakers knew it.
Samuel Galton: the Quaker who sold guns
The best-documented Birmingham gun firm was Farmer & Galton, later run by Samuel Galton Jr (1753–1832). The Galtons were Quakers, members of a church known for refusing to bear arms. They made guns for the British government, for the East India Company and for the African trade, and they became very rich.
In 1795 the Society of Friends told Galton to stop making guns or leave the fellowship. He refused and printed a defence. His argument was that the whole economy was tied up with war and that many Quakers profited from the gun trade too, directly or through their banks and businesses. As the historian Priya Satia shows in Empire of Guns, that claim was true. Galton moved in the same Quaker banking circle as the Lloyds and the Barclays.
The Galton family later went into banking, and money made from guns flowed into British finance. Today the family is better known through Samuel Galton's grandson Francis Galton, the scientist who founded eugenics. The name Galton was taken off a University College London building in 2020 because of that.
"By 1754 Farmer & Galton were making 25,000 to 30,000 Africa guns a year and finding it difficult to meet orders."Priya Satia, Empire of Guns, as quoted in a review in the Journal of African History
1789: Birmingham speaks up for the slave trade
When abolition reached Parliament in the late 1780s, some Birmingham manufacturers sent a petition supporting the slave trade. They argued that without the money from the trade, the local economy would collapse. Gunmakers were not the only ones. Birmingham also made the brass, chains and metal goods the trade bought.
But the town was split. Birmingham also sent anti-slavery petitions, and in 1790 Olaudah Equiano came to Birmingham and sold copies of his Narrative to local readers. Equiano was a formerly enslaved African who had bought his freedom and written his own life story. His visit is one of the first recorded acts of Black political protest in the town.
In 1846 the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had escaped slavery, also spoke in Birmingham. In 1889 Peter Stanford became the town's first Black minister. He had been born into slavery in the United States.
The women of 1825
Britain ended its slave trade in 1807, but slavery itself carried on in the Caribbean. On 8 April 1825 a group of women met at the home of Lucy Townsend in West Bromwich and founded the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. It was the first women's anti-slavery society in the United Kingdom. Its founders included Lucy Townsend, Mary Lloyd, Sophia Sturge and Elizabeth Heyrick.
These women pushed harder than many of the famous men. William Wilberforce did not approve of women in the movement, and the national leaders still talked about ending slavery slowly. Heyrick and the Birmingham women demanded that it end at once. They also organised a boycott of slave-grown sugar.
Sophia's brother Joseph Sturge, a Quaker corn merchant, became secretary of the Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society in 1826. He went to Jamaica to investigate the "apprenticeship" system that replaced slavery after 1834 and kept freed people working without pay. His campaign helped to end apprenticeship early, on 1 August 1838. In 1839 he founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which still exists today as Anti-Slavery International.
The women's society kept going until 1919. Its records are held at the Library of Birmingham, and in the UK they are listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register.
After abolition: the guns kept going
Birmingham's gunmakers did not welcome abolition, and they did not lose their African market. Under the so-called "legitimate trade" after 1807, Birmingham guns were swapped for palm oil, timber and other goods. In the first half of the 19th century between 100,000 and 150,000 Birmingham guns were still exported to Africa every year. In the late 19th century the town's gun trade employed some 40,000 people working from home.
Those guns were in Africa when Britain began its colonial wars there. Africa guns were the most numerous product of the Birmingham gun trade until at least the middle of the 19th century. By the time of the Asante wars and the scramble for Africa, African armies with old muzzle-loaders were facing British troops with breech-loading rifles and machine guns, often made in the same city.
The Gun Quarter north of the city centre still carries the name, and the Birmingham Gun Barrel Proof House, where gun barrels are tested by law, has worked there since 1813.
The West African side of the story
Birmingham guns ended up all along the coast from Senegal to Angola. On the Gold Coast, now Ghana, they were traded at the forts and castles, and the Asante kingdom bought guns in huge numbers to build its power. In Dahomey, the kings built an army around imported firearms. The African states were not passive buyers. They chose what to buy, set prices and played European traders against each other. But the people they sold were human beings, and the trade cost West Africa millions of lives.
- The forts and castles of the Gold Coast, where the guns were traded
- Cape Coast Castle, the British headquarters on the coast
- Manhyia Palace Museum, Kumasi, the seat of the Asante kings
- King Agaja of Dahomey and the gun-armed kingdom
Visiting: Birmingham's history today
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
BMAG, next to the Council House, closed in 2020 for repairs and has been reopening in stages since October 2024. The Birmingham history galleries reopened in May 2025. It is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, and the main galleries are free. Full reopening is planned for 2031, so check what is open before you go.
Library of Birmingham
The Library of Birmingham on Centenary Square holds the city archives, including the records of the Ladies' Negro's Friend Society. Researchers can ask to see the papers in the archive search room; book ahead.
The Gun Quarter and the Jewellery Quarter
The Gun Quarter is a short walk north of the centre, around Price Street, Loveday Street and Banbury Street. There is no museum, just street names and old workshops. The Museum of the Jewellery Quarter shows how Birmingham's small workshops worked, which is the same system the gun trade used.
Getting there
Trains from London Euston reach Birmingham New Street in about 1 hour 20 minutes. Birmingham Airport has direct and one-stop flights from several African and Middle Eastern hubs.
Tours and experiences
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
On the Gold Coast, the forts where Birmingham guns were traded can be visited from Accra:
Read next
The port that shipped Birmingham's guns to Africa.
Brass, ships and the Colston statue.
Another industrial city built on the slavery economy.
Equiano, Cugoano, Wilberforce and the long campaign.
Who got paid when slavery ended, and who did not.
All our pages on Britain's African history.
The African side of the story
Britain Adventures is part of a network of independent sites on Africa and its history. These are the places where the stories on this page continue:
- Pan-African: African Independence · Uganda · Egypt · Sierra Leone · All African Radio Stations
- Ghana: Ghana-Net · Cape Coast Castle · Elmina Castle · James Fort, Accra · They Made Ghana · War Cemetery Cape Coast
- Across Africa: Kenya Web News · Explore Nigeria · Gambia Vibes · Zambia Vibes
- European history: V2 Rocket and Peenemünde · Tannenberg Memorial
Search our Network. Start here.
