More than a paper trail

The 6-part podcast, Cotton Capital, delves into how transatlantic slavery shaped the British newspaper Guardian, the city of Manchester where it was founded, and Britain. The series traces the paper's ties to the cotton and textile industries through its founding editor, John Edward Taylor.

Guardian journalist Maya Wolfe-Robinson talks to historians about how Manchester became 'Cottonopolis', the enduring myth that obscures slavery's role in Britain's prosperity, and the challenges of documenting the city's links to the transatlantic slave trade.

In the second episode, The Meaning of Success, she travels to Jamaica to locate former sugar plantation 'Success', once co-owned by Guardian funder George Philips. She also visits Mount Gurney Church, where enslaved people from Success once worshipped.


Other episodes take listeners from Manchester to Jamaica, the US, Nigeria and Brazil - tracing the full arc of the slave trade before returning to Britain. History lingers. So does its reckoning.