The Emerging Scholars Programme was launched in 2022 and brought together a dynamic team of History MA students to advance collective understanding of how profits from the transatlantic slavery economy funded the cultural and educational development of The University of Manchester and the wider city region. 

Our Emerging Scholars have been working in partnership with Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre (RET) to research the history of the RET building and to share their research findings to staff and creatives.  

The first phase of the research on the Manchester Royal Exchange has now been integrated into the RET’s building tours and published as a series of research blogs on their website. 

Among them are blogs by Destinie Reynolds (BA History and Spanish) and Beth Carson (BA English and History) on the role of the Reynolds Moreton Dynasty and a wider pro-slavery cabal of Manchester merchants in establishing the First Exchange. Moleka Newman (MA History) and Aimee Eggington (MA History) also spotlight the resistance of enslaved Africans and Maroons on the plantations of high-profile families such as the Gregs and Gladstones who went on to have a multigenerational relationship with the Exchange as subscribers, funders, and leaders. Finally, Aashe Singh (BA History) spotlights the role of Gladstone and a network of other merchants responsible for funding the expansion of the Exchange in facilitating the transition from enslaved African labour to indentured Indian labour during the post-emancipation era. 

This year’s projects highlighted some well-known subscribers like revolutionary Friedrich Engels alongside the lesser-known figure of Manchester’s ‘Bard of Colour’ Robert Rose. We gained insight into later periods in the institution’s history including the building of the Manchester Ship Canal in1893 through deindustrialisation and the closure of the mills in the mid-to-late twentieth century.   

Our exhibition, Local History, Global Impacts, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Manchester Fifth Pan-African Congress is still open at the Royal Exchange Theatre. Created by Emerging Scholar Destinie Reynolds (BA History and Spanish) in partnership with Drs Jake Gandy and Kerry Pimblott, the exhibition sits alongside the pathbreaking play, Liberation (Dir., Monique Touko) and was supported by the AHRC Grassroots Struggles, Global Visions: British Black Power 1964-1985 (website) project.  

The research, a series of reports involving the Emerging Scholars Programme, reveals how the Royal Exchange’s 19th-century subscribers were enmeshed in the enslavement of African peoples, the exploitation of India, the opium trade in China, as well as the development of the economic doctrine of free trade, the birth of the modern city, and the development of liberal politics and economics.  

Crucially, the reports shine a light on how African people resisted enslavement, fighting a plantation economy that British elites were at the heart of. 

For more information: 

• Find out more about the Emerging Scholars Programme 
• The Guardian article