Cast in Stone

Media metadata | Métadonnées multimédias

James Watt

has biography | a une biographie

British inventor, engineer, and mercantile agent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Watt came from a family with close ties to transatlantic commerce and occasionally slave-trading. His father, James Watt senior (1698-1782) was a transatlantic merchant in Greenock who traded in sugar and tobacco with North America and the Caribbean, while his brother John "Jockey" Watt (1739-1762) became involved in slave-trading.

In 1762, Watt became involved in slave-trafficking when he took responsibility for an enslaved boy named Frederick from his brother Jockey. Watt possibly became involved in delivering the child to the Glasgow merchant John Warrand, but it seems Frederick was able to run away and escape the affair.

Watt also supplied steam engines to the Caribbean in the early nineteenth century, which were used on enslaved labour plantations. According to Jennifer Tann, the Boulton & Watt firm exported a total of 129 engines to the Caribbean between 1803 and 1833.

For more information on the relationship between James Watt and slavery, please refer to the research carried out by the historian Stephen Mullen.

was born | est né

19 January 1736

died in | est mort par

25 August 1819

has nationality | a la nationalité

Scotland

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

has type | est de type

depicted

has association with | a une association avec

Trevithick, Richard

is referred to by | est référencé par

Wikipedia

Art UK

National Portrait Gallery

Stephen Mullen, 'Glasgow, Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: an Audit of Historic Connections and Modern Legacies', (Report for Glasgow City Council, 2022)

Stephen Mullen, 'James Watt and Slavery in Scotland', History Workshop (2020)

Jennifer Tann, ‘Steam and Sugar: The Diffusion of the Stationary Steam Engine to the Caribbean Sugar Industry 1770-1840’, History of Technology, 19 (1997) 63-84