Cotton Capital

4.3 (127)
HISTORY
UPDATED WEEKLY

Cotton Capital is a podcast series that explores how transatlantic slavery shaped the Guardian, Manchester, Britain and the world. Stemming from an investigation into the Guardian founder's own links to slavery, this ongoing series explores that history and its enduring legacies today. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts

08/05/2023

Episode 6: Reparations

In the final episode of the series, Cotton Capital editor and Guardian journalist Maya Wolfe-Robinson looks at the subject of reparations. What do reparations mean for the communities and descendants of transatlantic enslavement – and what is the Guardian planning to do in its own programme of measures?

50 min
01/05/2023

Episode 5: Resistance

Guardian journalist and Cotton Capital special correspondent Lanre Bakare examines Black Mancunian history, beginning with the 1945 Pan-African Congress that took place in the city and shaped independence movements across Africa

41 min
24/04/2023

Episode 4: The Brazilian connection

During the transatlantic slave trade, more enslaved African people were taken to Brazil than any other country. Today, more than half of Brazil’s population identify as Black and there are more Black people in Brazil than any other country except Nigeria. But the country is still grappling with deep structural racism

37 min
17/04/2023

Episode three: The Sea Islands

Journalist DeNeen L Brown travels to the Sea Islands in the US and meets the Gullah Geechee people – direct descendants of enslaved Africans who picked the distinctive Sea Island cotton prized by traders in Manchester

48 min
10/04/2023

Episode 2: The meaning of Success

Our second episode follows journalist Maya Wolfe-Robinson as she travels to Jamaica in search of the site of the former sugar plantation Success, once co-owned by the Guardian funder Sir George Philips

51 min
03/04/2023

Episode 1: The bee and the ship

The first episode of the new Guardian podcast series Cotton Capital explores the revelations that the Guardian’s founding editor, John Edward Taylor, and at least nine of his 11 backers, had links to slavery, principally through the textile industry

46 min
28/03/2023

Coming soon: Cotton Capital – a new podcast from the Guardian

This new six-part series explores how transatlantic slavery shaped the Guardian, Manchester, Britain and the world. Stemming from an investigation into the Guardian founders’ own links to slavery, this ongoing series explores that history and its enduring legacies today. Search ‘Cotton Capital’ wherever you get your podcasts

1 min

7 Episodes

4.3

out of 5

127 Ratings

Well made, interesting

15/04/2023

cloudyabyss

For me, this bridged a knowledge gap I didn’t know I had. I learned in school about both the Slave Trade and the Industrial Revolution, but I’d never joined the two in the way that should have been obvious. Our national understanding of the British Empire is fragmentary, it’s good to join the dots. It’s interesting the guardian has chosen to do this. I’ll listen to the other episodes with interest. Hopefully it will be done well, this is a good start.
Enlightening

3 Apr

FayLo1

As a Guardian reader, and hailing from Manchester, this work has opened my eyes to my ignorance of history and the system that has prevented the telling of it.
A podcast EVERYONE should listen to

22/06/2023

ADWB54

Heartbreaking history that, sadly, cannot be altered. This story MUST be told and retold and never be forgotten. Makes me ashamed to be British.
So well told and interesting

09/05/2023

jenny tizard

This series is beautiful to listen to. Full of humanity and inspiring. Thank you.

Cotton Capital is a podcast series that explores how transatlantic slavery shaped the Guardian, Manchester, Britain and the world. Stemming from an investigation into the Guardian founder's own links to slavery, this ongoing series explores that history and its enduring legacies today. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts