Who Really Profited

Slavery's benefits reached far beyond plantation owners:

• Banks — lenders such as Barclays and JPMorgan's predecessor firms made loans using enslaved people as collateral
• Insurers — Lloyd's of London insured slave ships and their human "cargo"
• Northern factories — turned raw cotton into finished textiles, generating huge industrial wealth
• European ports — the triangular trade built cities like Liverpool, Bristol, and Nantes

This wealth was reinvested into infrastructure, industry, and institutions that still exist today. The head start was enormous and compounding.