Excavating Racial Capitalism in London's West India Docks

Abstract

Focusing on the construction of London's West India Docks in 1802, I argue that this project established a feedback loop with conditions of production in the Caribbean. Through an analysis of committee minutes, letters, parliamentary papers and visual art, I move beyond economic accounts of slavery's impact to demonstrate how geographies of security and surveillance-first developed on the sugar plantation-were imported into the design and function of London's port. As such, I argue that London's docks produced a geography of segregation which offers a unique insight into the workings of racial capitalism and its exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities. Positioning my discussion alongside London's contemporary landscape, I excavate Britain's repressed memories of slavery to illustrate how they still scar the urban environment.