Black metallurgists and the making of the industrial revolution

Figures & data

Figure 1. Thought to represent Queen Mother Idia, the eyes of this bust are inlaid with iron. Brass commemorative head, Edo, Benin City, early sixteenth century. British Museum No. Af1897,1011.1. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Figure 2. Bundles of iron rods/currency blades, Fang, Bene. Museum Purchase, Huntington Frothingham Wolcott Fund, 1920. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 20-29-50/B2167.

Table

Timeline of events
1775	Navy financier, Henry Cort, takes over the Portsmouth works of one of his debtors. His losses are substantial.
Dec 1780	John Reeder’s foundry reaches ‘perfection’: 76 Black metallurgists, equipped with water-powered rolling mills, remanufacturing several thousand tons of scrap into valuable bar iron. The foundry turns a clear profit or £4,000 a year, equivalent to a relative income of £7.4 million in 2020. Among other apparatus Reeder’s foundry manufactures grooved sugar rollers.
Dec 1780	Cort, struggling to break even, invests substantial sums to erect a rolling mill. His losses are substantial, amounting to nearly £10,000.
Dec 1780	Kwasi takes the name John Reeder.
Jan 1781	Kwasi kills Jack.
Nov 1781	The Princess Royal arrives in Portsmouth with news from Jamaica just as Cort is facing bankruptcy and drowning in scrap iron from a Navy contract.
Nov/Dec 1781	Cort begins to experiment.
Spring 1782	Reeder’s foundry is dismantled and loaded onto ships set for Portsmouth.
1782	Cort lays out £27,000, equivalent to the value of Reeder’s foundry.
Dec 1782	Cort declares he has ‘found some grand secret in making iron’ using grooved rollers, normally associated with sugar mills, in his Portsmouth Navy works.