A researcher discovered a bundle of letters on eBay that sheds new light on prominent British families who profited from slavery. Malik Al Nasir, a Cambridge PhD researcher, bought the documents while investigating his own family history and began building an archive.
The letters detail the affairs of 19th-century families linked to Sandbach, Tinne and Company, a business dealing in enslaved people, cotton, sugar and coffee. They were being sold by collectors of rare stamps and postmarks, but their significance to colonial studies was overlooked until Al Nasir acquired them.
The collection now forms part of the University of Cambridge's Sandbach Tinne collection, housed in the Cambridge Digital Library alongside papers of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Al Nasir's research reveals how Lancashire business dynasties, including the Sandbach, Tinne and Gladstone families, built fortunes from enslavement in Guyana and intermarried to shape global capitalism.
The Gladstones and Sandbachs were among the largest recipients of compensation payments made to enslavers after abolition in 1833. The archive includes birth certificates of Black descendants and shows how the plantation economy intertwined with the Industrial Revolution.
Al Nasir, who discovered he is related to the Sandbach family, said the documents were considered insignificant by philatelists but provide a unique window into the empire. His memoir, Searching for My Slave Roots, also explores the role of enslaved man Jack Gladstone in the 1823 rebellion and the impact of Rev John Smith's testimony on the abolition movement.
