Henry Cort stole his iron innovation from Black metallurgists in Jamaica

The British Industrial Revolution is marked by economic and societal shifts toward manufacturing — away from largely agrarian life. Many technological advances powered this change.

One of the most significant innovations was called the Cort process, named after patent holder Henry Cort. The process takes low quality iron ore and transforms it from brittle, crumbly pieces into much stronger wrought iron bars. The transformation is cheap, allows for mass production and made Britain the leading iron exporter at the time.

But after analyzing historical documents, Jenny Bulstrode, a historian at University College London (UCL), found that the process was not actually created by Cort.

"It's theft, in fact," says Bulstrode.

Uncovering a theft

Bulstrode's findings were published in the journal History and Technology in June. In the paper, she notes 18th century documents suggesting that Henry Cort, an English banker, stole the technique from 76 Black enslaved metallurgists in Jamaica.

Cort learned about the metallurgists from his cousin, a merchant who often shipped goods between Jamaica and England. The workers were enslaved metalworkers in a foundry outside of Morant Bay, Jamaica. Bulstrode discovered historical documents listing some of the enslaved workers' names, including Devonshire, Mingo, Mingo's son, Friday, Captain Jack, Matt, George, Jemmy, Jackson, Will, Bob, Guy, Kofi (Cuffee) and Kwasi (Quashie).

"These are people who are very sophisticated in their science of metalworking. And they do something different with it than what the Europeans have been doing because the Europeans are kind of constrained by their own conventions," Bulstrode says.

Rewriting a Jamaican legacy

The realization that the Cort process originated from enslaved African Jamaicans rather than a British merchant provokes contrasting reactions among academic historians and many in the general public.

"You have historians who are very vocal who have said, 'You know, this isn't new. We as historians are fully aware that enslaved Africans have been innovating, have been developing and have produced an amazing ... industrial complex,'" says Sheray Warmington, a researcher at The University of the West Indies.

Warmington specializes in development and reparations in post-colonial states. But she says that growing up in Jamaica, she and many others had never heard this history.

For Warmington and Bulstrode alike, this truth is a reminder that Black people are frequently underacknowledged for their accomplishments. They also hope it will spark conversations about how history and innovations in science and technology are taught in school.

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This episode was produced by Carly Rubin and Berly McCoy, edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact checked by Brit Hanson. Robert Rodriguez was the audio engineer.