Liverpool Shipping Records: Imports and Exports, 1820-1900 - Part 1 - Key Data

Containing over 70,000 images, Liverpool Shipping Records: Imports and Exports, 1828–1900 documents 80 years of imports and exports to and from the city of Liverpool. This collection contains bills of entry derived from the reports and manifests of ships that docked in Liverpool. These documents offer unique insights into Liverpool's maritime history and the goods traded in Liverpool between 1828 and 1900. This collection, therefore, provides students and researchers with an overview of global trade networks and their interaction with the city of Liverpool.

The prosperity of the city during this period was built on its maritime success as one of England’s major docks. In the early eighteenth century, Liverpool merchants supplemented their existing trade links with Ireland and Europe with voyages around the Atlantic. Liverpool became heavily involved in various imperial trade networks, including tobacco, sugar, indigo, rice, rum, and cotton. Many of the goods traded in Liverpool were derived from the labour of enslaved people. Indeed, Liverpool and its merchants were major players in the transatlantic slave trade. By 1800, Liverpool was the largest slave trading port in the world and much of the city’s wealth and development relied on enslavement and the triangular trade. 

In 1807, The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed and prohibited the trade of enslaved people throughout the British empire. This drastically changed shipping in Liverpool, which had previously been heavily involved in trading enslaved people. Merchants did, however, continue to trade goods produced by enslaved people and slavery continued its legacy in Liverpool’s trade networks.