Walk along Jamaica Street in Liverpool today and it is almost impossible to imagine the past that underpins it. This is an area now buzzing with creativity—murals, start-up workspaces, coffee shops spilling onto pavements—but beneath the colour lies a weightier story.
Both Liverpool and Bristol share an uncomfortable parallel. Their rise to prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries was not simply the result of industrious innovation but was funded, in part, by trading routes with America and the West Indies. The prosperity of these cities was tied to a grim economy of slaves, alcohol, and tobacco—though, of course, there was also trade in less controversial goods. Street names, etched into the very geography of our cities, act as signposts to that past. “Jamaica Street” is no coincidence. It is an imprint of trade, of exploitation, but also of global connection.
Liverpool’s Jamaica Street today sits at the edge of the Baltic Triangle, a district reborn through urban regeneration. What w…
