Jack House refers to Glasgow’s role in the Slave Trade in ‘The Heart of Glasgow’, 1965 edition

In Chapter 7 of The Heart of Glasgow, which the author called ‘Beyond the Plainstanes’, Jack House commented:

“At this time there was a group of self-made men in Glasgow who were called the Tobacco Lords. They had cornered the tobacco trade between America and Europe. They owned estates on the other side of the Atlantic and they paid for the tobacco by sending over goods of all kinds, produced in Glasgow, and Negro slaves, produced from Africa. The Glasgow Tobacco Lords were among the biggest slave-traders in Britain. This is a side of their business life which has been conveniently ignored by most Glasgow historians, who will tell you how various factories were built to provide America with hats, bottles, cotton goods, and all sorts of other goods, with never a word about human beings.”

The Heart of Glasgow, 1965 edition, pages 82-3.