Power & Politics

A political history of Britain in the places where it happened: parliament and palace, courts and counting houses, and the streets where people pushed back.

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London Museum Docklands

A sugar warehouse of 1802, explaining the trade it was built to hold.

EmpireMoney & the CityFree to enter

Photo by Joyofmuseums, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Also in Museums.

The West India Docks were private infrastructure: a walled, guarded, purpose-built system for moving the produce of the Caribbean through London faster and with less theft. This is one of the original warehouses, and the galleries inside follow the whole chain - sugar, rum, tea and tobacco; the merchants, shipowners, insurers and financiers who took the profit; and the enslaved people whose labour the Atlantic economy ran on. It is unusually direct about the money, which is the part most often left out. The last rooms follow the collapse of the docks when container ships outgrew the river, and the arrival of Canary Wharf on the same ground - one global economic function replacing another, a few hundred yards from the door.

Where
Hertsmere Road, E14 4AL
Nearest station
West India Quay · 3 min walk

Step-free access

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Hours

Monday10:00 – 17:00
Tuesday10:00 – 17:00
Wednesday10:00 – 17:00
Thursday10:00 – 17:00
Friday10:00 – 17:00
Saturday10:00 – 17:00
Sunday10:00 – 17:00

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