Gezicht op de Royal Exchange te Manchester before 1900

This is A.J. Doherty’s photograph of the Royal Exchange in Manchester. The Exchange was at the heart of the city’s booming textile industry, a place where fortunes were made and lost. What strikes me is the photograph’s stillness which belies the frenetic energy of the Exchange. We see a classical façade, a symbol of order and prosperity, yet behind it lies a complex web of labor, trade, and colonial exploitation. Manchester was, after all, a city built on cotton, and that cotton was harvested by enslaved people in the Americas. It is a poignant reminder of how wealth and power are often intertwined with injustice. Consider the social dynamics at play here. Who had access to this space? Whose voices were heard? Whose labor was unseen? This image invites us to reflect on the relationship between economic progress and social equity.