On 21 June 2023, a scholarly journal paper challenged the long-held view that nineteenth century British ironmaster Henry Cort had invented a method for recycling low quality scrap iron into more valuable wrought iron. Instead, the author asserted, Cort had stolen this idea from “Black metallurgists in Jamaica who developed it”, crediting them as the true innovators of the process, and identifying them as a combination of free and enslaved workers. This video describes the scholarly response to this paper, and the discussion over black ingenuity in the Industrial Revolution.
Alan Lester [@aljhlester]. “@SalisburyJohnof @Telegraph This Response Is Revealing. Lots of Papers Are Published with Arguments That Some Find Dubious. It’s Part of Normal Scholarly Practice to Challenge Them, Especially If They Are Well Publicised in the Press, without Vindictive Allegations of Fraud and ‘hoax’ against Their Authors.” Tweet. Twitter, 19 November 2023. https://x.com/aljhlester/status/1726331757778080035.
Allosso, Dan. “History Does Not Have a Replication Problem.” Substack newsletter. MakingHistory, 4 October 2023. https://danallosso.substack.com/p/history-does-not-have-a-replication.
American Historical Association. “Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct.” Historians, 7 January 2023. https://www.historians.org/resource/statement-on-standards-of-professional-conduct/.
Armitage, David. “The Impulse of the Present | Historical Transactions.” Historical Transactions, 26 July 2023. https://blog.royalhistsoc.org/2023/07/26/the-impulse-of-the-present/.
Barber, Regina G. “Henry Cort Stole His Iron Innovation from Black Metallurgists in Jamaica.” NPR, 7 August 2023, § Short Wave. https://www.npr.org/2023/08/03/1191989712/henry-cort-stole-his-iron-innovation-from-black-metallurgists-in-jamaica.
Bezís-Selfa, John. “Slavery and the Disciplining of Free Labor in the Colonial Mid-Atlantic Iron Industry.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 64 (1997): 270–86.
Bruce, Kathleen. “Slave Labor in the Virginian Iron Industry.” The William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 6.4 (1926): 289–302. https://doi.org/10.2307/1919261.
Bulstrode, Jenny. “Black Metallurgists and the Making of the Industrial Revolution.” History and Technology 39.1 (2023): 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2023.2220991.
Crémieux. “Crémieux on X: ‘Let’s Be Clear: This Editorial Is Not Important, Careful, or Reasoned. Its Arguments Are a Red Herring. The Article Is Divided into Two Sections: An Attempted Rebuttal of the Historical Facts and a Section in Which the Editors Let the Cat out of the Bag and Voiced Their Https://T.Co/PufO2E1xmw’ / X.” X (Formerly Twitter), 17 November 2023. https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1725319704129012086.
Devlin, Hannah, and Hannah Devlin Science correspondent. “Industrial Revolution Iron Method ‘Was Taken from Jamaica by Briton.’” The Guardian, 5 July 2023, § Science. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/05/industrial-revolution-iron-method-taken-from-jamaica-briton.
Eichhorn, Barbara, and Caroline Robion-Brunner. “Wood Exploitation in a Major Pre-Colonial West African Iron Production Centre (Bassar, Togo).” Quaternary International 458 Anthracology: Local to Global Significance of Charcoal Science Part II (2017): 158–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.08.073.
Evans, Chris, and Göran Rydén. “‘Voyage Iron’: An Atlantic Slave Trade Currency, Its European Origins, and West African Impact*.” Past & Present 239.1 (2018): 41–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtx055.
Farwell, Ashley. “Cherokee and Black Iron Workers of the Past: Exploring Alternative Methodologies to Experience 19th-Century Blacksmithing and Ironworks.” Master of Arts, University of New Brunswick, 2023. https://unbscholar.lib.unb.ca/handle/1882/37790.
Goldman, Lawrence. “Dr Bulstrode on Black Metallurgists and the Industrial Revolution – History Reclaimed.” History Reclaimed, 12 December 2023. https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/dr-bulstrode-on-black-metallurgists-and-the-industrial-revolution/.
Howes, Anton. “Age of Invention: Cort Case,” 29 August 2023. https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-cort-case.
———. “Age of Invention: Does History Have a Replication Crisis?,” 29 August 2023. https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-does-history-have.
———. “Age of Invention: How to Be a Public Historian,” 28 November 2023. https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-how-to-be-a-public.
humphrey. “Jenny Bulstrode, Malpractise, and Academic Freedom.” Committee For Academic Freedom, 3 October 2023. https://afcomm.org.uk/2023/10/03/jenny-bulstrode-malpractise-and-academic-freedom/.
Jelf, Oliver. “Henry Cort and the ‘Black Metallurgists’: On the Accuracy of Bulstrode’s Historical Account.” OSF, 22 February 2025. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/kbz6y_v2, https://osf.io/kbz6y_v2.
———. “The Origin of Henry Cort’s Iron-Rolling Process: Assessing the Evidence.” OSF, 24 August 2023. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/rp5ae, https://osf.io/rp5ae.
John of Salisbury [@SalisburyJohnof]. “@aljhlester @jennybulstrode To Reiterate the Point about the Key Word Being May: The Most That Can Be Said Is That the Thesis Is Plausible Speculation. The Substantive Disagreement Is over How Plausible. But It Has Not Been Presented as This at All: See Bulstrode’s Comments Here (Https://Ucl.Ac.Uk/News/2023/Jul/Black-Metal-Workers-Jamaica-Pioneered-Key-Industrial-Revolution-Innovation).” Tweet. Twitter, 18 November 2023. https://x.com/SalisburyJohnof/status/1725948314787651841.
Knowles, A. K. “‘The White Hands “Damn Them … Won’t Stick”’: Labor Scarcity and Spatial Discipline in the Antebellum Iron Industry.” Journal of Historical Geography 32.1 (2006): 57–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2005.07.015.
Leslie, Ian. “Stories Are Bad for Your Intelligence.” Ian Leslie, 2 September 2023. https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/stories-are-bad-for-your-intelligence.
———. “The End of History.” The Ruffian, 23 November 2023. https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-end-of-history?utm_medium=reader2.
Lewis, Ronald L. “Slavery on Chesapeake Iron Plantations Before the American Revolution.” The Journal of Negro History 59.3 (1974): 242–54. https://doi.org/10.2307/2716765.
Pole, Len. “Steeling Themselves: Effects of External Trade on West African Ironworkers.” Journal of Museum Ethnography 20 (2008): 17–32.
season-of-light. “Thoughts on Cort-Gate?” Reddit Post. R/EconomicHistory, 29 November 2023. www.reddit.com/r/EconomicHistory/comments/186vzg7/thoughts_on_cortgate/.
Slaton, Amy E., and Tiago Saraiva. “Editorial.” History and Technology 39.2 (2023): 127–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2023.2275357.
Smith, Noah. “Politicized Science Inevitably Tends toward Pseudoscience,” 30 November 2024. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/politicized-science-inevitably-tends.
Sreekumar, Divya. “Author Affiliations in Research Papers: Answering Your Top 3 Queries | Researcher.Life.” Researcher.Life, 22 December 2022. https://researcher.life/blog/article/author-affiliations-in-research-papers/.
Stoeger, Alexander. “BSHS Council Statement on ‘Black Metallurgists and the Making of the Industrial Revolution.’” BSHS, 22 November 2023. https://www.bshs.org.uk/bshs-council-statement-on-black-metallurgists-and-the-making-of-the-industrial-revolution.
UCL. “Journal Editorial Offers Unreserved Support for Jenny Bulstrode’s ‘Black Metallurgists’ Paper.” Science and Technology Studies, 16 November 2023. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/news/2023/nov/journal-editorial-offers-unreserved-support-jenny-bulstrodes-black-metallurgists-paper.
Weinberg, Justin. “Do Journals Favor Affiliated Authors? – Daily Nous.” Daily Nous, 2 March 2018. https://dailynous.com/2018/03/02/journals-favor-affiliated-authors/, https://dailynous.com/2018/03/02/journals-favor-affiliated-authors/.
Wootton, David. “Cort case shows why historical truth matters.” Engelsberg ideas, 28 September 2023. https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/cort-case-shows-why-historical-truth-matters/.
“Correction.” History and Technology 39.3–4 (2023): 348–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2023.2278894.
