Slavery and Colonialism Are Everyone’s History

[GodessOfThunder]

I was on a thread recently where posters were complaining of slavery and colonialism being “shoehorned” into exhibitions, and were strongly “pushing back” against it being given prominence as a topic in museums and at historic sites. Indeed, transatlantic slavery and colonialism often seem to be regarded as niche historical subjects of interest more to people of colour, and involving only a small number of rich white slave owners and colonial officials.

This perception however, does not reflect reality. Transatlantic slavery effected not only millions of Africans, but pretty much everyone in Britain too. Similarly, colonialism effected not only millions of subjects in the British Empire, but everyone “at home” also. The economy these projects fuelled changed what ordinary people ate and drank and what they wore. They changed how British people thought about non-European people in ways that continue to shape their mindset and create injustice today. Slavery and colonialism helped fund the Industrial Revolution and the jobs people in Britain performed, and much more too.

I’m not suggesting anyone today should feel guilty for these activities. But, these subjects are still all too often not regarded as part of all of our histories. This means attempts to give them proper prominence are met with resistance. If we are to understand British history at a public level properly there is still a great deal of work to do.

I agree OP, and find it ridiculous that some people are trying to claim that talking about it is somehow 'changing history' - it's just adding more detail and context.

It's also not somehow 'disrespectful' to British history - what is disrespectful is not believing the story of Britain is robust enough to take a bit of scrutiny and some more perspectives!

And I'm sorry, but the ' but there was always slavery and we ended it' does not excuse the massive global slavery complex created by European people, that is a rather naive way of looking at it. No one forced us to treat human beings as chattel on an industrial scale. Yes, it is good that they did get round to abolishing it but they should never have created an international slave trade. I agree no one should have to personally feel guilty about it, but we also are kidding ourselves if we think the fact 'we' ended it excuses the British Empire.

OP, you should start further back in history for the full context of what you’re talking about, (it’s actually hard to understand as another PP pointed out what you’re really trying to say), say circa 2000 BC

Sorry about double post no idea what happened

@TurnerP

I've just been reading the thread about the Roman Empire (how often do you think about it?) and the level of interest and enthusiasm is really interesting. People seem to view it positively. I guess the colonised and enslaved Britons might have felt differently though.

It made me wonder how long has to pass after the fall of an Empire for people in a formerly colonised country to feel personally disconnected from it and simply view it as an interesting part of their country's history.

Most people don’t care, to be frank.

It wasn't created by the Europeans. It was already happening

Who is "everyone" or "everyone in Britain"? This appears to include people whose own family histories were based in another place, which was not necessarily either the perpetrator or victim of colonialism and the slave trade. Everyone living in Britain now lives in a country which has the legacy of the British Empire, but if you/your family moved here in the 21st century or late in the 20th, it's not necessarily your history.

Is it the history of people from Eastern Europe, for example? There are now lots of Poles and Ukrainians living in the UK. Ukraine has a history of oppression from Russia and from Poland, and of Tatar slave raids abducting people into slavery in the Ottoman Empire, or if we go back further there are the Mongols and even the "slave/Slav" link, but not specifically a history of colonialism outside of Europe or of transatlantic slavery.

Eh ? Why shouldn't British history and museams contain a lot about British heros who changed the world for the better ?

We have a duty to understand the implications and ramifications of those actions though and acknowledge the disparity and injustice that black people in Britain continue to suffer.

While I agree that it was a bad trade but it was par for the times. I believe that there was a similar slave trade ongoing on the other coast of Africa sending people to Arabia and Asia which sadly gets neglected. I may not approve of slavery but the people living at the time lived by different standards. Sometimes I wonder what we'll be criticised for in the future and our grand children be apologising fir on our behalf.

Probably climate change and mass extinction which we are all contributing to daily. And that's happening all because we found fossil fuels to replace physical labour that used to be carried out by people including slaves and also animals.

The troubles of black Britain can't all be attributed to slavery, certainly not in the same way as they are in America where Slavery is still in living memory. The issues in Britain are, and always have been, about class. It's a peculiarly British fascination to hold people in their place due to their class.

Totally agree with @Ponoka7 and believe that this is where the "slavery is shoehorned into everything" sentiment really stems from. There was an issue with what you wrote (and then repeated in your reply to @Ponoka7) in your generalisation about the slave trade having altered the lives of ordinary people. It didn't. Certainly not all of them. Probably not even the majority of them. The wealth generated by the slave trade did not filter down to the millions who lived in abject poverty in disease-ridden slums. Or to the thousands upon thousands of very young children who worked gruelling and dangerous jobs.

I think some people, rightly or wrongly, get sick of hearing about the relevance of the Transatlantic slave trade to historic properties for example, because of precisely this false generalisation that ordinary people benefitted from it, when in reality we know that vast numbers did not and were living in horrific conditions. A bit more measured thinking and actual evidence on both sides would go a long way to bringing people's feelings on the subject closer together, IMO. Much as you don't want the impact of the slave trade white washed or minimised (and neither do I - I am happy to see factually presented information in historical exhibits etc), other people feel just as strongly that the suffering of so many ordinary people who didn't feel any benefit from it should not be edited out with incorrect sweeping generalisations about how ordinary British people benefitted from slavery.

I believe more people would happily research Slavery in all it's 'glory' providing it is balanced. Sadly what seems to be massively more common is for some of the Black community to use slavery from 200 years ago as reason to complain about their lives now.

Remove the false rhetoric that it is White privellege because a distant relation of POC was once a slave and accept that for the majority of us, life was very tough and short 200 years ago.

I'm not sure people are saying ordinary people benefitted from it directly, although it could be a lot of the wealth of this country and the fact we are still, FWIW, one of the most wealthy countries in the world is related to the slave trade.

Everyone know that slavery was practised before the empire, everyone knows that, yes, some African rulers did apparently sell their own people. But Europeans could have come to Africa, where they liked to describe local practises as terrible and barbaric, and said 'Look at this slavery, how awful, thank God we stopped doing that in Europe centuries ago... let's be Christian and free these people'. But instead they decided that as black people weren't really people they didn't count and saw the opportunity for big bucks by creating a massive, well organised global slave trade on a scale never seen before or since.

And people just want the impact acknowledged - I was at the Museum of London Docklands, where there is a big permanent exhibit about slavery, with a black friend. She was exasperated when it got to the general London history exhibit and the section about Caribbean emigration to London because to her it felt as though the big exhibition was saying 'Slavery was awful and bad but we ended it so everything's OK now' and not joining the dots about global movement and the ongoing impact on this country and on black people, which is kind of its job as a museum. And I think that in a microcosm is the issue - black people just want people to acknowledge it without these qualifications. Not guilt and hair-shirting, that's just centring ourselves - simply the ability to look the slave trade in the face without whataboutery.

While we're on the subject of Liverpool, did you know that in the mid 19th century the life expectancy of Liverpool labourers was 15. Just stop for a minute and think about that. 15. Professional men in Liverpool had a life expectancy of 35.

To say that Liverpudlians in general benefitted from slavery is very wide of the mark.

The problem with the rhetoric around slavery is not everyone abolished it at the same time, add to that some nations (America) love the sound of their own voices more than using their ears and the full picture is easily lost. Understandably black Americans are angry - slavery is still within living memory for them. Many states in America are so backwards with regards race it's beyond comprehension for the British to truly understand.

Britain is a class driven society and it is that where we see the effects of slavery and colonialism the most. The "no blacks and Irish" rhetoric was through fear from a class that was seriously oppressed and without jobs, money, housing or food. Because of this they didn't "want all those types coming over here stealing our jobs" when there were few jobs for unskilled and manual workers.

You can have a blanket "this is what happened" because what I've described as happening in one part of Britain may not have happened in other parts. Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, the industrial and seafaring powerhouses of the north really suffered once industry began to go bust, ANY perceived interloper was treated with hate.

The job of a museum is to give the edited highlights (or lowlights). You should be able to, if you're interested, find a curator who can direct you to resources to deepen your learning.

But it hadn't

I was reading the Ghost ship book by Kate Mosse and although it was fictional it was quite an eye opener about the galley slaves and how they were treated. They were taken from Europe and this was the 1600s

I'm afraid you may have misinterpreted my words, and I certainly wasn't trying to educate you about it.

What I meant was...when the colonial times are discussed in school nowadays, from what I've been told by the students I've known over the last 10 years or so, it almost exclusively focuses on the "bad" parts; why, I'm not entirely sure, and it's probably slightly too simplistic to say that it's because it's fashionable to hate on the British Empire, but I don't think that's entirely wide of the mark.

I'm not saying that everything should be completely balanced - history absolutely should be about facts, not facts-viewed-through-modern-lenses - but when hugely important events like the abolition of slavery for the first time in human history are omitted from the teaching (or only briefly mentioned in passing), it leads to the kind of skewed view of British history that we see everywhere today.

And, of course, there is the corollary to that which completely agrees with your point - the economics of the whole world were driven by human slavery, since time immemorial and in every part of the world; when folk try to judge folk of old from any time before the last 150 years for it, it's a fruitless endeavour and entirely results in seeing only a part of the picture.

Someone mentioned on the 'roman empire thread' that it was a bit sad and the empire ended and I mentioned the slavery and oppression of various peoples

The poster said 'well it wasnt just that bit', as if empires were formed without those aspects. ALL empires used slavery, landgrabs, stealing of resources oppression of people etc

Every single one of them, its just how humans worked

Modern empires/powerful unions are political and economic based but that is a very modern phenomenon

This bit in particular is completely untrue.
Understandably black Americans are angry - slavery is still within living memory for them.

Slavery was abolished in the mid to late 1800's in America. Numerous Generations have lived and died since then. I could understand some Blacks in Southern States still suffering racism etc. But for most of America it is poverty which is the issue, and that applies to all ethnicities.

Exactly this.

No one alive now is to blame for slavery. It's fine to teach about it but do we need to be flagellated for the acts of our ancestors?

So you've not seen the filmed interviews that are currently going semi viral of a couple that were born into slavery in America. Slaves. Talking on film.