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.

@GodessOfThunder

I agree with your ideas of how history should be approached but I do think we have to explore the idea of history without judgment. If we teach history without judgment aren't you in effect implicitly lauding slavers by not judging?

for instance if you were to teach civil war history to black US children and not offer a moral opinion on the right s and wrongs of the North and South's stance on slavery do you think this will be well recived?

I was listening to a discussion on Florida about how US history should be taught to black children and it was a challenging debate. There is an argument that teaching black children an in depth analysis of the war of independence really did ignore their ancestors experience (and literally non-independece) and hence perpetuation of the idolisation of the founding fathers of the US and ignoring the legacy of slavery. Of course on this radio show there were very vocal.voices saying the US school history curriculum should stay as it is.

I think it is difficult in practice to make the teaching of history a neutral act and leave the moral decision making to others. Ideally we should be able to do this on a theoretical level but in practice a lot of history or the weight we put on particular events comes with an agenda.

The teaching of slavery in the US does come with an agenda with aims of removing the degree of praise and pride in the US southern states on their historical leaders. There has been the gradual reduction in the display of confederate flags for instance over time and moved to remove prominent statues in some cities.

History is vitally important but we can't be disingenuous about the teaching of it not having an impact so we need to be careful about what and how we teach.

Even if your country was never a colonial invader, all of its inhabitants will still be benefit to g from the modern day exploitation and slavery that comes with anything mined out of the ground - such as lithium, coltan, gold in electronic goods, the environmental destruction that comes with much of this (and agriculture) and that of manufacturing. So we are all culpable unless we live essentially as self subsistence farmers and never buy consumer goods.

Believe me I know, it’s a country with huge environmental damage and exploitation happening still

Then why did you "kindly" tell me that I'm clearly not interested in history when I gave quite an enthusiastic defence of how much we can gain from properly appreciating historical nuance?

You've been all over this thread implying people are uncomfortable about their own racist ancestors. You clearly have your own perspective on what we need to highlight and centre in our teachings of slavery and colonialism. Which is fine, but own it.

Anyone who lives in Britain or the countries which make up Britain have benefitted from slavery and colonialisation. Drive on a long straight road - slaves of Rome, potatoes for dinner or chips? From the American colonies, curry for supper. India?
Freedom - will thank those from the UK, colonies and enslaved countries for fighting naziism. Freedom to question religion? Well if king Phillip of Spain had invaded England, it would have been different. Don't get me started on Napoleon.
Britain has a past. Good and bad things happened.

Slaves did not build Roman roads. Not a good opening.

I haven’t suggested anything about conclusions they drew, have I?

Whatever knowledge they did or didn’t have, pretty much everyone engaged in a behaviour or mode of thought influenced or directly facilitated by slavery and empire.

In fact, studying levels of knowledge and engagement with these issues in the past is an interesting topic.

The Romans were an occupying colonial power.

@Hobbi I don't know if slaves built Roman roads but it's certainly a legacy of Britain being colonised by the Romans along with other infrastructure. The same with our language - norman words for food served at the tables and the Saxon word for the animal in the field. Britain used to be a load of small kingdoms brought together by a colonial power too. We can celebrate both Boadicea and indoor heating.

You see the same in other colonised countries - arguably the Indian subcontinent is less prone to famine than it was pre British colonialisation because of the infrastructure improvements and improvements in record keeping that causes to be identified and addressed. You could also believe that they caused a load of famines and the experts don't agree on this either, primarily because the data pre British colonialisation is recorded in a different way that makes them not really comparable and (also!) biased as hell. I don't think anyone disputes that Clive and co. were awful.

There's also disagreement over what happened in places like Benin which is obviously a hot topic. We know that reports of the war there are biased on both sides. We know the bronzes are made from a material not found in Africa but used as currency for the slave trade. We know that the descendants of the Benin family are still rich from profiting from their people. Wouldn't that mean the bronzes really belong to the descendants of the slaves who were sold to make them? Personally I don't believe that the descendants of the families who got rich selling people should have them, whatever the colour of their skin, and I'd like the education system to convey that critical thinking.

Yet again, we come back to the importance of challenging the information we see and understanding it's bias as crucial. It's been really refreshing seeing this thread as a discussion rather than mass cancellation and I absolutely agree more of that context for discussion would be fantastic in the syllabus.

@Callmesleepy

You can surely understand why he rose an eyebrow when you said you didn't know if slaves built Roman roads after making it your opening statement. I'm afraid in this context, much of what you say is straying into whataboutery, albeit better informed than other posters. The point some of us are making is that there are direct, continuous consequences for modern life due to the transatlantic slave trade. Learning more about this would improve our understanding of economics, politics, crime, culture and, yes, race relations. Any notion of 'balance' when talking of the undeniable horrors of empire is little different to offering Jimmy Savile's charity work as a 'balance' to his crimes.

@GodessOfThunder

I find the information here about slavery interesting and I sure you as historian definitely do have an interest.

however you don't want to find that children or students find slavery 'interesting' but I am going to hazard a guess you want them to find it 'shocking' and 'appalling'. I think the motivation for many who want to concentrate on trans Atlantic slavery is to provide a historical platform for highlighting contemporary racism and that to my mind is moving into the territory of activism.

We had a debate in a local church about the Church of England's complicity in slavery (old church) and there was an inspection of the Bible about its attitude towards slavery. Of course the Bible isn't an abolitionist text and the right to own slaves is mentioned quite a lot especially in the Old Testament. I think this shows how embedded in human culture slavery was until recent centuries and through the great sweep of time no country has completely divorced from owning slaves.

Possibly looking at slavery as a concept in the entire human history would be a topic worthy of discussion and a concentration on one aspect may be overly narrow? Why concentrate on one particular human historical wrong when many counties may lay claim to a right for ancestral oppression to be part of school curricula? You may have British Muslims wishing the plight of Muslims in China to be taught or Ukrainians wishing the forced removal of children to Russia to be taught. I don't think there is room for every heinous act in human history to be discussed in depth so how do we prioritise?

You wrote: “If we teach history without judgment aren't you in effect implicitly lauding slavers by not judging?”

Judgment of the past isn’t the job of historians; history is about understanding.

Judgement is also fraught with difficulty. What criteria do you use? Judging using today’s mores would shed little light on the past as it’s anachronistic. Also, to explain why a particular judgement had been made diversions would have to be made into moral philosophy,

My understanding is that RE these days also looks at secular philosophical ideas. This would be a good place to discuss how to evaluate actions from a moral perspective.

I would say I would want them to be informed after a lesson: to walk away with a better understanding of the past. If they find a subject interesting that’s a good thing.

Part of studying slavery and empire should be to learn about their after effects in terms of the racial prejudice, developmental and political challenges in former colonies and on. This can help overcome prejudice, which is a good thing, but these events were fundamental to shaping the Britain (and the world) we live in today. The case for that knowledge stands on its own as well.

@GodessOfThunder

I take your point but is there a limit to what we can understand especially if we are talking about the darker side of humanity? Aren't there certain human events where we can't help but to judge and condemn as well as understand historical reasons e.g. the holocaust?

Understanding absolutely is the desire of a professional historian but the motivation of teaching of slavery is possibly not to promote the academically pure 'understanding' but to give society an opportunity to look at society's leaders in a different light which will lead to some extent condemnation for purported crimes (as modern society would view them)

Again going back to a previous example I can understand the reasoning behind George Washingtons decision not to back abolitionist policies as it would risk breaking up the newly. formed USA but there are those that wish promotion of history to reduce his reputation which to my mind isn't acheivable. I think some would want not to understand but collate evidence for condemnation.

I agree it’s natural to evaluate historical events from today’s moral perspective, but it’s not the job of a history teacher to articulate these in a class - because they wouldn’t be teaching history then, they would be teaching moral philosophy.

History of course also gets weaponised for all manner of causes today, but, again this doesn’t have to mean events in the past are judged.

@GodessOfThunder

I agree with the aims of any good history lesson but isn't interest and information not the 'end game' here? To contrast with a chemistry lesson where it is interesting that salt dissolves in water history is not an emotionally completely neutral subject and isn't there that hope that those emotions change attitudes.

I think the problem here is that we teach about how slavery helped shape modern Britain and if we think modern Britain is a good thing (6th largest country in the world) then you may be led to the unpalatbale conclusion slavery was beneficial (does this help race relations?). The legacy of slavery is prevalent then we are left with 2 options:

A) look at slavery neutrally (without judgment) and recognise the achievements of many industrialists, military figures etc. during the period of slavery in forming our country with acknowledgment that they may have directly or indirectly benefiting from slavery.

B) look at those who benefited from slavery with more judgment and reduce their standing in current societies view with the point that slavery may be a root for systemic and institutional racism. It would be recognised that people of colour are disadvantaged from historical oppression and their should be cultural and policy change to mitigate this.

If you go for A you could be accused of simplicity supporting slavery (by not condeming) and if you go for B then you will be accused of being to denigrate your country and the history it's built on?

I think it's a complex decision 🤷

6th largest economy

The myth of impartiality. British education is not nor has it ever been impartial. It has been openly crafted to impart British values. Imo this is not usually portrayed as negative. One of these values is specifically around mutual respect towards people of different backgrounds.

Despite perhaps the best of intentions, it is clear that collective bias has meant racist narratives have persisted. This thread alone has enumerated some of the common ones. We’ve had the white man’s burden, to black people are inherently inferior & lazy, the infantilisation of poc to name a few.

One of the ways this bias has continued is through the exclusion of poc in British history. Why is it then activism to change the curriculum so it fulfils one of the very objectives it’s failing to meet?

I think the question of "was slavery good or bad" is a bit of a pointless one because it's not like anyone is proposing we bring back formalised legal slave ownership today.

I think it's more interesting to look at, within the confines of people's worldviews and constraints at the time, how did different people choose to behave. For example you might have slaves because everyone did. But some people treated them not too differently from modern domestic servants, and others beat and raped them. What made some people feel able to get away with that? And how does that translate to people today, when they're in positions of power over people, although not necessarily in that precise legal arrangement?

Similarly with empire - it's honestly pointless discussing it as a concept. Even only considering Britain as a colonial power (a very limiting view IMO), colonial activities have an extremely mixed legacy as PP have observed. But if you look closely, some specific colonies had much more positive or negative legacies. Different administrators were kinder or more ruthless, more settler-focused or extraction-focused, more military-minded or more willing to negotiate.

It's instructive to consider those differences and instructive to consider how much of them derive from external forces vs individual decisions of the people involved. If for no other reason than to identify common patterns that have played out, so we can spot them in pseudo-colonial arrangements today that aren't obviously draped in British flags and Victorian moustaches (China belt&road, the IMF, mining corporations...).

I don't know. Some of my ancestors were from a former British colony. If slavery and colonisation had never happened how do you know what benefits they and their descendants may have enjoyed? Also, as has already been pointed out, if you are British, but not white, your enjoyment of any benefits created by empire and slavery are still seriously hampered by endemic and systemic prejudice.

@MCOut

Firstly racism is wrong and we should combat it.

However I think it is worth exploring whether teaching about slavery to a significant extent will in reality erode racism if that is the intention.

As I pointed out to a previous poster of we take an academically pure look at slavery then we are left with actually having a 'postive ' (note the apstrophes) economic benefit with no condemnation or moral judgment about the perpetrators or leaders at the time. I don't think this helps poc as it gives the impression that slave owning nations were implicitly 'in the right' without the condemnation.

if however we concrete on the human suffering it may be looked on as a way to install 'white guilt' and install a sense of grievance in poc that there is a historical grievance that has yet to be atoned for and there are plenty that atonement isn't appropriate.

I agree that the history of poc is important but how do we teach about pic history prior to colonisation and how do you teach about colonisation without a simplistic 'white European' = bad narrative?

@GodessOfThunder

I would be to suffer that we can entirely separate morality and history. I was taught about the holocaust at school and as well as understanding the historical social antisemetism that led to that event it would have been extremely difficult to leave a lesson and not condemn the Nazi party and it's leaders and I guess that is moral judgment.

we then get to the more complex area of slavery where country's leaders are never going to be condemned to the same extent as Hitler and I would think people have to make their peace with that. Teaching slavery may get an understandable emotional reaction but it would be galling to poc that there is no historical condemnation of European and US leaders at the time.

I actually think it is the intention of some that slavery lessons are weaponised. It is the intention that the lessons are not about intellectualism expansion of social awareness but to provoke an understandable emotional reaction to influence racial politics in the 21 21st century.

You make a very good point about the purpose of history but I do definitely think there are those that wish to make teaching a 'tool'.

But surely British values should be taught in British schools? I disagree the values taught are in any way racist. I learned the basics of slavery at school. It neither made me want to have a slave, nor applaud slave owners. It was just one of many subjects we touched on.

I'm going to pull you up on your second paragraph as I know part of it is aimed at a previous post from me. You are taking small snippets from posts, and using their words without context to try and support your claim of being racially prejudiced against. It is clear you have your own agenda here.

Just for interest I put the following search into google.
secondary school history curriculum 2023

On the first page along with a number of different schools curriculums, were these two pages of real interest.
The first from 2013: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/239075/SECONDARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf
Where in the first page it desribes that learning the 'follies' of mankind in respect to the UK is included.

The second and much more recent is this one:
https://www.keystagehistory.co.uk/in-the-news/inclusive-history-curriculum/
Which states So you will have a new “model history curriculum” by 2024 to equip you with the skills to lead lessons that cover “migration and cultural change”
in the very first line.

and then
The DfE will actively seek out and signpost to schools suggested high-quality resources to support teaching all-year round on black history in readiness for Black History Month October 2022. This will help support schools to share the multiple, nuanced stories of the contributions made by different groups that have made this country the one it is today.

Isn't what you are asking for.

1. Already being partially taught already and has been for at least 35 years with my experience. 2.Being further integrated into education next year.

I disagree the values taught are in any way racist.

Are you white British?

If you want to imply that British values are racist, come out and say it directly.