Aristocratic, if not royal, homes

[MsAmerica]

Sorry, if I could have found a history section, I would have posted there.

Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History
Great estates are among the country’s treasures. But their connections to slavery and colonialism are forcing visitors to reckon with myths they may not want to abandon.
By Sam Knight

He became very rich. Blathwayt’s uncle and benefactor, Thomas Povey, who had been instrumental in the conquest of Jamaica, in 1665, was a member of the Royal African Company, which then held a monopoly on the supply of slaves to the colonies. Blathwayt’s family connections and multiple offices made him a natural conduit for commercial opportunities: beaver trading in Massachusetts, silver mining in South Carolina, human trafficking in the West Indies. During the renovation of Blathwayt’s country house, his deputies and contacts overseas were eager to send him exotic hardwoods, along with plants for the garden, deer from north Germany, and Carrara marble for his tomb—anything, as one official wrote, to enhance “the beauty of your paradise at Dirham.”

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/23/britains-idyllic-country-houses-reveal-a-darker-history

Don’t all multimillionaires become rich by exploitation?
Rather strange you only mention one family of the era.
It really happened globally not locally and has been going on since early man really.
I recently looked up the history of torture thinking it was relatively recent 1600 type but no it goes back to prehistoric times.

Perhaps the British should petition Parliament to destroy every building which belongs to the National Trust on the grounds that they were all got by people who did, or might have, exploited others. Just a thought.

It’s not Just a matter of a particular family getting wealthy off the backs of slaves in plantations in West Indies , this has been going on for centuries , all ancient civilisations were built by slaves , whole countries became vastly wealthy as a result of their trading companies in Asia , Africa and the Caribbeans.

Lets petition for the pyramids to be pulled down

And these people would have paid tax meaning that the UK and everybody in the country benefited...

and the Colosseum, Taj Mahal, the White House, Harvard Law school and just about every ancient monument.

The Pyramids were not built by slaves. They were built by hired professional workmen. The myth of slaves building them has long been debunked.
And yes the great house in Britain are all built on the back of slavery. But worse this is still currently happening. Slavery is alive and thriving and many rich people still make their money from it.

And no it is not inevitable that money can only be made from slavery. In Victorian times there were philanthropists who were ethical investors. And today there are ethical investors and business people.
Slavery is not inevitable.

No one is asking for these buildings to be torn down 🙄 It's about acknowledging the past and, if the house belonged to a family who got rich on the slave trade, having information about that on display.

There's a similar situation in the US where former plantation homes now present a more balanced view of their history. It's no longer all about Scarlett O'Hara types languishing on the porch but covers the history of the enslaved peoples who worked on the plantation.

History cannot be changed but it can teach future generations not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
It's a shame that the activists that are pulling down statues/demanding them to be removed, don't spend a little more of the huge amount of time they seem to have on their hands, protesting about modern day slavery/young women and girls being traffic for sex. Is it not a glamorous enough cause?

How do you know they aren't? It's possible to care about more than one thing at a time but the media prefer to cover the causes that they think will generate the most public outrage.

It's possible that some of the vegetables on sale in my local supermarket have been harvested by modern-day slaves.

I agree that slavery has always been an issue - and still is. However, the West Indian slave trade was quite unusual in the way that it was much less visible to its beneficiaries than most. The Romans enslaved vast numbers of conquered people but the slaves were visible all around them - same for the Ottomans. The British slave trade was different as few slaves appeared in the country so it was to a certain extent out of sight out of mind. Jane Austen for example had characters who travelled to and from the West Indies but no mention of what happened there. Sadly, a lot of people would prefer this issue to remain swept under the carpet.

@thereisonlyoneofme

Lets petition for the pyramids to be pulled down

No one has asked for the houses to be pulled down.

It is a demonstrable fact that many lovely stately homes in the UK were built at least in part with the profits from slave trading.

Either we censor that part of their history and try to pretend it didn't happen, or we acknowledge it.

Acknowledging it doesn't invalidate the fact that these houses are important parts of our history. It is just as true to say that they were built from the profits of slave trading as well as to say that they are important architectural / artistic / cultural pieces of our history.

But to only look at the "nice" parts is to ignore half of the story.

The new football stadium in Qatar built for the World Cup was built on slave labour. And that is in the last couple of years. Yet no-one is boycotting it.

The new football stadium in Qatar built for the World Cup was built on slave labour. And that is in the last couple of years. Yet no-one is boycotting it.
Rubbish,
And unless you’ve been to the country or have first hand knowledge other than an article from the DM then Please have your facts check,
And google Zaha Hadid say on this matter.

I am not getting my facts from the Daily Mail, thank you very much.

She said the deaths of the migrant workers were nothing to do with her and were a matter for the Qatari government. And yes, I have visited Qatar and have family living there.

But as I said, wanting to acknowledge the full history behind a National Trust property, both good and bad, does not equate to wanting to tear it down.

It is absolutely untrue; there are no deaths on our site whatsoever. I sued someone in the press for it. You should check your facts
this is the interview I’m referring to, which is more recent than the one you linked Becky , the BBC later issued an apology to Zaha , saying the numbers they quoted were for the whole Country over number of years.

I'm not specifically talking about deaths on site. I'm talking about slave labour.