Abolition of the Slave Trade
Making History received many emails from listeners reacting to the discussion between Kwame Kwei Armah and Professor Denis Judd in programme 5 of this series. Here are a few of them:
"Britain did not create the Slave Trade it was well established before Britain began to acquire its American Colonies. Whilst the trade with the colonies was based on other goods such as tobacco and not sugar and later cotton the numbers of African slaves was limited. As neither Cotton nor Sugar were produced in New England and Canada those colonies developed with few slaves. Initially African slaves worked along side indentured servants, defeated English and Scots Royalists, former Irish Confederates and their dependants, and enslaved criminals without distinction of colour. It was when the colonies of the Caribean and southern colonies of America turned to sugar and cotton that the need for African slaves increased and dominated the transaltantic trade.
Various African kingdoms were willing partners in the trade and it was Africans who enslaved Africans. They probably did not consider that the members of neighbouring tribes were the same people as themselves. The idea of a common African identity is erroneous just as a common European identity would be erroneous.
African nations enslaved Europeans especially through the Northern Africa Corsair states.
There are reasons to apologize. The level of the trade was without parallel and promoted through the production and sale of arms to African kingdoms. In order to justify Slavery the various colonies around the turn of the 17th century began to redefine the status of African slaves and re-classified them as something less than human. This very act of re-classification shows that the trade was never like any other trade of the period.
Britain does not deserve special credit for the abolition of the trade as one of the commentators said Britain's need for fresh slaves had passed. This idea was ably promoted by C.L.R. James in his classic history "The Black Jacobins" and it is good to see it is now accepted.
Many of the Anti Slavery Society's leading figures promoted schemes to send Black Africans back to Africa. Similar ideas were later supported by Abraham Lincoln.
Slavery continued after 1807. Even when it was finally abolished there were indentured labourers from the Caribean to Central America, from India to Africa and the Caribean and blackbirding in Australia. 1807 was not some new dawn.
Slavery has continued and the various types are defined by the UN, so next year should be a spring board for campaigns against Slavery in all its forms.
The trade goods needed for the Slave trade were supplied to the main ports from all parts of the Country and the totally corrupting nature of the trade needs to be understood.
It is a complicated subject and simple gestures such as a blanket apology should be avoided.
Above all when any of us redefines a fellow human being as something less than ourselves for whatever reason we expose ourselves to a mentality that could again tolerate slavery."
Anthony Breen
"I thought that your article today on slavery was actually quite trite and simplistic. Kwame actually tried to deny any complicity between other Africans but actually, when the first Portoguese traders arrived in West Africa in the early 16th century slavery was already a well established commercial transaction.
My other point is that your programme gave the impression that slavery was now something in the past. Sadly it is not. Mali, Sudan, indeed most all the African countries on the southern Sahara rim have thriving slaving economies. Similiarly, some tribal peoples in India are routinely enslaved, and let's not even turn to Burma where forced labour of entire tribal peoples is a routine.
If we 'celebrate' the 200th anniversary of the 'abolition' of slavery (by one, tiny European country by the way)let us also remember the slavery still thriving today."
Clive
"I just want to make a comment about your outrageous commentator who on visiting the Liverpool Maritime Museum slavery exhibit said it was 'his Auschwitz'. This displays a moral indecency hitherto unheard even on Radio 4.
This was UNBELIEVABLE vainglory and historical conflation and manipulation. Would he compare the massacre of the Tutsies by the Hootoos to Liverpool's hand in the Slave trade? I suspect not. Describing the museum as 'his Auschwitz' (without apology for its crassness) is sickening in comparison to the planned mass extinction of the Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II.
Slavery having existed from AFRICA - (he named the Pyramids - and HOW were they built?? With SLAVES not bought or sold by any European).
Does every 'white' 'christian' descendent expect an apology from the modern Turkish for Ottoman slavery? Or every modern day South American expect an apology from the descendents of the Aztecs? Or the descendents of Captain Cook's voyages to the South Pacific an apology for those eaten by Cannibals? More importantly does every West African descendent owe an apology to those from the East and South coasts who were enslaved from the opposite coast of their own land by Black Africans (of different tribes) and sold into slavery to other Black Africans and then sold on to Europeans (from every nation - British, French, Portugese, etc) and other 'Africans' (if he wishes to include modern day descendents of Ancient Eygpt as 'African'.) How would each of these Tribes (who committed the outrage of enslaving their fellow men) even track down which tribes they enslaved? Where are the monuments on mainland Africa to this? Do those in Tangiers need to apologise for fascilitating over a !
thousand years of slavery, and piracy and people smuggling into Europe that still continues to this day? Must the Italians apologise for the Raising of Carthage by the Romans? Or the turks for the massacre of the Christians in 1453 in Constantinople?
This whole issue of 'Slavery Apology' is clouded by Historical Revisionism motivated by Racial Politics and pays no attention to the fact that moral standards have changed throughout the world thoughout time. Though we must not necessarily condone the actions of those who benefited from slavery we must not be the fools of history and attempt to whitewash or blackwash the actions of our ancestors.
One last thing - it was Britain that BANNED slavery for the first time in the history of the world (it was not banned by God in the bible or by the Greeks in Plato's Athens, or by the Eygptians in the so-called 'Cradle of Civilisation') - hence the year 2007 being the anniversay of a uniquely British achievement. Moreover were it not for the strength of the British navy and Empire the slave trade into Europe and out of Africa would have continued for at least another 100 years (and only continued in America and elsewhere due to the decline of British influence). "
Marcus Dahl
"With regard to your article on the slave trade from Liverpool, it was interesting to hear the views of Kwame Kwei Armah. He obviously has a lot of anger about the impact of the slave trade and quite rightly. However, to say that the part played by Africans themselves should be ignored or isn't important is quite frankly a ludicrous and revisionist version of the truth. He is quite right that the slave trade was about power of one group over another (white Europeans over black Africans) but it is also the case that black Africans used their power over other black Africans to further their own ends and helped to drive the slave trade. Kwame's allusion to the Holocaust was insidious and provided a poor metaphor.
We should teach our children the truth about the slave trade in all its glorious revulsion – European traders exploited the Africans, treated them appallingly and that African tribes played their part in aiding and abetting the slave traders.
And let us not forget that various forms of slavery still persists in parts of Africa today despite being banned in the West for nearly 200 years.
David Mycock"
"Thanks for doing the prog from Liverpool - but please don't worry about the ethics of a museum dedicated to the Slave Trade... Because - as your Scouse/Irish girl witness said - if it's part of our history - good or bad, shameful or not - then we SHOULD get to know about it and it certainly DESERVES to be recorded.
Slavery was abolished long ago and no Liverpudlian today looks on it with anything but shuddering revulsion - which still doesn't mean we have to live in denial just to get by...
Glad you picked out Goree Piaza - what a name...!!! I remember it well from my boyhood days - with its darkened arches behind the Cunard Building echoing to the rattle of the old Overhead Railway... What a city...!!!"
John Jay
"Kwame is right about the need for an apology from England about the slave trade. They may not have started it but they industalised it and like kwame says the results of slavery are still alive today. A big thank you to him about arguing the point so eloquently. The professor is wrong to equate the atlantic slave trade with 1066. as a black person I'm sick to death of hearing and reading that kind of racist rubbish. Black people have a right to a voice too. We are also radio 4 listeners too. Thank God for Kwame. Its brilliant to hear a black expert. Great idea to feature this topic well done radio 4."
Allyson
"Ref the Slavery Exhibition and worries about lack of African History: all Nick has to do is go up the road to the Museum of the World to see fantastic West African Art and Culture not to mention the Black Pharoahs who were more influential than the Ptolemeys in Egypt. We have it all here not just slavery issues - so tunnel vision."
Sue Collier
"Someone on the programme said that the slavery museum in Liverpool is unique. Have they never travelled across the pennines to Hull? I remember going round the Wilberforce museum as a child in the 50s and seeing how the slaves were treated. We should be celebrating those who campaigned against slavery, rather than indulging in self flagellation."
John Booth
"You may be surprised to learn that the Quakers are going to celebrate the lead up to the Abolition of Slavery Act by singing about it! We have had a long connection with campaigning against slavery going back to the c18th American Quaker John Woolman, who convinced Quakers in his homeland and over here in Britain that their involvement in the slave trade was against Friend’s principles and to start campaigning against the trade. C21st Friends are joining local singers in Newcastle-upon-Tyne over the Easter weekend to rehearse for a Performance of Woolman’s Witness, a cantata telling of John Woolman’s life and work written by Peter Aviss and Alec Davison. Arranged and promoted by The Leaveners, the Quaker Performing Arts Organisation, the performance will be at the Salvation Army Temple, Westgate Road, Newcastle on Easter Monday 9th April 2007 at 7pm. If you wish to take part in the performance or come to listen, more information is available from
"
Jo Smith
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Adoption
Making History listener Christopher Reason contacted the programme after working on his family history. His grandfather Tom Reason (1872 – 1926) was the subject of a family story which said that shortly after his birth, his father died, whereupon his mother remarried and emigrated and left little Tom in the care of the de Boyne family. Christopher soon discovered from Tom’s birth certificate that this was a fabrication. Tom was illegitimate and was put down in the 1881 census as living in Lewisham with the de Boynes as a ‘scholar and ‘visitor’.
Christopher Reason wanted to know why Tom wasn’t formally adopted?
Making History consulted the social historianÌý
Elizabeth explained that formal adoption was regulated until 1926. These links may be useful:
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Vanessa has presentedÌýscience and current affairs programmes for ±«Óãtv, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ±«Óãtv Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìý