tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/transatlantic-slave-trade-53821/articlesTransatlantic slave trade – The Conversation2023-12-11T13:13:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2188782023-12-11T13:13:40Z2023-12-11T13:13:40ZThe Napoléon that Ridley Scott and Hollywood won’t let you see<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564552/original/file-20231208-29-g15j8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C6%2C1388%2C1023&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 1802 Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot was part of Napoléon's effort to retake Haiti − then known as Saint-Domingue − and reestablish slavery in the colony.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Haitian_Revolution.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Critics have been raking Ridley Scott’s new movie about Napoléon Bonaparte over the coals for its many <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/heres-why-historians-are-not-a-fan-of-ridley-scotts-napoleon/articleshow/105540885.cms">historical inaccuracies</a>.</p>
<p>As a scholar of French colonialism and slavery who studies <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/tropics-of-haiti-9781781381854">historical fiction</a>, or the fictionalization of real events, I was much less bothered by most of the liberties taken in “Napoleon” – although shooting cannons at the pyramids <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/science/napoleon-movie-ridley-scott-egypt-pyramid.html">did seem like one indulgence too far</a>. </p>
<p>I have <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5292/">argued elsewhere</a> that historical fictions need not necessarily be judged by adherence to facts. Instead, inventiveness, creativity, ideology and, ultimately, storytelling power are what matter most.</p>
<p>But in lieu of offering a fresh and imaginative take on Napoléon, Scott’s film rehearsed the well-known <a href="https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/12/04/battle-of-austerlitz-reenactment-draws-record-numbers-of-participants">battles of Austerlitz</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Wagram">Wagram</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/world/europe/200-years-after-battle-some-hard-feelings-remain.html">Waterloo</a>, while erasing perhaps the most momentous – and consequential – of Bonaparte’s military campaigns. </p>
<p>As with <a href="https://collider.com/great-napoleon-movies/#39-love-and-death-39-1975">every other Napoléon movie</a>, Scott’s version will leave viewers with no understanding of the <a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/all-devils-are-here">genocidal war to restore slavery</a> that Bonaparte waged against Black revolutionaries in the French colony of Saint-Domingue – what’s known as Haiti today. </p>
<p>To me, leaving out this history is akin to making a movie about Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust. </p>
<h2>‘I am for the whites, because I am white’</h2>
<p>France’s seemingly eternal on-again, off-again war with Great Britain did not change the immediate boundaries of either country. These wars were often fought over land in the American hemisphere and included a historic contest over Martinique, a small island in the Caribbean, whose fate had far-reaching repercussions for slavery.</p>
<p>In 1794, following three years of slave rebellions in Saint-Domingue – events now known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-kingdom-of-haiti-the-wakanda-of-the-western-hemisphere-108250">the Haitian Revolution</a> – the French government <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/d/291">abolished slavery</a> in all French overseas territories. </p>
<p>Martinique, however, was not included: The French had recently lost the island to the British <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/martinique-british-occupation-1794-1802">in battle</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/L_Europe_pendant_le_consulat_et_l_empire/9MROAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA1-PA234&printsec=frontcover">a 1799 speech to the French government</a>, Bonaparte explained that if he had been in Martinique at the time the French lost the colony, he would have been on the side of the British – because they never dared to abolish slavery. </p>
<p>“I am for the whites, because I am white,” Bonaparte said. “I have no other reason, and this is the right one. How could anyone have granted freedom to Africans, to men who had no civilization.” </p>
<p>Once he rose to power, Bonaparte signed the 1802 <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/treaty-amiens">Treaty of Amiens</a> with the British, which returned Martinique to French rule. Afterward, he passed a law permitting slavery to continue in Martinique. And in <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9tablissement_de_l%27esclavage_par_Napol%C3%A9on_Bonaparte">July 1802</a>, Bonaparte formally reinstated slavery on Guadeloupe, another French colony in the Caribbean. Slavery then persisted in France’s overseas empire until 1848, long after his death in 1821.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Saint-Domingue, Bonaparte <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963447/f210.item">authorized</a> his <a href="https://unsansculotte.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/repression_revolt_and_racial_politics_ma.pdf">generals</a> to <a href="http://www.manioc.org/gsdl/collect/patrimon/tmp/NAN13043.html">eliminate the majority</a> of the adult Black population, and he signed a law to <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f457.image">reinstate the slave trade</a> to the island.</p>
<h2>A Black general’s rise</h2>
<p>For the mission to succeed, Bonaparte’s troops would have to contend with a formerly enslaved man called <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/loverture-toussaint-1743-1803/">Toussaint Louverture</a>, who had become a prominent leader during the early years of the Haitian Revolution. </p>
<p>After general emancipation, when the Black population had become citizens – rather than slaves – of France, Louverture joined the French army. He went on to play a key role in helping France combat and eventually defeat Spanish and British forces, who had since invaded the colony in an attempt to take it over.</p>
<p>Recognizing his military prowess, the French consistently promoted Louverture until he became the second Black general in a French army – after <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/people-global-african-history/dumas-thomas-alexandre-1762-1806/">General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas</a>, father of the famous French novelist Alexandre Dumas. (Thomas-Alexandre Dumas incidentally appears in the film as a character with a nonspeaking part.) </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of Black man dressed in military regalia opposite a man in religious garb. They are surrounded by soldiers and citizens, and a god-like figure looks over them from the clouds." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A print of Toussaint Louverture holding a copy of the Constitution of 1801.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.31021/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1801, as a testament to his growing authority, Louverture issued a <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/haiti/1801/constitution.htm">famous constitution</a> that appointed him governor-general of the whole island. Yet he still professed fealty to France even as the colony became semi-autonomous. </p>
<p>By then, however, Bonaparte had assumed power as first consul of France – and had made it his mission to “<a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f330.image">annihilate the government of the Blacks</a>” in Saint-Domingue so he could bring back slavery.</p>
<p>In January 1802, Bonaparte sent his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc to Saint-Domingue with tens of thousands of French troops. </p>
<p><a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f424.image">Bonaparte’s instructions</a>? </p>
<p>Arrest Louverture and reinstate slavery. </p>
<h2>The fall of Louverture</h2>
<p>One of the film’s writers, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/awards/consider-this/ridley-scott-napoleon-writer-david-scarpa-true-false-1234931486/#:%7E:text=There's%20a%20dangerous%20allure%20to,affair%20with%20his%20wife%2C%20right%3F">David Scarpa</a>, said Napoléon represents for him “the classic example of the benevolent dictator.” </p>
<p>If that Napoléon ever did exist, Louverture never met him.</p>
<p>In June 1802, Napoléon’s army arrested Louverture and deported him to France. As Louverture wasted away in a French prison, Bonaparte refused to put Louverture on trial. Throughout his incarceration, the guards at the jail denied Louverture food, water, heat and medical care. Louverture subsequently <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/wrongful-death-toussaint-louverture#:%7E:text=On%20the%20morning%20of%207,captive%20for%20nearly%20eight%20months.">starved and froze to death</a>.</p>
<p>With Louverture gone, Napoléon’s army operated with more bloodlust than ever before. In addition to conventional weapons, his troops fought the freedom fighters with <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Historical_Account_of_the_Black_Empir/CTpAAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22assumed+a+complexion+more+sanguinary+and+terrible+than+can+be+conceived+among+civilized+people%22&pg=PA326&printsec=frontcover">floating gas chambers</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Literary_Magazine_and_American_Regis/9BwAAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%E2%80%9CSeven+or+eight+hundred+blacks,+and+men+of+colour,+were+seized+upon+in+the+streets,+in+the+public+places,+in+the+very+houses%22&pg=PA447&printsec=frontcover">mass drownings</a> and <a href="https://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Ecavitch/pdf-library/Johnson_dogs_and_torture.pdf">dog attacks</a> – all in the name of restoring slavery.</p>
<p>The Black freedom fighters, now calling themselves the armée indigène, led by Haiti’s founder <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-haitis-founding-father-whose-black-revolution-was-too-radical-for-thomas-jefferson-101963">General Jean-Jacques Dessalines</a>, definitively defeated French forces in the historic <a href="https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/the-battle-of-vertieres/">Battle of Vertières</a> on Nov. 18, 1803. On Jan. 1, 1804, they <a href="https://haitidoi.com/doi/#:%7E:text=IT%20is%20not%20enough%20to,act%20of%20national%20authority%2C%20to">officially declared independence</a> from France and changed the name of the island to Haiti.</p>
<h2>‘A fatal move’</h2>
<p>If the filmmakers had included Napoléon’s failed mission to restore slavery in Saint-Domingue, it could have served as a propitious moment to tie the movie back to one of its only coherent arcs: Napoléon’s undying love for <a href="https://www.history.com/news/napoleon-josephine-bonaparte-love-story-marriage-divorce">Joséphine de Beauharnais</a>, his first wife.</p>
<p>In one memorable scene in the film, Joséphine tells Bonaparte that he is nothing without her, and he agrees.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Painting of woman with short brown hair wearing two necklackes and a white ruffled blouse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joséphine de Beauharnais advised Napoléon to let Saint-Domingue operate as a semi-autonomous colony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Jos%C3%A9phine_de_Beauharnais_vers_1809_Gros.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, Joséphine’s posthumously published memoir suggests that Bonaparte disregarded his wife’s most prescient counsel. Joséphine wrote that she urged her husband not to send an expedition to Saint-Domingue, prophesying this as a “fatal move” that “would forever take this beautiful colony away from France.” She <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9636609r/f112.image">advised Bonaparte</a>, alternatively, to “keep Toussaint Louverture there. That is the man required to govern the Blacks.” </p>
<p>She subsequently asked him, “What complaints could you have against this leader of the Blacks? He has always maintained correspondence with you; he has done even more, he has given you, in some sense, his children for hostages.” </p>
<p>Louverture’s children had attended Paris’ storied <a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/dhs_0070-6760_2000_num_32_1_2364">Collège de la Marche</a>, alongside the children of other prominent Black Saint-Domingue officials. Although Bonaparte ended up sending Louverture’s children back to the colony with Leclerc, another Black general from Saint-Domingue who fought to oppose slavery’s reinstatement was not so lucky. </p>
<p>Just before Bonaparte’s troops began their genocidal war in the name of restoring slavery, Haiti’s future king, <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-king-of-haiti-and-the-dilemmas-of-freedom-in-a-colonised-world">General Henry Christophe</a>, sent his son, François Ferdinand, to the Collège de la Marche. </p>
<p>After the Haitian revolutionaries defeated France and declared the island independent in 1804, Bonaparte ordered the school closed. Many of its Black students, like young Ferdinand, were then thrown into orphanages. The abandoned child <a href="https://archive.org/details/rflexionspolitiq00vast/page/6/mode/2up?q=Ferdinand">died alone in July 1805</a> at the age of 11.</p>
<p>Only at the end of his life, during his second exile on the remote island of St. Helena, did Napoléon express remorse for any of this. </p>
<p>“I can only reproach myself for the attempt on that colony,” the <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4710580&seq=533&q1=Toussaint">defunct emperor</a> said. “I should have contented myself with governing it through Toussaint.”</p>
<h2>A missed opportunity</h2>
<p>By including some of this rich material, Ridley Scott could have made a truly original film with historical and contemporary relevance. </p>
<p>After all, Napoléon’s history of trying to stop the Haitian Revolution – the most significant revolution for freedom the modern world has ever seen – has never been depicted on a Hollywood screen.</p>
<p>Instead, hiding behind beautiful cinematography, magnificent costuming and Vanessa Kirby’s masterful portrayal of Joséphine, Scott ultimately produced an unimaginative film about the already well-trodden military successes and failures of the man depicted as having literally crowned himself France’s emperor.</p>
<p>If “Napoleon” doesn’t exactly glorify its main subject, its creators certainly seemed to sympathize with the man whose wars were responsible for more than 3,000,000 deaths, as the film’s final caption reads. </p>
<p>The film did not say whether that number includes the tens of thousands of Black people Napoléon’s army killed in Saint-Domingue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marlene Daut does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leaving out the history of Napoléon’s brutal subjugation of Haiti is akin to making a movie about Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust.Marlene Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2184482023-11-28T17:03:44Z2023-11-28T17:03:44ZLloyds of London archives show how important the City was to transatlantic slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561855/original/file-20231127-23-57fbal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Slave Ship, by William Turner (1840): slavers throw overboard the dead and dying as a typhoon approaches.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Slave-ship.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1783, the City of London was gripped by a court case which symbolised the brutal economics of slavery. Two years previously, the Liverpool <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-shadow-of-slavery-still-hangs-over-global-finance-144826">slave ship Zong</a> had set out from Accra, in present-day Ghana, with 442 men, women and children crammed in its hold. </p>
<p>By November 29 1781, according to the crew, navigational errors sent the ship off course. Fearing low water supplies, captain Luke Collingwood made a cold calculation. Over the course of a few days, he threw 132 enslaved people overboard.</p>
<p>Collingwood was able to jettison what he thought of as his valuable “cargo” because the slave ship investors had an insurance policy. When the ship returned to Britain its syndicate of owners, led by Liverpool slave trader William Gregson, lodged a claim, which was challenged by the insurers. The court case that followed was not a murder trial, but an insurance dispute.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ChXz3LoQb9I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Insurance products were developed for the traders, to mitigate the dangers posed by sea travel, war, piracy and fire. Insurrection, too, was a threat. As many as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3091760">10% of slaving voyages</a> experienced uprisings by enslaved people. In Lloyds List, a journal of shipping news, an article dated August 28 1750, details how the Anne of Liverpool was “cut off by the Negroes on the Coast of Guiney – The Captain killed on the Spot, and all the Crew wounded”. </p>
<p>In the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/bearing-witness-to-the-history-of-black-lives-in-britain-140776">2020 Black Lives Matter protests</a>, insurance market Lloyds of London apologised for its role in the slave trade and committed to setting up a <a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20210224150241-gh1b4/">research project</a> to uncover what its own archives show about these historic links to slavery. </p>
<p>In November 2023, records documenting Lloyds’ involvement in insuring slave voyages were made public. </p>
<p>The research was undertaken by US scholars Alexandre White and Pyar Seth, who are affiliated with the <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/06/02/black-beyond-data-jessica-marie-johnson/">Black Beyond Data</a> research centre. White and Seth received no funding from Lloyds and retained full editorial control over the material. They have housed a digital archive of documents and objects from Lloyds’ collection on a new website, <a href="https://underwritingsouls.org/about/">Underwriting Souls</a>. </p>
<p>My work on the <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/">Legacies of British Slavery project</a> traced how the profits of slavery were invested in Britain. Research of this kind raises questions about <a href="https://theconversation.com/slavery-reparations-theres-little-legal-basis-to-make-companies-pay-for-historic-actions-141081">reparations</a> and whether responsibility, today sits with individuals, organisations or the state.</p>
<h2>Repairing the past to repair the future</h2>
<p>White and Seth estimate that in the 1790s, insurance for the slave economy made up <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6821fdcd6c2747b8a23f0ba42603edd5">41%</a> of the broader marine insurance industry. Until 1824, insurance brokers including Lloyds of London, Royal Exchange Assurance and the London Assurance Company held a monopoly on maritime insurance. Lloyds had a dominant market share of between 75% and 90%.</p>
<p>White and Seth have had relatively few artefacts to work with, to examine how slave-trade insurance functioned. This paucity of material reflects the fact that Lloyds was a marketplace and not a company –- individual brokers and underwriters mostly kept their own records. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An etching depicting people fighting aboard a tall ship." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Revolt Aboard Slave Ship, 1787, by Carl B. Wadstrom in An Essay on Colonization, particularly applied to the Western coast of Africa… in Two Parts (London, 1794, 1795).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2060">Carl B. Wadstrom</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The few surviving documents include the <a href="https://underwritingsouls.org/search-the-risk-books/">risk books</a> – insurance agreement ledgers – of two 18th century underwriters, Horatio Clagett and Solomon D’Aguilar. These shed light on the everyday practices and networks that enabled the trade. Enslaved people were insured as “goods”, which the researchers point to as “evidence of the dehumanising commodification and speculation on the financial value of enslaved lives.” </p>
<p>White and Seth digitised the <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/247667f218eb42bdab3b413fc357756c">Guipúzcoa insurance agreements</a>, named for the slave ship they related to. This enabled them to analyse how an insurance policy worked.</p>
<p>The agreements fix the value of an enslaved person at £45, which works out at £3,454.25 in today’s money. They also feature a clause unique to slaving voyages: underwriters would cover damage to the ship or any devaluation of enslaved people (including death) due to insurrection. </p>
<p>The policy thus both recognises the human agency of enslaved people in potential insurrection and categorises them as chattel.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/media-new/pdfs/angersteinmarine.pdf">John Julius Angerstein</a>, who is known as the “father of Lloyds” and whose art collection formed the <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/people/john-julius-angerstein">basis</a> of the National Gallery, has become a figurehead for institutional connections to slavery. Despite this, concrete evidence of the extent of his connections to the system have proved elusive. </p>
<p>Angerstein was a trustee of a plantation in Grenada and a marine insurance underwriter. It has therefore been assumed that some of his business related to the slave economy. White and Seth’s research places Angerstein in context, providing unequivocal evidence of a network of slave ship captains, West India merchants and slave owners among Lloyds’ subscribers and leading figures. </p>
<p>Nine founding members of Lloyds had ties to slavery. Eleven subscribers received <a href="https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/slavery/the-legacies-of-british-slave-ownership/">slavery compensation payments</a>, awarded by the government following the abolition of slavery in 1834 for the loss of their human “property”.</p>
<p>Among the digitised objects is a <a href="https://underwritingsouls.org/digitized-corpus/portrait-of-joseph-marryat-1757-1824-attributed-to-john-hayes-1786-1866/">portrait</a> of the former Lloyds chairman and slave holder, <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146630485">Joseph Marryat</a> (1757-1824). In <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/810dfff5de884c9d9e8e698e6d452460">presenting this image</a> White and Seth foreground the stories of enslaved people. Before we meet Marryat, we meet his mixed-heritage illegitimate daughter, <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/9216">Ann</a>, whose mother, Fanny, was enslaved by Marryat. Having been freed by her father when he left Grenada, Ann entered a relationship with a planter by whom she had three children. </p>
<p>Ann, herself, became a slave-holder and <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/9216">received slavery compensation</a>. Her story is an example of the complex choices faced by women of colour within a slave society.</p>
<p>Research <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/commercial/">I have contributed to</a> documents how instrumental the City of London’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/15/bank-of-england-owned-599-slaves-in-1770s-new-exhibition-reveals">financial organisations</a> were to the slave economy. The inequalities of what historians refer to as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/hwj/dbac022/6702045">“racial capitalism”</a> today – where racism and capitalism intersect – are rooted in this history. </p>
<p>Slavery reparations can take different forms. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306396818769791#:%7E:text=My%20own%20first%20effort%20to,of%20privilege%20they%2Fwe%20occupied.">Historical repair</a> hinges on the idea that acknowledging history can help to redress past silences. </p>
<p>Lloyds has only just begun this process. Research on its more extensive and lucrative activities, providing insurance for slave-produced commodities, has yet to be done. </p>
<p>The company has drawn some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/08/lloyds-of-london-slavery-review-fails-to-settle-heated-question-of-reparations">criticism</a> for focusing on <a href="https://www.lloyds.com/about-lloyds/culture/lloyds-market/diversity-and-inclusion/inclusive-futures#:%7E:text=In%20November%202023%2C%20Lloyd%27s%20launched,the%20classroom%20to%20the%20boardroom.">internal organisational change</a> and targeted corporate investment. Lloyds has described its initiatives as “shaped in consultation with Black experts and diverse colleagues across our market in order to deliver meaningful, sustainable change towards a more inclusive marketplace and society”.</p>
<p>Inevitably there will be calls to go further. The African Union and Caribbean Community recently agreed to press for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/african-and-caribbean-nations-agree-move-to-seek-reparations-for-slavery">state-to-state reparations</a> from European nations. </p>
<p>Both paths rely on historical evidence. Research of this kind is vital for reparatory justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Donington was on the advisory board for the 'Underwriting Souls' project. She worked on the ESRC-funded 'Legacies of British Slave-ownership' project (2009-2012) and the AHRC/ESRC-funded 'Structure and Significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership, 1763-1833' project (2013-2015).</span></em></p>A new archival study uncovers details about Lloyds of London’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. Whether historical or political, reparatory justice relies on such historical evidence.Katie Donington, Senior Lecturer in Black, Caribbean, and African History, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2124692023-09-01T15:51:39Z2023-09-01T15:51:39ZTory MP’s historic family links to slavery raise questions about Britain’s position on reparations<p>“Reparations have been paid for other wrongs and obviously far more quickly, far more speedily than reparations for what I consider the greatest atrocity and crime in the history of mankind: transatlantic chattel slavery.” So noted the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/uk-cannot-ignore-calls-for-slavery-reparations-says-leading-un-judge-patrick-robinson">eminent Jamaican international jurist Judge Patrick Robinson</a>, when launching the 115-page <a href="https://www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Quantification-of-Reparations-for-Transatlantic-Chattel-Slavery.pdf">Brattle Report</a> in June 2023. </p>
<p>The economic consultancy, The Brattle Group, was asked to draw up a report estimating the scale of reparations that should be paid for the chattel trade between 1510 to 1870, covering 31 countries that engaged in transatlantic slavery. This would include compensation for loss of life and liberty, uncompensated labour, personal injury, mental pain and anguish and gender-based violence. </p>
<p>The Brattle Report estimated that the UK – which was the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/british-transatlantic-slave-trade-records/">biggest slave trading nation up to 1807</a> and did not abolish slave ownership in the empire <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slavery-Abolition-Act">until 1834</a> – should pay a reparations bill of £18.5 trillion. To put that into context, the estimated annual GDP for the UK for 2023 is about <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp">£2.5 trillion</a> and the entire worth of the UK – its land, infrastructure and everything in it was estimated by the Office for National Statistics at <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/bulletins/nationalbalancesheet/2021">£10.7 trillion in 2020</a>. </p>
<p>But then centuries of value derived from the trade in human beings produced for Britain an equally unimaginable sum. The British government <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-collection-of-slavery-compensation-1835-43">borrowed £20 million</a> in 1833 to compensate slave owners, which amounted to a massive 40% of the Treasury’s annual income or about 5% of British GDP. According to the Treasury, the loan was only <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/17/government-finished-paying-uks-slavery-debt-2015/">finally paid off in 2015</a>.</p>
<p>The wealth created by the slave trade and the plantations continues to shape British society to this day and, in some cases, remains in the hands of families whose ancestors were involved in buying and selling slaves and running enterprises based on slave labour. One example is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/12/hes-the-mp-with-the-downton-abbey-lifestyle-but-the-shadow-of-slavery-hangs-over-the-gilded-life-of-richard-drax">Drax family of the Charborough Estate</a> in Dorset, which is now owned by Conservative MP, Richard Drax.</p>
<h2>Drax family legacy</h2>
<p>For the past three years I <a href="https://www.city.ac.uk/about/people/academics/paul-lashmar">have been researching</a> – and have just completed – an unauthorised history of the Drax family. The family appears to be unique in having an unbroken history of owning sugar plantations in the Caribbean from their inception until the present day. </p>
<p>Their ancestor James Drax (c.1609-1662) was one of the first settlers in Barbados in 1627 and is credited with inventing the British sugar industry in the 1630s. Around 1640 he developed the integrated sugar plantation. It was a highly efficient industrial process, but required a coordinated workforce working from before sunrise to sunset. </p>
<p>James Drax was the first – or one of the first – planters in the British empire to move to a workforce of enslaved Africans where the children of slaves were held in perpetuity. His descendant – the Conservative MP for South Dorset, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, (who prefers to be known as Richard Drax) heads the family that owns the vast Charborough Estate and the Drax Hall Plantation in Barbados. </p>
<p>Although he is a public figure, Richard Drax and his family are very private, not least about their wealth which is locked into a number of trusts. As head of the family, the MP lives in the <a href="https://www.thedicamillo.com/house/charborough-park/">17th-century grade 1 listed Charborough House</a> with its 1,500 acres of parkland all tucked away behind the three miles of the “Great Wall of Dorset”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Charborough House in Dorset" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charborough House in Dorset: the Drax family’s country seat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nirvana/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Writing for The Observer and Sunday Mirror in 2020, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/12/hes-the-mp-with-the-downton-abbey-lifestyle-but-the-shadow-of-slavery-hangs-over-the-gilded-life-of-richard-drax">I and my co-writer revealed</a> that he is the wealthiest landowner in the House of Commons. After detailed research, we were able to estimate that the MP and his family owned at least 15,000 acres of farmland, heathland and woodland in Dorset plus a farming estate and grouse moor in Yorkshire. </p>
<p>We calculated that his 125-plus properties and 23.5 square miles of Dorset land are worth at least £150 million. We also revealed that he had personally inherited the Drax Hall plantation in Barbados, which was valued in 2020 as worth £4.7 million. In April 2023 they cropped sugar there, as they had done since the 1630s.</p>
<p>Richard Drax has resisted engaging with the reparation debate. His “slavery was wrong” comments have not sufficed for the ancestors of people enslaved in Barbados. In 2020 when we raised the question of slavery and his ancestors with him, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/12/wealthy-mp-urged-to-pay-up-for-his-familys-slave-trade-past">he told us</a>: “I am keenly aware of the slave trade in the West Indies, and the role my very distant ancestor played in it is deeply, deeply regrettable, but no one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago. This is a part of the nation’s history, from which we must all learn.”</p>
<p>The distinguished Barbadian historian of slavery, Sir Hilary Beckles (who is also the chair of the <a href="https://caricomreparations.org/">Caribbean Reparations Commission</a> representing 20 countries) <a href="https://caricomreparations.org/caribbean-campaigners-demand-tory-mp-pays-reparations-to-barbados-because-family-plantation-held-slaves-from-1640-to-1836/">told the Sunday Mirror</a>: “It is no answer for Richard Drax to say it has nothing to do with him when he is the owner and the inheritor. They should pay reparations.” </p>
<h2>Mounting pressure for reparations</h2>
<p>In the three years since I first wrote about Richard Drax MP, the call for reparations has gotten much louder. Globally, Drax has come to symbolise those whose families benefited from slavery but rebuff formal apologies and paying reparations.</p>
<p>Pressure has grown on him and in October 2022 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/26/barbados-tory-mp-pay-reparations-family-slave-richard-drax-caribbean-sugar-plantation">he flew to Barbados</a> to meet with the country’s prime minister, Mia Mottley. The Barbados government believes that – as a descendant of a founder plantation owner, a British MP – his wealth and his attitude towards responsibility for reparations symbolises everything that was wrong with the way Britain treated Barbados and the colonies. </p>
<p>In the meeting between Drax and Mia Mottley, he was offered two options, one a package of reparations including all or a substantial part of Drax Hall. If he refused, Mia Mottley said they could take legal action over the issue. Drax himself has declined to comment and his office didn’t return attempts to contact him again this week. Meanwhile, other families such as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/27/british-slave-owners-family-makes-public-apology-in-grenada">Trevelyans</a> and the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-66606975">Gladstones</a> from the <a href="https://www.heirsofslavery.org/">Heirs of Slavery group</a> have come to represent those who recognise where their family wealth came from and feel the need to apologise and make some kind of reparations payment.</p>
<p>The Brattle report is an important waymark in making the case for reparations, as it is described as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/aug/21/dont-listen-to-the-critics-reparations-for-slavery-will-right-historical-wrongs">most comprehensive</a> financial analysis of transatlantic slavery. It estimates that the 31 enslaving countries procured 801.58 million life years of free labour on which they were able to prosper. </p>
<p>The momentum for reparations grows. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/uk-cannot-ignore-calls-for-slavery-reparations-says-leading-un-judge-patrick-robinson">Judge Robinson says</a> that the UK government needs change from its position of refusing to apologise. “I believe that the United Kingdom will not be able to resist this movement towards the payment of reparations: it is required by history and it is required by law.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lashmar is a member of the Labour Party </span></em></p>Some UK families whose wealth largely derives from the transatlantic slave trade have agreed to pay reparations.Paul Lashmar, Reader in Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2121282023-08-24T12:32:32Z2023-08-24T12:32:32ZSlavery stole Africans’ ideas as well as their bodies: reparations should reflect this<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544349/original/file-20230823-19-h76ser.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C25%2C5606%2C3534&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jamaican hero: a statue to Sam Sharpe, who led the Baptist War slave rebellion in 1831.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Debbie Ann Powell/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a speech to mark Unesco’s campaign for the <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/days/slave-trade-remembrance">Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition</a>, UN secretary-general António Guterres <a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-03-27/secretary-generals-remarks-the-general-assembly-event-marking-the-international-day-of-remembrance-of-the-victims-of-slavery-and-the-transatlantic-slave-trade">told the United Nations general assembly</a> earlier this year that the inequalities created by 400 years of the transatlantic chattel trade persist to this day. “We can draw a straight line from the centuries of colonial exploitation to the social and economic inequalities of today,” he said.</p>
<p>Guterres’ words were echoed by Judge Patrick Robinson of the international court of justice, who has called for the UK to recognise the need to pay reparations for its part in the slave trade, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/uk-cannot-ignore-calls-for-slavery-reparations-says-leading-un-judge-patrick-robinson">telling The Guardian</a> on August 22 that: “Reparations have been paid for other wrongs and obviously far more quickly, far more speedily than reparations for what I consider the greatest atrocity and crime in the history of mankind: transatlantic chattel slavery.”</p>
<p>Investment into the trafficking of African people in the Caribbean created a lucrative economic system that helped Britain develop into a global economic superpower. The consequences continue to be felt today – not only in vast inequities in the distribution of wealth and resources, but also in the denial and effacement of the people of African descent whose skills and knowledge helped power that industrial and societal transformation. </p>
<p>This year marks the 240th anniversary of arguably one of the biggest thefts in the history of intellectual property. The so-called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Cort">“Cort process”</a>, patented by the financier Henry Cort between 1783 and 1784, has been called one of the most important innovations of the British industrial revolution. Yet <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2023.2220991">recently published findings</a> show the process was first developed by 76 black metallurgists, many of them enslaved, in an 18th-century foundry in Jamaica. </p>
<p>The foundry was forcibly shut down for presenting too much of a threat to Britain’s economic and political domination. We know some of these black metallurgists’ names: Devonshire, Mingo, Mingo’s son, Friday, Captain Jack, Matt, George, Jemmy, Jackson, Will, Bob, Guy, Kofi and Kwasi.</p>
<h2>Stolen heritage</h2>
<p>African enslavement may be considered one of the quintessential depictions of global theft and destruction in human history. In 2018, <a href="https://www.about-africa.de/images/sonstiges/2018/sarr_savoy_en.pdf">Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy’s report</a> on the restitution of cultural heritage pointed out that 90% of sub-Saharan Africa’s material cultural heritage is held outside the continent. From the kidnapping of Africans from their homelands, the eradication of native populations, to the forced loss of African culture, history and identity, the damage that chattel enslavement has done continues to permeate development and economic discourse the world over. </p>
<p>But as the <a href="https://caricom.org/caricom-ten-point-plan-for-reparatory-justice/">global reparations movement</a> gains traction it opens a new discourse about the debt owed for that which was stolen. It also highlights the need to create a robust educational system aimed at highlighting the realities of slavery and colonialism. The history of the black metallurgists is just one example of the contributions of people of African descent to the wealth of European and US societies today.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Temperate House at Kew Gardens in London" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544351/original/file-20230823-23-pubp4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544351/original/file-20230823-23-pubp4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544351/original/file-20230823-23-pubp4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544351/original/file-20230823-23-pubp4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544351/original/file-20230823-23-pubp4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544351/original/file-20230823-23-pubp4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544351/original/file-20230823-23-pubp4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Large-scale iron production, such as Temperate House at Kew Gardens in London, was made possible by innovations developed by ironworkers in Jamaica.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/temperate-house-1859-designed-by-architect-249074416">Kiev.Victor/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For much of recent history, institutions in the global north have dominated the narrative of where and who drives innovation. But history – and history taught in schools – must also recognise and name enslaved Africans as true innovators of their times. In <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/22/desantis-slavery-curriculum/">Florida</a>, the governor and Republican presidential hopeful, Ron DeSantis, has <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-florida-standards-teach-black-people-benefited-slavery-taught-usef-rcna95418">introduced new educational standards</a> which teach that some enslaved people benefited from slavery. History must challenge this constant narrative of black bodies merely being machines.</p>
<h2>Truth and reparation</h2>
<p>In the search for truth and reparation, truth of brutalities inflicted alone is not enough. There must also be truth about the pioneers and innovators of colonised and enslaved societies – such as the 76 black metallurgists – whose ideas changed the trajectory of civilisation and who laid the building blocks for growth, change and development. </p>
<p>The simultaneous theft and denial of black innovation has served a purpose for the global north. The Caricom Reparations Commission, notes that one of the <a href="https://caricomreparations.org/caricom/caricoms-10-point-reparation-plan/">main policies of the European colonisers</a> was that there should be “not a nail to be made in the colonies”. A fundamental part of the global north’s accumulation has been to create captive markets and maintain those markets post-independence. Colonies and post-independence states alike have been actively deprived of the developmental apparatus to create a thriving society. </p>
<p>Resource extraction during this period was not merely centred on sugar, tobacco and cotton. It also drew on intellect and innovation which was stolen from the colonies and used to help build the prosperous nations of the global north. </p>
<p>Reparation is not only about money. It is also about recognition. Alongside the names of freedom fighters such as <a href="https://jis.gov.jm/information/heroes/samuel-sharpe/">Sam Sharpe</a> and <a href="https://jis.gov.jm/information/heroes/nanny-of-the-maroons/">Queen Nanny</a>, children must learn the names of black innovators. Part of truth and reconciliation must be this re-centring of black identity as part of a decolonised education system across former colonial and colonising states. </p>
<p>It must be a curriculum which includes the names and identities of enslaved African people whose skill and knowledge both challenged and transformed the global industrial and economic system. Through this, descendants will gain an understanding of the importance of their own history and ancestral cultures and all it contributed.</p>
<p>Recognition of the theft of black intellectual property provides a starting point for quantifying the harms that were done and continue to resonate to this day. This is necessary for any process of truth and reconciliation. </p>
<p>Quantification and monetary reparation, while necessary, are not in themselves enough. They must be combined with institutional recognition through an education system that acknowledges the role of enslaved African people in both challenging and driving forward the economies, scientific innovations and cultures of European enslavers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Britain’s industrial revolution was built on slavery: both black labour and intellectual property.Jenny Bulstrode, Lecturer in History of Science and Technology, UCLSheray Warmington, Honorary Research Associate, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107742023-08-14T12:26:30Z2023-08-14T12:26:30ZFlorida’s academic standards distort the contributions that enslaved Africans made to American society<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541753/original/file-20230808-23-3nwz2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C70%2C996%2C726&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Enslaved Africans built landmarks like the White House, the U.S. Capitol and New York's Wall Street. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-freed-african-american-slaves-along-a-wharf-during-news-photo/515185532?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The state of <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/01/kamala-harris-ron-desantis-black-history-00109170">Florida ignited a controversy</a> when it released a <a href="https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20653/urlt/6-4.pdf">set of 2023 academic standards</a> that require fifth graders to be taught that enslaved Black people in the U.S. “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their benefit.”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=566DVVQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">researcher</a> specializing in the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=566DVVQAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=566DVVQAAAAJ:u-x6o8ySG0sC">history of race and racism in the U.S.</a>, I – like a <a href="https://www.wfla.com/news/education/critics-call-floridas-new-standards-for-teaching-african-american-history-insulting/">growing chorus of critics</a> – see that education standard as flawed and misleading.</p>
<p>Whereas Florida would have students believe that enslaved Black people “benefited” by developing skills during slavery, the reality is that enslaved Africans contributed to the nation’s social, cultural and economic well-being by using skills they had already developed before captivity. What follows are examples of the skills the Africans brought with them as they entered the Americas as enslaved:</p>
<h2>1. As farmers</h2>
<p>During the period between 1750 and 1775, the majority of the enslaved Africans that landed in the Carolinas came from the traditional <a href="https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210307-how-rice-shaped-the-american-south">rice-growing regions in Africa</a> known as the Rice Coast.</p>
<p>Subsequently, rice joined cotton as one of the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210307-how-rice-shaped-the-american-south">most profitable agricultural products</a>, not only in North Carolina and South Carolina but in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.115.1.125">Virginia and Georgia</a> as well.</p>
<p>Other African food staples, such as <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008342">black rice</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7200344">okra</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/a-new-years-tradition-born-from-slavery/2011/12/21/gIQA63UfKP_story.html">black-eyed peas</a>, yams, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7200344">peanuts</a> and watermelon, made their way into North America via slave ship cargoes.</p>
<p>Ship captains <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/759158601">relied on African agricultural products</a> to feed the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-middle-passage.htm">12 million</a> enslaved Africans transported to the Americas through a brutal voyage known as the Middle Passage. In some cases the <a href="https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making/vol15/iss1/10">Africans stowed away food</a> as they boarded the ships. These foods were essential for the enslaved to survive the harsh conditions of their trans-Atlantic trip in the hulls of ships.</p>
<p>Once on plantations in the land now known as the United States, enslaved people occasionally were able to <a href="https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1264&context=history-in-the-making">cultivate small gardens</a>. In these gardens, reflecting a small amount of freedom, enslaved men and women grew their own food. Some of the crops consisted of produce originating in Africa. From these they <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-enslaved-chefs-helped-shape-american-cuisine-180969697/">added unique ingredients</a>, such as hot peppers, peanuts, okra and greens, to adapt West African stews into gumbo or jambalaya, which took rice, spices and heavily seasoned vegetables and meat. These dishes soon became staples in what would become known as <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-enslaved-chefs-helped-shape-american-cuisine-180969697/">down-home cooking</a>. Crop surpluses from the communal gardens were sometimes sold in local markets, thus providing income that some enslaved people used to purchase freedom. Some of these African-derived crops became central to Southern cuisine.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A farmer displays a handful of peanuts." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541757/original/file-20230808-29-qn6cof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541757/original/file-20230808-29-qn6cof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541757/original/file-20230808-29-qn6cof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541757/original/file-20230808-29-qn6cof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541757/original/file-20230808-29-qn6cof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541757/original/file-20230808-29-qn6cof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541757/original/file-20230808-29-qn6cof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">African crops like peanuts and okra became central to Southern cuisine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sudanese-farmer-displays-a-handful-of-peanuts-harvested-on-news-photo/1227995255?adppopup=true">Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. As cooks and chefs</h2>
<p>The culinary skills that the West Africans brought with them served to enhance, transform and produce unique eating habits and culinary practices in the South. Although enslaved Africans were forced to cook for families that held them as property, they also cooked for themselves, typically using a large pot that they had been given for the purpose.</p>
<p>Using skills from various West African cultures, these cooks often worked together to prepare communal meals for their fellow enslaved people. The different cooking styles produced a range of popular meals centering on <a href="https://www.pulse.com.gh/ece-frontpage/what-africas-slaves-brought-to-american-cuisine/2rkxxvd">one-pot cooking</a> to include stews or gumbos, or layering meat with greens. The meals comprised a high proportion of corn meal, animal fat and bits of meat or vegetables. Communal gardens, maintained by the enslaved, might supplement the meager supplies and what was available from hunting or fishing. Some of the cooks who emerged from these conditions <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2952566?casa_token=662izW38zxAAAAAA%3Alz9N4OhwxS2VuzmWJcdxKenY8Uk5dWP_U4XSXQKwe379BFbCbFdPSF9iVGfIHwRg3M-d1sgcw5AAxSZ58KeasDHCuSN-st0ed01jn11FMqk9WiDRra4">became some of the highest regarded and valued</a> among the enslaved in the regions.</p>
<p>Enslaved chefs blended African, Native American and European traditions to create <a href="https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220201-hercules-posey-george-washingtons-unsung-enslaved-chef">unique Southern cuisines</a> that featured roasted beef, veal, turkey, duck, fowl and ham. Desserts and puddings featured jellies, oranges, apples, nuts, figs and raisins. Stews and soups changed, given the season, sometimes featuring oysters or fish.</p>
<h2>3. As artisans and builders</h2>
<p>Slave ship manifests reveal that enslaved Africans included some who were <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Workers_on_Arrival/D2hyDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=enslaved+wood+workers+and+craftsmen&pg=PR11&printsec=frontcover">woodcarvers and metalworkers</a>. Others were skilled in various traditional crafts, including pottery making, weaving, basketry and wood carving. These crafts were instrumental in filling the perpetual <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1845390?casa_token=7qITcPXFjl0AAAAA%3Axy1lL9AsdasmaJCcYcc-FoIFMczQCDWCM3MqcF1QybJ8ojJ9j0IHXefJUVblkASDA5ZXwUPOhC3tb749l73WuFG14Kn-1xync8CxBBODA6MxkvhNbv4&seq=3">scarcity of skilled labor on plantations</a>.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://archive.org/details/greatauctionsale00does">planters and traders</a> considered purchasing an enslaved Black person, one of the key factors influencing their decision and the price was their skills. Slave auction sales included carpenters, blacksmiths and shoemakers.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Another_s_Country/yO2Cwx6AkH0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=enslaved+african+builders&pg=PA30&printsec=frontcover">Architectural designs showing West African</a> influences have been identified in structures excavated from some colonial plantations in various areas of the <a href="https://discoversouthcarolina.com/articles/discover-the-lowcountry">South Carolina Lowcountry</a>. These buildings, with clay-walled architecture, demonstrate that the West Africans came with building skills. <a href="https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/300-years-of-african-american-invention-and-innovation/">Excavated clay pipes in the Chesapeake</a> region reveal West African pottery decorative techniques.</p>
<p>Across the nation, <a href="https://ibw21.org/editors-choice/15-american-landmarks-that-were-built-by-slaves/">multiple landmarks were built by the enslaved</a>. These include the White House, the U.S. Capitol and the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, Fraunces Tavern and Wall Street in New York, and Fort Sumter in South Carolina.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of enslaved African women and a man sit on the steps of a porch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541754/original/file-20230808-17-sfs7m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541754/original/file-20230808-17-sfs7m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541754/original/file-20230808-17-sfs7m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541754/original/file-20230808-17-sfs7m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541754/original/file-20230808-17-sfs7m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541754/original/file-20230808-17-sfs7m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541754/original/file-20230808-17-sfs7m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Enslaved African women brought new medical practices and skills to the U.S. from their native lands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-women-and-a-man-presumably-enslaved-sit-on-the-news-photo/53265526?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. As midwives, herbalists and healers</h2>
<p>As Africans entered the Americas, they brought <a href="https://collegeofphysicians.org/programs/education-blog/medicinal-practices-enslaved-peoples">knowledge of medicinal plants</a>. Some enslaved women were midwives who used medical practices and skills from their native lands. In many cases, while many of these plants were unavailable in the Americas, enslaved Africans’ knowledge, and that gleaned from Native Americans, helped them to identify a range of plants that could be beneficial to treat a wide range of illnesses among both the enslaved and the enslavers. <a href="https://collegeofphysicians.org/programs/education-blog/medicinal-practices-enslaved-peoples">Enslaved midwives</a> delivered babies and, in some cases, provided the means for either avoiding pregnancies or performing abortions. They also treated respiratory illnesses. </p>
<p>These <a href="https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1376&context=undergrad_rev">practices and knowledge grew</a> as they began incorporating techniques from Native American and European sources. They employed an interesting array of these practices to identify herbs, produce devices and to facilitate <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-significance-doulas-and-midwives">childbirth</a> and <a href="https://collegeofphysicians.org/programs/education-blog/medicinal-practices-enslaved-peoples">maternal health and well-being</a>. They utilized several <a href="https://midwiferyinearlyamerica.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/childbirth-and-the-antebellum-american-south/">herbal remedies</a> such as cedar berries, tansy and cotton seeds to end pregnancies.</p>
<p>In 1721, of the <a href="https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/contagion/feature/the-boston-smallpox-epidemic-1721">5,880 Bostonians who contracted smallpox, 844 died</a>. Even more would have died had it not been for a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/smallpox-epidemic-boston-onesimus-african-indigenous/">radical technique introduced by an enslaved person named Onesimus</a>, who is credited with helping a small portion of the population survive.</p>
<p>Onesimus, purchased by Cotton Mather in 1706, was being groomed to be a domestic servant. In 1716, Onesimus informed Mather that he had survived smallpox and no longer feared contagion. He described a practice known as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d42859-020-00006-7">variolation</a> derived by West Africans to fight various infections. </p>
<p>This was a method of intentionally infecting an individual by rubbing pus from an infected person into an open wound. Onesimus explained how this treatment resulted in significantly milder symptoms, eliminating the likelihood of contracting the disease. As physicians began to wonder about this mysterious method to prevent smallpox, they developed the technique known as vaccinations. Smallpox today has been eradicated worldwide primarily because of the medical advice rendered by Onesimus.</p>
<p>Regardless of how Florida’s education standards misrepresent history, the reality is that the Africans forced to come to America brought an enormous range of skills. They were farmers, cooks, chefs, artisans, builders, midwives, herbalists and healers. Our country is richer because of their skills, techniques and knowledge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rodney Coates does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While a Florida curriculum implies that enslaved Africans ‘benefited’ from skills acquired through slavery, history shows they brought knowledge and skills to the US that predate their captivity.Rodney Coates, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Miami UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2073822023-06-20T13:42:22Z2023-06-20T13:42:22ZAfrican leaders in Sierra Leone played a key role in ending the transatlantic slave trade<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532152/original/file-20230615-15-iuj0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C25%2C2836%2C2149&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone and haven for thousands of free slaves.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/berwick-street-freetown-the-capital-of-sierra-leone-and-news-photo/2659536?adppopup=true">Original Artwork: Hatch Collection. Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone on the west African coast, was named for the freed slaves who were returned to Africa by British members of the movement to end slavery. Founded in 1787 by a group of 400 black Britons from London, the colony ultimately became a refuge for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108562423">nearly 100,000 people resettled</a> by the British Anti-Slavery Naval Squadron. </p>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/african-leaders-in-sierra-leone-played-a-key-role-in-ending-the-transatlantic-slave-trade-207382&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>As a historian focusing on the impact of abolitionism, I have studied <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674240988">this history</a> and the founding of modern Sierra Leone. </p>
<p>There is a misconception that Britain was the first to abolish the slave trade. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/antislavery_01.shtml">It wasn’t the first</a>, but its decision to abolish the trade was backed up by the power of its navy. Sierra Leone’s role in the story shows, however, to enforce that abolition, the British navy had to rely on the support of African states and polities that had already turned against the slave trade.</p>
<p>Africans played an overlooked <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/lourenco-da-silva-mendonca-and-the-black-atlantic-abolitionist-movement-in-the-seventeenth-century/B030B16D932D0C6A971FAC1BF9A19F5C">role in ending</a> the transatlantic slave trade. Sierra Leone’s rich history is testament to that.</p>
<h2>The founding of Sierra Leone</h2>
<p>The Atlantic Slave Trade began around the 1520s, but the area around Sierra Leone was not a major contributor to the trade before the middle of the 1700s. From 1763 onwards, the number of enslaved people shipped annually from the Sierra Leone coast by British, Portuguese and French traders rarely fell below <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/">1,000 and was often closer to 4,000</a>. Even then, the <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/">number of captives was roughly half the number being transported from the Gold Coast (Ghana)</a>, a quarter of the number being transported from the Bight of Benin, and a tenth of the number transported from the Angolan coast. </p>
<p>And yet from 1808, it was Sierra Leone – rather than one of the other sites of slave trading – that became the site of British anti-slavery operations. This was because by then, Sierra Leone was the site of an established and growing colony made up of members of the black British diaspora, many formerly enslaved. And the success of that colony was possible in part because of the interest and engagement of the Temne, the Susu, and other African people based in and around the Sierra Leone peninsula. </p>
<p><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300217445/freedoms-debtors/">In 1787</a>, the first group of black Britons arrived on the peninsula as part of a project in self-government and with the support of the London-based abolitionist leaders Granville Sharp and Olaudah Equiano. The first settlement faced hardships and lacked support among the Temne, whose land they were renting. </p>
<iframe title="" aria-label="Locator maps" id="datawrapper-chart-oThZT" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/oThZT/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="650" data-external="1" width="100%"></iframe>
<h2>The settlement grows</h2>
<p>In 1791, another group arrived in the colony and sought out a new treaty of settlement. This group chose to immigrate to Sierra Leone from inhospitable Nova Scotia (Canada), where they had been settled by the British government as <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/86852/libertys-exiles-by-maya-jasanoff/">“black loyalists”</a> after fleeing from slavery during the American Revolution (1776-1783). A new organisation, the Sierra Leone Company, took over the management of the colony from London. Their records show that by the early 1790s, the <a href="https://doi-org.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/10.1017/9781108182010">Temne</a> saw the arrival of these colonists as an opportunity. </p>
<p>King Naimbana, for instance, who negotiated the treaty between the Sierra Leone Company and the Temne, sent his son to London for education. And in their negotiations, company officials noted that the people they were engaging with were keen for opportunities to trade for imported goods without reverting to selling other people.</p>
<h2>African role in ending slavery</h2>
<p>As I found in my research, it was African demand that was shaping the success of the colony and its mission to shift the coast’s commerce away from the slave trade. Records held at the <a href="https://huntington.org/">Huntington Library in California</a> show that local buyers paid a higher price for the “SLC” mark – a price paid in goods and currency, rather than in enslaved captives. One British representative wrote a letter in 1793 to the Sierra Leone Company to complain that “it has become practice with slave traders to bring out guns for trade marked SLC for which they get a rapid sale and a double price in the Rio Nunez” to the north of the colony. He also worried that this was happening with “SLC” <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674240988">cloths</a>. </p>
<p>Although he was unsure of their enthusiasm for the abolition of the slave trade, the British official commented that “their mouths were full of proposals to trade with us and plant cotton and coffee”. And a Susu leader’s deputy launched a verbal attack against the slave traders, telling them:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is you slave traders who cause all our palavers. It is you who set the people in this country one against another. And what do you bring us for this? We have cloth of our own if you were gone tomorrow we should not be naked. If you were gone we should want but little guns and powder. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This support of the Susu and Temne around Sierra Leone for the colony, its trade, and its African diaspora population meant that the colony seemed like a natural fit for the British when they were looking for a way of enforcing their Slave Trade Act in 1807 to end the Atlantic slave trade. The British based an anti-slave trade naval patrol in the colony, as well as a court for processing captured slave ships. </p>
<p>The Sierra Leone Company was happy to hand over control to the British government, but it was the people on the ground whose successful trading relationships had built a growing city with markets, accommodation, infrastructure and, most importantly, a sense of security for the thousands of resettled enslaved people who would soon see its population soar. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A street with buildings and cars." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532155/original/file-20230615-17-t5rpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532155/original/file-20230615-17-t5rpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532155/original/file-20230615-17-t5rpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532155/original/file-20230615-17-t5rpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532155/original/file-20230615-17-t5rpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532155/original/file-20230615-17-t5rpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532155/original/file-20230615-17-t5rpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A street in Freetown, Sierra Leon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-a-street-in-freetown-sierra-leon-news-photo/179668674?adppopup=true">Original Artwork: Hatch Collection. Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>There is a misconception that Britain was the first to abolish the slave trade and that it brought enlightened anti-slavery ideas to Africa. This misconception was used to justify the spread of colonial rule in the 19th century. But the history of Sierra Leone shows that, in order to enforce their abolition decrees, the British had to rely on African states and polities that had already turned against the slave trade.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bronwen Everill received funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the Huntington Library for this research. </span></em></p>Africans should get more credit for the abolition of the slave trade.Bronwen Everill, Director, Centre for African Studies, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2000542023-03-16T20:10:24Z2023-03-16T20:10:24ZUncovering the violent history of the Canadian sugar industry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514332/original/file-20230308-20-sn5ci6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=130%2C8%2C2784%2C1818&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">By reflecting on sugar's origins, we can trace the pathways that have made this commodity so abundant.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/uncovering-the-violent-history-of-the-canadian-sugar-industry" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Sugar, we are often told, is bad for us. According to <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-sweet-danger-of-sugar">recent health advice</a>, adults should restrict their sugar intake to between six and nine teaspoons daily. But what is more upsetting about sugar is its atrocious history. </p>
<p>Western Europe’s <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/322123/sweetness-and-power-by-sidney-w-mintz/">appetite for “sweetness</a>” helped fuel the horrific transatlantic trade of enslaved peoples, in which at least 15 million enslaved people from Africa were forced to work on <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663685/capitalism-and-slavery-third-edition/">plantations in the Americas</a>. To this day, working conditions in sugar <a href="https://theconversation.com/child-labour-poverty-and-terrible-working-conditions-lie-behind-the-sugar-you-eat-95242">are among the world’s worst</a>.</p>
<p>Given its heinous human rights record, the question becomes: why do we continue to eat sugar? The answer is complicated. Crucial, however, are <a href="https://sugar.ca/international-trade/canadian-sugar-market/value-of-sugar-to-the-canadian-economy">the significant profits that sugar represents</a>, together with the low prices that sugar commands. </p>
<h2>History of sugar</h2>
<p>For nearly five centuries, European planters made dizzying fortunes in sugar, made possible by <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663685/capitalism-and-slavery-third-edition/">enslaving workers in colonized lands</a>. Sugar became so integral to European profiteering that it started <a href="https://doi.org/10.7312/beck18524-016">being produced on a global scale</a>. Canadian investors, too, have reaped massive sugar profits.</p>
<p>During the 1700s and 1800s, most Europeans, in what is now Canada, were implicated in the transatlantic sugar and slave trades. Not only did many consume the fruits of the enslaved sugar industry — including molasses and rum, in addition to sugar, <a href="https://cha-shc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The-Enslavement-of-Africans-in-Canada.pdf">as historian Afua Cooper writes</a> — but some also invested in Caribbean trade, itself powered by enslaved sugar work. </p>
<p>Several Canadian banks — including the Imperial Bank of Commerce and the Bank of Nova Scotia (now known as Scotiabank) — have their origins in the West Indies, where their forerunners <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2642737">established themselves early in the 19th century</a>. According to Cooper, the Bank of Nova Scotia exists “in the shadow of West Indian slavery.”</p>
<p>Western Canadians have also profited from unfree sugar labour. The famed western Canadian brand, Rogers Sugar, was established by American Benjamin Tingley Rogers who moved to Canada in 1889. Having grown up in the sugar industry, <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=7676">Rogers had both sugar connections and expertise</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo of old factory bulidings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514551/original/file-20230309-2232-l3hp15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514551/original/file-20230309-2232-l3hp15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514551/original/file-20230309-2232-l3hp15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514551/original/file-20230309-2232-l3hp15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514551/original/file-20230309-2232-l3hp15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514551/original/file-20230309-2232-l3hp15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514551/original/file-20230309-2232-l3hp15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Original B.C. Sugar refinery buildings in Vancouver in 1892.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(City of Vancouver Archives)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Building <a href="https://blogs.ubc.ca/buildingempire/2021/02/21/rogers-sugar-vancouver-1981/">a refinery in Vancouver</a>, a city newly constructed on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, Rogers created a western Canadian sugar empire — one that sourced raw sugar cane through the Pacific, refined it in British Columbia and sold it throughout the Canadian West. </p>
<p>Railway magnate <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-william-cornelius-van-horne">William Cornelius Van Horne</a>, together with noted investors such as <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/richard-bladworth-angus">Richard Bladworth Angus</a>, Edmund Boyd Osler and <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/donald-alexander-smith-1st-baron-strathcona-and-mount-royal">Donald Alexander Smith</a>, were among the ventures’ early shareholders. By the time of his death in 1918, <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=7676">Rogers had become “quite wealthy</a>.”</p>
<p>Now owned by Lantic Inc., <a href="https://www.lanticrogers.com">Rogers Sugar remains a recognized Canadian brand</a>. Less well known, though, is Rogers Sugar’s violent past.</p>
<h2>Sugar plantations</h2>
<p>To make the refined sugar that is so familiar to Canadians today, B.C. Sugar (the name of the company that owned Rogers Sugar) sourced both beet and cane sugars. Canadian beet sugar has its own atrocious labour history, as <a href="https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/002/NR33801.PDF?is_thesis=1&oclc_number=530949579">University of Saskatchewan professor Ron Laliberté</a>, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-law-and-society-la-revue-canadienne-droit-et-societe/article/abs/cartographies-of-violence-women-memory-and-the-subjects-of-the-internment/F291FCC6A7EC2F460E89E7C3CE07E610">York University professor Mona Oikawa</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0829320100006360">other experts</a> have demonstrated. </p>
<p>Refined predominantly in Vancouver, Rogers Sugar was made mostly from raw cane sugar. Since sugar cane cannot grow in Canada, <a href="https://worldcat.org/en/title/20094617">B.C. Sugar sourced internationally</a> from places including Mauritius, Java, Peru, Hawaii, Cuba, Fiji and the Dominican Republic. </p>
<p>B.C. Sugar also ventured into sugar cane plantation ownership: in Fiji between 1905 and 1922, and in the Dominican Republic between 1944 and 1955. Notably, it purchased the latter from the Bank of Nova Scotia.</p>
<p>In both cases, workers reported horrendous conditions. The pay was so low and the work was so menial in the Dominican Republic that, as historian Catherine C. Legrand points out, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-75.4.555">workers left the plantation whenever they could</a>.</p>
<p>In Fiji between 1905 and 1920, B.C. Sugar employed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/001946468502200103">indentured workers from India</a> who migrated to the colony on five-year contracts. As on other Fiji plantations, workers were subject to numerous atrocities and treated in ways similar to how enslaved and indentured people <a href="https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/chalo-jahaji">were treated on plantations globally</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of rows of tram cars full of sugar cane. In the distance a factory building can be seen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514535/original/file-20230309-305-61e1pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514535/original/file-20230309-305-61e1pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514535/original/file-20230309-305-61e1pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514535/original/file-20230309-305-61e1pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514535/original/file-20230309-305-61e1pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514535/original/file-20230309-305-61e1pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514535/original/file-20230309-305-61e1pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sugar cane cars lined up in front of a cane factory in Fiji in the early 20th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(City of Vancouver Archives)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Forced into hard physical labour with little time for sleep, indentured workers at B.C. Sugar’s Fiji plantation endured sickness, confinement, hunger, abuse, injuries, whippings, beatings and more, all for below subsistence pay and the <a href="http://girmit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/vnaidu_violence_preface.pdf">eventual chance to move out of indentured work</a>. </p>
<p>Conditions were so dire that some workers <a href="https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p212781/pdf/16.-Death-On-Fiji-Plantations-1900-1909-Nicole-Duncan.pdf">tragically perished in B.C. Sugar’s cane fields</a>. When Fiji de-criminalized the desertion of indenture contracts in 1916, it is little wonder that hundreds of workers left the colony’s sugar plantations. These <a href="https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/132695/1/PRM_05.pdf">included plantations operated by B.C. Sugar</a>.</p>
<h2>Understanding Canadian history</h2>
<p>Refined sugar is now so common it is difficult to imagine life without it. But, by reflecting on its origins, we can trace the pathways that have made this commodity so abundant. Canadian sugar was built upon violence, including upon enslaved and indentured labour. </p>
<p>By building upon <a href="https://teaching.usask.ca/indigenoussk/import/grab-a-hoe_indians.php">existing research</a> into <a href="https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v7i1.3305">Canadian</a> <a href="https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/llt/1978-v3-llt_3/llt3art05.pdf">sugar</a>, and by continuing to probe <a href="https://worldcat.org/title/281643610">Canadian sugar companies’ local</a> and <a href="https://worldcat.org/en/title/988075349">global</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00223349508572786">histories</a>, we can gain a clearer picture of how sugar became central to the Canadian diet. </p>
<p>And we can also work toward greater recognition for those who have laboured in the local and global Canadian sugar industry.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200054/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donica Belisle currently holds an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the project, "Canadian Sugar: A Local and Global History."</span></em></p>By reflecting on the violent origins of the Canadian sugar industry, we can bring wider attention to the exploitation underpinning the history of Canadian cuisine.Donica Belisle, Professor of History, University of ReginaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1984122023-02-03T10:58:00Z2023-02-03T10:58:00ZThe incredible story of how East African culture shaped the music of a state in India<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507583/original/file-20230201-18-ejchji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Siddi children performing Dance Dhamaal in Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Sayan Dey</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The term <a href="https://minorityrights.org/minorities/siddi/">Siddi</a> refers to Afro-Indians – Africans who mixed with Indians through marriage and relationships. Africans crossed the Indian Ocean and arrived in India during the 1200s, 1300s and 1400s. They were transported by Islamic invaders and Portuguese colonisers as enslaved people, palace guards, army chiefs, harem keepers, spiritual leaders, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sufism">Sufi</a> singers, dancers and treasurers. </p>
<p>Today, the majority of <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003111962-9/killing-kindness-sayan-dey">Siddis</a> are found in the west and south-west of India, in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana states. As they settled, they preserved and practised their African ancestral sociocultural traditions – and also adopted local Indian traditions. </p>
<p>This interweaving of African and Indian cultural values gave birth to various <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/creolisation">creolised</a> (mixed) food, music and spiritual practices.</p>
<p>As a diversity studies scholar, I have been <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003111962-9/killing-kindness-sayan-dey">researching</a> Siddi culture for some time. Working within this community in Gujarat and Karnataka, I found that their creolised cultural practices emerged as a resistance to colonisation, racialisation and victimisation in postcolonial India. </p>
<p>My most recent research – which can also be seen in a new <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaEnwQoGFzE">documentary</a> – has focused on the music and dance performances of the Siddi community in Gujarat, called Dhamaals. </p>
<p>The story of Dhamaal performance traditions reveals the rich and complex mixing of cultures in a world shaped by human movement and history.</p>
<h2>What are Dhamaals?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4098523">Dhamaal</a> is a mix of Sufi and African (mostly East African) musical and dance traditions. It refers particularly to the spiritual practices of the Siddis of Gujarat. </p>
<p>The Siddis begin almost every Dhamaal song by blowing into a conch shell. This is often followed by the slow playing of East African percussion instruments like the musindo and the slow thumping of feet that marks the onset of the singing and dancing Dhamaals. The ritual of foot thumping is a crucial part of spiritual East African dance and musical traditions.</p>
<p>The Siddis are followers of Islam and arrived in India from Muslim communities in East and Central Africa. Dhamaals are performed in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25472979">memory</a> of their spiritual leaders, among them Bava Gor, Mai Misra, Baba Habash and Sidi Nabi Sultan. According to Siddi <a href="https://cogentoa.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999940802523836?journalCode=usou20">folklore</a> they arrived from Ethiopia through the Nubian Valley, Syria and the Indian Ocean to the coast of Kuda in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat. </p>
<iframe title="" aria-label="Locator maps" id="datawrapper-chart-ESxU8" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ESxU8/2/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="650" data-external="1" width="100%"></iframe>
<p>Usually, Dhamaal songs and dances are performed to celebrate the anniversary of the birth and death of spiritual leaders. They are performed in two ways – Dance Dhamaal and Baithaaki Dhamaal. The <a href="https://youtu.be/1tw2hokk7DM">Baithaaki Dhamaal</a> is performed in the sitting position and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enJnkfqjS9I&t=12s">Dance Dhamaal</a> is performed in both sitting and dance positions. </p>
<p>During the performance of Baithaaki Dhamaal the focus is more on the lyrics and less on the musical instruments. During Dance Dhamaal the focus is more on the sounds of the instruments. These are often played in a frenzied manner and accompanied by frenzied dance movements. The spiritual songs that are sung during the Dhamaals are known as zikrs.</p>
<h2>A mixing of cultures</h2>
<p>The creole cultural aspects of Dhamaals are broadly reflected through the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-how-swahili-became-africas-most-spoken-language-177259">Swahili</a> Creole language used to sing the zikrs, the Indian and African musical instruments used to perform them and the Afro-Indian body movements of Dance Dhamaals. </p>
<p>Historically, the Swahili Creole language in India emerged among the Siddis through the mixing of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-how-swahili-became-africas-most-spoken-language-177259">Kiswahili</a> from East Africa with Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu languages from India. As an example, these are the lyrics of one <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHPAOw4_JRs">zikr</a>:</p>
<p>Ya bolo sabaya hua wey</p>
<p>Ya bolo sabaya hua wey</p>
<p>Hu sabaya</p>
<p>Salwale Nabi Sultan</p>
<p>This zikr is sung in the praise of Siddi spiritual leader Nabi Sultan, believed to have arrived in Gujarat from the Nubian Valley. The Swahili words that have been used are “hu” (a common expression of consent) and “sabaya” (meaning that everything is alright). The zikr means that with the blessings of Nabi Sultan no evil can befall the Siddis of Gujarat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507580/original/file-20230201-20-5u9lnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of people sit in a circle, some drumming on large drums. The doorway to the room is crowded with young observers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507580/original/file-20230201-20-5u9lnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507580/original/file-20230201-20-5u9lnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507580/original/file-20230201-20-5u9lnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507580/original/file-20230201-20-5u9lnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507580/original/file-20230201-20-5u9lnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507580/original/file-20230201-20-5u9lnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507580/original/file-20230201-20-5u9lnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Siddis performing Baithaaki (sitting) Dhamaal in a shrine in Gujarat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Sayan Dey</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The musical instruments used to perform the zikrs are East African percussion instruments. The musindo, for example, is a cylinder-shaped, two-sided drum from Kenya. The misr kanga is a small, funnel-shaped instrument from Ethiopia, containing small stones. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404cN3HjrVg">mugarman</a> is a large, cylinder-shaped, one-sided drum from Tanzania. These are played along with traditional Indian musical instruments. These include the harmonium (a keyboard instrument) and the dholak (a two-headed hand drum). The intermingling of Indian and African musical instruments generates creole rhythmscapes which are traditionally African and Indian at the same time.</p>
<p>During the Dance Dhamaal, the hand and the body movements of the Dhamaal dancers in Gujarat are very similar to the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/20951308/Ngoma_Memories_A_History_of_Competitive_Music_and_Dance_Performance_on_the_Kenya_Coast">Ngoma</a> dancers of East Africa. The Ngoma dancers thump their feet and swing their arms sideways to the rhythm of drums. The Dhamaal dancers also swing their arms sideways, but the thumping of feet depends on the context of their dance. During religious occasions, for example, the foot thumping is slow. This is because the Siddis follow many spiritual aspects of the <a href="https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/pi.1.1.73_1">Sufi tradition</a>. For Sufis, heavy and frenzied feet thumping is prohibited when worshipping spiritual leaders.</p>
<h2>Transoceanic roots</h2>
<p>These creolised musical and dance performances allow the Siddis in Gujarat to maintain their African ancestral practices. They do so in collaboration with Indian practices so that they do not forget their historical roots yet can respect local traditions at the same time. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The author’s documentary Afro-Indian Creole Rhythms: Siddi Dhamaals of Gujarat.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These creole practices have allowed the community to build a transoceanic identity (one which crosses the oceans). This is done in a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366838188_The_Creolizing_Turn_and_Its_Archipelagic_Directions">collaborative, reciprocal and diverse</a> way. </p>
<p>The Dhamaal tradition of the Siddis has socially, culturally and economically empowered the community as well. Several community members, through the assistance of government and private organisations, travel across India and the world to perform at cultural festivals. This encourages the Siddis to share their creolised cultural values across the globe.</p>
<p>This in turn invites audiences to consider history through an interracial and intercultural lens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198412/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sayan Dey receives funding from NRF SarChi Chair of Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of Witwatersrand. He is also a Faculty Fellow at Harriet Tubman Research Institute, York University, Canada. </span></em></p>Dhamaal music and dance reveals a rich and complex mixing of cultures that is shaped by history.Sayan Dey, Postdoctoral Fellow at Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1964052022-12-15T14:32:18Z2022-12-15T14:32:18ZBenin is building a theme park to remember slavery – is history up for sale?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500715/original/file-20221213-16138-2k9x52.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A lifesize replica of a slave ship graces Project Marina.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wozQKSPLJ8s">Screenshot/YouTube/Presidency of Benin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://anpt.bj/projet/9/la-marina-ouidah/">Marina Project</a> is a vast memorial and tourist complex under construction in Ouidah, a coastal town in the Republic of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Benin">Benin</a> in West Africa. The country hopes to <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/viatourism/5286?lang=pt">market itself</a> as a major destination for Afro-descendant tourists in the diaspora. Neighbouring Nigeria and its population of 220 million potential visitors also makes serene and diminutive Benin an enviable location for large scale tourist attractions. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wozQKSPLJ8s">waterfront development</a> is located at what was the main slave port for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Bight-of-Benin">Bight of Benin</a>. From this region almost two million enslaved Africans <a href="https://www.manning.pitt.edu/pdf/1979.SlaveryDahomey.pdf">departed</a> during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade">transatlantic slave trade</a>. At its height – from the 1790s to the 1860s – <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Ouidah">Ouidah</a> was controlled by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Dahomey-historical-kingdom-Africa">kingdom of Dahomey</a>.</p>
<p>The future complex will include a <a href="https://halcyonhospitalityadvisors.com/marina---dhawa-ouidah-hotel--spa.html">hotel spa</a>, a lifesize replica of a slave ship, memorial gardens, a craft market and an arena for <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zdFwDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">vodun</a> performances. Vodun is a religion practised in Benin and among the descendants of enslaved Africans in the US, Haiti and beyond. </p>
<p>The local <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/nov/01/its-been-nearly-a-month-and-its-still-sold-out-the-woman-king-takes-over-benins-only-cinema">success</a> of the Hollywood film <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-woman-king-is-more-than-an-action-movie-it-shines-a-light-on-the-women-warriors-of-benin-190466">The Woman King</a> revealed a strong interest in this historical period, still neglected in school syllabuses. </p>
<p>The Marina Project could lead to a better understanding of the transatlantic slave trade. But it raises many questions. In its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wozQKSPLJ8s">design</a> and scope it epitomises contested directions of slave heritage tourism. The commodification of heritage may debase the experiences of painful pasts. The spectacle of culture produced by the tourist industry is often met with contempt. </p>
<p>Anthropologists and “well-travelled tourists” often regard the likes of “tourist dances” as particularly tacky, according to US scholar <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3094939?seq=6#metadata_info_tab_contents">Edward M. Bruner</a>. And yet, fellow anthropologist <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/647237#metadata_info_tab_contents">Paulla Ebron</a> argues that heritage tourists may also be pilgrims and their commercial cultural experiences may be intimate and sincere. She <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/647237#metadata_info_tab_contents">notes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Africa became sacred and commercial, authentic and spectacular.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Marina Project is also contested for other reasons. Some fear that mass tourism will have an adverse impact on an area known for its unique ecosystem and <a href="https://infonature.net/benin-alerte-sur-les-consequences-du-projet-touristique-marina-porte-du-non-retour-a-ouidah/">biodiversity</a>. Adding to concerns is the development of another gigantic seaside resort nearby, Club Med’s <a href="http://anpt.bj/article/11/le-club-benin-future-station-balneaire-avlekete/">d’Avlékété</a>. </p>
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<p>There are already numerous slavery <a href="https://www.cipdh.gob.ar/memorias-situadas/en/lugar-de-memoria/la-ruta-del-esclavo/">heritage sites</a> in Benin. These range from the <a href="https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0120">European forts</a> in Ouidah to the royal palaces of the kings of <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/323/">Abomey</a>, <a href="https://momaa.org/directory/royal-palace-musee-honme/">Porto Novo</a> and <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g1598711-d23849651-Reviews-Palais_Royal_D_allada-Allada_Atlantique_Department.html">Allada</a>. </p>
<p>It’s my view, as an anthropologist, that the latest developments are walking a fine line, balancing education and remembrance with crude commerce.</p>
<h2>Teaching slavery in Africa</h2>
<p>Slavery and the slave trade remained insufficiently taught in schools. In 1998, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) implemented the Transatlantic Slave Trade <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000187641">education project</a>. Participating countries in West Africa like Ghana, Senegal and The Gambia helped address the issue.</p>
<p>On the beach in Ouidah, the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/door-of-no-return">Door of No Return</a> is a concrete and bronze arch with poignant images of shackled bodies of enslaved Africans. It’s one of the city’s most notable landmarks – but only one among hundreds. The <a href="https://levoyageducalao.com/afrique/route-des-esclaves-de-ouidah/">road</a> from the slave market to the monumental gate was marked by two dozen sculptures and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=HCM93pyDhMEC&dq=Fortun%C3%A9+Bandeira&pg=PA217&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Fortun%C3%A9%20Bandeira&f=false">symbolic stops</a> commemorating the march of the captives.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500998/original/file-20221214-5213-21pej1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large archway facing the sea. It is cream and bronze in colour with stylised bas-relief sculptures on it showing chained human bodies and ships." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500998/original/file-20221214-5213-21pej1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500998/original/file-20221214-5213-21pej1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500998/original/file-20221214-5213-21pej1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500998/original/file-20221214-5213-21pej1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500998/original/file-20221214-5213-21pej1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500998/original/file-20221214-5213-21pej1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500998/original/file-20221214-5213-21pej1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Door of No Return in Ouidah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">jbdodane/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Unesco drive is part of the organisation’s flagship <a href="https://en.unesco.org/themes/fostering-rights-inclusion/slave-route">Slave Route Project</a> (renamed Routes of Enslaved Peoples), <a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/cea_0008-0055_1995_num_35_137_2030">launched</a> in 1994 from Ouidah. It sparked the global development of research projects dedicated to studying slavery. It also set off new commemorations of slavery and the slave trade on the continent and beyond. In Benin, it transformed the memorial landscape.</p>
<p>For example, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjXNJdKiNLo&t=11s">Da-Silva Museum</a> in Porto Novo, Benin’s administrative capital, opened in 1998. The private institution offers resources (exhibitions, documents, spaces) for school pupils to learn about slavery. Its founder, Urbain-Karim-Elisio da Silva, is a prominent <a href="http://acervoaguda.com.br/en">aguda</a> – part of an Afro-Brazilian community related to slave traders and former slave returnees. </p>
<h2>New memorials in a complicated landscape</h2>
<p>On my last visit to Ouidah in February 2022, the Door of No Return and museum were undergoing renovations. The sculptures had been removed while the road was rebuilt. The museum is to be reborn as the <a href="https://www.lescrayons.com/musee-international-de-la-memoire-et-de-l-esclavage-de-ouidah.html">International Museum for Memory and Slavery</a>. </p>
<p>But the <a href="https://tourisme.gouv.bj/projects/31/projets-phares__autres-projets/home">Marina Project</a>, next to the door, is the most spectacular of the new developments. A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wozQKSPLJ8s">video clip</a> released by the government lists several of its buildings. Their names – “Afro-Brésilien”, “Bénin”, “Caraïbes” – acknowledge the descendants of enslaved Africans.</p>
<p>The new structures add to an already multi-faceted (and sometimes disputed) treatment of the country’s complicated involvement with the slave trade. Descendants of slave raiders and slave traders live alongside the descendants of enslaved people. Their competing memories and separate interests have led to differing memorial strategies. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501062/original/file-20221214-8925-hnc795.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A circular structure on the beach with a tree at its centre and seating all around it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501062/original/file-20221214-8925-hnc795.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501062/original/file-20221214-8925-hnc795.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501062/original/file-20221214-8925-hnc795.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501062/original/file-20221214-8925-hnc795.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501062/original/file-20221214-8925-hnc795.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501062/original/file-20221214-8925-hnc795.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501062/original/file-20221214-8925-hnc795.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The arena for vodun performances at the Marina Project.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot/YouTube/Presidency of Benin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anthropologist C. Ciarcia cites <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/gradhiva/1170">two opposing stances</a>. In Ouidah, where tourism infrastructures are concentrated, forgiveness – through ritual atonement and commemoration – is sought publicly. In Abomey, the former capital of Dahomey and its slave raiders, narratives are less apologetic. For fellow anthropologist Anna Seiderer, the presence of vodun, in particular, has been important for tourists who are eager to <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/cm/116">imagine and enact</a> their roots.</p>
<h2>Slave heritage tourism and its discontents</h2>
<p>Slave heritage tourism in Africa caters mainly to the interests of foreign visitors, especially descendants of enslaved Africans in North and South America and the Caribbean region. Several Unesco world heritage centres curate these legacies for tourists: <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/26/">Gorée island</a> (Senegal), <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/34/">slave castles</a> (Ghana), and <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/173/">Stone Town</a> (Tanzania). To be sure, tourism development was always part of the slave route project, even before Unesco. </p>
<p>Ouidah’s new developments are featured in the <a href="https://presidence.bj/home/benin-revele/decouvrir-benin-revele/">Benin Révélé</a> – a grand development programme imagined by president <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/patrice-talon-1958/">Patrice Talon</a>. According to some <a href="https://www.jeuneafrique.com/1328951/culture/au-benin-un-chantier-patrimonial-et-memoriel-colossal/">detractors</a>, a lot of these projects will become white elephants, used by few.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/woman-king-is-worth-watching-but-be-aware-that-its-take-on-history-is-problematic-191865">Woman King is worth watching: but be aware that its take on history is problematic</a>
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<p>Another recurring criticism is that new museums, memorials and events are fashioned by foreign experts rather than local talents. The new sites are designed, built and staged by mostly French or Chinese architects, engineers and curators. </p>
<p>The Marina Project is one of many projects that memorialise Benin’s past. The combining of commercial and memorial goals doesn’t make them less able to teach history or offer intimate processes of remembrance. But the new trend in high end cultural consumption is seemingly more problematic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196405/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominique Somda receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.</span></em></p>A grand new memorial park walks a fine line - between teaching about slavery and becoming a tourist trap.Dominique Somda, Junior research fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1918652022-10-05T13:46:58Z2022-10-05T13:46:58ZWoman King is worth watching: but be aware that its take on history is problematic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488093/original/file-20221004-18-v5q4hn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures Entertainment/Tiff</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Hollywood movie <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8093700/">The Woman King</a>, released in mid-September, became an immediate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/18/movies/the-woman-king-box-office.html">box-office success</a>. The triumphs of the <a href="https://travelnoire.com/agoodjie-warriors-protected-benin">Agoodjies</a>, the women warriors of the ancient <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Dahomey-historical-kingdom-Africa">Kingdom of Dahomey</a> in today’s Benin, west Africa, are as magnificent as <a href="https://collider.com/the-woman-king-premiere-toronto-international-film-festival-viola-davis-john-boyega/">the public had anticipated</a>. In this epic historical drama, African women take centre stage.</p>
<p>Abomey (the kingdom’s capital) and Ouidah (the main port under its control) are shown from the perspective of Nawi, a novice in the all-female regiment. She opposes the enduring injustice of gender expectations, espouses the camaraderie of her sisters in arms and faces the brutality of slave traders. The humanity of the Dahomey women is superbly portrayed. </p>
<p>But the film has drawn controversy from many angles. </p>
<p>The US far right has condemned it for depicting black women <a href="https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2022/7/ofraiklyc6adn2d5uwakk0gzaksuwu">murdering white men</a>. The <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BoycottWomanKing&src=typed_query&f=top">hashtag</a> <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/why-is-boycottwomanking-trending-viola-davis/">#BoycottWomanKing</a> has also trended on social media among black users. </p>
<p>The film in fact attracted racist rhetoric even before it was released. Online <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHolOo8td4I">commentators</a> condemned the perceived savagery of the Dahomey kingdom. In those reports, particular attention was given to the <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/3183">“annual customs”</a> in Dahomey, the palace rituals that sometimes included massive human sacrifices. </p>
<p>Criticism has also been levelled at the film from people presenting themselves as “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/slavery-black-immigrants-ados.html">ADOS</a>” (American descendants of slavery). They have called for it to be boycotted because it glorifies an African kingdom that brutalised their ancestors.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-woman-king-is-more-than-an-action-movie-it-shines-a-light-on-the-women-warriors-of-benin-190466">The Woman King is more than an action movie – it shines a light on the women warriors of Benin</a>
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<p>Disapproving notes have also come from specialists of 19th-century Dahomey history who have publicly shared their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/20/what-woman-king-gets-wrong-right-about-dahomeys-warriors/">concerns</a> about the misrepresentation of the slave trade in the film.</p>
<p>Finally, a recurring argument is that the Kingdom of Dahomey, with its many flaws and crimes, was not worthy of representation. Some social media users, calling for more representations of positive black stories, have also questioned the choice of Dahomey. One <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/xnebrs/why_the_hell_would_you_make_a_movie_about_dahomey/">Reddit user</a> asked a question that has echoed online in various forms: “Why the hell would you make a movie about Dahomey when you have Toussaint?”. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=SCAI6lgHuMgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Toussaint+louverture&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Toussaint%20louverture&f=false">Toussaint Louverture</a> is the hero of the Haitian revolution – and, coincidentally, the son of a woman enslaved during wars waged by the Kingdom of Dahomey. </p>
<h2>African histories matter</h2>
<p>As an anthropologist who has studied the legacies of slavery in Africa and who grew up in Benin, I argue that our approaches to internal slaveries or African participation in the slave trades must not be minimised. Their existence should also not serve the dehumanisation of Africans or justify the erasures of their complex histories.</p>
<p>My criticism of the movie is related to the misuse of fiction. Film making often involves the liberal creation of plot points and characters arcs. But is there a limit to our our right to alter history?</p>
<p>African histories are not inconsequential; they don’t deserve simple reinventions. Africans have a right to demand fair and layered representations.</p>
<h2>Distortions</h2>
<p>The film resorts to considerable distortions. The trajectory of King Guézo (1818-1859) of Dahomey seems particularly contentious. Historian Ana Lucia Araujo <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2022/09/woman-king-movie-true-story-dahomey-amazons-slave-trade.html">alerts us to his role</a> in continuing his engagement with the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade">transatlantic slave trade</a> – abolished in 1807 by the British but eradicated only decades later. <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates?selected_tab=timeline">The last documented</a> transatlantic slave voyage occurred in 1866. </p>
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<p>By contrast, King Guézo in the film (handsomely interpreted by John Boyega) affirms his commitment to ending the slave trade despite the greed of Brazilian merchants and the rival <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Oyo-empire">Oyo kingdom</a> (an important neighbouring kingdom and a leading participant in the slave trade in the Bight of Benin). </p>
<p>The film seems to rely on a central dichotomy to lay out moral and political ambiguities: it pits the “evil” Oyo kingdom against the “innocent” Dahomey kingdom.</p>
<p>In the US, implicating African kingdoms such as Dahomey in the context of the proliferation of revisionist curriculums – for instance, that propose to teach the slave trade as a <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/30/texas-slavery-involuntary-relocation/">simple relocation of people</a> – can be daunting. </p>
<p>Far too often, the recognition of the role of African political entities in the transatlantic slave trade (the women warriors of Dahomey were tasked with capturing fellow Africans to be sold into slavery) is interpreted as a permission to absolve Euro-Americans of their responsibilities as enslavers of Africans. </p>
<h2>The price of entertainment</h2>
<p>Asked to react to the controversies around the film, US actress Viola Davis, who stars in the movie, <a href="https://variety.com/2022/awards/awards/viola-davis-julius-tennon-the-woman-king-historical-facts-box-office-1235377450/">explains</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We entered the story where the kingdom was in flux, at a crossroads. They were looking for a way to keep their civilization and kingdom alive. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that they were decimated. Most of the story is fictionalised. It has to be.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Julius Tennon, a producer on the movie and Davis’ husband, adds in the same interview: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s history, but we have to take license. We have to entertain people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The film could be praised as an alternate history, belonging to a genre of fiction where actual historical events receive different endings. Popular movies, series, and novels have used this type of narration. The resolution can provide consolation, a sense of hypothetical retaliation, or conversely cause utmost terror. </p>
<p>For example, in Tarantino’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/">Inglourious Basterds</a>, Hitler and Goebbels are shot by a Jewish-American commando. In the TV show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Watchmen</a>, Charles Lindbergh, the real-life aviation pioneer, becomes the US president and implements fascist and antisemitic policies. </p>
<p>Whether dystopian or utopian, alternate histories can work when they transform notorious events and disrupt known historical orders – narratives so familiar that they surprise, but without instilling any doubt in the minds of their audience. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/james-hutton-brew-gold-coast-abolitionist-who-exposed-britains-anti-slavery-hypocrisy-187385">James Hutton Brew: Gold Coast abolitionist who exposed Britain's anti-slavery hypocrisy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With this genre, fiction reveals itself as fiction because of the magnitude of the changes it imposes. </p>
<p>In the case of The Woman King, however, it is fair to assume that the history of Dahomey is relatively unknown to a large part of its global audience. </p>
<p>Anthropologist Nigel Eltringham, in the book <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/EltringhamFraming">Framing Africa</a>, reminds us of the distinction between “true inventions” of fiction – those which may remain intentionally truthful – and the falsifications that distort histories beyond repair and recognition when they, for instance, remove the blame for actual crimes committed by historical figures.</p>
<p>Falsifications may undoubtedly undermine our sense of justice and trust in history. A group of US-based historians, Ana Lucia Araujo, Vanessa Holden, Jessica Marie Johnson, and Alex Gil, have assembled an extensive and impressive online document, <a href="https://womankingsyllabus.github.io/?fbclid=IwAR16h_EBNmwPnv1an0dBEjC9k5sZtIdTaXD2z0rStGEFQp104pA9hvMlr6U">The Woman King Syllabus</a>, for viewers interested in “the history beyond the fiction”. </p>
<h2>Should one watch it?</h2>
<p>The Woman King should be seen. For its spectacular celebration of the Agoodjies’ strength and its invitation to explore their meaningful, public and intimate lives. And also for – rather than despite – the political and ethical conundrums it occasions. </p>
<p>It is, however, best viewed with an awareness of its extensive alterations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191865/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This publication was made possible partly by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.</span></em></p>This movie is absolutely worth seeing. But it’s best viewed with the awareness of its significant alterations of history.Dominique Somda, Junior research fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1870572022-08-11T12:14:18Z2022-08-11T12:14:18ZPoliticians seek to control classroom discussions about slavery in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478567/original/file-20220810-4757-e6ok2b.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3994%2C2664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Texas law says slavery cannot be taught as part of the 'true founding' of the United States.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-house-select-committee-on-constitutional-news-photo/1233910770?adppopup=true">Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Of all the subjects taught in the nation’s public schools, few have generated as much controversy of late as the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818816116">subjects of racism and slavery</a> in the United States.</p>
<p>The attention has come largely through a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/05/gop-red-wave-critical-race-theory-526523">flood of legislative bills put forth primarily by Republicans</a> over the past year and a half. Commonly referred to as anti-critical race theory legislation, these bills are meant to <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism">restrict how teachers discuss race and racism in their classrooms</a>.</p>
<p>One of the more peculiar byproducts of this legislation came out of Texas, where, in June 2022, an advisory panel made up of nine educators recommended that slavery be referred to as “<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/30/texas-slavery-involuntary-relocation/">involuntary relocation</a>.” </p>
<p>The measure <a href="https://www.complex.com/life/texas-education-slavery-involuntary-relocation">ultimately failed</a>.</p>
<p>As an educator who trains teachers on how to educate young students about the history of slavery in the United States, I see the Texas proposal as part of a disturbing trend of politicians seeking to hide the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-world-history-of-violence/violence-slavery-and-race-in-early-english-and-french-america/A70A9EB704B9377091F489FB185C596D">horrific and brutal nature of slavery</a> – and to keep it divorced from the nation’s birth and development.</p>
<p>The Texas proposal, for instance, grew out of work done under a <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/pdf/SB00003F.pdf#navpanes=0">Texas law</a> that says slavery and racism can’t be taught as part of the “true founding” of the United States. Rather, the law states, they must be taught as a “failure to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”</p>
<p>To better understand the nature of slavery and the role it played in America’s development, it helps to have some basic facts about how long slavery lasted in the territory now known as the United States and how many enslaved people it involved. I also believe in using authentic records to show students the reality of slavery.</p>
<h2>Before the Mayflower</h2>
<p>Slavery in what is now known as the United States is often traced back to the year 1619. That is when – as documented by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Rolfe">Colonist John Rolfe</a> – a ship named the White Lion delivered <a href="https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/african-americans-at-jamestown.htm">20 or so enslaved Africans </a> to Virginia.</p>
<p>As for the notion that slavery was not part of the founding of the United States, that is easily refuted by the U.S. Constitution itself. Specifically, <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C1-1/ALDE_00001086/">Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1</a> prevented Congress from prohibiting the “importation” of slaves until 1808 – nearly 20 years after the Constitution was ratified – although it didn’t use the word “slaves.” Instead, the Constitution used the phrase “such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit.”</p>
<p>Congress ultimately passed the “<a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/slave-trade.html#:%7E:text=The%201808%20Act%20imposed%20heavy,its%20passengers%20sold%20into%20slavery.">Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves</a>,” which took effect in 1808. Although the act imposed heavy penalties on international traders, it did not end slavery itself nor the domestic sale of slaves. Not only did it drive trade underground, but many ships caught illegally trading were also brought into the United States and their “<a href="https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/act-prohibit-importation-slaves">passengers</a>” sold into slavery.</p>
<p>The last known slave ship – the Clotilda – <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/clotilda-last-known-slave-ship-arrive-us-found-180972177/">arrived in Mobile, Alabama, in 1860</a>, more than half a century after Congress outlawed the importation of enslaved individuals.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map of Africa showing slave trade routes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1880 map shows where enslaved people originated from and in which directions they were forced out.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/map-showing-the-sources-of-slave-supply-and-routes-of-news-photo/3277873?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Stringer via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to the <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/trans-atlantic-slave-trade-database">Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database</a>, which derives it numbers from shipping records from 1525 to 1866, approximately 12.5 million enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas. About 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage and arrived in North America, the Caribbean and South America. Of these, only a small portion – <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/">388,000</a> – arrived in North America.</p>
<p>Most enslaved people in the United States, then, entered slavery not through importation or “involuntary relocation,” but by birth.</p>
<p>From the arrival of those first 20 so enslaved Africans in 1619 until slavery was <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=Passed%20by%20Congress%20on%20January,within%20the%20United%20States%2C%20or">abolished in 1865</a>, approximately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2020.1755502">10 million slaves lived in the United States and contributed 410 billion hours of labor</a>. This is why slavery is a “<a href="https://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/the-contribution-of-enslaved-workers-to-output-and-growth-in-the-antebellum-united-states/">crucial building block</a>” to understanding the U.S. economy from the nation’s founding up until the Civil War.</p>
<h2>The value of historical records</h2>
<p>As an educator who trains teachers on how to deal with the subject of slavery, I don’t see any value in politicians’ restricting what teachers can and can’t say about the role that slaveholders – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/congress-slaveowners-names-list/">at least 1,800 of whom were congressmen</a>, not to mention the <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/slavery-in-the-presidents-neighborhood-faq#:%7E:text=A%3A%20According%20to%20surviving%20documentation%2C%20at%20least%20twelve%20presidents%20were,Andrew%20Johnson%2C%20and%20Ulysses%20S.">12 who were U.S. presidents</a> – played in the upholding of slavery in American society.</p>
<p>What I see value in is the use of historical records to educate schoolchildren about the harsh realities of slavery. There are three types of records that I recommend in particular.</p>
<h2>1. Census records</h2>
<p>Since enslaved people were counted in each census that took place from 1790 to 1860, census records enable students to learn a lot about who specifically owned slaves. Census records also enable students to see differences in slave ownership within states and throughout the nation.</p>
<p>The censuses also show the growth of the slave population over time – from
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2020.1755502">697,624</a> during the first census in 1790, shortly after the nation’s founding, to <a href="https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf">3.95 million</a> during the 1860 census, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/civil-war-the-nation-moves-towards-war-1850-to-1861/">as the nation stood at the verge of civil war</a>.</p>
<h2>2. Ads for runaway slaves</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An advertisement for two men who ran away from slavery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Advertisements for fugitive slaves offer a glimpse into their lives.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Few things speak to the horrors and harms of slavery like ads that slave owners took out for runaway slaves.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to find ads that describe fugitive slaves whose bodies were covered with various scars from beatings and marks from branding irons.</p>
<p>For instance, consider an <a href="https://dlas.uncg.edu/notices/notice/505">ad taken out on July 3, 1823</a>, in the<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83025819/"> Star, and North-Carolina State Gazette</a> by Alford Green, who offers $25 for a fugitive slave named Ned, whom he described as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“… about 21 years old, his weight about 150, well made, spry and active tolorably fierce look, a little inclined to be yellow, his upper fore teeth a little defective, and, I expect, has some signs of the whip on his hips and thighs, as he was whipped in that way the day before he went off.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Advertisements for runaway slaves can be accessed via digital databases, such as <a href="https://app.freedomonthemove.org/">Freedom on the Move</a>, which contains more than 32,000 ads. Another database – the <a href="http://dlas.uncg.edu/notices/">North Carolina Runaway Slave Notices project</a> – contains 5,000 ads published in North Carolina newspapers from 1751 to 1865. The sheer number of these advertisements sheds light on how many enslaved Black people attempted to escape bondage.</p>
<h2>3. Personal narratives from the enslaved</h2>
<p>Though they are few in number, recordings of interviews with formerly enslaved people exist.</p>
<p>Some of the interviews are <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/articles-and-essays/introduction-to-the-wpa-slave-narratives/limitations-of-the-slave-narrative-collection">problematic</a> for various reasons. For instance, some of the interviews were heavily edited by interviewers or did not include complete, word-for-word transcripts of the interviews.</p>
<p>Yet the interviews still provide a glimpse at the harshness of life in bondage. They also expose the fallacy of the argument that slaves – <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/wise/wise.html">as one slave owner claimed in his memoir</a> – “loved ‘old Marster’ better than anybody in the world, and would not have freedom if he offered it to them.”</p>
<p>For instance, when Fountain Hughes – a <a href="https://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/fountain-hughes">descendant of a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson</a> who spent his boyhood in slavery in Charlottesville, Virginia – was asked if he would rather be free or enslaved, he <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/">told his interviewer</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You know what I’d rather do? If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun and just end it all right away, because you’re nothing but a dog. You’re not a thing but a dog. A night never come that you had nothing to do. Time to cut tobacco? If they want you to cut all night long out in the field, you cut. And if they want you to hang all night long, you hang tobacco. It didn’t matter about you’re tired, being tired. You’re afraid to say you’re tired.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s ironic, then, that when it comes to teaching America’s schoolchildren about the horrors of American slavery and how entrenched it was in America’s political establishment, some politicians would prefer to shackle educators with restrictive laws. What they could do is grant educators the ability to teach freely about the role the slavery played in the forming of a nation that was founded – as the Texas law states - on principles of liberty and equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raphael E. Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lawmakers are seeking to downplay the role that slavery played in the development of the United States, but history tells a different story.Raphael E. Rogers, Professor of Practice in Education, Clark UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1756562022-01-27T15:13:29Z2022-01-27T15:13:29ZBook review: how Africa was central to the making of the modern world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442723/original/file-20220126-21-hadgbf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, approached by a Berber on camelback, from The Catalan Atlas, 1375</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Attributed to Abraham Cresques/Bibliothèque Nationale de France/Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Journalist, photographer, author and professor Howard W. French’s <em><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631495823">Born in Blackness</a>: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War</em>, is the most recent in a long career of thoughtful and significant literary and journalistic interventions. It demands an account of modernity that reckons with Africa as central to the making of the modern world.</p>
<p>The book’s main aim, French explains early on, is to restore those key chapters which articulate Africa’s significance to our common narrative of modernity to their proper place of prominence. </p>
<p>French intricately traces, from the early 15th century through the Second World War, the encounters between African and European civilisations. These, he argues, were motivated by Europe’s desire to trade with West Africa’s rich, Black <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/06/27/medieval-africa-lost-kingdoms/">civilisations</a>. These included the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Ghana-historical-West-African-empire">Ghanaian</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/empire-mali-1230-1600">Malian</a> empires. The ancient West African region was perceived as an <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/africa_caribbean/west_africa.htm">abundant source</a> of both gold and slaves. French argues that it is the “intertwined background of gold and slavery” which would eventually birth the transatlantic slave trade of the early 16th century. </p>
<h2>A 600 year journey</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442726/original/file-20220126-17-vg5rdr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration that is detail of The Catlan Atlas showing a king greeting a berber on camel back, lines and buildings in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442726/original/file-20220126-17-vg5rdr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442726/original/file-20220126-17-vg5rdr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442726/original/file-20220126-17-vg5rdr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442726/original/file-20220126-17-vg5rdr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442726/original/file-20220126-17-vg5rdr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442726/original/file-20220126-17-vg5rdr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442726/original/file-20220126-17-vg5rdr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Liveright/W.W. Norton & Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Born in Blackness</em> sprawls approximately 600 years. It traverses geographies from the edge of Europe, across Africa and the Americas. It follows the long history of the age of European “discovery” beginning with <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/africa-portugal">Portugal’s early ventures</a> into Africa and Asia in the late 1400s and early 1500s, through the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade">Atlantic slave trade</a>’s “modest” start in Barbados in the 1630s to the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/haitian-revolution-1791-1804/">Haitian Revolution</a>. </p>
<p>Then it moves to London’s <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/tradeindustry/slavetrade/overview/parliament-abolishes-the-slave-trade/">abolishment</a> of the transatlantic trafficking of humans in 1807 and the introduction of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/cotton-harvester">mechanical cotton picker</a>. This invention “could do the work of fifty sharecropping Blacks, a fact not lost on the white planters of the (Mississippi Delta)”. French’s historical tracing of the crafting of the modern world through the oppression and subjugation of Black persons continues on through the Second World War and beyond.</p>
<p>Citing Simeon Booker, a noteworthy African-American journalist whose work concerned the American <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement">civil rights movement</a> and the murder of <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/murder-of-emmett-till/">Emmett Till</a>, an African-American teenager accused of offending a white woman, French notes that in the early 1960s, “Mississipi could easily rank with South Africa, Angola or Nazi Germany for brutality and hatred”. </p>
<p>His careful weaving together of how gold and slavery became intertwined over centuries and continents makes one thing abundantly clear. Without the trade of persons belonging to African civilisations across the globe, but particularly the Atlantic, the modern world would not have been made.</p>
<h2>A reckoning with slavery</h2>
<p>As the author explains, the boom of the cotton, sugar and tobacco industries of the colonial US simply would not have happened without the trade of slaves from Africa. Without this “capitalist jolt” as French puts it, what we know now as the United States of America would have remained relatively obscure. It would not likely have become the superpower state it is today.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-lives-matter-but-slavery-isnt-our-only-narrative-137016">Black Lives Matter but slavery isn't our only narrative</a>
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<p>In this way <em>Born in Blackness</em> challenges emphatically the deliberate forgetting of European contests over control of African resources. This process of erasure, French explains, began with Europe’s “Age of Discovery” (1400s-1600s). The improperly explained rationale for this era was that European civilisations wanted to form trading ties with Asia. To do so, they reached across continents, including Africa, for territory – and, later, subjects. </p>
<p>But French insists that the real rationale was Europe’s earnest desire to establish economic ties with Africa, and in particular West Africa with its resource-rich civilisations and resource-based economies. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442730/original/file-20220126-19-om9dcg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of a man in a blue shirt with a brown jacket, wearing glasses, his beard unshaven." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442730/original/file-20220126-19-om9dcg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442730/original/file-20220126-19-om9dcg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442730/original/file-20220126-19-om9dcg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442730/original/file-20220126-19-om9dcg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442730/original/file-20220126-19-om9dcg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442730/original/file-20220126-19-om9dcg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442730/original/file-20220126-19-om9dcg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Howard W. French.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">W.W. Norton & Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The intervention of <em>Born in Blackness</em>, then, is to insist on reckoning with the role played by the brutal bond between Europe and Africa. This was forged through slavery. It is what drove the birth of a truly global capitalist economy; it hastened the processes of industrialisation and revolutionised the world’s diets by facilitating the globalisation of the consumption of sugar. </p>
<p>It is also important to mark, as French does, that the centrality of enslaved Africans’ labour extends beyond the mining of plantation crops to the very creation of the plantations themselves. It was the slaves who prepared the land for planting: they removed plants and rocks, but most importantly displaced indigenous peoples from their territories. </p>
<h2>A world born in Blackness</h2>
<p>In marking this, <em>Born in Blackness</em> demonstrates how the displacement to which African persons taken as slaves is mirrored in the making of modern-day America and echoed in the displacement of first nations or indigenous Americans.</p>
<p>What is at stake in the intervention of the book is precisely what is gestured toward by its title: that modernity and the modern world was indeed born in Blackness. The civilisational transformations the author traces – economic, spatial and most importantly cultural in their texture – are a product of Blackness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren van der Rede receives funding from the Early Career Academic Development programme of the Division of Research Development, Stellenbosch University.</span></em></p>Born in Blackness by Howard W. French is a towering work. It argues that, because of gold and slavery, Africa is central to creating the modern world.Lauren van der Rede, Lecturer, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1697852021-10-26T14:22:42Z2021-10-26T14:22:42ZNigerian museums must tell stories of slavery with more complexity and nuance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427828/original/file-20211021-25-1ifhwxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Gidan Makama national museum in Kano, Nigeria.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aminu Abubakar/AFP/Getty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In many parts of the world, museums are considering how to present history through different lenses, rather than just representing colonial and imperialistic views of certain events, countries or whole continents.</p>
<p>The current museum presentations of exhibits and information about slavery – especially the transatlantic slave trade – are a stark example of colonisation that’s been spun through a white, eurocentric lens. Hence, it’s become a key part of the decolonisation debate. </p>
<p>Museums all over the world have struggled to move beyond presenting more than emotionally removed snapshots of the slave trade. Most of these halls are continuing a long tradition of disconnecting themselves and the public from personal and local stories of slavery. This makes them disconnected from community and public memories. </p>
<p>African museums are also guilty of this practice. The transatlantic slave trade was a 400-year period during which African people were stolen from their homes and shipped to colonial nations. It was complex and multi-faceted. But when presented by museums today, it is communicated as a singular and temporarily isolated event. African museums frame the transatlantic slave trade narratives from an economic perspective. Their narratives are built around economic drivers and the economic effects of slavery on African countries, and the countries that benefited from the trade.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21619441.2021.1963034">recent study</a>, I examined how slavery is presented in two Nigerian museums. One is Calabar’s Slave History <a href="http://slaveryandremembrance.org/partners/partner/?id=P0027">Museum</a>, which is government-funded; the other is the privately run Seriki Faremi Williams Abass <a href="https://seriki-williams-abass-slave-museum.business.site">Museum</a>. In both museums, the dominant narrative about slavery is that the Europeans arrived; the slave trade developed; and then it was abolished.</p>
<p>Little attention is paid to the practice of slavery in the region before Europeans arrived in the 1440s. There’s little mention of how the practice persisted, even after the British outlawed the slave trade in its empire. There’s no mention of concerns about <a href="https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/resources/downloads/">modern slavery</a> in Nigeria.</p>
<p>This is an isolationist approach to a large, complex set of stories. When I spoke with local communities descended from victims of slavery, members strongly criticised government funded museums’ approach. They kicked against the museums’ failure to convey the complete, complex, and conflicting localised human story of the slave trade. They also wanted museums to reflect that slavery continues to have an impact on local communities today. Especially on the culture and identity of individuals and ethnic groups.</p>
<h2>Official avoidance of history</h2>
<p>Elsewhere in Nigeria, transatlantic slavery and the slave trade are largely absent from national or state museums, including the <a href="https://momaa.org/directory/nigerian-national-museum/">Nigerian National Museum</a> in Lagos.</p>
<p>This official avoidance of the history of slavery and its accompanying acts of oppression and injustice could be linked to the colonial legacies of many of these museums. It may also be connected to wider political rhetoric that unsuccessfully urges Nigerians to forget such dark chapters. Of course, such avoidance is not limited to Nigeria – it’s a global trend of deliberate erasure. It has deep roots in imperialist and eurocentric agendas.</p>
<p>After independence in 1960, Nigeria’s heritage and past were used to enlighten and educate the public in national “official” histories. The aim was <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/og/article/view/141270">nation-building</a>. Six decades later, it has culminated in the exclusion of the transatlantic slave trade from wider narratives of independence, colonial geography, and ethnic histories in Nigerian museums.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A yellow bungalow, with a lawn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Slavery Museum at Badagry, Nigeria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MyLoupe/Universal Images Group/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Colonial heritage narratives about Nigeria have not been amended throughout the years. These incorrect narratives linger, despite evidence that slavery and enslavement form the core of the country’s personal, local and cultural memories. </p>
<p>Official efforts have failed to consider community narratives and memories, thereby removing Nigerians from the centre of their own history and heritage. The result is that these museums are often perceived as locally irrelevant: there is a disconnect between the official narrative and the descendent community’s <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333776834_Heritage_and_Community_Archaeology_in_South-Western_Nigeria">versions</a> of the past. </p>
<p>One of the museums in my study, the Seriki Faremi Williams Abass Slave Museum in Badagry, was developed as a direct result of the gaps in official museums’ offerings.</p>
<h2>Local collaboration is key</h2>
<p>It is critical that museum professionals in Nigeria – and the rest of the world – begin to open up dialogue with diverse local communities. Museums must be immersed in people-centric local narratives. They have to also build <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21619441.2021.1963034">trust</a> with the communities in which they operate. </p>
<p>This collaboration will allow for the co-production of culturally relevant, personalised and empathetic narratives. Via this collaboration, the story of slavery and slave trade can be sensitively and accurately presented. It will also enable museums to highlight the unique cultural impact of slavery on specific localities, especially at the points of origin and final destination. </p>
<p>This approach could encourage the public and museums to question over-simplified stories of the past. It’s also a valuable way to support empathy with the past. This could enable the public to face uncomfortable and potentially personal truths about the slave trade and enslavement that move beyond victimisation and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2013.771422">stereotypes</a>. </p>
<p>By considering transatlantic slavery and slave trade through this lens, museums have the potential to connect people to the past, so communities might learn, reflect and heal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Faye Sayer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nigerian museums continue to present colonised versions of history. This harms local communities.Faye Sayer, Researcher in Community Archaeology and Public History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1623172021-06-11T10:48:55Z2021-06-11T10:48:55ZWhat the discovery of a shackled skeleton in a ditch reveals about slavery in Roman Britain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405741/original/file-20210610-17-w7k4p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C977%2C732&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Roman burial shackles found on the skeleton in Great Casterton</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MOLA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A body found buried in a ditch by construction workers in the village of Great Casterton, in the east Midlands of England, has shed new light on Roman slavery in Britain. A <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/britannia/article/an-unusual-roman-fettered-burial-from-great-casterton-rutland/1C2ECF53B1B14CEB0790E170FD5AE442">new analysis</a> of the skeleton and the burial has revealed that the male body was probably that of slave from third century. </p>
<p>Although there is no obvious cause of death, the skeleton showed evidence of traumatic injuries from which the man it belonged to had recovered. There was no coffin or grave goods (items buried alongside the body). The grave was shallow and dug in a ditch. The body was not carefully laid out, as is the norm in Roman burials. And there were manacles on the man’s ankles (so whoever dumped him could not be bothered to remove them). All this evidence suggests the man was a slave. </p>
<p>Common narratives tend to stress the perceived benefits of the Roman empire to civilisation: the roads, cities and villas. While it’s true that Roman rule transformed the landscape of Britain, it also brought with it a new economy – and with that the imposition of Roman systems of exploitation, including slave labour. </p>
<h2>Slave labour in Britain</h2>
<p>It seems likely that the first Roman slaves in Britain came with the Roman invasion in 43AD. Richer soldiers had slaves to attend to them. Officers brought domestic slaves who worked not just as household servants but also as administrative personnel. As the province grew, merchants arrived bringing with them slaves to manage households and businesses. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white diagram of a skeleton buried underground in Great Casterton" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405871/original/file-20210611-27-7qjs9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405871/original/file-20210611-27-7qjs9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405871/original/file-20210611-27-7qjs9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405871/original/file-20210611-27-7qjs9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405871/original/file-20210611-27-7qjs9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405871/original/file-20210611-27-7qjs9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405871/original/file-20210611-27-7qjs9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A diagram of the Great Casterton shackled burial.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MOLA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Great Casterton slave is unlikely to have come from this ranking of the enslaved population. The shackles he was found wearing and the punishment his body had suffered suggest the skeleton belonged to a manual labourer. The Romans chained at least some of their agricultural slaves so this man was probably a farm worker, employed in the fields of one of the large estates that were developing in southern Britain during the third century. </p>
<p>Historians have <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-history/conquerors-and-slaves?format=PB&isbn=9780521281812">associated</a> mass slavery in Rome with the period of imperial expansion, from roughly 200BC to AD100. People were a significant element of the wealth the Romans extracted from the conquered territories. The abundance of slave labour and its cheapness permitted their development of large slave-worked estates and slaves became ubiquitous in Roman Italy. </p>
<p>The Great Casterton slave, however, falls outside that time period and comes from the fringes of the Roman empire. Evidently, his presence was not the result of a campaign of conquest, but of an economic system that depended upon slave labour and consequently maintained a slave trade. </p>
<h2>Comparisons to the Atlantic slave trade</h2>
<p>As with Atlantic slavery, Rome’s slave trade grew from a nexus of commercial opportunity, a demand for labour and a willingness to employ the violence of enslavement. Profits were generated from the commercial exploitation of the slave’s labour. The Romans could and did use wage labour on commercial estates. But slave labour must have provided economic benefits to the estate owners that undercut free labour. </p>
<p>The use of chained slaves appears to have been limited to certain regions, but fettered slaves are known from Italy and Gaul and now probably from Britain. Large slave-worked estates were features of the economy of the western empire into the fifth century. </p>
<p>We may assume that the system depended on an abundance of cheap slaves whose very disposability allowed extreme exploitation (this was certainly the case with Atlantic slavery). In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved people could be pillaged from sub-Saharan Africa in vast numbers and at minimal cost. In the centuries of Roman imperial expansion, whole populations were enslaved and sold on the Mediterranean slave markets such as that at the Greek island of Delos.</p>
<p>Many were transported to Italy and provided the labour for the great estates that developed from the late second century onwards and which were a source of great wealth for Rome’s political elite. The sources of slaves in the later Roman period are less obvious. Yet slaves were ubiquitous: census returns from Egypt suggest that more than <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-history/demography-roman-egypt?format=PB">10% of the population were slaves</a>. One might expect higher proportions for the Roman West. </p>
<p>The demand for slaves in the third century AD required raiders and traders, likely operating both beyond and within the frontiers of Rome. Banditry and piracy were supported by the sale of captives into the Roman slave markets. Mass slavery and slaving were central to the Roman economic system and its much admired civilisation. </p>
<p>The slave at Great Casterton attests not only the economics of Rome, but also its cultures of human interaction. As with Atlantic slavery, the “manufacture” of the slave required systemic brutality and an absence of sympathy. Dumped within metres of an established burial ground, this slave was denied dignity in death and now serves as a martyr to a civilisation that beat him, chained him and finally dumped him in ditch.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162317/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Alston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Atlantic slave trade isn’t Britain’s first brush with forced labour.Richard Alston, Professor of Roman History, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1623762021-06-08T16:30:50Z2021-06-08T16:30:50ZEdward Colston museum display: what happens next for the fallen statue<p>When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the summer of 2020, attention quickly turned to perceived symbols of oppression. After years of calls to remove racist monuments, Confederate and colonial statues quickly came down all over the world. But despite this, art historian Erin Thompson <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/05/confederate-monuments-removed-temporarily/">has found that</a> many or most have gone up again in new locations.</p>
<p>Some statues have been moved into museums; others have been moved to private locales owned by people who are most enthusiastic about preserving them. Few have been destroyed, and in many places, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-legal-protection-for-england-s-heritage#:%7E:text=Historic%20England%20and%20the%20Secretary,in%20the%20most%20exceptional%20circumstances.&text=These%20new%20laws%20will%20protect,throughout%20England%20for%20future%20generations.">including the UK</a>, new laws block removal of statues, prescribing instead that they should be retained and explained. Thompson argues that since permanent removal is rare, the question is less whether statues should be removed, and more where they should be located, and how they should be contextualised.</p>
<p>One common proposal is to move such statues to a museum. Another is to keep them in place and add plaques, artwork or counter-memorials. A third option is to place new statues or artwork elsewhere, to create more balanced representation across an entire area. The idea behind each of these “recontextualising” methods is that changing the context of the statue can change its meaning.</p>
<p>People often think of such methods as a middle path that strikes a balance between removal and preservation. But it is rarely that simple. As I’ve <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/japp.12485">argued elsewhere</a>, a move that is dramatic enough to change the meaning of a statue is often just as controversial as removal, while subtler courses of action may not really alter the meaning of the statue at all. </p>
<p>Adding layers to the landscape by commissioning new works may seem like the most friction-free route. But in fact, as New York City’s commissioning process shows, commissioning new artworks to rebalance representation <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vinnie-bagwell-park-commission-1673086">can be fraught</a> because artists and artworks invariably represent particular communities, values and tastes, and not others.</p>
<h2>Shaping Edward Colston’s new display</h2>
<p>This year, I had a chance to reflect on these questions in a new way when I helped advise on curatorial decisions for a temporary display of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol’s M Shed museum. The museum had to figure out how to display a dramatically damaged statue of a figure who had symbolised generosity, kindness and philanthropy to one part of the community, and injustice, suffering and oppression to another.</p>
<p>I rang colleagues in the US and Europe but none knew of recently vandalised statues on display in museums. We found valuable resources like the <a href="https://www.sitesofconscience.org/en/home/">International Coalition of Sites of Conscience</a> – a “global network of historic sites, museums and memory initiatives that connects past struggles to today’s movements for human rights” – but we still had to think through complex ethical issues, with limited examples to draw from. </p>
<p>What are the ethics of displaying a vandalised statue? The questions were myriad. Should the statue be standing up, lying down, or somewhere in between? Should the graffiti be preserved, or washed away? Should it be surrounded by placards and images of protesters, or should the space around the statue be neutral and open? </p>
<p>We chose to create a welcoming space that eschewed harsh imagery or language –except where necessary to honestly depict events. The museum has rightly presented the statue as it received it, fallen and painted. Though the statue is controversially lying down with the graffiti intact, the reason is straightforward: it was too damaged to stand upright, and the curators decided to preserve the spray paint from BLM protests - a material record of the statue’s most significant historical moment. </p>
<h2>The exhibition</h2>
<p>The thematic colour of the exhibition is a brilliant light blue, symbolising clarity. The space immediately above and around the statue is also neutral, open and reflective. This was achieved by keeping the wall blank and projecting a series of three-part dialogues and rhetorical questions over the statue. One dialogue says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I was euphoric when the statue came down.”</p>
<p>“Really? I was horrified!”</p>
<p>“I felt like a great weight was lifted.”</p>
<p>How did you feel when Colston’s statue was toppled?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This disappears, and then another dialogue says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Everybody knows slavery is wrong. But you can’t change history.”</p>
<p>“Statues don’t teach history. They honour people.”</p>
<p>“Colston’s statue <em>has</em> taught me history. When I see it, I reflect on the bad things and feel grateful for the good.”</p>
<p>What is the purpose of statues and memorials?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Different sides take turns, and the question is handed back to the visitor to form their own judgements, enabling us to represent diverse views in a way that allows for the possibility of evolving ideas.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1402164657914318848"}"></div></p>
<p>Once you move past the statue, there’s a wall with octagonal photographs of colourful Bristol street art framed around a mirror, so that visitors see their own reflection with Bristol in the background. Viewers are also prompted to ask how Bristolians can best come together. On the central side of this panel, a wall of responses to a survey about the future of the statue are projected, so that public voices appear in real time within the display.</p>
<p>The M Shed exhibition may well provide valuable lessons for other museums as they decide how to display contested statues. </p>
<p>Through conversation and consultation, it is now for us to work out what the next directions should be for the Colston statue. There’s no easy answer. But as policy-maker Ben Stephenson, consultant Dr Marie-Annick Gournet and I argue in our forthcoming Guidelines for Public Bodies Reviewing Contested Statues, it is key that all voices are welcome, and that the process is transparent, accountable, fair and inclusive, with democratic legitimacy and an emphasis on public dialogue and mutual respect. </p>
<p>It is equally key that we concentrate not only on statues, but also on taking this moment to inspire change towards a more equal society, while fostering ways for people to connect across political differences. That is the idea behind our next big project, <a href="https://www.bridginghistories.com">Bridging Histories</a>, a free public-learning programme launching June 10, which will exemplify how histories can bring us together to shape positive change for the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162376/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Burch-Brown is currently co-chairing the We Are Bristol History Commission. She is director for Bridging Histories, which is being funded by an ESRC Impact Accelerator award, a UKRI Citizen Science grant, and University of Bristol. </span></em></p>The question of what should happen to symbols of oppression has re-emerged a hot-button issue now that the graffiti-covered figure has moved to Bristol’s M Shed museumJoanna Burch-Brown, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1599282021-05-03T13:50:52Z2021-05-03T13:50:52ZThe N-Word: a volcano kept active by the flickering embers of racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398133/original/file-20210430-16-13d1npa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mural by Gabriel Marques, Dublin</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many years ago, talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey had actor Don Cheadle and a couple of other guests on her TV programme to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0667132/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl">debate</a> racism, including the unresolved question of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/john-mcwhorter-n-word-unsayable.html">N-word</a>. Arguably, by the end of the show, there was no resolution of the status of the word in American society, the country where it has caused so much anguish and turmoil.</p>
<p>“Negro”, under slave conditions, quite apart from being a neutral racial category, became a term of absolute dehumanisation. Africans <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Middle-Passage-slave-trade">stolen</a> by the millions and transported to the New World had to be divested of their humanity, individuality and variety. </p>
<p>A word had to be invested with the powers of dehumanisation, on the one hand, and absolve the racist oppressor of culpability, on the other. Since the period of US <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/plantation-system/">plantation slavery</a> from the 1600s to the 1800s, the word of terror – invested with so much vitriol, hate and revulsion – wended its venomous way through the veins of the black community, polluting the entire body politic. </p>
<p>A word is as delicate as an egg and had to be treated so accordingly.</p>
<h2>A state of white supremacy</h2>
<p>After the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-slavery-idUSL1561464920070322">defeat</a> of slavery, the end of the American Civil War, systemic lynching, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">Jim Crow segregation</a> of the early 1900s, and the successes of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement">civil rights movement</a>, the terrible word was still loose in American society, evoking dusky trauma and spectres of toxins. It was a word that was not dead and buried. It had acquired a life of its own and had become as complex as the deceit and illusions of the ongoing <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/">age of mass incarceration</a>.</p>
<p>American authors <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Wright-American-writer">Richard Wright</a> in <em><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/103/1033262/native-son/9781784876128.html">Native Son</a></em> (1940) and <a href="https://bookriot.com/who-was-ralph-ellison/">Ralph Ellison</a> in <em><a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5053/the-art-of-fiction-no-8-ralph-ellison">The Invisible Man</a></em> (1952) evoke the terror and soul destroying anonymity through which blackness had to exist under white supremacy. The reality of blackness entailed a continual recoil into nameless shadows, opprobrium and silence. Finally, it entailed a state of enforced non-being even if it was artificially constructed.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/comparing-black-people-to-monkeys-has-a-long-dark-simian-history-55102">Comparing black people to monkeys has a long, dark simian history</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mikhail_Bakhtin">Mikhail Bakhtin</a>, the Russian cultural critic and literary theorist, popularised the notion of the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095550811">carnivalesque</a> – a concept that became well-known in his country in the 1960s and much later in the West. It has been subsequently adopted as a means of deconstructing figures and institutions of tyrannical power by ordinary people. </p>
<p>Power, in arbitrary and irresponsible forms, is not often to be confronted head on. Instead, it is more judicious to puncture its bombastic façade using the weapons of humour, evasion and other similar sleights of hand. And thus the sheer terror of unaccountable power is defanged by the instrumentality of humour and the carnivalesque. In that manner, we are able to laugh at the state of abjectness that power imposes upon us in order to endure yet another day.</p>
<p>The N-word lives within the black community like a volcano, ready to erupt at any time, fed constantly by the bitter flares of history, humiliation and dehumanisation. But it also has to be appeased, detoxified and inverted for black folk to remain human and resilient. </p>
<h2>Taking venom from a snake</h2>
<p>And just as black folk have been able to create astounding works of beauty out of unbearable abjection – think of 1940s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/bebop">bebop</a> music from the brothels and after hours clubs of the American Chitlin’ circuit and <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7550286">hip hop</a> from the derelict precincts of the Bronx – the odious, life-crushing word was made to undergo a rebirth, a reinvention and was as such infused with new music and sinuousness. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man on stage raises both hands in peace signs as a crowd of arms from spectatotrs do the same. He wears a yellow T-shirt with a prominent image of a man on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rapper Nas pays tribute to Tupac Shakur in 2004. Hip hop reclaimed the word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scott Gries/Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>In this way, the victims and descendants of racial oppression wouldn’t have to live with tainted shadows, befouled blood and nightmares every moment of their lives. They had to perform an act similar to daredevilry, which is, to extract and detoxify venom from a snake without being bitten.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/05/26/529839430/all-songs-1-why-were-still-obsessed-with-tupac">Tupac</a> <a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/1513077/Richie+Rich/Ratha+Be+Ya+Nigga">raps</a>, “I’d ratha be your N.I.G.G.A” and makes it cool to do so, it is easy to gloss over the tribulations, bloodshed and heartbreaks it took to reach this stage of supposedly post-racial, post-<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/martin-luther-king-hungry-club-forum/552533/">Martin Luther King</a> casual hipness. </p>
<p>Yet this seemingly benign scenario has to be juxtaposed with the rise of the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com">Black Lives Matter</a> movement – including its contradictions and disenchantments. It rose due to the alarming cases of police brutality aimed at often unarmed black men and the apparent inaction of the political establishment in curbing these new forms of racial discrimination and injustice. </p>
<h2>Rivers of blood</h2>
<p>The word of abjection – regardless of its sordid and tortuous past itinerary – had to be appeased with endless rivers of blood. It would be a demonstration of a lack of empathy for a non-black person to throw the epithet around casually. </p>
<p>In this case, “non-blacks” are those who do not possess a direct or ancestral link to the transatlantic slave trade as primary victims. In the case of South Africa, non-blacks would apply to those who benefited most directly from the apartheid regime of racial stratification.</p>
<p>It is necessary to take into cognisance the multitude of crushed bones, shredded bodies and defeated spirits – in short, the genocidal ordeal – it took for the word to become hip and cool within only black communities. </p>
<p>In other words, it took horrifying crucibles for it to become a specific term of endearment, invariably, a consequence of astronomical costs. It is the inadequate recognition of this excruciating history by non-black persons that rankles the black community. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman with a fist in the air shouts into a microphone as she marches in a crowd in urban streets, a green and brown illustration of a man held aloft on a poster behind the woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Protest for justice for George Floyd, NYC 2020. Police brutality forms a backdrop to the use of the word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>We need to be constantly reminded that social transformation isn’t complete as long as blacks are vilified, oppressed and murdered simply because of the colour of their skin. Recent cases in point, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/shooting-of-Trayvon-Martin">Trayvon Martin</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html">Breonna Taylor</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56818766">George Floyd</a>.</p>
<p>It’s not helpful to adopt a trivialisation of the essence of racial <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-rainbow-nation-is-a-myth-that-students-need-to-unlearn-66872">rainbowism</a> without its accompanying historical realities. What precisely are we to achieve by flippantly discarding the humanism we have been nurtured by to acquire a stunted, uncertain version of something that continually seems to elude us? What is the benefit of the new if it fosters a form of ahistorical barbarism?</p>
<h2>Hands off the word</h2>
<p>So the N-word, regardless of its current chic hip hop-speak, is perennially a double-edged sword, thoroughly <a href="https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/Manichean">Manichean</a>, with Jekyll and Hyde properties. Non-blacks would do well to appreciate this ever-shifting duality and are perhaps better off eschewing it.</p>
<p>It took black folk unimaginable resources of creativity, humanity, humour and generosity to detoxify it for their own collective sanity. Nonetheless a non-black de-contextualised appropriation of it remains, as always, a seismic volcano. A volcano kept active by the flickering embers of racism.</p>
<p><em>Osha is the author of several books including <a href="https://brill.com/view/title/31257">Postethnophilosophy</a> (2011) and <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/dust-spittle-and-wind">Dust, Spittle and Wind</a> (2011), <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/an-underground-colony-of-summer-bees">An Underground Colony of Summer Bees</a> (2012) and <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/on-a-sad-weather-beaten-couch">On a Sad Weather-Beaten Couch</a> (2015).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It took black folk unimaginable resources of creativity, humanity, humour and generosity to detoxify the N-word for their own collective sanity.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1523082021-03-01T13:18:07Z2021-03-01T13:18:07ZColleges confront their links to slavery and wrestle with how to atone for past sins<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386756/original/file-20210226-21-1oelrib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4075%2C2717&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students at Georgetown University protest in 2019, demanding the school make amends for its history with reparations. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-at-georgetown-university-protested-for-the-school-news-photo/1179276294?adppopup=true">Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Colleges and universities across the U.S. have been taking a hard look at their ties to slavery.</p>
<p>This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Back in 2006, Brown University published a report showing that the university – from its construction to its endowment – <a href="https://www.brown.edu/about/administration/institutional-diversity/resources-initiatives/slavery-justice-report">participated in and benefited from the slave trade and slavery</a>.</p>
<p>And since then, several other colleges and universities have disclosed their ties to the use of slave labor.</p>
<p>For instance, Johns Hopkins University – whose namesake and founder has historically been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/arts/johns-hopkins-slavery-abolitionist.html">portrayed as an abolitionist</a> – <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/12/09/johns-hopkins-ties-to-slaveholding-reexamined/">reported in December 2020</a> that its founder actually employed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/arts/johns-hopkins-slavery-abolitionist.html">four enslaved individuals in his Baltimore household</a>.</p>
<p>At the University of Mississippi, a slavery research group has found that at least <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2020/12/29/university-of-mississippi-professors-research-the-legacy-of-slavery-at-states-flagship-university/">11 enslaved people labored on the campus</a>.</p>
<p>At Georgetown University, officials disclosed in 2016 that one of its presidents – Thomas Mulledy – <a href="https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/collections/show/1">sold 272 enslaved men, women and children</a> in 1838 <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/history-slaves-sold-georgetown-detailed-new-genealogical-website">to save the university from bankruptcy</a>. The revelation sparked an effort to track down descendants of the people and to atone by offering <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/04/28/526085106/georgetown-university-to-offer-slave-descendants-preferential-admissions">preferential admission</a> – but <a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/09/09/georgetown-preferential-admission-descendants-slaves-financial-aid/">not scholarships</a> – for them to study at Georgetown.</p>
<p>Georgetown University has since committed to raising <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/31/20940665/georgetown-reparations-fund-slavery-history-colleges">$400,000 a year for reparations</a> to help the living descendants of enslaved people sold by the school’s president in 1838. But some students have <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/11/04/georgetown-reparations-plan-slaves-sold-university-draws-criticism">criticized the plan</a> as not going far enough. Meanwhile, implementation has apparently <a href="https://thehoya.com/editorial-pressure-administration-on-gu272/">stalled</a>.</p>
<h2>Action steps debated</h2>
<p>Many universities benefited from slavery, and there has been a growing discussion about what, if anything, universities owe to the descendants of the people they enslaved and what they can do to atone.</p>
<p>In Virginia, for example, the Virginia House approved <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?ses=211&typ=bil&val=HB1980">a bill</a> to require five state universities founded before 1865 to <a href="https://diverseeducation.com/article/204721/">offer economic assistance and four-year scholarships</a> to descendants of enslaved people who labored on the campuses. The Virginia Senate has yet to take up the measure, known as <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?211+sum+HB1980">HB 1980</a>. </p>
<p>From my vantage point as a historian of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YvLOBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=calvin+schermerhorn&ots=satW3Z-B_1&sig=pK-XGqdT_SpC3scLfGYIkklBlOs#v=onepage&q=calvin%20schermerhorn&f=false">slavery, capitalism</a> and racial inequality, the issue goes beyond whatever “<a href="https://time.com/5013728/slavery-universities-america/">connections</a>” U.S. colleges and universities have had to slavery. Even after slavery, these schools continued to oppress Black people by <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/121382/forgotten-racist-past-american-universities">not allowing</a> them to enroll as students.</p>
<h2>Inequitable access</h2>
<p>Institutions that used slave labor were slow to open to African American students. Georgetown graduated its <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2963372">first Black undergraduate</a>, Samuel A. Halsey Jr., in <a href="https://thehoya.com/first-black-undergraduate-dies-2/">1953</a>. </p>
<p>The University of Virginia graduated its first Black <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2963173">undergraduate</a>, Robert Bland, in <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/first-african-american-graduate-says-failure-was-never-option">1959</a>. </p>
<p>Yet admission to traditionally white universities is one piece of the higher education puzzle. Historically Black colleges and universities, commonly known as HBCUs, continue to have an <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=667#:%7E:text=In%202018%2C%20non%2DBlack%20students,percent%20in%201976%20">outsize role</a> in ensuring African American upward mobility through higher education. Even though the nation’s <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=667#:%7E:text=In%202018%2C%20non%2DBlack%20students,percent%20in%201976%20">100 or so</a> HBCUs represent less than 3% of the nation’s <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84">4,360</a> colleges and universities, they graduated <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=667">13%</a> of Black undergraduate college students nationally in the 2017-2018 school year.</p>
<p>And the institutions that tend to enroll <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecondary/reports/2018/05/23/451186/neglected-college-race-gap-racial-disparities-among-college-completers/">higher proportions</a> of historically underrepresented groups – including African Americans – also tend to be the <a href="https://tcf.org/content/report/policy-strategies-pursuing-adequate-funding-community-colleges/">least well funded</a>. That matters because students who attend better-funded colleges tend to <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/12/study-shows-students-more-likely-graduate-wealthier-institutions">graduate at higher rates</a>.</p>
<h2>Financial disparities</h2>
<p>The disparities transcend higher education. White families, on average, tend to have <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/">10 times the wealth of Black families</a>. That <a href="https://higherlearningadvocates.org/2020/03/12/student-debt-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-reform-should-narrow-the-chasm/">gap</a> is likely to grow in part because the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/sunday/race-wage-gap.html">racial wage gap</a> is expanding.</p>
<p>Student loan debt also disproportionately affects Black Americans.</p>
<p>Four years after they graduate, Black Americans have <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/black-white-disparity-in-student-loan-debt-more-than-triples-after-graduation/">$25,000 more debt</a> than their white counterparts, in part because of additional graduate borrowing and accrual of interest. Consequently, African Americans face more difficulties <a href="https://www.trellisfoundation.org/black-student-debt-a-summary-of-recent-research/">repaying loans</a> than their white counterparts.</p>
<h2>Are reparations enough?</h2>
<p>Universities are beginning to put resources toward efforts to atone for their roles in slavery.</p>
<p>The Virginia Theological Seminary is designating <a href="https://vts.edu/mission/multicultural-ministries/reparations/">$1.7 million</a> as a reparations fund that will be spent on scholarships and new curriculum. Princeton Theological Seminary is contributing a <a href="https://gather.ptsem.edu/princeton-theological-seminary-announces-plan-to-repent-for-ties-to-slavery/">$27 million</a> endowment expected to fund scholarships, community engagement, curriculum development and other efforts to atone for its ties to slavery.</p>
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<p>St. Mary’s College of Maryland has built the <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/526936-see-the-first-memorial-to-the-enslaved-peoples-of-southern">first memorial</a> to enslaved people of Southern Maryland on its campus. I spoke with St. Mary’s history professor Garrey Dennie, who says that the college is building “a curriculum that is attentive to the experiences of African Americans both in the present and in the past” as part of an effort to right past wrongs. </p>
<p>Yet scholars and economists studying racial economic inequality, such as <a href="https://thenextsystem.org/for-reparations">William A. Darity Jr.</a>, point to the need for federal action. This action could range from <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469654973/from-here-to-equality/">economic reparations</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/06/15/black-reparations-and-the-racial-wealth-gap/">endowment-building at HBCUs</a> to <a href="https://www.responsiblelending.org/research-publication/quicksand-borrowers-color-student-debt-crisis">debt forgiveness</a> for Black students.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>As colleges and universities continue to examine how they benefited from slavery and shut out African Americans from their campuses for a century after slavery was abolished, reparations only to the descendants of those who were enslaved by agents of a particular college might be just one part of the equation.</p>
<p>To eliminate the educational disparities that they helped uphold after slavery, former slaveholding colleges must, I believe, address inequality on a much broader level. At the heart of the matter is the extent to which Black Americans can afford to pay schools that once paid nothing for the labor of the people they enslaved.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Calvin Schermerhorn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Are reparations for slavery enough for colleges to make amends? A scholar argues that access and student loan debt must also be addressed.Calvin Schermerhorn, Professor of History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1525222021-02-26T13:26:34Z2021-02-26T13:26:34ZThere was a time reparations were actually paid out – just not to formerly enslaved people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386544/original/file-20210225-17-1di91zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C60%2C5071%2C3581&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">No guessing who in this 1864 depiction may have been compensated after slavery ended.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/propri%C3%A9taire-dune-plantation-avec-leurs-esclaves-aux-etats-news-photo/840481568?adppopup=true">API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The cost of slavery and its legacy of systemic racism to generations of Black Americans has been clear over the past year – seen in both <a href="https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/08/us-blacks-3-times-more-likely-whites-get-covid-19">the racial disparities of the pandemic</a> and widespread protests over <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/29/us-police-brutality-protest">police brutality</a>.</p>
<p>Yet whenever calls for reparations are made – as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/17/slavery-reparations-house-committee-debates-commission-study/6768395002/">they are again now</a> – opponents counter that it would be unfair to saddle a debt on those not personally responsible. In <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/mitch-mcconnell-opposes-reparations-slavery/index.html">the words of</a> then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking on <a href="https://theconversation.com/juneteenth-freedoms-promise-is-still-denied-to-thousands-of-blacks-unable-to-make-bail-98530">Juneteenth</a> – the day Black Americans celebrate as marking emancipation – in 2019, “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea.” </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://dpp.uconn.edu/person/thomas-craemer/">professor of public policy</a> who has studied reparations, I acknowledge that the figures involved are large – I conservatively estimate the losses from unpaid wages and lost inheritances to Black descendants of the enslaved at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">around US$20 trillion in 2021 dollars</a>.</p>
<p>But what often gets forgotten by those who oppose reparations is that payouts for slavery have been made before – numerous times, in fact. And few at the time complained that it was unfair to saddle generations of people with a debt for which they were not personally responsible.</p>
<p>There is an important caveat in these cases of reparations though: The payments went to former slave owners and their descendants, not the enslaved or their legal heirs.</p>
<h2>Extorting Haiti</h2>
<p>A prominent example is the so-called “Haitian Independence Debt” that saddled revolutionary Haiti with reparation <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-france-extorted-haiti-the-greatest-heist-in-history-137949">payments to former slave owners in France</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A 1791 depiction of fighting between French troops and Haitian revolutionaries." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Haitians had to pay for their independence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/combat-entre-les-esclaves-et-larm%C3%A9e-fran%C3%A7aise-lors-de-la-news-photo/1291357942?adppopup=true">API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Haiti <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/haitian-revolution-1791-1804/#:%7E:text=On%20January%201%2C%201804%2C%20Dessalines,nation%20to%20recognize%20its%20independence.">declared independence from France in 1804</a>, but the former colonial power refused to acknowledge the fact for another 20 years. Then in 1825, King Charles X decreed that he would recognize independence, but at a cost. The price tag would be 150 million francs – more than 10 years of the Haitian government’s entire revenue. The money, the French said, was needed to compensate former slave owners for the loss of what was deemed their property.</p>
<p>By 1883, Haiti had paid off some 90 million francs in reparations. But to finance such huge payments, Haiti <a href="https://canada-haiti.ca/sites/default/files/Haiti,%20France%20and%20the%20Independence%20Debt%20of%201825_0.pdf">had to borrow 166 million francs</a> with <a href="https://history.wisc.edu/publications/haiti-and-the-great-powers-1902-1915/">the French banks</a> Ternaux Grandolpe et Cie and Lafitte Rothschild Lapanonze. Loan interests and fees added to the overall sum owed to France.</p>
<p>The payments ran for a <a href="https://canada-haiti.ca/sites/default/files/Haiti,%20France%20and%20the%20Independence%20Debt%20of%201825_0.pdf">total of 122 years from 1825 to 1947</a>, with the money going to more than 7,900 former slave owners and their descendants in France. By the time the payments ended, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">none of the originally enslaved or enslavers were still alive</a>.</p>
<h2>British ‘reparations’</h2>
<p>French slave owners weren’t the only ones to receive payment for lost revenue, their British counterparts did too – but this time from their own government.</p>
<p>The British government paid reparations totaling £20 million (equivalent to some £300 billion in 2018) to slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1833. Banking magnates Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore arranged for a loan to the government of $15 million to cover the vast sum – which represented almost half of the U.K. governent’s annual expenditure.</p>
<p>The U.K. serviced those loans <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/29/slavery-abolition-compensation-when-will-britain-face-up-to-its-crimes-against-humanity">for 182 years from 1833 to 2015</a>. The authors of the British reparations program saddled many generations of British people with a reparations debt for which they were not personally responsible.</p>
<h2>Paying for freedom</h2>
<p>In the United States, reparations to slave owners in Washington, D.C., were paid at the height of the Civil War. On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/37th-congress/session-2/c37s2ch54.pdf">Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor within the District of Columbia</a>” into law.</p>
<p>It gave former slave owners $300 per enslaved person set free. More than <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299814">3,100 enslaved people</a> saw their freedom paid for in this way, for a total cost in excess of $930,000 – almost $25 million in today’s money.</p>
<p>In contrast, the formerly enslaved received nothing if they decided to stay in the United States. The act provided for an emigration incentive of $100 – around $2,683 in 2021 dollars – if the former enslaved <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299814">agreed to permanently leave the United States</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Similar examples of reparations going to individual slave owners can be found in the records of countries including Denmark, <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A1567C">the Netherlands</a> and <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112046472657&view=1up&seq=1">Sweden</a>, as well as <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/004005870">Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela</a>, <a href="https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/173/">Peru</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com.pr/books?id=pRFQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Brazil</a>.</p>
<p>The French government even set an example on how the government can conduct genealogical research to determine eligible recipients. It compiled a massive six-volume compendium in 1828, listing some 7,900 original <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">slave owners in Saint Domingue and their French descendants</a>.</p>
<h2>Reparations, this time the other way round …</h2>
<p>Blessed with detailed U.S. Census records and local archives, I believe the government could do the same for the Black descendants of enslaved Americans. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/overview/1860.html">1860 census</a>, the last one before the Civil War, the government counted 3,853,760 enslaved people in the United States. Their direct descendants live among close to <a href="https://blackdemographics.com/">50 million Black residents in the United States</a> today.</p>
<p>Using historic census records to estimate the number of man-, woman-, and child-hours available to slave owners from 1776 to 1860, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">I estimated how much money</a> the enslaved lost considering the meager wages for unskilled labor at the time, which ranged from 2 cents in 1790 to 8 cents in 1860. At a very moderate interest rate of 3%, I arrived at an estimate of $20.3 trillion in 2021 dollars for the total losses to Black descendants of enslaved Americans living today. </p>
<p>It is a huge sum – roughly one year’s worth of the <a href="https://www.bea.gov/news/2021/gross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2020-second-estimate">U.S.’s GDP</a> – but a figure that would comfortably close the racial wealth gap. The difference is, in contrast to historical precedents, this time the benefits would go to the Black descendants of the enslaved, not to enslavers and their offspring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152522/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Craemer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History is full of examples of nations paying out to compensate for slavery. But the money never went to those who suffered under the system, only those who profited.Thomas Craemer, Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539812021-01-28T09:09:49Z2021-01-28T09:09:49ZHow former president Rawlings pioneered heritage tourism in Ghana – in his own words<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380970/original/file-20210127-19-1bx9ucu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tourists pose for pictures at the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NATALIJA GORMALOVA/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1980s, Flight Lieutenant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/jerry-rawlings-obituary">Jerry John Rawlings</a> launched heritage tourism as a means to economic development in Ghana. Under his initiative, Ghana’s forts and castles – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-slavery-journey-widerimage-idUSKCN1UR4JV">where</a> enslaved Africans were forcibly put on slave ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean into slavery in the Americas – were turned into heritage sites for tourism. It united Africans and African descendant people living in the disapora.</p>
<p>Rawlings was Ghana’s youngest and longest-serving post-independence leader. He led military uprisings in 1979 and 1981 and served as elected president from 1992 to 2000. When Rawlings came to power in 1981, Ghana faced numerous <a href="https://asq.africa.ufl.edu/files/Adedeji-Vol-5-Issue-2.pdf">challenges</a>. Food was scarce, medicines unavailable, over a million Ghanaians were deported from Nigeria, and the economy was almost bankrupt. Rawlings understood the capital investment necessary to rebuild the economy. </p>
<p>However, Ghana’s 1979 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Ghana-1982-1992-Revolution-Democracy/dp/9988786816">revolution</a> had criticised the former regime’s ties to the West and Western imperialism, so private investment dried up. Eastern bloc nations gave minimal support. Rawlings was compelled to secure World Bank and International Monetary Fund assistance, a tactical acquiescence that proved pivotal for heritage.</p>
<p>Rawlings rarely gave interviews. This abbreviated <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1743873X.2020.1817929">interview</a> with him was the first time he spoke publicly on heritage tourism and development. It comprises several conversations in 2018 and 2019. </p>
<hr>
<h2>How did you arrive at this innovative idea – using cultural heritage tourism for development?</h2>
<p>I was always interested in culture and art. (He shows me his childhood artwork.) As a child, I was an artist. </p>
<p>At that time (in the 1980s), Ghana was politically stable. Cocoa, gold and timber were our major commodities. The tourism idea was unplanned. But I worked with many progressive-minded people. For instance, Valerie Sackey (Ministry of Communications) and Dr Ben Abdallah (Minister of Culture and Tourism) who approached me with the idea. They targeted cultural heritage, such as the forts and castles, natural heritage, performance and arts – for example <a href="https://panafestghana.org/">Panafest</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in an overall and shades reads a placard that says, 'Do Not Mind Foreign Intervention', a crowd of peoplein the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rawlings reading a placard at a 1981 demonstration in Nicholson Stadium, Accra.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Rawlings Archival Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quite frankly, I was surprised by the response. I remember, when I was young, <a href="https://theconversation.com/kwame-nkrumah-why-every-now-and-then-his-legacy-is-questioned-120790">(Kwame) Nkrumah</a> was the star of Africa, and black Africa at that. I was acquainted with African Americans coming to Ghana. We had personalities such as <a href="https://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/Who%20We%20Are/who-was-george-padmore">George Padmore</a> and <a href="https://duboiscentreghana.org/">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. I was familiar with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/books/malcolm-x-a-life-of-reinvention-by-manning-marable-review.html">Malcolm X</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr">Martin Luther King</a>. I expected those who visited would want to know Africa better. After all, I was a young student when <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muhammad-Ali-boxer">Muhammad Ali</a> came to my school. Consequently, I saw all of this as part of a natural flow of events – even if it also brought some resentment. Many had a complex relationship with Ghana. After I left school, I observed this first-hand, when I used to ‘be-bop’ around town. African Americans struggled to come to terms with the fact that Africans participated in the transatlantic slave trade and sold their ancestors into slavery. It was a very mixed response. </p>
<p>So, when I was in office, I did not think African Americans travelling to Ghana was something to be revived. I left the matter to those who championed heritage tourism and the various ministries.</p>
<h2>Is it possible to describe you as a pragmatist, for trying to reconcile the revolution with ‘real world’ demands?</h2>
<p>We had little money to invest in what was important to provide stability – a stable climate, water, roads. But we did well, as tourism became our third largest foreign exchange earner – though we didn’t invest in tourism per se. Ghana was seen as a place where the black man had reason to feel proud and was not exploited by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/neocolonialism">neocolonialism</a>, so that was something in and of itself. The 1979 revolution also restored justice and respect… In our case, this pilgrimage … was a connection to blackness, to ‘Africanness’. </p>
<h2>Were there any challenges?</h2>
<p>Sure. The African diasporan presence raised the subject of citizenship and nationality. This created issues, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-is-morally-bound-to-offer-reparations-for-slavery-153544">reparations</a> for the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, which also created a polarisation between our own people and African descendants. Still, I would like to mention something interesting. Gradually, African Americans won recognition in various arenas, for example, sports and entertainment. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, several were so disgusted at their treatment by the United States government that they offered to participate in the Olympics on Ghana’s ‘ticket.’</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A greying man with a beard and sunglasses sits in a brown chair looking ahead intently." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rawlings later in life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alhassan Idrissu/Courtesy the Rawlings Archival Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, soon after, African American perceptions of Africa altered with the <a href="https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/1980s-ethiopia-famine-facts">Ethiopian famine</a>. Whereas previously, they sympathised with Africa’s struggles and, in a defiant move, wanted to identify with the continent, that sentiment suddenly collapsed. Horrible scenes on the television – overwhelming images of Ethiopians covered in flies, with bloated stomachs, dissuaded lots of African Americans from identifying with Africa. </p>
<h2>As head of state, you worked and lived at Osu Castle. What was that like?</h2>
<p>Often, I was too busy to give thought to the (slave trade and colonial) past. I saw my fellow black man suffering. When I travelled up north, I saw my people did not have water to flush their toilets and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/guineaworm/index.html">Guinea worm</a> was everywhere. The pressure of economic and social injustice was on me! Don’t forget that I was not always at the castle. I was always on the move. So was (my wife) Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. I had water, electricity and a bed to sleep on. What more could I have asked for? Why would I spend money on renovating the castle? Many Ghanaians did not have basic necessities. I did not even have the money to buy bullets for my soldiers in Liberia, or to protect people during the violence in the north.</p>
<h2>How do you see the heritage tourism and development initiative today?</h2>
<p>As for Ghana, we receive people well. Over the years, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">the ‘return’</a> has become increasingly known. Ghana has enjoyed a unique position because of our history, independence, Nkrumah, the assertion of black people in Africa’s liberation struggle and black people generally.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">Ghana's Year of Return 2019: traveler, tourist or pilgrim?</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>We are aware of our responsibilities to ourselves, our fellow Africans, and those in the diaspora. I am not enthusiastic about (financial) reparations. Those taken during the transatlantic slave trade must decide. If they return, we should offer them land and dual citizenship as restorative and social justice … As for diasporans and development … they do not have the money to develop us in Africa. Let us give them the respect that they want, that is due. That is the beginning of it all. Then other things will follow. This way, they can also fight for the continent … help us gain access to what the continent deserves. You see? This is how it should be. </p>
<p><em>Postscript: President Rawlings passed away as this article was to go to press. It is published with support from the Rawlings family. Thanks to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjht20/current">Journal of Heritage Tourism</a> for permission to republish.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a rare series of interviews, the late Ghanaian leader spoke of how the country’s slave trade was revisited as a vehicle for economic development.Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Director of Christiansborg Archaeological Heritage Project, Associate Professor at Africa Institute Sharjah & Associate Graduate Faculty, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1535442021-01-25T14:59:41Z2021-01-25T14:59:41ZWhy the West is morally bound to offer reparations for slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380201/original/file-20210122-15-jlotmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C40%2C6639%2C4184&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kwame Akoto-Bamfo's sculpture dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade on display in Montgomery, Alabama. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Raymond Boyd/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 20th anniversary of the UN World Conference on Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, will be celebrated <a href="https://www.un.org/WCAR/durban.pdf">this August</a>. There was much discussion at the conference about reparations to Africa for the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/atlantic-slave-trade">trans-Atlantic slave trade</a>, in which millions of Africans were captured to provide free labour in North and South America and the Caribbean for <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Transformations_in_Slavery.html?id=iWUXNEM-62QC&redir_esc=y">over four and a half centuries</a>. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the conference was overshadowed by the <a href="https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/66286904-0e0b-4b5f-8e91-5212ee941d6c/september-11th/">9/11 attacks</a> on the US several days after it ended. The question of whether reparations should be paid to the continent of Africa for the trans-Atlantic slave trade is <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1915182/what-reparations-are-owed-to-africa/">still being debated</a>.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that former Western slave-trading countries will engage in reparative measures in the near future. The turn toward authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that even well-intentioned governments <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B082ZNF9JY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">will propose reparations to Africa</a>.</p>
<p>But, despite these political changes in slave-trading nations, there remains a strong case for why the fight for reparations shouldn’t be abandoned.</p>
<h2>Apology for the slave trade</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/remedyandreparation.aspx">2005 United Nations document</a> discusses different aspects of reparations, including apologies for past harms, the right to know the truth, and financial compensation. </p>
<p>Over the past 15 years (following the 2005 UN report) there has been no progress on these issues, not even over the issuing of an apology. </p>
<p>At the 2001 conference a Dutch representative spoke of his government’s <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2001/rd942.doc.htm">“deep remorse”</a> for the slave trade and enslavement. In 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement expressing “sorrow” for the slave trade, <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/fr/derni%C3%A8res-actualit%C3%A9s/blair-sorrow-over-slave-trade-uk/">but not apologising</a>.</p>
<p>None of these amounted to an apology. Nor has the US issued one. President Bill Clinton acknowledged the horrors of the slave trade in 1998 during a visit to Uganda. <a href="https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/Africa/19980324-3374.html">But he didn’t apologise</a>. On a visit to Senegal in 2003, President George W. Bush said that the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030708-1.html">one of the greatest crimes in history</a>. Again, there was no apology.</p>
<p>Some people might object to their government apologising for the slave trade on the grounds that neither they nor their ancestors were <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-923X.2008.00928.x">involved</a>. But as the late Kenyan-American scholar Ali Mazrui <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Black_Reparations_in_the_Era_of_Globaliz.html?id=GkCCqchCegIC&redir_esc=y">argued</a>, if you are a citizen of a country, you must take on <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14448.html">its responsibilities as well as its benefits</a>.</p>
<p>Western slave-trading countries have a moral, if not a legal, obligation to apologise. </p>
<h2>A truth commission on the slave trade</h2>
<p>One way to identify the responsibilities of former slave-trading Western states might be through a truth commission on the slave trade.</p>
<p>Critics might argue that such a truth commission should discuss all actors in African enslavement. About 14 million people were taken from Africa in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but another 10 million were taken <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Transformations_in_Slavery.html?id=iWUXNEM-62QC&redir_esc=y">in the Arab trade</a>.</p>
<p>Africans also participated in the trans-Atlantic trade and held their own slaves. The Nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was shocked to learn that her great-grandfather was a slave trader, selling slaves to Cuba and Brazil after the trade was abolished by the US and Great Britain. When her great-grandfather died, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-great-grandfather-the-nigerian-slave-trader">six slaves were buried alive with him</a>.</p>
<p>Acknowledging both Arab and African participation in enslavement, a truth commission on the slave trade could explain that internal African slavery was generally much more benign than American slavery. Enslaved people within Africa were frequently incorporated into the families of their owners. Similarly, Arab slave-owners were more likely to free enslaved children <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674986909">than were Western enslavers</a>.</p>
<p>This type of information would counter arguments that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was no worse than internal African slavery or Arab slavery. </p>
<p>In any event, the fact that other entities committed similar wrongs is not an excuse for a perpetrator state not to apologise.</p>
<h2>Financial reparations</h2>
<p>One problem in the discussion of financial reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade is which former slave trading and slave-holding nations might owe financial reparations to Africa. About a quarter million enslaved Africans disembarked in the US between 1626 and 1875, whereas 5.1 million disembarked in Brazil <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates">between 1401 and 1875</a>. Does Brazil owe reparations to Africa? Or does Portugal, a slave-trading nation, owe reparations to Brazil, which was then its <a href="https://www.brazil.org.za/portuguese-colonisation-of-brazil.html">colony</a>?</p>
<p>Similarly, do Arab countries and African slave-traders owe reparations for their part in the slave trade? The case of philosopher Anthony Appiah is instructive. He is of mixed Ashanti (Ghanaian) and British ancestry. Both his British and Ashanti ancestors <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/PS8VM45VbjnCB7dVP5BN62/episode-transcript-episode-86-akan-drum#:%7E:text=Anthony%20Appiah%2C%20who%20teaches%20at,trade%2C%20or%20some%">traded in slaves</a>. Do the Ashanti owe reparations to other ethnic groups within Ghana from whom they took slaves? </p>
<p>As with apologies, however, these questions don’t absolve Western slave-trading powers of their particular responsibilities. The US, the UK, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal still bear collective ethical responsibility for the wrongs their societies committed in the past.</p>
<p>Yet even if these countries are responsible to pay financial reparations, critics might ask who should be the recipients of reparations. Yet it is now possible through genetic research and research on slave-trading ships for Western slave-trading countries to determine where the bulk of their captives originated (for example Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal or Angola). Western states could then compensate those countries.</p>
<p>Western critics might still ask why they should pay reparations to Africa. The trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in the mid-19th century. </p>
<p>In reply, some scholars and activists argue that, without the slave trade, Africa would be <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Europe-Underdeveloped-Africa-Walter-Rodney/dp/0882580965">much more developed today</a>. Moreover, the West could not have developed <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Capitalism-Slavery-Eric-Williams/dp/0807844888">without the trans-Atlantic trade</a>. According to this argument, Western slave-trading states should compensate African states because the West developed while Africa was actively underdeveloped.</p>
<p>Western countries willing to pay reparations could finance specific projects connected to the slave trade. They could donate funds to maintain African museums and historic sites of the trade. They could also fund educational programmes to study the trans-Atlantic trade, or fund a truth commission on the slave trade.</p>
<p>The small amounts dedicated to this type of reparation would not satisfy advocates who argue for reparations in the billions, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/4543">even trillions, of dollars</a>. But they would at least be a material acknowledgement of the harms the slave trade caused.</p>
<p>The question of whether aid should be part of the equation also raises a host of tricky issues. Have, as some might argue, Western countries not already compensated for the slave trade via foreign aid? And what of the misuse of aid which has been <a href="https://ssir.org/books/reviews/entry/dead_aid_dambisa_moyo">stolen by corrupt governments</a>?</p>
<p>Whether reparations or aid, the same problems of mismanagement, lack of transparency, and corruption emerge. </p>
<h2>Making amends</h2>
<p>Whatever celebrations the UN organises to mark the 20th anniversary of the Durban conference, former Western slave-trading states bear moral responsibility to offer reparations to Africa. </p>
<p>Apologies, a truth commission on the trans-Atlantic trade, and symbolic financial compensation will not solve the problems of Africa’s continued underdevelopment. But they would at last constitute an admission that the West should never have engaged in this trade. They would also be an acknowledgement of the West’s responsibility to try to remedy the continued legacy of the slave trade in Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for research for her book, Reparations to Africa (2008) from which some of this article is drawn.</span></em></p>The turn towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that former Western slave-trading nations will agree to reparations in the near future.Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1505882020-12-01T13:22:51Z2020-12-01T13:22:51ZReckoning with slavery: What a revolt’s archives tell us about who owns the past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372008/original/file-20201130-15-8ssyk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C1%2C742%2C418&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Statue of the Berbice slave revolt leader Kofi in Georgetown, Guyana.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1763_Monument,_Georgetown,_Guyana._2014.jpg">David Stanley - Flickr/WikiMedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The consequences of 400 years of the Atlantic slave trade are still felt today. Untangling the power structures and systemic racism that came with slavery is ongoing, with <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/09/30/kettling-protesters-bronx/systemic-police-brutality-and-its-costs-united-states">police brutality</a>, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/virginia-indiana-joining-taking-confederate-monuments/story?id=71066712">memorials to slave owners</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/us/slavery-reparations-explanation-trnd/index.html">reparations</a> forming part of the discussion.</p>
<p>But as the United Nations marks Dec. 2 as the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/observances/slavery-abolition-day">International Day for the Abolition of Slavery</a>, a practice it notes “is not merely a historic relic,” modern society also has to reckon with another question: Who has access to the records about slavery’s past?</p>
<p>I was struck by this question recently as I gave a Zoom talk in Guyana on my new book <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/blood-on-river">Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast</a> about <a href="http://www.guyana.org/features/guyanastory/chapter30.html">a slave rebellion in Berbice</a>, now Guyana, that took place in 1763-1764. </p>
<p>During the revolt, former slaves organized a government and controlled most of the colony for almost a year. The Dutch either fled altogether or holed up on a well-fortified sugar plantation near the coast. A regiment of European soldiers sent from neighboring Suriname mutinied and joined the rebels they had come to defeat. But obligated by treaties, indigenous peoples such as Carib and Arawak fought on the side of the Dutch. The revolt ended when the rebels, out of food and arms, were overpowered by enemies who had received an infusion of men and supplies from the Dutch Republic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372009/original/file-20201130-19-1exvutt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372009/original/file-20201130-19-1exvutt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372009/original/file-20201130-19-1exvutt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372009/original/file-20201130-19-1exvutt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372009/original/file-20201130-19-1exvutt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372009/original/file-20201130-19-1exvutt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372009/original/file-20201130-19-1exvutt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1742 map of Berbice River with plantations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/NG-477">Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The uprising, unusual among Atlantic slave rebellions for its length, size and near success, is barely known outside Guyana. But even African-descended Guyanese, it turns out, know less than they would like. Almost 13,000 people, intrigued by new information about a foundational chapter in their history, had tuned in to watch my presentation on Facebook and Zoom. </p>
<h2>A rare cache</h2>
<p>First colonized in 1627 to trade with Amerindians, Berbice passed into the hands of an investment company 100 years later that exploited the colony, which was growing coffee, cacao and sugar.</p>
<p><iframe id="usGbP" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/usGbP/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Berbice became British Guyana in the early 19th century and gained independence as the English-speaking <a href="https://www.un.int/guyana/guyana/country-facts">Cooperative Republic of Guyana</a> in 1966. Modern-day Guyanese view the slave rebellion as the <a href="https://www.stabroeknews.com/2014/02/24/opinion/letters/berbice-revolt-beginning-quest-independence/">origin of their republican inclinations</a>. </p>
<p>Yet, all of the records related to the rebellion – in fact, most of the country’s historical records – are in archives in <a href="https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4302">London</a> and <a href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/archief/1.05.05">The Hague</a>.</p>
<p>The sources for the uprising are extensive. There are the usual colonial records, such as the colonial governor’s daily journal, letters from officials and merchants and military reports. They are tainted by self-interest, Euro-centrism and racism. </p>
<p>More rare in the history of Atlantic slavery are letters sent by <a href="https://face2faceafrica.com/article/meet-cuffy-the-west-african-slave-who-led-a-1763-revolt-that-made-him-a-guyanese-hero">rebel leader Kofi</a> to his Dutch counterpart. An African from the Gold Coast who had been forcibly taken to Berbice as a child, Kofi sought to end the military conflict through diplomacy.</p>
<p>And then there are the extraordinary testimonies of 900 suspected rebels and bystanders. They were taken as part of the Dutch kangaroo court to <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/blood-on-river">investigate guilt in the rebellion and condemn people</a> to the rack, the pyre and the gallows.</p>
<p>These records, too, are problematic. The people on the stand feared for their lives. A Dutch clerk translated their answers from Creole into Dutch, summarized them, and put them in the third person. Using them requires, like most historical records, great care. </p>
<p>Still, the testimonies represent the voices of African-Guyanese ancestors. But the manuscripts have lain in the <a href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/en">Dutch National Archives</a> since the 19th century. They are in standard Dutch rather than the Creole language of Dutch Berbice likely more prevalent among the enslaved population at the time, and their existence was heretofore unknown in Guyana. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Dodging rebellion</h2>
<p>The copious records reveal not only the political course of the rebellion but how people felt about it. Many young men joined enthusiastically. Older people and Creoles (people born in the colony) had more to lose in terms of family and meager possessions and were more reluctant. </p>
<p>To remain on the sidelines, they lived quietly on their plantations, dodging anyone, whether Europeans, rebels or Amerindians, or by hiding in the savanna or rainforest until the coast was clear. They were motivated by a desire not only to survive but also to remain masterless and ungoverned.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372055/original/file-20201130-17-glr3y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372055/original/file-20201130-17-glr3y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372055/original/file-20201130-17-glr3y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372055/original/file-20201130-17-glr3y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372055/original/file-20201130-17-glr3y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372055/original/file-20201130-17-glr3y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372055/original/file-20201130-17-glr3y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Page from investigation into Berbice revolt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/en">National Archives of the Netherlands</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his letters to the Dutch, Kofi proposed dividing the colony in two. It seems likely that he intended to keep several sugar plantations in production, perhaps with forced labor, in order to participate in the world market. Some 30 years later, Haitian revolutionary <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h326.html">Toussaint L’Ouverture</a>, too, would force self-emancipated Haitians to work in the cane fields for similar reasons. Many ordinary Guyanese were not up for this.</p>
<p>Many revolt narratives would have us believe that people are eager to rebel, sharing a common vision of freedom. This is not always the case. <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807849996/breaking-loose-together/">It was not in the American Revolution, nor was it in Berbice</a>.</p>
<h2>An act of emancipation</h2>
<p>At my Zoom lecture on Nov. 24, listeners asked many questions. But they were particularly interested in the court testimonies. </p>
<p>Why, some asked in the chat, were these records still housed in the National Archives in The Hague? Shouldn’t they have been gifted back, or better yet, transcribed and translated? That way, African-Guyanase would be able to interpret the records for themselves and tell their own stories.</p>
<p>As it happens, the Dutch National Archives recently put <a href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/nieuws/nieuwe-presentatie-van-onze-archieven-vind-meer-scans">all of Berbice’s records online</a> – but that does not solve the language problem. I was able to put my Guyanese host in touch with a staff member at the National Archives who seemed receptive to the idea of publishing a translation of the investigations in English.</p>
<p>Reckoning with slavery requires having access to the records of the past. After all, writing one’s own history, too, is an act of emancipation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marjoleine Kars receives funding from National Endowment for the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, The Huntington Library and Gardens, the European University Institute, the John Carter Brown Library, UMBC.</span></em></p>The slave revolt in Berbice, modern-day Guyana, was unusual for its length and near success. So why are so few of the revolt’s documents in the Caribbean nation’s archives?Marjoleine Kars, Associate Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1370162020-09-13T07:37:03Z2020-09-13T07:37:03ZBlack Lives Matter but slavery isn’t our only narrative<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353709/original/file-20200819-42970-1ayov5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Slave memorial in Zanzibar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eye Ubiquitous/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Our historical understanding of Blackness is most commonly shaped by the story of the Atlantic slave trade – the forced movement of Africans to the West, in particular to the Americas. But this is a linear narrative that is dominated by American voices. It’s not just potentially exclusory; it doesn’t adequately take into account the diversity of black people worldwide. The same is true of <a href="https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/the-forgotten-social-history-of-international-blackness/">Blackness</a> studies, which continue to be dominated by and serve the interests of Western scholarship. Aretha Phiri asks Michelle M. Wright, professor and author of <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/becoming-black/?viewby=title">Becoming Black</a>: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora, about her work in disrupting the slavery narrative.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Aretha Phiri:</strong> To start with a recent development, the Black Lives Matter <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com">movement</a> appears to have gained global momentum. And yet its impact seems to be mainly in the global North. Does this suggest that black people’s experience of race and racism is not universal? </p>
<p><strong>Michelle M. Wright:</strong> The fight for freedom is important, but it really has to include everybody. This requires some radical rethinking. We have to ask who gets to access contemporary spaces. Who has the time (and money) to join in the fight according to the times and places set by the leaders? Who speaks the language we have chosen to communicate in, and who is left out? Black folks are astonishingly diverse in their cultures, histories, languages, religions, so no single definition of Blackness is going to fit everyone. When we fail to consider this, we effectively leave many Black people out of the conversation.</p>
<p><strong>Aretha Phiri:</strong> Slavery’s afterlife is central to Black Lives Matter’s important call for racial and structural justice and equality. Yet, in your <a href="https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-7466.2010.01072.x">paper</a>, Black in Time: Diaspora, Diversity and Identity, you trouble the dominance of a corresponding “Middle Passage” epistemology as racially reductive. What is broadly meant by “Middle Passage” thinking and how is it disseminated by US-based scholars?</p>
<p><strong>Michelle M. Wright:</strong> In most US (and European) academic conversations, the “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Middle-Passage-slave-trade">Middle Passage</a>” – also known as the Atlantic slave trade – is used interchangeably with the African “<a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/anthropology-and-archaeology/human-evolution/african-diaspora">diaspora</a>” – the dispersal of Black and African people from their “original”, typically (West) African locales to North America. This linear mapping is not just convenient, it is false. Ninety-five percent of enslaved Africans were transported to South America and the Caribbean, not the US; not to mention the millions of slaves who were transported east to places like Turkey and India. Reinforced by a linear timeline which is understood to “progressively” track history, this mapping further distorts history in service to the West. That is, because (West) Africa is the starting point, the tendency is to view it as embedded in “the past” and the West as aligned with “the future”. </p>
<p>In my <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Physics_of_Blackness.html?id=0Za4oAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">book</a>, <em>Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology</em>, I call this particular mapping of Blackness the “Middle Passage epistemology”. It’s a specific form of knowledge or way of knowing (the world) that is oriented to the West, specifically to America. This is problematic not just because it hierarchises or “ranks” Blackness, but also because (transatlantic) scholarship on Black African diaspora is often imagined through historical and cultural parameters in which “Middle Passage Blackness” is the norm, often the only representation of Blackness. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355831/original/file-20200901-24-1pti2kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sculpture of a woman protester rests in a waste skip, her fist in the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355831/original/file-20200901-24-1pti2kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355831/original/file-20200901-24-1pti2kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355831/original/file-20200901-24-1pti2kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355831/original/file-20200901-24-1pti2kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355831/original/file-20200901-24-1pti2kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355831/original/file-20200901-24-1pti2kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355831/original/file-20200901-24-1pti2kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A statue of a Black Lives Matter protester in Bristol was put in the place of a statue of a slave trader - and then removed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p><strong>Aretha Phiri:</strong> Building on your observation, I am struck by the continued influence in South African universities of Paul Gilroy’s seminal text <em>The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness</em> in particular and US-based <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/black-atlantic">Black Atlantic</a> studies in general. Where these foreground the global influences and contributions of Black peoples, they also unfortunately disseminate “Middle Passage” thinking which situates Africa in the past. What are the other challenges presented here?</p>
<p><strong>Michelle M. Wright:</strong> Not only is what is typically represented in Black Atlantic scholarship narrow, it is almost always heterosexual and masculinist. It struggles to imagine race and racism outside of the threat of emasculation and racial futures and racial pasts outside of a heteropatriarchal norm. </p>
<p>Most recently, the famous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html">1619 Project</a> in The <em>New York Times</em> aimed at documenting the impact of slavery on the US. But it focuses almost exclusively on Black men in African American history, eliding the achievements of women and queer folks. This leads to the assumption that it is heterosexual Black men who played the major contributory roles. But our earliest <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/abolitionism-European-and-American-social-movement">abolitionist</a> movements were started by Black women, our first Presidential candidate was a Black woman, and it was Black queer activists like James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin who were central to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement">Civil Rights Movement</a>. So yes, part of the ethical challenge, then, is to recognise that some Black people have much more privilege than others.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/on-decolonising-teaching-practices-not-just-the-syllabus-137280">On decolonising teaching practices, not just the syllabus</a>
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<p><strong>Aretha Phiri:</strong> I am struck, again, at how your analysis is relevant to Black African scholarship, where considerations of women and queer bodies have also historically been obscured or omitted…</p>
<p><strong>Michelle M. Wright:</strong> Racial metanarratives are inherently limiting. It’s very difficult for Black Africans, much less Black Europeans and Black peoples of the Pacific and Central and South America, to read themselves through the dominant (US) framings of Blackness. For example, if you are a Kenyan living in Mombasa, chances are high that your greatest preoccupation is not racist white cops, but violence from <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/20/kenya-no-letup-killings-nairobi-police">Black Kenyan policemen</a>. And here we are, one scholar Zimbabwean/South African, the other a US citizen born and raised in Western Europe, both women, myself queer. The “Middle Passage” epistemology fails because it dictates that you belong to the past and I belong to the present and future. But history, nationality, gender, class and sexuality intersected us here at this exchange even as we came through different paths and bring different experiences, outlooks and philosophies. </p>
<p><em>This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%23BlackAtlanticsSeries">series</a> called Decolonising the Black Atlantic in which black and queer women literary academics rethink and disrupt traditional Black Atlantic studies. The series is based on papers delivered at the <a href="https://stias.ac.za/events/revising-the-black-atlantic-african-diaspora-perspectives/">Revising the Black Atlantic: African Diaspora Perspectives</a> colloquium at the <a href="https://stias.ac.za">Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137016/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aretha Phiri is an NRF-rated researcher and previously a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle M Wright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Black Lives Matter brings the slavery story into the present in America – but it leaves Africa stuck in the past.Aretha Phiri, Associate Professor, Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes UniversityMichelle M Wright, Professor, Emory UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1448262020-08-21T13:26:26Z2020-08-21T13:26:26ZHow the shadow of slavery still hangs over global finance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354074/original/file-20200821-20-x1u7fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/city-london-one-leading-centres-global-94112977">Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1npv6v">infamous Zong trial</a> began in 1783, it laid bare the toxic relationship between finance and slavery. It was an unusual and distressing insurance claim – concerning a massacre of 133 captives, thrown overboard the Zong slave ship. </p>
<p>The slave trade pioneered a new kind of finance, secured on the bodies of the powerless. Today, the arcane products of high finance, targeting the poor and troubled as profit opportunities for the already-rich, still bear that deep unfairness.</p>
<p>The Gregsons, claimants in the Zong trial, were merchant princes of 18th century Liverpool, a city that had quickly grown to be one of the world’s leading commercial capitals. The grandiose Liverpool Exchange building, opened in 1754, boasted of the city’s commercial success and the source of its money, its friezes decorated with carvings of African heads. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="2442" data-image="" data-title="How to build a stock exchange 17: Black markets, white markets" data-size="42333174" data-source="Philip Roscoe" data-source-url="https://how-to-build-a-stock-exchange.blubrry.net/" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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<div class="audio-player-caption">
How to build a stock exchange 17: Black markets, white markets.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://how-to-build-a-stock-exchange.blubrry.net/">Philip Roscoe</a><span class="download"><span>40.4 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2034/htbase-episode-17-190620.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<p>But Liverpool’s wealth also stemmed <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/983/Specters-of-the-AtlanticFinance-Capital-Slavery">from its innovations in finance</a>. The great slave merchants were also bankers and insurers, pioneers in what we today call <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112402">financialisation</a> – they transformed human lives into profit-bearing opportunities. </p>
<p>From the point of view of merchants, the Atlantic trade was slow, unreliable and risky. Ships were threatened by disease, by poor weather, and by the constant threat of insurrection. To speed up the flow of money, merchants began to issue credit notes that could travel swiftly and safely across the ocean. </p>
<p>Slaves would be purchased in Britain’s African colonies and transported to the Americas where they were sold at auction. The merchant’s agent would take the money received and rather than investing it in commodities like sugar or cotton to be sent back to Liverpool, they would send a bill of exchange – a credit note for the sum plus interest – across the Atlantic. </p>
<p>The bill of exchange could be cashed at a discount at one of the many banking houses in the city, or replaced by another, again at a discount, to be dispatched to Africa in payment for more human chattels. Credit flowed swiftly, cleanly and profitably. </p>
<h2>Obscenely novel</h2>
<p>This evolution of private credit did not originate in Liverpool. It had underpinned the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674771451">Florentine banking dynasties</a> of the 15th century and <a href="https://theconversation.com/neoliberalism-has-tricked-us-into-believing-a-fairytale-about-where-money-comes-from-113783">gave rise to money as we know it now</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="British abolitionist poster of a standard slave ship in the 18th century." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354070/original/file-20200821-18-1xoqum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354070/original/file-20200821-18-1xoqum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354070/original/file-20200821-18-1xoqum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354070/original/file-20200821-18-1xoqum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354070/original/file-20200821-18-1xoqum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354070/original/file-20200821-18-1xoqum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354070/original/file-20200821-18-1xoqum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A complex financial system evolved around the trade in enslaved Africans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/british-abolitionist-broadside-poster-demonstrates-crowding-237236926">Everett Collection / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The obscene novelty of the slavers’ banking system was that this financial value was secured on human bodies. The same practices continued on the plantations, where the bodies of slaves were used as collateral on loans allowing the expansion of estates and the acquisition of yet more productive bodies. The slaves were exploited twice: their freedom and labour stolen from them, their captured “economic value” leveraged by cutting edge financial instruments. </p>
<p>The Liverpool merchants also pioneered the use of insurance as a means of guaranteeing the financial value of the their commodities. The slavers had long recognised that the only way to survive the occasional total losses that expeditions incurred was to gather together in syndicates and share the risk. </p>
<p>So when the captain of the Zong realised he was unlikely to land his cargo of sickening and malnourished slaves, he ordered 133 souls to be thrown overboard. The perverse legal logic was that if part of the cargo had to be jettisoned to save the ship, it would be covered by the insurance. </p>
<p>These bodies-as-financial-commodities had only speculative value. Insurance made it real and bankable. This was true in 18th century Liverpool and it remains so in 21st century Wall Street. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting by JMW Turner showing abstract ship at sunset with bodies in water." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354068/original/file-20200821-20-d3cu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354068/original/file-20200821-20-d3cu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354068/original/file-20200821-20-d3cu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354068/original/file-20200821-20-d3cu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354068/original/file-20200821-20-d3cu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354068/original/file-20200821-20-d3cu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354068/original/file-20200821-20-d3cu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Slave Ship by JMW Turner depicts the Zong massacre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_massacre#/media/File:Slave-ship.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<h2>Financialisation today</h2>
<p>Financialisation has since taken many forms, but basic elements remain the same. It is based on uneven power relations that capture future individual obligations and make them saleable. The contracts underlying the 2008 credit crisis, for example, turned future mortgage payments into tradeable financial securities with actual present value. </p>
<p>For those issuing the bonds, the profit was risk free. The risk was borne by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6084476/">predominantly poor Americans</a>, whose adverse credit ratings and lack of financial skills made them easy prey for the issuers of mortgages so constructed as to lock them into economic bondage. These people were disproportionately black, Latino or migrant. </p>
<p>Insurance played a part here, solidifying the speculative value of investments to the benefit of traders. And when the bubble finally burst governments stepped in to maintain this system, the US Federal Reserve supporting giant insurer AIG <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/aig-bailout-cost-timeline-bonuses-causes-effects-3305693">to the tune of US$182 billion</a> (£139 billion) while many people lost their homes. </p>
<p>The credit crisis bailout is eerily reminiscent of another. By the time of abolition slave ownership was so embedded in British society that the government was forced to compensate individual owners for the loss of their capital – it required an enormous loan that taxpayers only <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/17/government-finished-paying-uks-slavery-debt-2015/">finished paying off in 2015</a>. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that bankers today are like slave traders. But I am saying that contemporary finance is still riddled with regimes of dominance and exploitation at work. </p>
<p>Take contemporary <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304422X12000150#!">philanthrocapitalism</a>, where finance seeks to do good while also benefiting investors. Novel financial instruments position social problems as an opportunity for profit. The bodies of prisoners, for example, become implicated in <a href="https://theconversation.com/social-impact-bonds-explained-95504">schemes to prevent recidivism</a> with personal character reform the trigger for investment payouts. </p>
<p>Schemes such as this make social problems the responsibility of individuals and ignore the structural relations of austerity that lie behind them. Finance wins twice, praised for solving the very same problems that it has benefited from creating. </p>
<p>Beware financiers bearing gifts. <a href="http://financeandsociety.ed.ac.uk/article/view/2739">Student loans</a>, mortgage bonds, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038026117744415">social impact bonds</a>, even <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718503001131">biodiversity investing</a> – all earning rents from the captured future activities of relatively powerless individuals – bear the shadow of the Atlantic trade.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144826/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Roscoe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Slave traders transformed human lives into profit-bearing opportunities – just like modern finance.Philip Roscoe, Reader in Management, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1396462020-06-30T20:34:15Z2020-06-30T20:34:15ZIndigenous and Afro-Brazilian lands are under greater threat in Brazil during COVID-19<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344826/original/file-20200630-103653-1tqjkpc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=253%2C0%2C4218%2C2588&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are more than 3,600 territories in Brazil that are home to Quilombola, descendants of escaped slaves, but few hold titles to the land.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Elielson Pereira da Silva)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The far right-wing government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil has used the COVID-19 pandemic as a smokescreen to undo environmental regulations and undermine the territorial rights of Indigenous Peoples and traditional Afro-Brazilian communities in the Amazon. </p>
<p>The strategy of the Bolsonaro’s government and its allies in congress is very clear: to take 9.8 million hectares from Indigenous and traditional territories in the Amazon to seize more land for agribusiness. </p>
<p>These actions pose an existential threat to Indigenous Peoples and others living in communities in the Amazon, as the new policies would effectively disintegrate their territories and lead to more deforestation in the coming years. </p>
<h2>Turning crime into legal activities</h2>
<p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro’s government has ushered in a rapid process of dismantling of policies that protect Indigenous and traditional communities. There are 305 Indigenous groups in Brazil and <a href="http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/indios-no-brasil/terras-indigenas">35 per cent of the territories they claim have not been recognized by the government</a>.</p>
<p>On April 22, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), the Brazilian government agency that oversees policies relating to Indigenous peoples, introduced <a href="http://www.in.gov.br/web/dou/-/instrucao-normativa-n-9-de-16-de-abril-de-2020-253343033">new guidelines</a> that would encourage land-grabbing of undemarcated Indigenous lands.</p>
<p>On May 12, the so-called “ruralist bench,” a group of wealthy landholders with an important presence in congress, failed to approve a measure (<a href="https://www.camara.leg.br/proposicoesWeb/fichadetramitacao?idProposicao=2233488">MP910</a>) that would have legalized the occupation of Indigenous lands by land-grabbers, usually for the purpose of deforestation, agribusiness or mining.</p>
<p>This temporary victory, the <a href="https://www.congressonacional.leg.br/materias/medidas-provisorias/-/mpv/140116">result of public pressure</a>, was overshadowed by the presentation of another proposed bill, with the same intentions, on May 14. </p>
<p>FUNAI and the secretary of land affairs are controlled by two representatives from the ruralist bench. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-indigenous/brazils-bolsonaro-hands-indigenous-land-decisions-back-to-farm-sector-idUSKCN1TK37O">They have openly opposed</a> agrarian reform and the demarcation of Indigenous lands. They also have acknowledged <a href="https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-49173621">their intentions</a> to undo environmental and Indigenous protections, and are aligned with Bolsonaro who said, “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-election-landrights-deforestat/indigenous-land-culture-at-stake-in-brazil-election-experts-idUSKCN1N0241">I will not demarcate an extra square centimetre of Indigenous land. Period</a>.”</p>
<p>Environment Minister <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfgv7DLdCqA">Ricardo Salles reiterated this position in April</a>, when he advised Bolsonaro and his cabinet to take advantage of the media’s attention on COVID-19. He argued COVID-19 was an opportunity to “run the cattle herd” through the Amazon, and change “all the rules and simplifying standards” in all the ministries to facilitate agribusiness and mining projects.</p>
<h2>Quilombola Afro-Brazilian territories at risk</h2>
<p>These measures will also have devastating impacts on the 3,658 territories that are home to Quilombola, descendants of escaped slaves. <a href="http://cpisp.org.br/direitosquilombolas/observatorio-terras-quilombolas/?terra_nome=&situacao=0&ano_de=1995&ano_ate=2020&orgao_exp=0">Only 180</a> of them have been fully titled. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339920/original/file-20200604-67347-1g8wapp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339920/original/file-20200604-67347-1g8wapp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339920/original/file-20200604-67347-1g8wapp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339920/original/file-20200604-67347-1g8wapp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339920/original/file-20200604-67347-1g8wapp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339920/original/file-20200604-67347-1g8wapp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339920/original/file-20200604-67347-1g8wapp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A welcome sign outside the Quilombola Nova Betel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Elielson Pereira da Silva)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The plight of the Quilombola under Bolsonaro’s government has received little press. Land conflicts that involved some form of violence, caused by alleged landowners and/or land-grabbers, peaked in 2019. According to data from the <a href="https://www.cptnacional.org.br/component/jdownloads/send/41-conflitos-no-campo-brasil-publicacao/14195-conflitos-no-campo-brasil-2019-web?Itemid=0">Pastoral Land Commission</a>, 13,687 Quilombola families were involved in land conflicts and the lives of 15 leaders were threatened in that year alone. This was the highest number of land conflicts recorded by the commission since 1985.</p>
<p><a href="http://novacartografiasocial.com.br/tag/quilombolas/">Our research</a> shows how the Quilombola community of Nova Betel in the municipality of Tomé-Açu, in the Amazonian state of Pará — as well as <a href="http://www.palmares.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TABELA-DE-CRQ-COMPLETA-ANALISE.pdf">many Quilombola</a> territories that are not yet demarcated and fully recognized by the Brazilian state — could disappear under Bolsonaro’s government. </p>
<p>Nova Betel contains 1,850 hectares of land, certified in 2016 by Fundação Cultural Palmares (FCP) — the first (and easiest) step on the long path to collective land rights. Despite this, deforestation and land-grabbing have accelerated in Nova Betel since 2007. For example, <a href="https://www.biopalma.com.br/quem-somos">Biopalma da Amazônia S.A</a>, owned by Vale, one of the world’s largest mining companies, has planted palm oil trees in <a href="https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/page.php?page=Session&project=LASA20&id=312419c">75 per cent of Nova Betel’s territory</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339919/original/file-20200604-67351-tqjfw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339919/original/file-20200604-67351-tqjfw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339919/original/file-20200604-67351-tqjfw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339919/original/file-20200604-67351-tqjfw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339919/original/file-20200604-67351-tqjfw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339919/original/file-20200604-67351-tqjfw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339919/original/file-20200604-67351-tqjfw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Palm oil plantations in the Quilombola Nova Betel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Elielson Pereira da Silva)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other projects also threaten to take land from the Quilombola community. A <a href="http://novacartografiasocial.com.br/download/mineracao-e-garimpo-em-terras-tradicionalmente-ocupadas-conflitos-sociais-e-mobilizacoes-etnicas/">pipeline</a>, power <a href="http://www2.aneel.gov.br/aplicacoes/siget/arq.cfm?arquivo=35490">transmission line</a> and even a <a href="https://agenciapara.com.br/noticia/16323/">government-proposed railway</a> cut through their territory. Each of these initiatives pushes the Quilombola members towards selling their lands. </p>
<p>Our interviews in May with Quilombola leaders in Nova Betel revealed how employees of the <a href="http://www.tbe.com.br/conteudo_pti.asp?idioma=0&conta=45&tipo=66233">Transmission Company of Energy of Pará S.A (ETEP)</a> pressured eight families to allow a power line to cross through their territory. ETEP offered each family about US$580 as financial compensation, but they refused.</p>
<p>Not only did ETEP violate the Quilombola right to self-determination and prior consultation as enshrined in the International Labour Organization’s <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C169">Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention</a>, but it also breached the health protocols introduced by the community during the pandemic, putting at risk the health of isolated and vulnerable Quilombola families. </p>
<h2>Quilombola lives matter</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://grist.org/article/4-indigenous-leaders-on-what-bolsonaro-means-for-brazil/">racist discourse of the Bolsonaro government</a> together with the COVID-19 pandemic wreaks havoc on Quilombola communities in the Amazon. According to the COVID-19 <a href="https://quilombosemcovid19.org">Observatory in Quilombos</a>, a joint initiative of the National Organization for the Coordination of Black Rural Quilombola Communities (CONAQ) and the Socio-Environmental Institute, an independent non-profit civil society organization, the mortality rate among Quilombola is 25.1 per cent, the highest among all social groups within Brazil. </p>
<p>In the states of Pará and Amapá, Quilombola account for 54.9 per cent of COVID-19-verified deaths. The inequality in the fight against COVID-19 caused by historic dynamics of institutional racism will have a devastating impact on Quilombola people if the disease maintains this rate of spread and lethality. </p>
<p>Taking inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement, CONAQ launched on May 12 the campaign <a href="http://conaq.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CONAQ-24_ANOS-MANIFESTO-VIDAS_QUILOMBOLAS_IMPORTAM.pdf">#Vidas Quilombolas Importam</a> (Quilombola Lives Matter) to condemn the racism against Afro-Brazilians. </p>
<p>Bolsonaro’s government, however, has refused to take urgent measures to safeguard the lives of Quilombola during COVID-19 and to provide protection to their land rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diana Cordoba receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elielson Pereira da Silva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jair Bolsonaro’s government has put forward laws that could put Indigenous land into the hands of mining, agricultural and timber businesses.Elielson Pereira da Silva, Doutorando, Desenvolvimento Socioambiental, Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA)Diana Cordoba, Assistant Professor, Global Development Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1376912020-05-11T11:50:40Z2020-05-11T11:50:40ZFor parents of color, schooling at home can be an act of resistance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332067/original/file-20200501-42918-1qa6knh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C23%2C5109%2C2777&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Educating your children at home brings the power to choose what they learn.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/son-reading-to-dad-royalty-free-image/638761855?adppopup=true">MoMo Productions/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>My 6-year-old hates the British. To be more specific, the British Empire that ruled over up to <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/history/93820/british-empire-how-big-was-it-and-why-did-it-collapse">a quarter of the world’s land</a> by the early 1900s. Hates that one of the biggest diamonds in the world, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor-diamondand-why-british-wont-give-it-back-180964660/">found in India</a> over 1,000 years ago, now sits in the queen’s set of crown jewels. Hates that they <a href="http://origins.osu.edu/milestones/december-2017-india-pakistan-partition">drew up borders quickly</a> and exited South Asia in the 1940s, resulting in the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-great-divide-books-dalrymple">death of millions</a>, and making his grandfather and great-grandparents refugees in the newly formed nation of India.</p>
<p>How does my 6-year-old know all about this? Well, because we talk about it and have a lot of books at home. We have always read <a href="http://www.niahouse.org/blog-fulton/2018/10/19/45-childrens-books-about-south-asian-history-and-culturenbsp">books about South Asian culture and history</a>. And now that we have more flexible schedules since we have to work at home – and the kiddo has to do school at home – we have even more time together. He naturally gravitates to the books with characters that look like him.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332054/original/file-20200501-42923-qk085k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332054/original/file-20200501-42923-qk085k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332054/original/file-20200501-42923-qk085k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332054/original/file-20200501-42923-qk085k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332054/original/file-20200501-42923-qk085k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332054/original/file-20200501-42923-qk085k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332054/original/file-20200501-42923-qk085k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sampling of books at the author’s home.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monisha Bajaj</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LwU2EpEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholar of multicultural education</a>, I know that children are able to understand complex issues, like <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/04/24/716700866/talking-race-with-young-children">racism</a>, if they are broken down and explained in a way that they can grasp. So, when books talk about subjects like segregation, slavery, colonialism or sexism, my partner and I explain those terms as best we can.</p>
<h2>A different worldview</h2>
<p>Conversations about world history in our home go a little like this: </p>
<p>Parent: “People from Europe really liked the spices and cloth from South Asia, so they wanted to go there to buy stuff.” </p>
<p>Kiddo: “Even Christopher Columbus was lost and trying to find India, right?” </p>
<p>Parent: “Right! Europeans went to South Asia, first to trade and buy things. But then they wanted more power, and the British decided to take over and bully people around.”</p>
<p>Kiddo: “How did they bully them?”</p>
<p>Parent: “They made people give them money (land-taxes), didn’t let them make their own clothes to wear, and didn’t even let them make salt out of the water in the sea next to where they lived!”</p>
<p>Books like “<a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/elizabeth-cody-kimmel/a-taste-of-freedom/">A Taste of Freedom</a>,” which recounts Gandhi’s famed <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/india/salt-march">Salt March</a> to protest British rule, and resources like the website and podcast “<a href="https://parentingforliberation.org/">Parenting for Liberation</a>,” certainly help with these conversations.</p>
<p>The coronavirus pandemic has brought on a lot of hardship and heartache to families everywhere, and it has also made it easier for parents like us to spend more time with our children. For parents of color, this means a chance to educate our children as we see fit. We have an opportunity to offer counter-stories that focus on people who look like us, as opposed to having our children forced to learn from narratives written from a European or white perspective.</p>
<p>Our family traces our origins to different parts of South Asia, and we are using this time at home to read about anti-colonial and anti-caste activists like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bhimrao-Ramji-Ambedkar">B.R. Ambedkar</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/elm-2019/dakshayini-velayudhan-d53a91ca9f1d">Dakshayani Velayudhan</a>, people my son wouldn’t ever encounter in his school curriculum. </p>
<h2>Racism in schools and society</h2>
<p>There’s no shortage of examples of inaccurate textbooks like the one in Texas that made headlines a few years ago for referring to enslaved people as immigrant “<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/23/450826208/why-calling-slaves-workers-is-more-than-an-editing-error">workers from Africa</a>.”</p>
<p>There is also a cultural mismatch between America’s teachers and students – <a href="https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/08/15/the-nations-teaching-force-is-still-mostly.html">80% of America’s teachers are white</a>, but <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cge.pdf">more than half</a> of the nation’s students are children of color. And this mismatch matters: <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2018-11-23/black-teachers-improve-outcomes-for-black-students">Studies show</a> that black students are more likely to graduate from high school if they have an African American teacher in elementary school.</p>
<p>No matter the teacher’s ethnic identity, research shows that students are <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/culturally-responsive-teaching/understanding-culturally-responsive-teaching/">more interested in school and do better</a> when they feel like they can relate to what’s being taught and when the lessons reflect their own heritage and history. This is where schooling your children at home can make a difference. That is, parents can select lessons on historical or contemporary issues that do reflect their children’s history and heritage.</p>
<h2>Hard histories</h2>
<p>No doubt, some social justice education can get to be too much and provide too early an exposure to graphic images of violence and suffering. For example, a friend’s son at age 5 watched a video at a neighbor’s house that showed the targeting of an African American boy by the police – something that is part of a larger <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/PoliceUseOfForceAfrosUSA.pdf">documented issue of police violence against black Americans in the U.S.</a> Afterward, the child would get quiet and scared whenever he saw a police officer.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332070/original/file-20200501-42913-srsmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332070/original/file-20200501-42913-srsmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332070/original/file-20200501-42913-srsmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332070/original/file-20200501-42913-srsmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332070/original/file-20200501-42913-srsmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332070/original/file-20200501-42913-srsmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332070/original/file-20200501-42913-srsmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332070/original/file-20200501-42913-srsmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Don’t let children watch disturbing scenes on their own.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/parents-looking-at-a-laptop-computer-at-home-with-royalty-free-image/1189239933?adppopup=true">davidf/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“<a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12401792/police-black-parents-the-talk">The talk</a>,” or discussions African American parents have with their children about the police, is both necessary and real. But, all forms of racial justice education have to be done with nuance and from a <a href="https://parentingforliberation.org/">place of liberation</a> rather than fear. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, when my son and I read a book about abolitionist and Civil War hero Harriet Tubman, we listened to some songs on YouTube from the movie “<a href="https://www.focusfeatures.com/harriet">Harriet</a>,” but I didn’t let him see the video. Studies show that early exposure to graphic violence can <a href="https://dartcenter.org/content/children-and-media-coverage-trauma">cause trauma and distress</a>, so home-based social justice education has to be delivered with care and attention. That means carefully preselecting videos and clips to watch with children to screen for excessive violence, and taking time to explain tough concepts and issues.</p>
<h2>In search of liberation</h2>
<p>In reading and discussions in our family, we focus on movements and activists. Educator and TV legend <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mister-rogers-faith-shaped-his-idea-of-childrens-television-123313">Fred Rogers</a> famously said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/13/mr-fred-rogers-find-helpers-quote-coronavirus-how-help-neighbors-kindness/5041005002/">Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping</a>.’” I would modify that Mister Rogers quote slightly for parents of color to say “When you see injustice, look for the people who are resisting. You will always find people who are resisting.” </p>
<p>While my kiddo still hates “the British,” he also knows about the <a href="http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/">British abolitionists</a> who helped former slave, activist and author <a href="https://theconversation.com/frederick-douglass-july-4th-and-remembering-babylon-in-america-79246">Frederick Douglass</a> fight for an end to slavery in the 1800s. </p>
<p>Schooling at home provides a unique chance for children of color to build up their knowledge of their histories and larger struggles for social and racial justice locally and globally. Perhaps this moment can be an opportunity, a place of possibility within the overwhelming and daunting task of parenting during the pandemic.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monisha Bajaj does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of multicultural education says the COVID-19 pandemic gives parents of color the chance to choose what their children learn at home.Monisha Bajaj, Professor of International and Multicultural Education, University of San FranciscoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.