Category Archives: Slavery

Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge explores founder’s slavery links

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Historic and contemporary pieces interrogate city and university’s connections to colonialism

An exhibition by the Fitzwilliam Museum will explore Cambridge’s connections to enslavement and exploitation for the first time, both in the university and the city.

Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance features works made in west Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Europe, and interrogates the ways Atlantic enslavement and the Black Atlantic shaped the University of Cambridge’s collections.

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Dutch study reveals extent of wealth made via slavery from three past rulers

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Report comes shortly before an expected apology from King Willem-Alexander in a speech in Amsterdam

Inside the stables of Paleis Noordeinde in The Hague is a golden coach embellished with images of colonial offerings to Dutch rulers that many, including the current Dutch king, regard as a symbol of exploitation that, according to a new study, netted three Dutch rulers the equivalent of more than €545m (£465m).

Historians calculated the staggering value of colonial profit for Willem III (also king of England, Ireland and Scotland), Willem IV and Willem V for a report published at the request of the Dutch parliament last week before a widely expected apology over slavery from the Dutch king.

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Sierra Leone’s symbolic Cotton Tree falls during storm in Freetown

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Centuries-old Ceiba pentandra marked where formerly enslaved people had prayed upon arrival in west Africa

A centuries-old tree that served as a historic symbol in Sierra Leone has been felled during a storm, the government has said.

The 70-metre (230ft) Ceiba pentandra – known by Sierra Leoneans as Cotton Tree – lost all of its branches on Wednesday during torrential rains and high winds, with only the base of its enormous trunk still standing. The tree, which was in the capital, Freetown, was about 400 years old.

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Belize likely to become republic, says PM, as he criticises Rishi Sunak

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Exclusive: Johnny Briceño attacks his UK counterpart’s refusal to apologise for atrocities of slavery

The prime minister of Belize, Johnny Briceño, has sharply criticised Rishi Sunak’s refusal to apologise for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, and said it was “quite likely” Belize would be the next member of the Commonwealth realm to become a republic.

Speaking to the Guardian in the country’s capital, Belmopan, Briceño argued the British government had a moral responsibility to apologise for the atrocities of slavery and added to the calls throughout the English-speaking Caribbean for financial reparations from the UK.

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Commonwealth Indigenous leaders demand apology from the king for effects of colonisation

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Exclusive: Aboriginal Olympian Nova Peris says ‘change begins with listening’ as campaigners from 12 countries ask for ‘process of reparatory justice to commence’

Australians have joined Indigenous leaders and politicians across the Commonwealth to demand King Charles III make a formal apology for the effects of British colonisation, make reparations by redistributing the wealth of the British crown, and return artefacts and human remains.

Days out from Charles’s coronation in London, campaigners for republic and reparations movements in 12 countries have written a letter asking the new monarch to start a process towards “a formal apology and for a process of reparatory justice to commence”.

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Ancestor’s Irish famine role could merit compensation, says Laura Trevelyan

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Sir Charles Trevelyan was Treasury official during great famine in 19th century when potato crops failed

The former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan has said her family would consider paying compensation to Ireland because of an ancestor’s role in the Great Famine of the 19th century.

Her great-great-great-grandfather Sir Charles Trevelyan, a senior British government official, was among those who “failed their people” during the humanitarian catastrophe in the 1840s, she said.

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Trinity College Dublin to ‘dename’ George Berkeley library over slavery links

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University said 18th-century philosopher and bishop bought enslaved people to work on his Rhode Island estate

Trinity College Dublin is to remove George Berkeley’s name from its biggest library because of the Irish philosopher’s links with slavery in the 18th century.

The university said on Wednesday it would “dename” the Berkeley library and review an academic award that carries his name, as well as portraits of the scholar.

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Portugal should apologise for role in slave trade, says its president

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Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa makes rare acknowledgement of centuries of forced transportation of millions of Africans

Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has said his country should apologise and take responsibility for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, the first time a leader of the southern European nation has suggested such a national apology.

From the 15th to the 19th century, 6 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into slavery, primarily to Brazil.

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Descendants of UK slave owners call on government to apologise

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Heirs of Slavery body wants restorative justice to tackle ‘ongoing consequences of this crime against humanity’

The descendants of some of Britain’s wealthiest slave owners have launched an activist movement, calling on the government both to apologise for slavery and begin a programme of reparative justice in recognition of the “ongoing consequences of this crime against humanity”.

A second cousin of King Charles and a direct descendant of the Victorian prime minister William Gladstone have joined journalists, a publisher, a schoolteacher and a retired social worker, to create the Heirs of Slavery campaigning body, which will lobby the UK government to acknowledge and atone for its role in the transportation of 3.1 million enslaved African people across the Atlantic.

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Benin bronzes made from brass mined in west Germany, study finds

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Metal used for west African artworks was acquired from manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the slave trade

Scientists have discovered that some of the Benin bronzes were made with brass mined thousands of miles away in the German Rhineland.

The Edo people in the Kingdom of Benin, modern Nigeria, created their extraordinary sculptures with melted down brass manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the transatlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries.

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Only surviving fragment of ‘slave’ cloth found in Derbyshire record office

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Exclusive: 240-year-old scrap of indigo woollen cloth identified as fabric made in Yorkshire to clothe millions of enslaved people

It is a scrap of indigo woollen cloth that is slightly moth-eaten and so tiny that few would give it a second glance, but a 1783 note on its reverse has revealed its chilling significance.

Discovered in a public record office in England, it has been identified as the only surviving fragment of its kind used to clothe millions of enslaved people in the Caribbean and North America for almost 200 years. This coarse fabric, known as “slave” or “negro” cloth, was woven in West Yorkshire, close to the town of Penistone, from which it derives its name.

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Export ban on Coleridge anti-slavery manuscript as British buyer sought

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Handwritten poem in Greek from his undergraduate years has recommended sale price of £20,400

A handwritten manuscript containing a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge railing against the slave trade has been temporarily barred from leaving the UK in the hope that a British buyer can be found.

The poem, written in Greek by Coleridge across six mottled pages, attacks the horrors of slavery and condemns those who overlooked the conditions of enslaved people on the Middle Passage transportation route in the late 18th century.

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Clive Lewis calls for UK to negotiate Caribbean slavery reparations

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Labour MP says Rishi Sunak should talk to region’s leaders after Trevelyan family announcements

The Labour MP Clive Lewis has called on Rishi Sunak to enter negotiations with Caribbean leaders on paying reparations for Britain’s role in slavery, following the historic announcements by the Trevelyan family.

Speaking at a parliamentary debate on promoting financial security in the Caribbean, Lewis said the issue of reparations could not be dismissed as an obsession among a small group of “so-called woke extremists”.

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‘My forefathers did something horribly wrong’: British slave owners’ family to apologise and pay reparations

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The Trevelyans were shocked to see their name in a slavery database and a journey to Grenada confirmed the continuing impact of their grim history

An aristocratic British family is to make history by travelling to the Caribbean and publicly apologising for its ownership of more than 1,000 enslaved Africans. The Trevelyan family, which has many notable ancestors, is also paying reparations to the people of Grenada, where it owned six sugar plantations.

Last weekend, the family met online and agreed to sign a letter of apology for its enslavement of captive Africans. Forty-two members of the family have so far signed and more signatures are expected.

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British opera singer creates work to reveal humanity of enslaved ancestors

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Insurrection: A Work in Progress by Peter Brathwaite will highlight folk traditions as a form of resistance

A leading British opera singer is developing a work based on the music of his enslaved ancestors in Barbados as a way of examining complex historical events and highlighting forms of resistance.

Peter Brathwaite and the Royal Opera House (ROH) will present Insurrection: A Work in Progress to audiences in March, inviting feedback from the public that will shape the opera’s next stages.

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C of E’s historic slavery fund – worth £100m but how far will it stretch across communities?

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Clerical leaders hope for ‘lasting legacy’ to serve places affected by past slavery trade, but fund may spread thinly across all of west Africa and Caribbean

The Church of England’s decision to set up a £100m fund for communities adversely affected by historic slavery is the latest – and biggest – step it has taken over the past few years to “address past wrongs” relating to its links to the slave trade.

The report on the origins of the C of E’s healthy £9bn-plus endowment fund correctly describes the 17th century slave trade as “abhorrent” and a source of misery and injustice.

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‘A search for ourselves’: shipwreck becomes focus of slavery debate

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Vessel that sank with more than 200 transported people onboard is being used to humanise the story of slavery

In 2015, a delegation from the Smithsonian Institution travelled to Mozambique to inform the Makua people of a singular and long-overdue discovery. Two hundred and twenty-one years after it sank in treacherous waters off Cape Town, claiming the lives of 212 enslaved people, the wreck of the Portuguese slave ship the São José Paquete D’Africa had been found. When told the news, a Makua leader responded with a gesture that no one on the delegation will ever forget.

“One of the chiefs took a vessel we had, filled it with soil and asked us to bring that vessel back to the site of the slave ship so that, for the first time since the 18th century, his people could sleep in their own land,” says Lonnie Bunch, now the secretary of the Smithsonian.

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Dutch PM apologises for Netherlands’ role in slave trade

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Mark Rutte says Dutch state ‘enabled, encouraged and profited from slavery’ for centuries

Mark Rutte has offered a formal apology on behalf of the Dutch state for the Netherlands’ historical role in the slave trade, saying slavery must be recognised in “the clearest terms” as a crime against humanity.

In a speech at the national archives in The Hague, the Dutch prime minister acknowledged the past “cannot be erased, only faced up to”. But for centuries, he said, the Dutch state had “enabled, encouraged and profited from slavery”.

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Dutch king commissions research into royal role in colonialism

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Three-year investigation for King Willem-Alexander will span period from late 16th century until present

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands has commissioned independent research into the role of the royal family in the country’s colonial past, the Dutch government’s information service (RVD) has announced.

Three Dutch historians and a human rights expert will carry out the investigation, which is set to take three years and will span the period from the late 16th century until the “post-colonial” present, the RVD said, without elaborating on the details.

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