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The British Transatlantic Slave Trade

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The British Transatlantic Slave Trade Memory, Myth and Forgetting: the British Transatlantic Slave Trade Lucy Ball The thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Portsmouth September 2013 Abstract Based on Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory and Connerton’s notion of collective forgetting, this thesis contends that the history of the British transatlantic slave trade has been deliberately omitted from British collective remembrance, replaced by a stylised image of the campaign for its abolition, in the interests of maintaining a consistent national identity built around notions of humanitarian and philanthropic concern. This thesis examines the way that this collective amnesia was addressed during the bicentenary of the passage of the Slave Trade Act in 2007 in museological display and the media, alongside its interrogation in novels published during the last seventeen years. The exploration of the bicentennial commemoration provided a unique opportunity to examine the way in which the nation presented its own history to the British public and the international community, and the divergent perspectives at play. Analysis of the artefacts and panel text featured at the International Slavery Museum, the Uncomfortable Truths exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Chasing Freedom exhibition at the Royal Naval Museum reveals an emerging desire amongst curators to reduce attention garnered on the previously-lionised British abolitionists in favour of an increased representation of the experiences of the enslaved, including instances of their resistance and rebellion. Examination of neo-slave narratives scrutinises the way that postcolonial novelists draw attention to the process by which eighteenth-century slave narratives came to be published, demonstrating their unsuitability to be considered historical texts. S. I. Martin’s Incomparable World (1996), David Dabydeen’s A Harlot’s Progress (2000), Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes (2009), Bernadine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots (2009) and Andrea Levy’s The Long Song (2010) re-write the slave experience and the process of writing, reframing abolitionist motivations around self-interest and political necessity rather than humanitarian concern. Media engagement was analysed through newspaper articles reporting on the bicentenary, the output of the BBC’s Abolition Season, and the representation of slavery in film, revealing a surface-level engagement with the subject, furthering the original abolitionist imagery, with any revisionist output needing to be specifically sought-out by the consumer. The thesis concludes that a revisionist approach to the history of the slave trade is becoming more apparent in challenges to collective memory occasioned by the bicentenary of its abolition; novelists make this challenge unavoidably clear to their readers, whilst those visiting museums are presented with an opportunity to reassess their understanding of this history by engaging with exhibits; the media, however, provides this revisionism but only in small ways, and has to be sought out by audiences keen to engage with it. 1 Contents Introduction 5 Chapter 1: Contemporary museology and the slave trade 18 Chapter 2: Bicentennial exhibitions 39 Chapter 3: Neo-slave narratives 54 Chapter 4: Re-imagining slave trade protagonists 89 Chapter 5: Bicentenary in the media 112 Conclusion 131 Bibliography 135 2 Declaration Whilst registered as a candidate for the above degree, I have not been registered for any other research award. The results and conclusions embodied in this thesis are the work of the named candidate and have not been submitted for any other academic award. Word count: 62,776 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Petra Rau for her support and guidance in helping to refine my original research idea into the project that this thesis became; for her insight, interest and endless patience and encouragement. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Dr Maggie Bowers for her supervision over the past year, and for her ability to offer reassurance in moments of deepest anxiety. The University of Portsmouth’s English department provided me with an inspiring and intellectually stimulating research environment, for which I am grateful. Thanks also to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, whose Studentship Award made this thesis possible. Special thanks go to Andrew and Lucy Smith, without whom this thesis would never have begun, for their endless hospitality and encouragement. I am grateful to Dr Chmel, Dr Jackson and Dr Ford, for proving it possible to finish a PhD and for offering their advice and empathy when the going got tough. My friends and family I am indebted to for their support and reassurance throughout the composition of this thesis, and for tolerating my increasingly bad temper during the final months. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my sister Claire, who has offered her unfailing encouragement as well as emotional, financial and referencing support during the entirety of this process without complaint, and without whom I fear this thesis would never have reached completion. 4 Introduction In September 2013, an unnamed Russian official dismissed Britain as ‘just a small island’, to which Prime Minister David Cameron responded with an impassioned invective on the aspects of British history which are widely considered a source of national pride: ‘Britain is an island that has helped to clear the European continent of fascism and was resolute in doing that throughout World War II. Britain is an island that helped to abolish slavery, that has invented most of the things worth inventing, including every sport currently played around the world, that still today is responsible for art, literature and music that delights the entire world. We are proud of everything we do as a small island – a small island that has the sixth-largest economy, the fourth- best funded military, some of the most effective diplomats, the proudest history, one of the best records for art and literature and contribution to philosophy and world civilisation’ (BBC News, 2013) Though the speech received much criticism and derision from the media, and indeed could be contradicted on many fronts, it is significant that the abolition of slavery is presented by Cameron as one of the key moments of Britain’s history of which Britons can be proud. Whilst a decade ago the history of slavery arguably barely featured in the collective remembrance of Britain’s past, its inclusion today not only in public discourse but as a beacon of national pride presented to the world by the Prime Minister, alongside war-time victories, The Beatles and Shakespeare, marks a significant change in the way this history is being managed. In many ways Cameron’s response summarises the complications inherent with a consideration of the way Britain has remembered, or perhaps more accurately forgotten, its slave trading history. The declaration ‘helped to abolish slavery’ is ambiguous in that it is not clear whether it refers to the slave trade or the entire system of enslavement; whether it implies Britain spear-headed a global campaign or was instrumental in leading other nations towards abolition; and lastly because Cameron neglected to qualify with the caveat that it refers only to the transatlantic slave trade, with many forms of slavery still in operation throughout the world today. Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the inclusion of ‘helped to abolish slavery’ is that it necessarily obfuscates nearly two hundred years’ worth of history concerning British transatlantic slavery which preceded its abolition, and therefore inevitably conceals the nature of British involvement (economic, legal and political). With the overwhelmingly vast majority of the history of the British transatlantic slave trade being one of brutality, exploitation and dehumanisation, it is the curious notion 5 of feeling not merely a sense of pride regarding its abolition, but a seeming belief that this one piece of legislation effectively wipes clean the slate of such a history, with which this thesis is concerned. As Dark Tourism historian John Beech wryly puts it: ‘Isn’t the UK celebrating the abolition of slavery rather like celebrating that you’ve stopped beating your wife?’ (Beech, A Step Forwards or a Step Sideways?: Some Personal Reflections of how the Presentation of Slavery has (and hasn't) changed in the last few years, 2008) The decision to view the British slave trade through the moral lens of abolition is not a new phenomenon, however. ‘Repression and narrative disguise surrounded the memory of slavery’, Marcus Wood argues, ‘from the moment Britain decided it had attained the moral high ground, with the stroke of a pen in 1807’ (2007, p. 205). 1807 saw the culmination of a twenty year political campaign by abolitionists to end the trade in slaves between Africa and British plantations in the Americas, with the passage of The Slave Trade Act (1807). Following the foundation of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787, an organised public campaign in Britain sought to convert wider public opinion of the trade, and was supplemented by parliamentary representation by figures such as Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp, who quickly became the public figureheads of the campaign. Along with the published testimonies of former slaves like Oloudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano, parliamentary Select Committee hearings
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