The way history has long been taught here, Britain's abolition of the African slave trade March 25, 1807, allowed it to claim the moral high ground in the struggle to end slavery in the New World. Two centuries later, if a series of exhibitions planned for this year leave their mark, perceptions may be about to change.
Rather than dwelling on William Wilberforce, the feisty abolitionist who drove the reform through the British Parliament and is the subject of the film Amazing Grace, these shows are highlighting a far uglier back story: Britain's deep engagement in the slave trade in earlier centuries and the fundamental role this played in forging the nation's wealth and power.
With the support of the government and a US$20 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, national museums and community groups across Britain have begun re-examining what a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London calls these "uncomfortable truths."
The mood may be ripe for such a reassessment. After years of waxing nostalgic about its lost empire, Britain is now daring to look more critically at its imperial record. At the same time there is fresh curiosity about the history and culture of the Caribbean, African, Arab and Asian immigrants who are changing the face of Britain.
There is also new transparency. Although Prime Minister Tony Blair fell short of an apology, in November he went further than any previous official by expressing "deep sorrow" for Britain's role in the slave trade. "It is hard to believe what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time," he noted.
Penitence seems to weigh most heavily on the northwestern port city of Liverpool, which in 1800 controlled 80 percent of the British slave trade and more than 40 percent of the European slave trade. The triangular trade, by which African slaves were bartered for sugar, cotton and tobacco in the Americas, was the foundation of Liverpool's enormous prosperity.
Today, the city takes this past seriously. In 1994 the Merseyside Maritime Museum opened a Transatlantic Slavery Gallery to tell the story of Liverpool and slavery. This display will close in June to make way for Britain's first International Slavery Museum, which will open on Aug. 23, named by the UN as Slavery Remembrance Day.
David Fleming, the director of National Museums Liverpool, said the new museum would portray and analyze "the vitality and complexity of West Africa prior to the coming of European slavers, the horrors of the Middle Passage, the fate of the enslaved people in the Americas and of course the never-ending fight for freedom."
London and Bristol, two other major slave-trading cities, are also probing their consciences this year. In October the Museum of Docklands in London will open a permanent gallery called London, Sugar and Slavery, while the Bristol Industrial Museum has opened a Transatlantic Slavery gallery exploring how the city profited from the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Opening the bicentennial commemoration is the show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Uncomfortable Truths: The Shadow of Slave Trading on Contemporary Art and Design, which looks at the slave trade and its benefits to Britain through the eyes of 11 contemporary artists from around the world.
In some cases — like Romuald Hazoume's striking serpent made from jerrycans, in the museum's courtyard — the link between the art and this narrative is less than obvious. Hazoume, a Benin-born artist, has also created a larger work, La Bouche du Roi, transforming 300 jerrycans into masks, which will tour Britain, starting at the British Museum.
RSS