Slavery memorial. Murky1/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc-nd)
In response to a 2013 article in The Guardian on the narrowness of the British history curriculum, Elizabeth Truss, then the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the department for education, trumpeted the inclusion of “explicit references to ‘the slave trade and the abolition of slavery’, William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano”. Her response demonstrates the problematic way that transatlantic slavery is both remembered and taught in Britain. The (optional, rather than required) teaching on transatlantic slavery freezes its horrors as a past phenomenon of more barbarous times. In doing so, it provides a framing that allows white liberals to fondly reminisce about Britain’s heroes of abolition. The same logic is at work when ‘modern day’ slavery is described as the legacy of the African holocaust. Instead of addressing the actual legacy of the system of slavery – the continued oppression and structural disadvantagement of black populations in the west and the disconnection caused between the diaspora and African continent – this framing permits white liberals to embrace the abolitionist spirit of the past. It allows them to fight the good fight against ‘human trafficking’, perpetrated by those supposedly (and conveniently) coming from the developing, less enlightened world. While this is surely more comfortable for white students, it misses out on several key aspects that must be included if the importance of transatlantic slavery is to be taught effectively.
Legal system of oppression
The system of slavery lasted for over 300 years (approximately 1503 to 1888) and was embedded into the fabric of western society. Trading in African flesh was not controversial for most of those three centuries. The wealth generated from the trade funded the development of industry and whole cities such as Bristol and Liverpool. As research by academics at UCL demonstrates, a broad cross section of society owned enslaved Africans. Many of today’s major financial institutions also have roots in the trade. Lloyds of London, for example, proclaims that its history is in ‘marine insurance’, but this is code for ‘insuring slave ships’. Upon abolition slave owners generally received compensation and were not charged for their crimes. Even the deliberate drowning of 132 Africans on the Zong slave ship, done to ensure the white crew’s stock of potable water, was not met with punishment. In teaching transatlantic slavery, it essential for students to understand how embedded it was in the legal framework of the time.
