Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery: Local Nuances of a ‘National Sin’

290 Pages·2016·2.446 MB·English

by  Katie Donington, Ryan Hanley, Jessica Moody

Britain’s History and Memory
of Transatlantic Slavery
LiverpooL StudieS in internationaL SLavery, 11

Britain’s History and Memory
of Transatlantic Slavery
Local Nuances of a ‘National Sin’
Edited by
Katie Donington, Ryan Hanley
and Jessica Moody
Britain’s History and Memory of transatlantic Slavery
Liverpool university press
First published 2016 by
Liverpool university press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7Zu
Copyright © 2016 Liverpool university press
The right of Katie donington, ryan Hanley and Jessica Moody to be
identified as the editors of this book has been asserted by them in accordance
with the Copyright, designs and patents act 1988.
all rights reserved. no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-publication data
a British Library Cip record is available
print iSBn 978-1-78138-277-6 cased
epdf iSBn 978-1-78138-355-1
typeset by Carnegie Book production, Lancaster
Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Contributors xi
introduction
Katie Donington, Ryan Hanley and Jessica Moody 1
Part I Little Britain’s History of Slavery
1 From Guinea to Guernsey and Cornwall to the Caribbean:
recovering the History of Slavery in the Western english
Channel
Brycchan Carey 21
2 ‘There to sing the song of Moses’: John Jea’s Methodism
and Working-Class attitudes to Slavery in Liverpool and
portsmouth, 1801–1817
Ryan Hanley 39
3 portrait of a Slave-trading Family: The Staniforths of Liverpool
Jane Longmore 60
4 Forgotten Women: anna eliza elletson and absentee Slave
ownership
Hannah Young 83
5 east Meets West: exploring the Connections between Britain,
the Caribbean and the east india Company, c. 1757–1857
Chris Jeppesen 102
• v •
Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery
Part II: Little Britain’s Memory of Slavery
6 Whose Memories? edward Long and the Work of
re-remembering
Catherine Hall 129
7 Liverpool’s Local tints: drowning Memory and ‘Maritimising’
Slavery in a Seaport City
Jessica Moody 150
8 Local roots/Global routes: Slavery, Memory and identity in
Hackney
Katie Donington 172
9 Multidirectional Memory, Many-Headed Hydras and Glasgow
Michael Morris 195
10 Making Museum narratives of Slavery and anti-Slavery in
olney
Leanne Munroe 216
afterword
John Oldfield 237
Selected Bibliography 247
Index 261
• vi •
List of Illustrations
List of illustrations
Colour
Image 1.1: oil portrait of ann de Lisle de Beauvoir, with young
servant; circle of Henri Gascars, c. 1669.
Image 3.1: portrait of Thomas Staniforth, 1769, by Joseph Wright of
derby (1734–1797).
Image 3.3: portrait of Charles Goore (1701–1783) by Joseph Wright of
derby, c. 1769.
Image 9.1: panel from the Great tapestry of Scotland showing the
Glasgow tobacco Lords.
Black-and-White
Image 3.2: darnall Hall, near Sheffield. 62
Image 3.4: Liverpool old dock, 1770. 65
Image 3.5: Thomas Staniforth’s house in ranelagh Street,
W. G. Herdman, 1867. 68
Image 3.6: diagram of the stowage plan for the slave ship Brookes, 1788. 73
Image 6.1: plan of Lucky valley estate, Clarendon, Jamaica, 1769, by
James Blair. 135
• vii •
Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery
Image 7.1: Goree warehouses engraving, 1826 copy. 163
Image 7.2: piazza sculpture plaque. 168
Image 7.3: piazza Waterfall sculpture with Wilberforce House in the
background. 169
Image 8.1: Joanna vassa’s grave in abney park Cemetery, Hackney. 179
Image 8.2: Thomas King Entering London Dock 1822–1827, William
John Huggins. 184
Image 8.3: portrait of Samuel Boddington by William drummond
c. 1835. 187
Image 8.4: poster advertising Joseph Jackson Fuller’s preaching at
Salem Chapel. 192
Image 10.1: The slave ship model at the Cowper and newton
Museum, olney. 235
• viii •
Acknowledgements
acknowledgements
This book has developed through a series of conference events. initial ideas
arose following Katie and Jessica’s participation in a section of the american
association of Geographers conference on ‘Slavery and Memory’ in new
york in 2012 organised by derek H. alderman and e. arnold Modlin. The
event generated a number of questions for us on the relationship between
slavery and the geographies of memory in Britain. as a result, joined by
ryan, we decided to convene the conference ‘Little Britain’s Memory
of Slavery: The Local nuances of a national Sin,’ which took place at
university College London on 13–14 September 2013. The conference was a
joint initiative between the Humanities research Centre at the university
of york, the Wilberforce institute for the Study of Slavery and emanci-
pation at the university of Hull and the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership
project at university College London. it was generously supported by those
three institutions, english Heritage and the economic History Society.
The conference brought together academics, public historians, museum and
archive professionals, genealogists, artists and campaigners to think through
the ways in which slavery has been remembered, commemorated, memori-
alised and represented in different parts of Britain. We would like to thank
all those who took part as speakers or attendees. The conversations that
began during that meeting are threaded through this book.
We have been supported throughout the publication process by Liverpool
university press and would like to thank editorial director alison Welsby
for all her help, and patience, in producing the volume. We would like to
thank the anonymous reader at Lup for their invaluable comments on the
various chapters presented here. Finally, we are also very grateful to the
Ludwig fund at new College, oxford for financial support in reproducing
the colour images featured in this volume.
Kd, rH and JM
• ix •