What Was Britain's Role In The Slave Trade? (Slavery Documentary) | Timeline

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] England in 1837 had enjoyed more than 200 years of prosperity and global power that success had been fueled by the slave trade but within 12 months slavery would be abolished a new monarch Victoria was crowned this should have marked the end of the story of slavery in fact the Victorians replaced shackles of iron with a poison of racial prejudice today thousands of Britons are discovering their own part in the shameful history of Britain slave trade a history which is only now forcing its way back into our consciousness we have developed a kind of amnesia about history it's now an issue which you can understand it's an amnesia that comes from a sense of guilt a desire not to not to remember the past because to remember the past is to remember a troubled and anxious and sometimes barbarika set of realities to most Britons today the Caribbean islands are just a holiday paradise but away from the sandy beaches these islands hold the secrets of a forgotten history great houses stand empty a mute testament to 400 years of British occupation [Music] the graveyards of the Caribbean are a record of the personal history of a few privileged families some of the worst aspects of slavery are that memories are broken and chains of chains of memory are broken and one of the differences between coming from the sort of family I come from is that there's a record this is the resting place of one of the oldest surviving West Indian families its descendants today are only just coming to terms with their history all the Kurtis ills of the Wills say and I bequeath to my son and the first item is always slaves and I rang up my mother and said did you know that did you know that the Warner's had slaves but she said of course not darling never never of course they didn't have slaves so that and and it was completely naive of me to have imagined that a Caribbean family would not have been involved in in that economy [Music] for over 300 years the Warner's play the part of a successful upper-crust English family their most famous sons a pelham captained and managed England's cricket team at the turn of the century but he learned his cricket back home in the Caribbean chapter 1 West Indies I was born in the Isle of Trinidad in the West Indies where my father was at one time Attorney General and my earliest recollections of cricket are of batting on a marble gallery to the bowling of a black boy who rejoiced in the name of Calibri the glass windows of the bedrooms which ran along this gallery were often broken and my father would say that I should come to a bad end but perhaps he derived consolation from the bowler who used to remark beg pardon sir but I tell you sir mr. Pelham he make a fine bat sir when he grow big marina Warner's grandfather is part of a history which stretches back more than three centuries but which the family had chosen to neglect I had known my grandfather's a shrunken old man in South Kensington and that this is where he started was a huge surprise this is a history that takes some forgetting it goes back to 1624 when Charles the first gave Sir Thomas Warner this Royal Charter to colonize four caribbean islands the said Thomas Warner hath lately discovered for several islands in Maine Ocean toward the continent of America the one called the Isle of son Kristopher another the Isle of Nevis another Barbados and another the Isle of Montserrat which said Island are possessed and inhabited by savages and he subjects of this our own to remove themselves to the said islands with purpose to proceed and so hopeful work so that's the beginning of colonization of the Caribbean the Warner's are just one of many families who rose on the backs of slaves at least a dozen still hold titles which were awarded or bought following their success in slavery Barron Ashburton of the bearings banking dynasty inherited a slaving fortune as did by count Cobham Lord Liverpool is the descendant of slave owners and the ancestors of Earl Harwood's the Queen's cousin made the equivalent of a million pounds from their slave holdings most slave owning families have long since lost all record of that past they have erased the history of Britain slave descendants two centuries before the empire Windrush brought immigrants to post-war Britain ships had already carried thousands of stowaways sailors and servants across the Atlantic all of them former slaves [Music] today many of their descendants still live here in the archives of Liverpool library one young man is seeking a link to his slave past Laurance Westgarth family has lived in this city for at least 7 generations but their story begins much earlier my ancestors were transported on ships as cargo not as passengers as literally as cargo and to be bought and sold but something that I found hard to deal with I personally don't feel it's worth getting angry about I feel that people need to channel their energy into ways which are constructive I see it as a quest Lawrence knows that his ancestor came here from the Caribbean over 150 years ago his name was Robert Cox this certificate shows his marriage in Liverpool in 1822 the records also say that he was a mariner but beyond that they are silent I couldn't tell you anything about Robert Cox for me he's just a name he's a name on a spare certificate he's a name on a marriage certificate but in many ways the connection of all my ancestors who I've traced is strongest with him because I identify with him in a way with which is which is in many ways signifies the same type of position I mean I feel in many ways that I'm searching and I'm sure he felt the same because him coming here and settling here was almost like it was a journey he was finding the place where he would feel at home as far as I'm concerned and the fact that he settled here tells me well you know maybe maybe the fact that he found a home here means that other people can find the home Robert Cox found employment in the warehouses and docks of Liverpool where black and Irish immigrants lived and works side by side generations later they are still neighbors through his work as an acupuncturist Lawrence's met Catherine Hudson as a young girl Catherine live next door to Lawrence's great-great-grandmother Mary Ellen and tone Mary Ellen was the granddaughter of the family's first arrival Robert Cox so what was Mary Ellen like she was an average build life she wasn't fast or anything like that because around next round pleasant face and I always remember the thing that she would have twinkly air but the edges of seem to be Tindra twice and as a child used to fascinate me but she was all was them very pleasant place and she'd always sit on the chair at the top of the steps like the door wide open and as children we'd pass away hello mrs. M tone was mrs. Anson fair-skinned oh oh no she wasn't very dark no no I am this is quite light-skinned really miss Toronto was more deaf because he was in a different nationality if they thought mrs. aunt oh no she was them quite light-skinned both like you she was yeah quite light-skinned mrs. Anto and then but she was over same and she was they should mr. Santo she was a navy she was there did anybody ever talk about slavery or the slave trade at that time no not really you know I don't never remember anything getting said about slavery that time like it then we didn't actually know really anything about that like you know which we went educated at also know anything about that it's only this lazy is that we've had anything really [Music] slave traders and merchants money built 19th century Liverpool their contribution is honored everywhere the part played by Lawrence's slave ancestors remains unrecognized the entire Town Hall is adorned with the portraits of slave traders and in many ways you know the opulence that's associated with that trade can be seen in this building and in saying that that makes me feel like I almost have a connection to the building because it was off the backs of the slave trade that it was built now my ancestors were the people who you know with the victims of that trade and I guess me coming here and looking at the building and making that connection is my way of acknowledging the role that they played in the building of the whole city I mean the place is truly magnificent it's breathtaking I mean the amount of work that must have gone into actually building something like this must have been unbelievable [Music] you [Music] my personal experiences as regards slavery is that it's totally changed the you know the experiences that I would have had had it not be and I probably wouldn't be here today but you know it's it's made me not able to trace aside my family that I would have loved to announcer trace it it's slavery is taken away all the grounding following the abolition of slavery many of Britain's prominent families set about burying their links with a slave trade they rushed to invest in Britain's booming manufacturing industries but the establishment conspired to cover up the nation's continuing economic dependence on slave labor [Music] the factories spreading across the land needed African palm oil as an essential lubricant the oil was slave produced but by the mid 19th century Britain's imports had grown from a hundred and fifty tons to twenty five thousand tons a year British looms were spinning cotton produced by American slaves British financier supplied credit illegally to Cuban and Brazilian slave traders British merchants even accepted slaves as payment for goods the government proved powerless in 1841 Lord Broome told Parliament that he greatly regretted that British capital and British subjects furnished the slaves for the mining companies of Cuba and Brazil British companies consigned goods which are only intended for the purchase of slaves vessels are being built in this country which from their structure and internal arrangements could leave no doubt that they were intended for the slave trade Broome was never going to succeed at Westminster too many MPs were still benefitting directly from the continued trade in the 1840s there was a reporter of British companies who were involved in the slave trade in West Africa one of the companies involved was called Forster and Smith the government set up US or Parliament set up a select committee to look into the activities of this company and another company now on the select committee which looked into the activities of Forster and Smith sat somebody called Matthew Forster who it's not difficult to see was actually very much connecting with his company other he did he said he sit on the Select Committee but he also drafted the report of the Select Committee which you will not be surprised to know said that this company was not in any way involved with slave real estate Trading West Africa it would be decades before Britain's involvement with slave labor was completely suppressed and in that time the country would experience the emergence of racial attitudes which still pervade Britain today [Music] in the 1700s Georgian Britain had been transformed by the profits from the plantations before abolition these Great Houses featured a common sight the black servant there were at least 10,000 in the homes of the rich Africans were still enslaved in the Caribbean yet in England black and white servants were treated as equals in Britain the situation was different from the plantation because the ID of a Freeborn Englishman who should not be subject to arbitrary cruelties was very alive in the 18th century it may not have been alive in the colonies but it was very much part of a the notion of being an Englishman and of course black slaves in Britain benefited from that that principle if you like here wealth was the great divide money mattered color did not society frowned far more on mixing between different classes than between different races at all levels of society there were voluntary associations between black people and white people at the level of the aristocracy for example you have the famous case of soubise the servant of the Duchess of Queensbury who was a man of great flamboyance a youth of great flamboyance very handsome all the kitchen wenches wanted him but he also had this relationship which became a scandal at the time with it with the Duchess so he had to be sent to India he was banished to India in this society some black people became well known figures in their own right Frances barber was brought from Jamaica at the age of seven as a slave when his owner died he was passed to a new master one of England's leading authors Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson's an interesting character because he was one of the finest perhaps the finest mind of his time and he had strong strong feelings about race and slavery he violently opposed it he had in his household a young man named Francis barber who lived with him for 34 years baba became settled enough to marry and start a family line which still survives Francis barbers son was Samuel Samuels son was Isaac Isaac's son was Enoch Enochs son was William Edward William Edward son was Albert and I Dennis is Albert son Francis barber would be intrigued to see how white his descendants have become in his day the difference between black and white hardly mattered i think that sam johnson looked on Francis barber as being he saw the relationship I mean to stay with him for 35 years and it must have cost him quite a lot of money to educate him as well and as well to keep him so I think the wars have very very strong relationship more like father and son even when Francis was away at school Johnson wrote to him regularly dear Francis I am at last sat down to write to you and thought very much to blame myself for having neglected you so long let me know what English books you read you can never be wise unless you love reading did not imagine that I shall forget you or forsake you yours affectionately Samuel Johnson on his return to the household Francis became Johnson's manservant and constant companion befriended by London's literary elite of course when you have someone like Frances barber in the household who's well known to all of Johnson's friends that person is going to have contact with Johnson's friends as well so Boswell when he is writing the biography of Johnson of course trailing him around and taking all his famous notes becomes someone who knows Frances barber and he referred to him as I think gentle Frank or dear Frank dear Frank some of your old masters friends have thought that you're opening a little shop for a few books and stationery wares in Litchfield might be a good thing I hope you may consult and consider of it I answer your sincere friend James Bosma at the end of Johnson's life he did an unprecedented thing which was to leave him his literary estate and and quite a bit of money this had been warned against by some of Johnson's friends but he felt very strongly that Frank was the closest thing he would have to family I don't want to exaggerate that because he doesn't think of Frank really is being family but he is the closest thing to family and he feels very strongly that Frank should be supported for the rest of his life in the name of God amen I Samuel Johnson being in full possession of my faculties do ordain this my last will and together with my books plate and household furniture I leave to the use of Francis Butler my manservant a negro using the money that Johnson had left him barber moved back to Litchfield with his wife an English woman called Betsy and their children he died in 1801 his family have lived in the same area ever since as far as color wise I have never been embarrassed by I am a descendant from Francis Bartlett I've always class myself as being English and I would have thought that Frances barber been educated and in this country for most of his life what kid said to himself to be an Englishman Frances barber lived the life of an English gentleman yet by the time Dennis was born his own family was trying to paint their black ancestor out of the picture my mother didn't like to hear anybody talk about Frances barber my father always raised Deaton called him or we said mr. Bob my mother always used to turn and say look don't talk about that black man in front of the children his master's dictionary defined him as a Negro but barber probably never faced overt racial prejudice yet only a few decades after his death black people had become objects of derision contempt and fear the change in attitudes was rooted in the battle for abolition the popular abolitionist movement made slaves the object of public sympathy but the pro-slavery campaign has struck back branding black people no better than animals the slave traders lost the battle but they started the first widespread campaign against black people in England when racism as such as a philosophy kicked in was as a direct reaction to the abolitionist movement the abolitionist movement driven by the some of the leading intellectuals of the day as well as driven by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in this kingdom who signed petitions after petitions and presented them to the House of Lords when the abolition movement really kicked in in the from the 1780s onwards the planters had to respond and so they this is where you get them as virulent imagery about brutal pagan best steel black people in the literature and in the imagery cartoons portraying black people as licensures began to circulate the anti abolitionist Edward long wrote the lower class women in England are remarkably fond of the blacks in the course of a few generations more or the English blood would become so contaminated with this mixture as even to reach the middle and then the higher orders of the people this is a venomous and dangerous ulcer that threatens to disperse its malignancy far and wide until every family catches infection from it The Times and other magazines reviewing a London performance by the black actor IRA Aldridge could barely contain their distaste the features of this genuine [ __ ] possess much of the African character that are considerably humanized owing to the shame of his lips it is utterly impossible for him to pronounce in English it is impossible that mr. Aldridge should fully comprehend even the meaning of the words he utters in the name of common sense we enter our protest against a repetition of this outrage in the interests of decency we protest against a ladylike girl like Miss Ellen tree being subjected to the indignity of being poured about by this black [Music] until the eighteen forties these racial attitudes had a little impact in Britain but the advent of colonialism would turn them into opinions held in every quarter of Victorian England the moment the slave trade ended colonialism began the flags were planted here and the Germans and the French and the British were roaming all over here and a way of firing on each other out of the various forts and so on across all the way down to the Cape British colonists breathe fresh life into old stereotypes to justify their occupation of Africa when the next phase came in which was really the imperialist phase when Africans partitioned who had to have justifications in the 19th century for for really theft for really walking into people's country shooting them and taking whatever it is they're the colonial adventurers were given a further spurious defense by a new British passion science some races were they said born to rule if you believed and you've been told by highly reputable scientists chaste Owens cousin no less that Africans were not totally separate stem of humanity and were simply on a lower lower wrong then it's very hard for anybody to accept equality and that attitude was an astonishingly pervasive it was an automatic response to see these people as less than human to identify somebody as different was almost automatically to judge them as worse and that really was the beginning of the idea of scientific racism by the second half of the 19th century racial attitudes had changed radically this was reflected in popular fiction in Vanity Fair Rhoda Schwartz a mulatto is described as clumsy and socially inept wearing diamonds as big as pigeon eggs the Victorians felt a particular revulsion for people of mixed race they begin to make their way into the fiction in very oblique in obscure ways they become the mysterious stranger from abroad who has a secret perhaps a genetic secret so when you get a novel like Jane Eyre in which she is trying to become the real owner the real wife of Rochester and you find that he's got a wife who has got a problem Edward Rochester McDowell had this woman to be thy wedded wife [Music] the existence proceed to the cellar you cannot proceed as a wife my name is Briggs I am an attorney mr. Mason in the 20th of October 1824 Edward Rochester of Thornfield Hall was married to Bertha Mason at st. Mary's Church Spanish Town Jamaica the record of the marriage will be found in the register of that church past enclosure book there'll be no wedding today you begin to realize as you read back that she is most likely got a racial identity that he finds insupportable this won't do so you've got a woman in the Attic who has come from the West Indies and she has to be burned up at the end of the book in order for Jane to become the real wife [Music] that gentleman is my wife Mads and the offspring of the man to happily so you begin to see in the Victorian period a lot of fear of black people who have a slave background infiltrating their way into the Victorian world and it's a great terror to many people to think that it's not out there somewhere it's back here in the house is in your wife it's in your attic the Victorians devised a racial hierarchy designed to emphasize a separateness of black people the shadow of this nineteenth-century prejudice still falls across British life [Music] the Victorians theory was based on biological distinctions between Africans and Europeans they were partially right we now know that there are small genetic differences between races modern science is finding that some racial characteristics can turn up in unexpected places races generally speaking are coarse defined by genes very small sample of genes skin color hair color shape of the nose and so on so genetics and race are close together but we now know that we can be much more specific than that there are certain genes which are pretty characteristic of certain parts of war for instance in Africa that our particular genes which until the world began to mix up as far as we know would only found in Africa the famous wound is the gene for sickle cell anemia which is a protective blood variant protects against malaria people who came from West Africa have been moved often against their well to different parts of the world as a result a sickle cell gene but many others moved with them that means that if there has been any maintain between Africans and Americans then gene would persist and as a result that are probably thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who think of themselves as white and indeed have white skins in the world who are carriers of a sickle cell gene they have an African ancestor sign science can now lead us to the descendants of slaves most of them know nothing of their hidden heritage Jane prior lives in Brighton until one morning in 1997 she had no idea that there was anything unusual in her family history I've been a beloved owner since 1994 and give blood regularly about three times a year and in 1997 I received a letter from the National blood transfusion service totally out of the blue saying they tested my blood and found a sickle cell trait the first thing I did when I found out was telephone my mother and said well it must come from you I think because of the way we understood our family line the first person I thought of him was my mother as opposed to my father and asked my mother to go and get tested which she did then he went to the hospital and had blood had it too so but it is genetics it had to come from one of my it's got to come through the family and the only family that have mentioned it is my mother's side so that's you were to go back then to the ground parents but from there only by talk by word they think it's back through my mother's side and a mother and her mother it's it starts here with you Anil then it comes to me her sisters and her mother her father that's my mother your grandmother as she went to be training to be a nurse max a father but that's even a bill and their mother a father Jane will never suffer sickle-cell anemia both parents have to pass on the genetic trait for the disease to develop that's why only black children are generally thought to be at risk but Jane's random test suggests otherwise looking through the family tree Val recalled that one of their ancestors was said to be a sailor who came from Jamaica in the 1700s the sickle cell trait confirms the family legend but also in they census with John Brown it's another John Brown in the same area who could have been his father it was very much treated as confirmation of the way the family line was going and the digging into the past that was more or less the icing on the cake I thought it was exciting I thought it was great you you you finally put the full stop after the word you know it's made something definite everything before that was well it could be this it could be that it could be something else this underlined it more or less I said it is so Jane and vow now realize that they are one of many white families in Britain who are directly descended from slaves I don't think the people in England I mean I'm only talking from what I can say that the slave trade is something that's in a storyline I don't think it hits deeply and also thinking there might be that history in our own family that you suddenly makes you think about it more when how it's had a knock-on effect to a lot more people than they probably realize I want to realize and how it's affected to the history today yeah if it hadn't have happened then the history of this country would be totally different Oh be different to lately different well if they happen to be in the slave trade we wouldn't be here [Laughter] Jane and Val discovered their heritage by accident but other British families have found new ways of identifying their slave ancestors [Music] this remote part of Scotland's West Coast has no obvious connection to the slave trade but here in Dumfries there is a direct link to britain slaving past in this quiet graveyard in the village of which horn the headstones bear the names of families who have been here for generations the name jolly appears at least a dozen times the jolly circuit and Azaria had been here a long long time I mean kids can buck as far as working back on him you're talking with 200 year so I mean I'm only families and money families can actively say they've been in one area for that amount of time [Music] in spite of their deep roots here the jollies still feel that they are different they look white but David believes he has a black ancestor I mean the color here is a trademark and I mean thank God it's it's it's Glavin it because when you went it dances when you're at the skill or not I mean you were you wanna meet an example but you are always the dead seemed people aren't different David feels haunted by a past that he cannot understand have you didn't he won't talk to Kenya you could gain India Clayton manga and manga Len with a close couldn't you but if you're a jolly you could need a no no if you had the cuddly he'd David believes that he can still see the evidence of an African ancestor even in his grandchildren he's got a comfy a collar a place somewhere somebody or color but it's only type 2 here the only place you can finish typing here it's no snow for the whites I do it a family at it really I don't know [Music] david jolly is now retired his suspicion has been with him all his life but he's never been able to prove it [Music] just ten miles away from his home there is a clue it could resolve the puzzle that has dogged his family for generations [Music] here in Wigton sure lies the family seat of the Maxwells layers of man wreaths [Music] David's going to see a 200 year old painting hanging in the house it has a story that has been handed down through the family [Music] david has arranged to meet sir Michael Maxwell the 9th baronet who could throw some light on the mystery [Music] greetings david i'm michael max walk then there's me very good to meet you something to have a look at this picture and I did all I know about it okay thank you very much come on in David have a look at this picture we've never seen this before have you know what I know about it is that it was painted in 1765 and the man is my ancestor seven generations back he was a lawyer and he's with his black page boy who looks young difficult to say how old he is but he could be 12 13 14 I know they're linear but what is interesting is that the boy is very well dressed beautifully dressed and max what is well-dressed and so he wouldn't have been as we think of slaves as in the fields he would have been an indoor house I've always heard this is connected with your family I suspect that he had a child a daughter he was married probably in one of the local villages your family probably came over from Ireland and married the daughter who was half black that is supposition but I've always been told ever since I was a child that there was a connection with him and the Jolly Fiona filming but you know we can't prove either way no it's I think it's very sweet there weren't that many black slaves in Scotland and that was why he was painted you know it was something different we don't know where he came from we don't know where when he left where he left what is unfortunate is that our family records are fairly complete but there's a gap at this time I said all the family papers of Scottish records office and they searched through them and they can find no trace of this we've looked through the parish records and there's no trace there's a gap in the parish records who knew they would have been burnt or destroyed or whatever and so we'll never know exactly now you can Oregon move underneath we could get re the word of my man and I just feel that the word of mouth has been so strong that something must high Minister read a story Disney killeth reading through her family enormous could better art eat and been taken away but day there's always plenty of stories but I've never owned it a lota thanks T Bucky don't but as you saw mr. problem solving there is nice and additionally seem to be a it seems quite hobby yup he's well to us and I can she uh I beg a there's a resemblance High Definition redundant and not gives us a reason for cuddling here it does Ian explanation on gene is going through you in fact that gentleman here assemble of your cell do you know oh well got no haven't me neither D it's fat yes but I could do them possible positive heroes and Blanca no I like it another question has been answered a/c nation and the question he's been answered sometimes are I don't know maybe I accept things a wee bit too easy but sometimes you're better eh I think about that they know no matter what why year got you better to know if he if you know at least you can answer if you don't know he can t answer and the questions are in your head yes just know what's they explain it but I never wanted McConnell here that's what I wanted to convey [Music] I feel that he's looking at me I don't know what he'd be seeing you know what you'll be thinking but that is a along and near an ERISA Utah collect closely covered it but Ilana you know I like it and he [Music] david jolly believes that he has finally found his African ancestor the story of slavery has been a missing chapter in Britain's history what started as a simple trade grew into an enterprise that transformed three continents for Africa it brought depopulation and under development to the Caribbean it brought a burst of prosperity followed by a century of poverty and decline [Music] in Britain we have ignored the imprint left on our land yet the legacy of our slaving past is all around us the elegance and gentility of our stately homes were founded on the brutality of plantation life our industrial might sprang from the manual labor of millions of slaves [Music] above all in many of today's British families the slave system created an unbreakable bond to a past when our nation traded in human cargo [Music] you

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Keywords: real, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, Documentary Movies - Topic, BBC documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Channel 4 documentary, stories, documentary history, Documentaries, history documentary, Full Documentary, 2017 documentary, History, slavery, black history, ancestry

Id: eyoJXTohKOE

Length: 49min 25sec (2965 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2019