BBC1's Antiques Roadshow is usually on, although I often don't watch it as such. Last night (3rd April) I did, and there were two items that are actual practical examples of decolonisation, which show how you can look at existing British history from a new viewpoint.
The programme was from Culzean Castle in Ayrshire. If you are not familiar with it, members of the public take along an antique or collectible that they have, and someone expert with that sort of art or craft talks about it, and values it. The programme visits different venues. That is relevant to example 1, the format of the programme is relevant to example 2.
Example 1
In the castle there is a list of the names of servants. The first name, from the 1740s, was Scipio Kennedy. This is the story as recounted in the programme.
Scipio Kennedy was a slave. He had been taken from west Africa to the Caribbean at the age of 6. At the age of 8 he had been bought by the owner of the castle and brought to Scotland. At the age of 30 he was freed. He married a local woman, they had a family, and the family prospered enough to be able to afford a grave and headstone for Scipio when he died at the age of 80.
The thing that struck me immediately about that was that he was freed AT THE AGE OF 30. Does that mean he was a slave, on Scottish soil, for 22 years?
Links between slavery and large "stately homes" has been very much in the news lately because of coverage, some of it apoplectic and not very sensible, of work done by my colleague Professor Corinne Fowler at the University of Leicester and the (English) National Trust. I could see how there could be links because owners or builders of the homes had got their money from the slave trade or industries that relied on it, like sugar. More about sugar in a moment. But I had not thought of people like Scipio Kennedy.
Kennedy, according to the castle website, was the family name of the owner.
Scipio Kennedy has a Wikipedia page, and the National Trust for Scotland have a series of stories of his life, which go into a lot more detail about his life.
Example 2
One of the people who had brought along antiques had brought along examples of silverware that would be used for sugar, so nibs, tongs, and sugar bowls. Some at least were made in Scotland, and they all dated from the late 1790s and the early 1800s, specifically from dates connected with events in the movement to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. This made the antiques expert, and I have to say me, think - as we (as a nation) started to drink more tea socially, we started to use more sugar, and silversmiths made silverware for the purpose. But this all relied on the slave trade.
William Wilberforce first tried to get the transatlantic slave trade ended in 1791, if my memory of the programme is right. Henry Dundas, who seems to have effectively been deputy prime minister, argued that it should be ended gradually. It was, in 1807. In that time, 600000 more people were taken from Africa to the Caribbean as slaves.
And that, I guess, is why there has been discussion around Dundas' statue in St Andrew's Square in Edinburgh, a very tall and prominent column. That is perhaps the subject of another post.
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