Britain's forgotten slave owners: Part one

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2021

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

It wasn't until recently that researchers working in the national archive in London discovered the extent to which ordinary people in Britain had been involved in the slave trade in the 18th and early 19th century. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Dr Nick Draper, who uncovered volumes of records detailing the thousands of people who claimed compensation when slavery was abolished in Britain in 1834. He and colleagues at University College London set up the Legacies of British Slave-ownership database, documenting this forgotten part of Britain's history.

(Photo: Taken from Josiah Wedgwood's medallion, 'Am I Not a Man and a Brother?''. The inscription became one of the most famous catchphrases of British and American abolitionists. Credit: MPI/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC
0:35.4	Sounds.
0:36.4	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast here on the BBC World Service
0:47.4	with me Louise Adalgo. All this week we're looking back at events in
0:51.6	black history and today I'm bringing you the first of two programs on Britain's slave-owning past.
0:58.0	It wasn't until recently that researchers working in the National Archive in London discovered the extent to which ordinary people in Britain had been involved in the slave trade in the 18th and early 19th century.
1:10.0	Tomorrow one man tells us how that research helped him trace the family who'd owned his ancestors in Jamaica.
1:16.3	But today is the story of Britain's forgotten slave owners.
1:20.3	Masa baby wonk. Asa Bayh baby, war, kill a bea.
1:27.0	For 200 years, Britain had grown rich on the profits of slavery.
1:32.0	From 1698 onwards, British... had grown rich on the profits of slavery.
1:33.0	From 1698 onwards British merchants had shipped its believed 3 million people from Africa
1:39.0	to Britain's colonies in the Caribbean to work as slaves on British-owned sugar plantations.
1:44.3	There was a hugely lucrative trade and some of the glories of British architecture in cities like Bristol, Liverpool and Bath were built on the back of it.
1:57.0	Until finally in the early 1800s public opinion began to turn.
2:03.0	This slave system, even though it was 3,000 miles away, permeates Britain in a way that we have not collectively recognized in any way.
2:13.8	It was historian Dr Nick Draper who in 2006 170 years later would uncover in the National Archives
	...

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