Nelson and the Slave Trade
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2020
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson died at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. Recently there has been considerable interest in Nelson's views on the slave trade and the plantation economy of the West Indies. A letter of Nelson's written months before his death in 1805 to the infamous Jamaican slave owner Simon Taylor, was published years after his death in attempt to stop the abolition of the slave trade as the matter was before Parliament. Martyn Downer joined me on the podcast to discuss key phrases in the letter that were forged before publication to make Nelson appear even more virulently opposed to the abolition of the slave trade.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I have a welcome dance notes history on the 21st of October 1805, |
| 0:04.3 | Vice Admiral, Vy count Horatio Nelson, one of the most famous and celebrated naval |
| 0:09.7 | victories of all time. A complete annihilation of the French and Spanish fleet of Cape Trafalgar |
| 0:16.6 | in southwestern Spain, Nelson famously died at the battle and almost immediately was absorbed |
| 0:23.2 | into the pantheon of Great British martyrs. He became almost the patron saint of Empire |
| 0:29.8 | through the rest of the 19th century. Subsequently, Nelson's reputation has been gone over by his |
| 0:36.0 | drawings quite rightly. They have sought to actually uncover the man behind the myth for generations. |
| 0:41.8 | We've been asking questions of Nelson's correspondence, his actions and trying to get to the bottom |
| 0:46.8 | of his beliefs. Now, one of the great political questions of the late 18th or 19th century was the |
| 0:52.6 | abolition of the trade and enslaved Africans. Millions of enslaved Africans have been transported |
| 0:57.6 | across the Atlantic and European ships to work on what were fantastically productive sugar plantations, |
| 1:05.0 | making vast fortunes for their owners and of course seeing none of the economic benefit to |
| 1:11.8 | themselves at all. In Nelson's battle of time in the West Indies, he married someone from the white |
| 1:16.8 | planter society out in the West Indies and therefore his views on the slave trade in particular |
| 1:22.4 | and slavery itself have been a source of controversy. Recently, a letter that Nelson apparently wrote to |
| 1:29.9 | an infamous plantation owner Simon Taylor and Jamaica has been the subject of much debate by historians |
| 1:36.7 | and one of them, Martin Downer, has proved that key phrases, key elements of that letter were in fact |
| 1:43.8 | changed to make Nelson appear more virulently opposed to abolition, more pro slave trade if you like. |
| 1:51.2 | I got Martin Downer on the podcast, talk about his letters Nelson and the slave trade. |
| 1:55.7 | If you want to watch our program on documentary on Trafalgar, you can do so at history at TV. |
| 2:00.4 | Got quite a few documentaries about the Navy on there and indeed on the history of the slave trade |
| 2:06.6 | as well. If you want to go and do that, you go to history hit.tv, it's like Netflix for history. |
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