Postcolonial Derby: Privateers, Pieces of Eight and the Postwar Playhouse

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What connects a "double elephant" sized map, an academy of dissenters and Daniel Defoe? Shahidha Bari makes a virtual visit to the University of Derby's hub for the Being Human Festival 2020. Today the East Midlands city of Derby is often overlooked, but it was one of the powerhouses of the industrial revolution. Historians and archivists have been exploring Derby as a postcolonial city and uncovering its hidden past. We hear how an intricate set of world maps by the 18th-century cartographer Hermann Moll may have arrived in Derby and what they tell us about the city's relationship with the world. What light can the Mexican silver coins Arkwright used to pay his mill workers at Cromford shed on 19th-century global trade and piracy? And how did Derby's little theatre club formed after the Second World War give rise to a star of the British cinema, Alan Bates?

Shahidha Bari speaks to historians from the University of Derby; Dr Cath Feely, Professor Paul Elliot and Dr Oliver Godsmark. And we hear from Laura Phillips, Head of Interpretation and Display at Derby Museums. and Mark Young, Librarian at Derby Local Studies Library.

Being Human Festival: https://beinghumanfestival.org/

Other programmes in our Free Thinking New Research playlist includes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09fnz6t Lost and Found in the Archives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b6hk Love Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b082kwts What the Archives reveal

Producer: Ruth Watts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's
0:27.5	out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.4	Hello, the city of Derby is quietly nestled in the East Midlands.
0:35.9	But did you know that it's also home to 200-year-old
0:39.4	Mexican coins, 18th century world maps, and the archive of a great British movie star. In today's
0:46.4	Arts and Ideas program, we'll learn how focusing in on one city might illuminate much bigger global
0:52.4	histories. Join me, Shahed Abari, just after this.
0:56.8	Pst, do you like ideas? Big ones, satisfying ones, crunchy ones, ones that make you go,
1:04.1	oh, I like that, tell me more. My name's Matthew Sweet, and between you and me, the BBC Arts and Ideas
1:10.2	podcast is what you need.
1:11.9	We kind of do everything, really. We'll navigate Plath, Pankhurst, Derrida, we'll tell you what to do
1:17.4	on a date with Carrie Grant. We do the big questions about art, sex, death, democracy,
1:23.2	conservatism, colonialism and cows. And here's the thing, we like booking people who know what
1:29.0	they're talking about, so consider us a safe haven from the chancers and the renter gobs and the
1:34.8	I reckonistas. So click on us, the Arts and Ideas podcast. We can't guarantee satisfaction,
1:41.2	but we'll always strive to give you it, or the right kind of dissatisfaction.
1:46.7	Hello, Derby is a city of many fine things, from the porcelain of Royal Crown Darby to
1:52.8	paintings of the Industrial Revolution by Joseph Wright of Derby. It's home to cotton mills that
1:58.3	have become world heritage sites, and a computer game whose gun-toting heroine gives her name to the city's inner ring road.
2:05.6	Lara Croft Way, if you happen to be driving by.
	...

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