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Established | 23 August 2007 |
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Location | Albert Dock, Liverpool, England, United Kingdom |
Coordinates | 53°24′04″N2°59′35″W / 53.401°N 2.993°W |
Type | Slavery |
Visitors | 396,877 (2019) [1] |
Website | International Slavery Museum |
The International Slavery Museum is a museum located in Liverpool, UK, that focuses on the history and legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. The museum which forms part of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, consists of three main galleries which focus on the lives of people in West Africa, their eventual enslavement, and their continued fight for freedom. Additionally the museum discusses slavery in the modern day as well as topics on racism and discrimination. [2]
Originally part of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, which opened in 1980, the history of the slave trade was originally discussed as part of the city's maritime history shortly before a dedicated Transatlantic Slavery gallery was created in 1994 to better explore Liverpool's historic role in the slave trade. [3] Notable among campaigners for the establishment of an international slavery museum in 1992 was Dorothy Kuya. [4] By the early 2000s international interest in the exhibition and a high volume of visitors led to the decision for a museum specially dedicated to the history of slavery to be set up so as to better explain slavery and its legacy.
The new museum opened on 23 August 2007, the date of the annual International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition marking the beginning of the slave uprising in Saint-Domingue. The year 2007 was particularly significant as it was the bicentenary of the United Kingdom's Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished the slave trade (though not slavery itself) inside the British Empire. The Merseyside Maritime Museum used to house a Transatlantic Slavery Gallery. Phase 1 of the International Slavery Museum involved relocating current exhibitions to the third floor of the museum and adding new displays, which doubled the space dedicated to the subject.
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New displays incorporate the latest historical research but also cover wider issues of the legacy of transatlantic slavery, and its contemporary relevance. Topics such as freedom and identity, social justice and human rights, underdevelopment in Africa and the Caribbean, racial discrimination and injustice and the transformation of European, African and American cultures as a result of slavery.
The East Gallery features approximately 400 annotated songs pertaining to the experience of slavery and the music of Africa and the slave-descended African diaspora. [5]
National Museums Liverpool say the new gallery focuses on the experience of individuals, using the narratives of enslaved and those involved in the trade. They include a shrine to the ancestors of the enslaved as a quiet area for contemplation and reflection.
The second phase planned is the development of a new visitor-focused resource centre with an events programme of performance, public lectures and debate. The centre will have a research facility for visiting scholars to work and access to National Museums Liverpool's archive collections. A digital archive of material related to the transatlantic slave trade will be available.
To enable phase two of the project National Museums Liverpool has acquired the former Dock Traffic Office, which adjoins the Maritime Museum. The two buildings are to be linked. The Dock Traffic building was formerly occupied by ITV's Granada Television.
The museum was awarded £50,000 in March 2018 to buy and restore the painting 'Am Not I A Man and a Brother'. The painting dates from around 1800 and is based upon a design commissioned by the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The image is considered to be one of the first instances of a logo designed for a political cause, and was used on the pottery of Josiah Wedgwood. [6]
There is a section about life and culture in West Africa before the transatlantic slave trade, the history of slavery and also displays and special exhibitions about the legacies of slavery and current human rights issues.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved people around the world.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The outfitted European slave ships of the slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central and West Africa who had been sold by West African slave traders mainly to Portuguese, British, Spanish, Dutch, and French slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade.
Thomas Clarkson was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire. He helped found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended British trade in slaves.
The Merseyside Maritime Museum is a museum based in the city of Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is part of National Museums Liverpool and an Anchor Point of ERIH, The European Route of Industrial Heritage. It opened for a trial season in 1980 before fully opening in 1984 and expanding in 1986. The museum occupies warehouse block D at the Albert Dock, along with the Piermaster's House, Canning Half Tide Dock and Canning Graving Docks.
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. It was passed by Earl Grey's reforming administration and expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807 and made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company", Ceylon, and Saint Helena. The Act came into force on 1 August 1834, and was repealed in 1998 as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, later anti-slavery legislation remains in force.
The West Africa Squadron, also known as the Preventative Squadron, was a squadron of the British Royal Navy whose goal was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. Formed in 1808 after the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807 and based out of Portsmouth, England, it remained an independent command until 1856 and then again from 1866 to 1867.
Sylviane Anna Diouf is a historian and curator of the African diaspora. She is a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University and a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Her contribution as a social historian, she stressed, "May be the uncovering of essential stories and topics that were overlooked or negated, but which actually offer new insights into the experience of the African Diaspora. A scholar said my work re-shapes and re-directs our understanding of this history; it shifts our attention, corrects the historical record, and reveals hidden and forgotten voices."
Bristol, a port city in south-west England, was involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Bristol's part in the trade was prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries as the city's merchants used their position to gain involvement. It is estimated that over 500,000 enslaved African people were traded by Bristol merchants.
Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman occupation and until the 11th century, when the Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom, and all slaves were no longer recognised separately in English law or custom. By the middle of the 12th century, the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared, but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries.
The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is an international day celebrated August 23 of each year, the day designated by UNESCO to memorialize the transatlantic slave trade.
The organization Les Anneaux de la mémoire is an association under French law. Its objective is to make better known the history of the slave trade and slavery and their current consequences, in the perspective of making an experiment among many others, of work of memory whose theory remains to be done, in order to promote exchanges, balanced and equitable, between the societies of Africa, America and Europe. The Rings of Memory develop and implement exhibitions, publications, cultural actions at local and international level. Shared values and the search for scientific validity in its approach to historical, social and economic facts underlie all the association’s activities today. They are at the origin of multiple cultural actions, international conferences and symposia, publications, educational activities and numerous cultural and tourist development projects, in the framework of actions built with interlocutors from the three continents.
The Slave Route Project is a UNESCO initiative that was officially launched in 1994 in Ouidah, Benin. It is rooted in the mandate of the organization, which believes that ignorance or concealment of major historical events constitutes an obstacle to mutual understanding, reconciliation and cooperation among peoples. The project breaks the silence surrounding the slave trade and slavery that has affected all continents and caused great upheavals that have shaped our modern societies. In studying the causes, the modalities and the consequences of slavery and the slave trade, the project seeks to enhance the understanding of diverse histories and heritages stemming from this global tragedy.
Laurence Westgaph, is a political activist and television presenter, specialising in Black British history and slavery.
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is a museum in Montgomery, Alabama, that displays the history of slavery and racism in America. This includes the enslavement of African-Americans, racial lynchings, segregation, and racial bias.
George Case (1747–1836) was a British slave trader who was responsible for at least 109 slave voyages. Case was the co-owner of the slave ship Zong, whose crew perpetrated the Zong massacre. After the massacre, the ship owners went to court in an attempt to secure an insurance payout of £30 for each enslaved person murdered. A public outcry ensued and strengthened the abolition movement in the United Kingdom. In 1781, he became Mayor of Liverpool. After he died, the wealth generated by his slavery was bequeathed to the Case Fund by his grandson.
William Davenport was a British slave trader who was, by the number of ships disembarked, the single most prolific slave trader from the Port of Liverpool. He took part in 163 slaving voyages and his slave ships carried almost 40,000 enslaved Africans.
William Earle (1721–1788) was an English slave trader. In a career lasting 40 years he was responsible for at least 117 slave voyages and by the number of slave voyages he was the sixth most active slave trader in the period 1740–1790 from the Port of Liverpool.
Liverpool, a port city in north-west England, was involved in the transatlantic slave trade. The trade developed in the eighteenth century, as Liverpool slave traders were able to supply fabric from Manchester to the Caribbean islands at very competitive prices.
Thomas Earle (1754–1822) was an English slave trader. He was responsible for at least 73 slave voyages and alongside his brother he transported over 19,000 enslaved people. Of these 3,000 died on board his ships. One of his ships, Annabella, was seized by the British Crown for slave trading with the enemy. He was Mayor of Liverpool in 1787.
William Whaley was an English slave trader. He was involved in at least 22 slave voyages from the Port of Liverpool, and was one of the biggest slave traders in British America. He employed two of the biggest slave traders, William Davenport and William Earle, before they became slave traders.
Daniel Brown, "Songs of Slavery", Index on Censorship, Volume 36, Number 1, 2007, p. 138–140.