The Society of Merchant Venturers is a charitable organisation in the English city of Bristol.
Bristol Harbour is the harbour in the city of Bristol, England. The harbour covers an area of 70 acres. It is the former natural tidal river Avon through the city but was made into its current form in 1809 when the tide was prevented from going out permanently. A tidal by-pass was dug for 2 miles through the fields of Bedminster for the river, known as the "River Avon New Cut", "New Cut", or simply "The Cut". It is often called the Floating Harbour as the water level remains constant and it is not affected by the state of the tide on the river in the Avon Gorge, The New Cut or the natural river southeast of Temple Meads to its source.
Edward Colston was an English merchant, slave trader, philanthropist, and Tory Member of Parliament.
Scipio Africanus was a former slave born to unknown parents from West Africa. He was named after Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the famous Roman general who defeated the Carthaginian military leader Hannibal.
Robert Milligan was a Scottish merchant, ship-owner and slave trader who was the driving force behind the construction and initial statutory sectoral monopoly of the West India Docks in London. From 1768 to 1779 Milligan was a merchant in Kingston, Jamaica. He left Jamaica in 1779 to establish himself in London, where he got married and had a family of eight children. He moved to Hampstead shortly before he died in 1809. By the time of his death, one of Milligan's partnerships had interests in estates in Jamaica which owned 526 slaves in their sugar plantations.
John Cassidy was an Irish sculptor and painter who worked in Manchester, England, and created many public sculptures.
The Georgian House is a historic building at 7 Great George Street, Bristol, England. It was originally built around 1790 for John Pinney, a wealthy sugar merchant and slave plantation owner, and is now furnished and displayed as a typical late 18th century town house. The period house museum includes a drawing room, eating room, study, kitchen, laundry and housekeeper's room. There is also a small display on slavery and sugar plantations. The Georgian House has been a branch of Bristol City Council since it was presented to the city as a museum in 1937.
Bristol, a port city in the South West of England, on the banks of the River Avon, has been an important location for maritime trade for centuries.
The Engineers House is a historic building, previously known as Camp House, on The Promenade, Clifton Down, Bristol, England. It has been designated as a Grade II* listed building.
M Shed is a museum in Bristol, England, located on Prince's Wharf beside the Floating Harbour in a dockside transit shed formerly occupied by Bristol Industrial Museum. The museum's name is derived from the way that the port identified each of its sheds. M Shed is home to displays of 3,000 artefacts and stories, showing Bristol's role in the slave trade and items on transport, people, and the arts. Admission is free.
The Centre is a public open space in the central area of Bristol, England, created by covering over the River Frome. The northern end of The Centre, known as Magpie Park, is skirted on its western edge by Colston Avenue; the southern end is a larger paved area bounded by St Augustine's Parade to the west, Broad Quay the east, and St Augustine's Reach to the south, and bisected by the 2016 extension of Baldwin Street. The Centre is managed by Bristol City Council.
Marvin Rees is a British Labour Party politician who served as the second and final Mayor of Bristol from 2016 to 2024.
John Pretor Pinney was a plantation owner on the island of Nevis in the West Indies and was a sugar merchant in Bristol. He made his fortune from England’s demand for sugar. His Bristol residence is now the city's Georgian House Museum.
Charles Pinney was a British merchant and local politician in Bristol, England. He was a partner in a family business that ran sugar plantations in the West Indies and owned a number of slaves. Pinney was selected as mayor of Bristol in 1831 and within weeks had to manage the response to major riots. Public order was lost for a number of days and significant damage caused to the city centre. Pinney was charged with neglect of duty over his actions but was acquitted at trial. He returned to local government as an alderman, holding the position until 1853.
The statue of Edward Colston is a bronze statue of Bristol-born merchant and trans-Atlantic slave trader Edward Colston (1636–1721). It was created in 1895 by the Irish sculptor John Cassidy and was formerly situated on a plinth of Portland stone in a public space known as The Centre in Bristol, until it was toppled by anti-racism protestors in 2020.
A number of statues and memorials were the subject of protests and petitions during the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom in 2020.
A Surge of Power 2020 is a 2020 black resin sculpture, sculpted by Marc Quinn and modelled on Jen Reid; both Quinn and Reid are credited as artists. It depicts Reid, a black female protester, raising her arm in a Black Power salute. It was erected surreptitiously in the city centre of Bristol, England, in the early morning of 15 July 2020. It was placed on the empty plinth from which a 19th-century statue of Edward Colston, who had been involved in the Atlantic slave trade, had been toppled, defaced and pushed into the city's harbour by George Floyd protesters the previous month. The statue was removed by Bristol City Council the day after it was installed.
Jen Reid is a British Black Lives Matter activist from Bristol. After the statue of Edward Colston was pushed into Bristol Harbour, Reid stood on the empty plinth and made a Black Power salute. This pose was then recreated in the sculpture A Surge of Power 2020.
R v Rhian Graham, Milo Ponsford, Jake Skuse and Sage Willoughby, known as the Colston four, was a British court case surrounding the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston, involving four defendants accused of criminal damage in relation to the removal and dumping in the canal of the controversial statue in Bristol in 2020 during a protest.
Frances Coker was born enslaved on Nevis. She was a domestic servant to John and Jane Pinney of Nevis in the West Indies and Bristol, England. She was manumitted (freed) in 1778, after which she continued to work for the Pinney family as a free woman. In Bristol she lived at 7 Great George Street, the Pinneys' house. As Jane Pinney's maidservant Coker travelled widely in England as well as revisiting her family in Nevis.
