Wednesday,
October 8, 2003 12:14
Slavery in Southampton |
|
|
 |
| Chains
- the symbol of slavery |
|
|
The
South Coast's martime past is usually associated with naval adventurers
and great liners, there is
a side to our past not previously found in the school textbooks -
Southampton's links with the infamous slave trade. |
|
|
|
|
The
city has not previously had a reputation as a centre of slavery -
compared with ports like Bristol and Liverpool which had their prosperity
built on trading black slaves from Africa.
 |
| Exhibit
of a slave ship |
However
students from the University of Southampton's Archaeology Department
have trawled through the archives looking for details of the city's
involvement in slavery.
Their
work was originally put on show at the Tudor House Museum as a special
exhibition called 'Bought and Sold - Southampton's Links with the
Slave Trade' in 2001.
Although the students found no evidence of actual slaves passing
through the port of Southampton, many of the sailors and ships based
here went on to transport slaves from Africa to sugar plantations
in the Caribbean or cotton fields in the USA.
 |
| Rev
Thomas Atkins |
They
have also found that some prominent slave owners did come from Southampton
- Thomas Combes and John Morant owned plantations as far afield as
Sumatra in present-day Indonesia, and the West Indies. They also treated
their slaves with varying degrees of kindness and contempt - some
giving them land, others using brutal punishments.
The exhibition, which is on show at BBC Broadcasting House, tracks
the slaves progress. Packed 'one to a ton', life on board the slave
ships was far from pleasant, most would have died on the long voyages.
 |
| A
barrel of slave-produced coffee |
Most of
the material was found in local archives, although some potential
donors still did not want to publicly reveal their ancestors role
in such a discredited trade.
The slave trade also added to the city's landscape - All Saints Church
was the last resting place for several slave owners - presumably they
would have donated some of the profits of their slave trade to the
church.
| "He
who is not an enemy to slavery, is a slave himself."
|
| Rev
Thomas Atkins from Southampton, 1830 |
There
were some redeeming features when it came to the city's slave connections
however - some Southampton men were leading figures in the campaign
to get the slave trade ended. Joseph Clark, Edward Palk and Rev Thomas
Atkins were all involved in the campaign to bring slavery to an end
in the 19th Century.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
