Chains
- the sign of enslavement
Southampton's past comes under the spotlight with an exhibition on
the city's involvement in the 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.
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| 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 is now on show at the Tudor House Museum as a special
exhibition called 'Bought and Sold - Southampton's Links with the
Slave Trade'
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.
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| Maps
of plantations on show |
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 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 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.
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| 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.
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| Rev
Thomas Atkins from Southampton, 1830 |
There were some
redeeming features when it came to the city's slave involvement -
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.
The exhibition is on at the Tudor House Museum in Southampton until
March 11th.
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