Public lecture: A British family’s legacy of slave ownership, and its relevance today

Thursday 4 November 2021

4.00-5.30PM GMT

Wilberforce Institute, 27 High Street, Hull. HU1 1NE

Or join us by livestreaming on Microsoft Teams. Please click here to register and receive a link.

For other information contact

Cecile Oxaal: Alex Renton: Karen Okra

This talk will be given by Alex Renton, author of Blood Legacy: Reckoning With a Family’s Story of Slavery, and will include contributions from Cecile Oxaal and Karen Okra, who will both share details of their own family histories.

Alex’s ancestors were prominent Scots who were also slave holders in Tobago and Jamaica. In the excerpt below, Alex reflects on what he decided to do when skeletons fell out of his family cupboard. As he notes, it’s not easy to stuff them back in. When they’re 150 years old, and more, you might think they represent what police drama calls a cold case. But often the old crimes turn out to have much more relevance today than first appears.

Alex’s family’s cupboard was an archive store-room in the old house in Scotland where his grandparents lived. His grandfather was a historian, in charge of Scotland’s national archive for twenty years. At home he carefully curated the family’s own papers, which went back to the seventeenth century. Several of his books on Scottish history were based on them. But in the great mass of letters, diaries and accounts was a story that he never got around to telling, or that he decided was best left untold.

‘Like many old families in Britain, we grew up with a legend of our ancestors’ essential goodness. The men whose pictures hung on the walls of the old house had played their role in the management of the best empire the world had ever known, we learnt: a benevolent machine for civilising the greater part of the globe. But there was another, less pride-inducing side of the story. The first I knew of it was seeing, in my grandfather’s catalogue of the papers, the words ‘Tobago’ and ‘Jamaica’, again and again. His own grandfather had been a third generation plantation-owner: he had received £1.5 million in government compensation money in 1833 at abolition for ‘giving up’ the 198 enslaved people in Jamaica.

My family has glossed over this history, as my education did, as Britain has. This denial – of the 3.25 million Africans who were enslaved and transported, of the generations that were exploited and abused afterwards, and of what the 12% of GDP slavery-related industries meant to Britain in the early 1800s – is a crime that still toxifies Britain today.

It also acts to deny that the racism and inequality that afflicts our 21st century country has its roots in the story of British slavery and colonialism. I believe it is right for people like me, with the privilege of access to this history, and as beneficiaries of the wealth of slavery, to acknowledge it today. We cannot change the history, but – as Sir Geoff Palmer, campaigner in Scotland for acknowledgement of the country’s history in enslavement puts it – ‘we can still change the consequences’.

Alex will be joined by Cecil Oxaal who will talk about her family history, one of mixed heritage from wealthy white slaveholders. Karen Okra will also be sharing her family heritage. Together our speakers will offer three different but equally interesting perspectives on people in Britain with Caribbean histories.

For more information about Alex’s book go to www.bloodlegacybook.com

The Alderman Sydney Smith Annual Lecture – a brief history (Part II)

Part II: the end of the first phase of the Annual Lecture and its later re-inauguration

Emeritus Professor Michael E. Turner,

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull.

[email protected]

Tonight Professor Douglas Hamilton of Sheffield Hallam University will give our Alderman Sydney Smith Annual Lecture. If you haven’t yet signed up you can do so here where you will also find details of the lecture. Having given us the first part of his brief history of the lecture last week, Emeritus Professor Michael Turner concludes this week with a discussion of the end of its first phase, and its later re-inauguration.

Sydney Smith died in 1984 at the age of 99, but the annual lecture he founded in 1972 continued for another four years before coming at that point to an abrupt end. In October 1988 the Department of Economic and Social History was looking forward to welcoming Arthur Marwick, the flamboyant professor from the Open University, to deliver a talk, but he never came.

The 1980s saw quite considerable debate and sometimes unrest in the University sector. Many universities embarked on radical restructuring programmes in order to embrace some of the new technologies and subject areas that society would demand in the future. More traditional areas of learning came under attack as intellectual knowledge was no longer valued for its own sake. Universities embraced different ways to confront the more targeted funding provided by the conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher. More specialisation took place, for example, and the activities of so-called fringe subjects, especially languages, were discontinued. Members of staff moved to other universities where central funding for their activities was increased. The University of Hull lost Classics, Scandinavian Studies, Dutch Studies, and Russian, and in the sciences the Physics Department was lost. Some of these activities did return, but with much reduced activity. It was the attack on Philosophy which led to the redundancy of a specific lecturer, but it also served to ignite the fuse of revolt. Redundancy was not a word easily applied to the University sector and Hull became the first or at least the most prominent University to declare a redundancy. In consequence the AUT, the national Association of University Teachers, rallied to Hull’s cause and a boycott of all activity at Hull was declared. The impact was considerable. The University found it very difficult to recruit external examiners not only for undergraduate degrees but also to examine research theses. Colleagues were no longer invited to speak at external events, and external speakers cancelled their visits to Hull. Most significantly for our story here, Arthur Marwick cancelled his invitation to give the Annual Sydney Smith Lecture.

For whatever reason, the lecture was not reinstated once order had been restored, though the income from its investments grew nicely during the years of double-digit interest rates. In 2001 the Department of Economic and Social History was amalgamated with History. From 2004, however, the Wilberforce Institute began to take shape, under the three ‘WISE’ men who founded it, David Richardson, Michael (Mike) Turner and Gary Craig; it opened its doors late in 2006. Mike and David had both worked in the old Department of Economic and Social History, and so in 2009 they negotiated with the University to release the Alderman Sydney Smith endowment specifically to the Wilberforce Institute in order to re-inaugurate the lecture. It was a perfect match, a lecture in social and labour history but specifically devoted to slavery and all its exploitative labour connotations. To make this rebirth something to be remembered, the distinguished American historian, Professor Seymour Drescher, was invited from Pittsburgh in 2010. His credentials included books on slavery, antislavery, abolition and most controversially his Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (1977).

Later speakers included Professors Marcus Wood in 2011, Philip D. Morgan in 2012, Catherine Hall in 2013 and Verene A. Shepherd in 2014. In 2018, we welcomed Professor Jean Allain, a scholar of international law who helped draft the Bellagio Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery. Two of our former Directors have also given lectures – Professors David Richardson in 2016, and John Oldfield in 2020.

Over the years, the lecture has moved between the University Campus and the Wilberforce Institute. Last year Covid-19 forced John Oldfield to deliver his lecture using a virtual format, but this year we are planning once again to hold the Alderman Sydney Smith Annual Lecture in the Institute, with live-streaming of Professor Hamilton’s talk for those who cannot make it. We would be delighted to welcome you in person or inline.

Reproduced by kind permission of Hull History Centre

https://hullhistorycentre.org.uk/home.aspx

A21: Walk for Freedom in Hull

Saturday 16 October 2021, 11am

Sarah Colley, PhD student

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull.

Walk in single file! Quietly! Wear black!

Aren’t these the kind of instructions often given in schools?

Perhaps on occasion, but on Saturday October 16th this is the guidance we will be adopting on the Walk for Freedom, which is taking place this year in Hull for the first time. A21, the charity behind the walk, describe it as a silent protest against contemporary slavery. Its aim is to raise awareness that slavery still exists.

Those of us working or studying at the Wilberforce Institute strongly believe in social justice and the principle of freedom for all. Being next door to the birthplace of William Wilberforce, I have been constantly reminded that millions of people are still living in situations of contemporary slavery, such as forced labour, sexual exploitation, debt bondage and forced marriage. So, what can we as individuals do, when it feels that any action we take won’t make much of a difference to the 40 million people estimated to be in some form of slavery today?

Well, on one of A21’s awareness cards, it says “when we show up for the freedom of others, we show up for the world we want to see. A world where justice, human dignity, and freedom prevails. Your steps matter. Your voice matters. For those enslaved in your city, and around the world.” By walking here, or in a city close to us, or even by taking up A21’s virtual challenge, we can all play a part in learning more about slavery. And by having more discussions on the topic, by more people learning what to look out for and how to report it, I would argue we can all play our part.

We’d love to have you join us on the Hull walk, and this is not just a local event – we will be joining with people in walks organised in over 50 countries, in hundreds of locations across the world, all on the same day. So, what do you need to know about the Hull walk? I will try and answer the most common questions below, but feel free to email me if you have any other queries:

Where is the walk taking place?

We will be following a historic route around Hull, starting from the Wilberforce Monument and walking down Humber Street, along the marina, across the new Murdoch connection bridge, and through the city centre. Our walk will end in Queens Gardens, where Wilberforce will be atop his 90-foot column, looking down on us as we finish.

What time are we walking?

We are starting the walk at 11am and as it is a 2-mile route, it will take us around an hour to walk it. We are suggesting that everyone registers online, via the A21 website before October 16th, but we will be able to register people on the day, if preferred. Registration will be open by 10am.

Who is supporting the walk?

Raising awareness is always a team effort and huge thanks need to go to the amazing support offered by my colleagues and friends at the Freedom Festival, the Humber Modern Slavery Partnership and of course, those at the Wilberforce Institute. We are all passionate about doing whatever we can to raise awareness of the topic.

More about A21

For more information on A21, please have a look at their website: https://www.a21.org/ where you can read more about the charity and the work they do, and also find information on the walk and this year’s virtual challenges.

If you are concerned that someone might be held in slavery, forced labour or being exploited in other ways, you can always call the Police (999 or 111, depending on whether it is an emergency or not) or the Modern Slavery Helpline on 08000 121 700 or you can report or contact them online.

Hope to see you on October 16th!

Alderman Sydney Smith Annual Lecture: Enslaved revolt and the Royal Navy in the Caribbean, c. 1790-1832

Thursday 14 October 2021, 5.30PM – 7.30PM BST

Wilberforce Institute, 27, High Street, Hull. HU1 1NE

Or join us by livestreaming on Microsoft Teams

Professor Douglas Hamilton

Sheffield Hallam University

This year our Alderman Sydney Smith Annual Lecture will be given by Douglas Hamilton, Professor of History at Sheffield Hallam University. He is an historian of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic empire, with a particular interest in the Caribbean and slavery. He is currently working on two projects. The first is ‘An empire of islands’ funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council which explores how islands contributed to the establishment, extension, and maintenance of the British Empire in the Age of Sail. The second project assesses the role of the Royal Navy in eighteenth-century Caribbean society.

For this lecture, Professor Hamilton will focus on this second project, and he offers an abstract below of what he intends to cover.

While the actions of foreign navies and enemy privateers occupied the minds of naval officers, one of the gravest threats to the security of the British colonies in the Caribbean came from within. For a generation or more scholars have placed considerable emphasis on what Hilary Beckles has called ‘the 200-years war’ against enslavement, highlighting the role of the enslaved in their struggle for self-liberation. The actions of the Royal Navy as an instrument of the state to be used in suppressing revolt have received much less attention. Yet in virtually every major rising across the British Caribbean from the mid-18^th century, the Royal Navy was instrumental in securing victory for the colonial elite. The existing scholarship currently highlights the ways in which the navy blurred the lines between enslavement and emancipation and provided routes into freedom; this lecture makes plain the extent to which it helped Britain and the Caribbean planter class face down challenges to the system of enslavement.

For details of how to get to the Institute, or to livestream this event contact

Adolphe Duperly (1833): Destruction of the Roehampton Estate in 1832.

Conference: Modern Slavery and Climate Change

Monday 11 October 2021

Climate change and modern slavery are elements of a vicious circle. Natural disasters and slow degradation of the environment destroy traditional livelihoods and push people towards hazardous and exploitative work. Meanwhile, these exploitative and unregulated industries are often extremely polluting and high emitters of CO2.

This free online event, hosted by the Wilberforce Institute in partnership with Anti-Slavery International, brings together researchers and practitioners from around the globe to share their experiences and solutions to this vicious circle.

Join us online on 11 October 2021 by registering for your free ticket at: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/158716331821

Those taking part include speakers from Rainforest Alliance, Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery International, Rights Lab, Fundación Libera, International Institute for Environment and Development, and Confederación Nacional de Mujeres indígenas de Bolivia, among others.

Wilberforce Institute Debate: The Impact of Brexit – has this increased or decreased the risk of labour exploitation and modern slavery in the UK?

Tuesday 21 September 2021, 4PM – 6PM BST

As issues about the supply of goods and pharmaceuticals begin to bite in the wake of Brexit, Cristina Talens, Head of Business Risk Assessment Services in the Wilberforce Institute, will lead a major discussion about the impact of Brexit on labour exploitation and modern slavery. This webinar introduces a panel of experts, listed below, who are working at the forefront of identifying and tackling exploitative practices on the ground today.

Dame Sara Thornton – UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and chair of the Government Skills and Curriculum Unit Leadership Advisory Board. Dame Sara was Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police from 2007-2015 and the first Chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council from 2015-2019

Melville Miles – Head of Human Rights (Greencore) and Board Member of the Food Network for Ethical Trade

Darryl Dixon – Head of Gangmasters Licensing Authority single enforcement body

Shayne Tyler – Group Compliance Director at Fresca Group and Anti-Slavery Network Director

David Camp – Chief Executive of allianceHR Ltd and the Association of Labour Providers Ltd

This is not a discussion between academics. Cristina has assembled a stellar panel of experts from a diverse range of backgrounds from the Anti-Slavery Commissioner to police enforcement and experts in the areas of ethical trade and supply chains. Our speakers will be talking about the impact of Brexit on labour in the UK and the new risks companies need to be aware of with the sourcing of labour.

To sign up for this event please click on the link below:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7287658042180033552

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Wilberforce Institute Debate: Slavery in Massachusetts

Thursday 22 July 2021, 4PM – 6PM BST

Slavery was important everywhere in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, including in places like Massachusetts where the numbers of enslaved people were relatively small and the colonial economy was not directly based on enslavement. Slavery had been legally sanctioned in 1641, but just over a century later, according to the Massachusetts government’s own website, the population of the enslaved may have constituted little more than 2 percent of the total population.

What has drawn the recent attention of scholars however is not the number of the enslaved or their economic roles. The topic of Native American and African American slavery in Massachusetts has flourished following a series of important articles and books on a range of issues, from the rise and fall of slavery in Boston, to the life and works of Phillis Wheatley, the African American poet, to the question of why emancipation occurred, when it took place and how it happened during the American Revolution. This webinar introduces some of the major scholars who are contributing to this dynamic field – Jared Hardesty, Gloria McCahon Whiting and Margaret Newell – along with commentary from two very distinguished historians of New England and Canada – Mark Peterson and Charmaine Nelson. The speakers will reveal how important the question of slavery was in Massachusetts, despite the small number of the enslaved, and outline a range of historical opinion on slavery and emancipation in this fascinating British colony and American state.

To sign up for the webinar please click on the link below:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1007670936280116239

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

First slaves arrive in Massachusetts. Image at https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/first-slaves-arrive-in-massachusetts.html

Wilberforce Institute Summer Webinar: Windrush Day 2021

Tuesday 22 June 2021, 4pm – 5:30pm BST

On Windrush Day 2021 the Wilberforce Institute welcomes you, on behalf of partners across the City of Hull, to highlight Hull’s important migrant ties with the Caribbean at a free online event.

Chaired by Karen Okra, the panellists include Gifty Burrows (Founder of the Africans in Hull and East Yorkshire Project), Dr Nicholas Evans (Senior Lecturer in Diaspora at the University of Hull), and Catherine Ross and Lynda-Louise Burrell (Founders of Museumand, The National Caribbean Heritage Museum). Closing remarks will be provided by Councillor Aneesa Akbar, Portfolio Holder for Communities at Hull City Council.

This region’s links to the Caribbean are very strong. Planters from Hull and the surrounding region were among the earliest colonists settling Barbados in the first half of the seventeenth century; an early Governor of the Island emanated from Ryedale; Lincolnshire planter, Thomas Thistlewood, had a friend on Jamaica who came from Hull; and trade from the British West Indies arrived at the port of Hull from numerous islands including modern day Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, Haiti and St Kitts. More recently, during the Second World War thousands of RAF personnel from the Caribbean were based at nearby RAF Hunmanby.

It is therefore unsurprising that personal connections established over centuries encouraged people from the Caribbean to come and live, study, or work in our region after the Second World War to bolster Britain’s post-war labour shortages. It was a period often described as the Windrush Generation after the HMT Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex, on 22 June 1948, carrying passengers from the West Indies. Those coming to this region in the following decades included lawyer Sir Roy Marshall, who became the fourth Vice Chancellor of the University of Hull and the first black leader of any UK university; historian Sir Hilary Beckles, a triple graduate of the University of Hull and present Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies; and rugby captain Clive Sullivan, whose family originated in Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda.

The personal bond between both regions is the focus of a new £16,000 project funded by the UK Government’s Windrush Grant. Led by Hull City Council the partnership includes the University of Hull, Wilberforce House Museum, Hull Libraries, Hull Culture and Leisure Limited, Hull City Council, Museumand, The National Caribbean Heritage Museum and the Hull Afro Caribbean Association. It will draw upon the expertise of historians Professor Trevor Burnard and Dr Nicholas Evans from the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute.

To learn more about the ties the project seeks to highlight then please click on the link below to register for the webinar:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6896312166844011789

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

HMT *Empire Windrush*, source: http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//19/media-19146/large.jpg

Workshop: Sugar and Slaves on its 50th Anniversary

Monday and Tuesday 28-29 June 2021

Co-sponsored by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania and the Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PUBLICATION OF RICHARD S. DUNN’S SUGAR AND SLAVES: THE RISE OF THE PLANTER CLASS IN THE ENGLISH WEST INDIES, 1624-1713

The Wilberforce Institute is delighted to be co-hosting this major two-day workshop on Richard S. Dunn’s Sugar and Slaves with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Established as the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies in 1978, and renamed in honour of its benefactor Robert L. McNeil, Jr., in 1998, the McNeil Center facilitates scholarly inquiry into the histories and cultures of North America in the Atlantic world before 1850, with a particular but by no means exclusive emphasis on the mid-Atlantic region.

2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Dunn’s Sugar and Slaves, which has become one of the foundational books in the writing of Caribbean and Atlantic history. His highly evocative work opened up an entire field of study. Since its publication, historians have both deepened our understanding of subjects first developed in Dunn’s work and, inspired by his scholarship, have turned to new topics entirely.

The workshop will be based around pre-circulated papers, which will be forwarded to you soon after 7 June if you have registered. For the provisional programme see below.

For more information and to register for the workshop, please visit:

http://mceas.org/dunn.shtml

Monday 28 June 2021

Please note that all times are Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5; BST-5)

10:00-10:15 AM
Introduction and Welcome

Emma Hart and Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center and University of Pennsylvania

10:15-10:30 AM
Reflections on Sugar and Slaves, I:
Hilary Beckles, University of the West Indies

10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Session One The Environment:
Chair: Trevor Burnard, Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull

Mary S. Draper, Midwestern State University
“Winds, Lived Geographies, and Empire Building in the Seventeenth-Century British Caribbean”
Justin Roberts, Dalhousie University
“‘Corruption of the Air’: Disease and Climate Change in the Rise of English Caribbean Slavery”
Jordan Smith, Widener University
“‘The Native Produce of this Island’: Processes of Invention in Early Barbados”

12:00-1:00 PM
Lunch Break

1:00-2:00 PM
Session Two Other Contexts:
Chair: Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center and University of Pennsylvania

Peter C. Mancall, University of Southern California
“The First Age of Revolution”
Michiel van Groesen, Leiden University
“The Anglo-Dutch Lake? Johannes de Laet and the Ideological Origins of the Dutch and English West Indies”

Tuesday 29 June 2021

10:15-10:30 AM
Reflections on Sugar and Slaves, III:
Nicholas Canny, National University of Ireland, Galway

10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Session Four Economies:
Chair: Emma Hart, McNeil Center and University of Pennsylvania

Paul Musselwhite, Dartmouth College
“`Plantation’ and the Rise of Capitalist Agriculture in the Early Seventeenth-Century Caribbean”
Teanu Reid, Yale University
“Financial Life in the Tropics”
Nuala Zahedieh, Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull
“The progress of `King Sugar’ in early English Jamaica”

12:00-1:00 PM
Lunch Break

1:00-2:00 PM
Session 5 Slavery panel I: Origins
Chair: Alison Games, Georgetown University

Casey Schmitt, Cornell University
“‘They brought them from the Palenque’: Captivity and Smuggling in Jamaica, ca. 1660”
Holly Brewer, University of Maryland
“Not ‘Beyond the line’: Reconsidering Law, Power ad Empire in the origins of slavery in the Early English Empire”

2:00-2:30
Break

2:30-4:00 PM
Session 6 Slavery panel II: Runaways, Marronage
Chair: Sheryllynne Haggerty, Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull

Clifton Sorrell, University of Texas
“‘Ne Plus Ultra’: The Maroons and the Contested Conquest and Geography of Early Jamaica–– 1655-1690”
Simon P. Newman, University of Wisconsin
“The Barbados Planter Class and the Normalization of Slavery and Resistance in Restoration London”
Linda Rupert, UNC Greensboro
“Intertwined Geographies of Marronage and Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Circum-Caribbean”

4:00-4:15 PM
Reflections on Sugar and Slaves, IV:
Roderick McDonald, Rider University

4:15-4:45 PM
Wrap up, with remarks from Richard Dunn, University of Pennsylvania

Richard S. Dunn, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania, with two of his editions of *Sugar & Slaves*

Unfree labour in the Angolan coffee economy, 1830-1960

Wilberforce Institute Webinar, Thursday 20 May 2021, 4PM – 6PM BST

Dr Jelmer Vos

Lecturer in Global History

University of Glasgow

We hope you will join us for the last of our Wilberforce Institute Webinars for this academic year. On Thursday 20 May, at 4pm (BST), Dr Jelmer Vos of the University of Glasgow will share with us some of his latest research on the history of forced labour in Angola.

The first coffee estates in Angola using enslaved workers emerged in the 1830s. African smallholders long remained the dominant producers of coffee in this Portuguese colony, but in the 1930s and especially after World War Two settler production based on a system of forced wage labour expanded dramatically, making Angola one of the largest producers of robusta coffee in the world. Forced labour became a prominent feature of colonial life in Angola, and eyewitnesses and historians have long debated the continuities between this form of labour coercion and proto-colonial slavery.

This paper intervenes in this literature with three propositions. First, Angola differed from other colonial coffee economies where foreign planters played a dominant role (Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Kenya) as the Portuguese government, despite fierce international pressures, was unwilling to withdraw their support from the settler economy. Second, forced labour resembled ‘modern slavery’ as described by Kevin Bales, in the sense that the system treated African farm labour as ‘disposable’. Third, despite this, its roots lay not so much in proto-colonial slavery, but rather in the equally old system of compulsory porterage.

To sign up for this event please click on the link below:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6900012022283361804

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.