Original subtitles

Our country is proud of its history and heritage.

But, for nearly 250 years,

Britain profited and boomed on the back of a trade in human beings.

The slave trade.

In this programme,

I track down architecture and objects that tell the story of this

challenging period in our history.

Each one found in the west of England,

the British epicentre of this industry.

I ask the question,

should these objects be shown today as valid works of art

and architectural heritage,

or should they be hidden from view as shameful artefacts

of an era we best forget?

My name is Miles Chambers, and I'm Bristol's Poet Laureate.

I'm on a journey of discovery through objects and architecture,

and I'm going to write a poem along the way, reacting to what I find.

Naturally, words are important to me.

And if you, like me, live in Bristol,

it's hard to escape a word you see around you everywhere.

Colston.

Born in 1636, Edward Colston helped to create a golden age for Bristol.

A highly religious Merchant Venturer and philanthropist,

he brought huge amounts of wealth to the city.

Here, on Narrow Quay, his ships were stuffed full of cargo,

ready to set sail on trading voyages lasting many months at a time.

The Bristol merchants were so successful that during the 1730s

these docks overtook London and became the busiest in Britain.

Now covered over with roads and walkways, Colston's statue

stands in the very place where his ships once sailed for West Africa.

Edward Colston.

It says here, "Erected by the citizens of Bristol as a memorial

"of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of the city."

Interesting.

Interesting.

While Colston undoubtedly gave alms to the poor,

virtually all his money was made from the transatlantic slave trade.

This was part of the European-wide industry that traded

around 10 million human beings, all treated as cargo and sold

as slaves in the Americas, in the West Indies.

I am a product of that.

I have no real idea where my family came from in Africa.

My mother said she's Zulu and my father said Masai.

I doubt that.

But what I do know is my family ended up being taken to

Jamaica and sold as slaves to work on the sugar plantations.

The trade in slaves formed a triangle from England to

West Africa, and then to the West Indies and back.

While Bristol was at its apex,

many parts of the West Country made huge profits from the business.

Some eight miles down the River Avon is the village of Saltford.

Here, they manufactured the main currency of the slave trade - brass.

This is the last remaining mill from the time.

I've come to meet the curator...

..Tony Coverdale.

This is what you've come to see. Ah, right.

Everything in here would have actually been produced during

the slave trade?That's right. This mill started operation in 1723.

All right.And all these items were made here,

and these were made specifically to feature into that first leg of

the slave trade. So, let me show you this -

this is what's called a Guinea kettle, and this is typical of what

was made here.A Guinea kettle?

A Guinea kettle.Now, I'm going to guess why it's called

a Guinea kettle - because it's going to Guinea?Exactly.

And I'm holding it, and it's surprisingly very light.

It is, that's right. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc.

It's very thin. But that gives two things.

One is, by being so thin, that's part of the things that they wanted

in Africa.Right.But also you can see there are all these dimples,

which are the marks of the hammer, and that's where the hammer

struck the brass.Which was driven by the mill here?

Which was driven by the water power in the mill here.

They wanted to see that battery wear,

because that told you it was good quality brass.

Right, OK.If it was poor brass, the pan would have cracked.

In West Africa, the English merchants traded the brass items

with black African slave traders.

This was actually used as currency.

It was used as currency, yes.

For a human being?

Yes.A black African?

Yes. Bearing in mind that we're trading,

and what they wanted were things like pans like this.

There also were things called manillas which were used as coins.

These were stylised bracelets.

And I was told that in Guinea, if they saw a piece of brass

or a gold coin, they would take the brass and leave the gold coin.

Is that true?Exactly.

It's known as the red gold of Africa.

I hate to ask this, but I need to ask this.

How many of these would have been used to purchase a human?

We've got an inventory of a cargo going out to Africa, dated 1785,

and on that about 20 of those pans would buy a person.

Today's figures - that means we were buying a man for about £800,

selling him for about £3,600.

OK. So, it's just cold, hard business.

"This is my stock, this is how much I'm going to sell it for..."

Exactly."..this is my profit." That's right.And that's it.

But this is people.

Wow.

It's unbelievable to think that I've been discussing the value of

a person in pots, yet this beautifully hand-beaten

Guinea kettle was indeed a currency of the slave trade.

Slavery has existed for thousands of years, probably started in Africa,

and every empire that has ever existed has enslaved people.

Roman, Greek, Babylonian, Egyptian, Nubian.

But what made this slave trade different was the distinction

between race. It was about colour - you were black and African, you were

a slave, you were white and Western, you were the master -

and the devastation which happened because of that.

Once the brass pots from the mills and other items were traded,

the ships were filled with their human cargo...

..then transported across the Atlantic to the West Indies,

on a voyage that would take weeks.

Conditions were horrific.

Men, women and children packed in like cattle.

Many wouldn't survive the trip.

Bristol boomed and burgeoned on the back of the slave trade.

But it was in Bath, some 14 miles away,

that many of the profits were invested and enjoyed.

It's no coincidence that this beautiful Georgian city was built,

and had its heyday, during the height of the slave trade.

One of Bath's most famous residents was sugar plantation owner

William Beckford, who lived at this magnificent house

on Lansdown Crescent.

A colourful character,

the talk of the chattering middle-class residents of Bath,

he had a number of then-illegal gay affairs.

He was obsessed with building towers.

In 1826, he built what's now called Beckford's Tower.

It once housed part of one of the greatest collections of books,

furniture and art in Georgian England.

The artefacts are mostly gone.

It's this neoclassical folly I've come to see.

Dr Amy Frost, a senior curator from the Bath Preservation Trust,

knows more about Beckford's remarkable structure than anyone.

Oh, my goodness, there's a lot of steps! How far up does it go?

Well, Beckford wanted to get the best view he could,

and the best way to do that was from a tower.

So, he built it as tall as he could.

Sure.So, this is 120 foot high.

120 foot.Which means we have 154 stairs to go up.

154 stairs!

Oh! I don't need to go to the gym today.

The tower was designed by Henry Edmund Goodridge,

an architect who lived and worked in Bath.

Its cantilever staircase is a tour de force, perfectly symmetrical,

a work of art in itself.

How often did Beckford come up here?

So, he would come up every day.

Every day? He built it when he was 66,

he would ride his horse up from his house a mile down the road...

Right...and he would come up here and he would read,

look at his objects, and then he would walk back down his garden

just in time for breakfast.

But the main thing was that he could come up and look at this incredible

view, which you can now see.

And it is absolutely incredible, isn't it?

From this tiny room, Beckford gazed across this land,

sitting in splendid isolation, the lord of all he surveyed.

The Beckford that built this tower, he wasn't the first Beckford,

was he?No, he's the fourth generation of this sort of

huge Beckford dynasty.

The first Beckford went to Jamaica in 1661, and that's right

at the beginning of when the British have taken on Jamaica.

So, our Beckford's father's period, they had 13 sugar plantations.13?

Which then really made them the biggest landowners in the whole of

the West Indies.So, sugar, it's a luxury, or it was then?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's like a real luxury commodity.

Incredibly expensive to buy,

so, only the very best people could serve things made with sugar in it.

And, of course, they're producing sugar with free labour,

with slave labour, so... They don't have to pay wages.

Yeah, exactly. So, it's almost pure profit.

And it's an obscene amount of money, I mean, they are generating.

And to put that in today's money...

So, what are we talking about, billions?Just billions.

Billions, right.And it is the kind of wealth and extravagance of

a Russian oligarch today, how they live and what they spend it on.

And, at the height, the Beckford family - if you add, kind of,

all the uncles and brothers and cousins and nieces and everyone

together - I mean, the only fortune really that can rival the Beckford

family is the royal family, is the Crown.Right.

So, they're second only to the royal family?

An extraordinary amount of money. That's incredible.

And did he ever go to Jamaica?

Did he ever go there and see...?No. No, he never went.

He was groomed to be the gentleman,

and Beckford is a real absentee plantation owner.

I suppose that was his downfall, then?

Yeah. He never had that kind of control that his father had.

So, they start swindling him,

and the abolitionist movement starts to have

an impact, and, during all that time, Beckford is just spending.

He's building buildings, buying objects.

Eventually, by 1822, he's run out of money.

Really? That vast wealth?!

Yeah. The Beckfords were really the most powerful family on Jamaica,

and, certainly at their peak, they were the biggest plantation owners.

And that's about 3,000 slaves.

Mm. You know,

I'm sitting here listening to you and that is quite concerning,

because my family are from Jamaica, my ancestors.

And, if I go back generations,

I'm thinking it's pretty probable that some of them would have been

slaves on one of his plantations.

It's highly likely and, you know, for you, sitting here

in this building, I can't imagine what that feels like.

Yeah.

It's...

Yeah, disconcerting, a little.

We had to work to give him all this.

Mm.

I'm now left wondering if the things that I've seen,

these harsh reminders of the slave trade,

should be kept on public display.

Just eight miles north of Bath is Dyrham Park,

a National Trust estate once owned by William Blathwayt,

the colonial administrator

who oversaw all aspects of the slave trade.

Like William Beckford,

Blathwayt filled his opulent mansion with valuable art and collectables.

I've been told I might find two particular items from

this collection quite shocking.

National Trust volunteer David is going to show me.

Well, Miles, here are the Dyrham blackamoors.

Carved from wood, blackamoors - or black Muslims -

originated in Venice before becoming fashionable in Britain.

I...I think they're very...

..beautiful sculptures, in the sense that the costume they're wearing,

the way they're made, the colours.

But what offends me the most is the position of servitude,

the chains around the feet,

the implication of the chain around the neck.

Exactly how old are these?

They were made in London in 1670.

These artefacts were used, really, by the rich and affluent,

as holders of potpourri, sweetmeats and scent.

Right.And they would have been placed at the doors where

a party was being held, to show off their wealth.

I need to ask you, do you think these blackamoors

should be on display?

I do think that these blackamoors should be on display.Why?

They represent a mark, an insignia of slavery,

and an acceptance of slavery, in the context of their time.

They actually represent an ethos which embraced slavery

as a normal part of life.

And, despite the disturbing feelings that one has when one looks at them,

these feelings have got to be faced.

I think the National Trust are to be applauded for displaying these

fulsomely, without fear, in Dyrham Park,

before the many thousands of people that pass through this building

every year. It has to leave an impression on them.

Yeah.

The blackamoors have certainly left an impression on me.

I can understand why people, both black and white,

would want them swept under the carpet.

Yet, I can also see why these historical artefacts are important

reminders of the time.

While people liked to collect so-called Negro artwork,

the wealthy British also liked to own black servants,

slaves shipped over from the plantations to Britain.

At St Mary's Church in Henbury, just outside of Bristol is a slave grave

of a young servant called Scipio.

This ornately decorated tombstone is unique,

showing he was held in high regard by his master.

Today, I'm meeting Bristol historian and good friend Dr Edson Burton.

Well, not much is known about the life of Scipio Africanus...

Right...prior to, you know,

his death and his early life in the Caribbean.

But we know that, of course, he was the servant to the Earl of Suffolk.

So, aristocratic families would often take a slave with them,

from the Caribbean to Britain.

And that was partly showing off your wealth.

So if you're involved with sugar and you were signalling that you were a

sugar magnate - imagine the sort of major dot-com industry of the time -

you'd have a black slave.Right.

And Scipio Africanus - it's Latin taxonomy, isn't it?

What often is the case is that people gave their enslaved Africans

these ornate, grand Latinate names.

But imagine that whatever his original name was,

that had been removed and erased,

and, instead, he was named like flora and fauna.

It's very difficult to get into the mind-set of the 18th century,

and what you have is the beginnings of racialising people

as being different.Right.

Right. I want us to come round here. I know you've seen it before, but...

..we've got his footstone.

These words concern me.

"I was born a Pagan and a slave,

"now sweetly sleep a Christian in my grave.

"What tho' my hue was dark,

"my saviour's sight shall change this darkness into radiant light."

The complexity here is that you've got a play on colour and difference

that is used by people who thought of Africans as inferior.

Blackness is seen as problematic.

People, on the one hand, clearly seemed to adore him,

and, at the same time, saw him as a different kind of human.

What's captured here is a sense that Scipio needs to become another

person, he needs to become white in order to enter into humanity.

Scipio's grave illustrates to me that the concept of racism as we

know it today was born, and really created, from the slave trade.

I grew up in Wiltshire.

I would say every day I was reminded of the colour of my skin.

And I actually believed that there were certain jobs which blacks did,

and certain jobs which whites did.

There were certain limitations to my blackness.

And I remember my first trip to Jamaica - I was 19.

I was just blown away. Everyone was black.

That illustrated, yes, I can be a lawyer, I can be a doctor.

I could be a poet, or even the first black Poet Laureate.

It was many years after Scipio's death that people started to

campaign for the abolition of slavery.

The movement created an iconic artefact to build social awareness

for their cause.

I've come to see one of these precious pieces kept at

the M Shed in Bristol.

Sue Giles is senior curator for the Bristol museums.

Lovely to see you. So, what's this?

This is what's called a slavery medallion, or a slavery plaque.

Fantastic.And, 1780s, the abolition movement was finally gathering pace,

and the Society For The Abolition Of The Slave Trade was established.

And, 1787, this was produced as

the sort of slogan and the logo of the society.

Can I hold it?You can. You'll have to put a glove on.

Oh, right. I hope this is big enough because I've got big hands.

Right.Perfect.

OK. So there you are.

Ah.

So what's it made from?

It's made of what's called jasperware.

Wedgwood had been experimenting for years,

trying to copy Chinese porcelain,

and, so, jasperware was his sort of version of porcelain.

So, Josiah Wedgwood, as in Wedgwood the famous pottery designer?

Yeah. He was a strong supporter of the abolition movement and he helped

to publicise it by making these pieces, fired in the kilns, whenever

there was a gap to fit them in amongst all the other stuff,

and then they were distributed, I think for free.

So, what would you have done with it?

Well, this one obviously has been made into a picture.

Oh, right. So it's not like a medallion that you'd wear, you know,

a bit like Mr T? No, not quite that flash.

OK.

But other people might make them into a brooch or a hatpin.

You could also have it inlaid into something like a little snuffbox,

so, when you offer your friend some snuff,

they can see that you're a supporter and you start the conversation.

What concerns me is you see an image of a kneeling black man.Yeah.

And appealing to the white middle-class powers that be

to free him.It is a very passive image, but also

it's what society needed to appeal to people in Britain.

So, this would've been like the first form of a fashion accessory

that supported a cause?Yeah.

I think the Society For The Abolition Of The Slave Trade was

the first major public campaign,

and the idea that you get everyone involved by wearing something

that shows what they believe in.

In 1807, the act to abolish the slave trade was finally passed in

Parliament, stopping the legal transportation of slaves.

But slave ownership was allowed to continue in the West Indies

until 1834. Even then the plantation owners received compensation

for the loss of their slave labour.

Nathaniel Wells, who lived here on Park Street in Bath,

owned plantations in St Kitts, but, extraordinarily,

he was the son of a black slave.

Dr Olivette Otele from Bath Spa University has brought me here.

Hello...And the Gardner family have given us privileged access

to their home.

What can you tell me about his earlier life?

Well, his mother was an enslaved woman, and his father was a Welshman

who was born in Cardiff and who had three plantations in St Kitts.

Three?Yes, in the West Indies.

So, Nathaniel ended up being one of his father's favourites.

He talks about his "natural and dear son Nathaniel, who was born,

"whose mother was called Juggy."

And the relationship between the mum and the father is quite

a contentious one because most women in plantations were raped.

So, it wasn't really a relationship. It was a subjugated relationship.

But Nathaniel grew up as a free young child because...

He was free?Well, actually,

his father freed him when he was four years old.

So, when the father died, Nathaniel inherited the three plantations,

plus a huge amount of money.

£120,000, which in today's money is around £6 million.

£6 million?

Yes, and he was only 15.

So, Olivette, when the plantation owners had to free their slaves

because of the abolition of slavery, am I right in thinking that

they got compensation?Yes, they did, and in today's money it's

something like 2 billion because they actually lobbied Parliament

and claimed that they were losing their property and their livelihood.

That's an incredible pay-out.

Yes, it is.And, so, am I right in assuming that Nathaniel Wells

would've received compensation?Yes.

Nathaniel received £1,400 and nine shillings,

which in today's money is roughly £62,000.

How do you think it was possible...

..that he could own slaves?

Well, he probably didn't see himself as a black person.

He was raised as a gentleman.

He probably identified with the white elite because, indeed,

he was highly educated and he had a lot of money, which means

that he completely accepted the kind of slave society he lived in

and he was born in.So, what you're saying is that, in that sense,

it wasn't about race - it was about class, it was about prestige,

it was about power, about position. And he was born and groomed into

that from day one?He was absolutely groomed into that, but we still

have to remember that this was a society also based on race,

because let's remember that enslaved Africans were black.

The rape of black female slaves was normal on the plantations.

And, like so many others from the West Indies,

I know I have white genes in my bloodline.

In Bristol, it's interesting to see how little public recognition

there is for the slaves who built the wealth of the West Country.

There is only one slave who's been given public recognition.

His name is Pero Jones.

A slave from the West Indies who became a servant here,

in the Georgian House.

In 1999, this bridge was built in the heart of the city.

It's called Pero's Bridge.

This is a really apt place to stop and think.

To think about the journey I've been on, to think about what

I've seen that has made the slave trade more vivid and more real.

The emotions I've felt that made it more raw.

Should these objects be shown?

Yes. It's a part of our history, but, more importantly...

..it's a part of our future...

..as a constant reminder, lest this should ever happen again.

So, we've completed the triangle, back to the place where

Colston's ships were unloaded of their bittersweet cargo,

ready to set sail again for West Africa.

His name is still around me everywhere,

but maybe, when the Colston Hall is renamed in 2020,

Bristol will grasp the opportunity to create a lasting tribute to those

who suffered for the slave trade.

What shall we do with these West Country artefacts

Aspects of a shameful history

Pummelled brass indentations on callous bases

Bartered for innocent souls

Wrists, weighted with currency made from unsympathetic bolts

An eclectic tower boasted a view of sweet opulence

As far as the eye can see

Offensive, submissive figurines

Why are you called Moor?

A bright, white grave for a dark black boy made pure

Medallions of abolition begging for liberty

A slave empire run from a house in Bath given to an unusual viceroy

A fortune given to a black slave master when he was just a boy

We should show them, but don't celebrate them

A reminder of what we did in the past

Of how we treated each other in pursuit of greedy wealth

Lest we forget

Lest history repeat itself.