Britain's History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery

Book at Lunchtime seminar on Britain's History and Memory of
Transatlantic Slavery, edited and written by Ryan Hanley (Fellow in
History, University of Oxford). Transatlantic slavery, just like
the abolition movements, affected every space and community in
Britain, from Cornwall to the Clyde, from dockyard alehouses to
country estates. Today, its financial, architectural and societal
legacies remain, scattered across the country in museums and
memorials, philanthropic institutions and civic buildings, empty
spaces and unmarked graves. Just as they did in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, British people continue to make sense of this
‘national sin’ by looking close to home, drawing on local histories
and myths to negotiate their relationship to the distant horrors of
the ‘Middle Passage’, and the Caribbean plantation. This collection
brings together localised case studies of Britain’s history and
memory of its involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, and
slavery. Editor and author Ryan Hanley (Fellow in History,
University of Oxford) joins an expert panel to discuss these
essays, ranging in focus from eighteenth-century Liverpool to
twenty-first-century rural Cambridgeshire, from racist ideologues
to Methodist preachers, examining how transatlantic slavery
impacted on, and continues to impact, people and places across
Britain. Ryan will be joined by Bob Harris (Professor of British
History, University of Oxford), Padraic Scanlan (Assistant
Professor in International History, LSE and Research Associate in
History and Economics, Cambridge University). This event will be
chaired by Sebabatso Manoeli (Lecturer in African History,
University of Oxford)