Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership
The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership is a research centre of the University College, London which focuses on revealing the impact of British slavery and, in particular, the implications of the Slave Compensation Act 1837. It is based on "two earlier projects based at UCL tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain: the ESRC-funded Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, and the ESRC and AHRC-funded Structure and Significance of British Caribbean Slave-ownership 1763-1833 "
Staff
Its inaugural director was Nick Draper and its chair Catherine Hall; other key researchers were Keith McClelland and Rachel Lang. In June 2020, amidst the international George Floyd protests and the Covid-19 pandemic, Professor Matthew J. Smith, formerly of the University of the West Indies, took over the directorship.Draper and Hall argue that the central purpose of the Legacies database is to counter "selective forgetting", whereby society forgets the human cost of slavery but celebrates its abolition.
The database
The Centre's work is freely available online to the public through the Legacies of British Slave-ownership database. This database aims to record all those individuals who were recompensed by the British state at the abolition of slavery in 1833. This flow of money was, as the title of the project indicates, to the slave owners, and not to the newly freed individuals: the liberation of the slaves was treated legally as the expropriation of their masters. A very large sum was paid by the British state to thousands of its subjects; most of the erstwhile owners received compensation for only one or a handful of slaves, but a small number of families owned large plantations with hundreds or even thousands of enslaved workers, and so received substantial amounts of money.The project builds on a wider re-examination of Britain's links to slavery and its abolition, some of which was stimulated by the 2007 bicentenary of the Slave Trade Act 1807. For example, English Heritage held a conference on "Slavery and the British Country House: mapping the current research" in 2009. The papers were compiled into a book of the same title, with an opening chapter to set the scene by Nicholas Draper describing the legacies project, then in embryo. Madge Dresser's introduction acknowledges that "Academic research takes time to feed through into the public domain, where such links had so often been either studiously ignored or actively repressed." Compensation money was received by the owners of "well-known sites of slave ownership such as Dodington Park... the National Trust’s property at Greys’ Court... and Brentry House in Gloucestershire", not far from the slave port of Bristol.
The research upon which the Legacies database is based revealed that some 46,000 Britons received compensation under the Slave Compensation Act 1837. The Slave Compensation Commission established a sum equivalent in today's money to about 17 billion pounds, the largest payout until the bailout of the banks in 2008.
As Hall has stated, beneficiaries of slavery were not only people who owned slaves, but also those whose business dealings derived benefit from slavery. This includes the engines of the Industrial Revolution such as sugar processing and textile manufacture.
One of the purposes of the legacies project is to research how the families spent their compensation. Some of the money went to pay for the education of sons and grandsons and to consolidate their professional and political power:
Money was also invested in the Railway Mania of the 1840s and in the factory system. "As well as paying for the building of dozens of country houses and art collections, the money also helped fund railways, museums, insurance companies, mining firms, merchants and banks."
Many notable people, including former Prime Minister David Cameron and actor Benedict Cumberbatch, are decedents of people who benefited from slavery. Many slaveholders and beneficiaries of slavery are recognised in the United Kingdom through public honours.
Slavery generated immense wealth. For example, the London business district known as the Isle of Dogs, where the three West India Docks were built, arose from speculation in the slave trade. Another example is New Town, Edinburgh.
Impact
The Centre and its easily accessible database have attracted significant attention, globally, within academia as well as the news media.United Kingdom
, High Commissioner of Barbados, compared the project to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, run by the Emory Center for Digital ScholarshipA two-part television programme, Britain's Forgotten Slave-owners, was broadcast by the BBC to accompany the public launch of the project. It was presented by the historian David Olusoga and won a BAFTA award and the Royal Historical Society Public History Prize Winner for Broadcasting.
Organisations which existed at the time of slavery have begun to examine their histories and search for any connections. For example, the University of Glasgow launched an enquiry to understand the impact of slavery on the institution. A number of business still in existence have been shown to have benefited from slavery: "Among the names the UCL project has turned up are the Bank of England, Lloyds, Baring Brothers and P&O."
Australia
The Centre's work has been considered by scholars, including Catherine Hall, Humphrey McQueen and Clinton Fernandes, in relation to Australian colonial history. The Legacies database revealed numerous connections to slavery that had previously been overlooked or unknown. For example, the colony of South Australia may owe its existence to slavery finance, through George Fife Angas and Raikes Currie, who gave large sums of money without which the colony would not have been created in 1836. This body of research generated media attention. Another Australian state, Victoria, has been shown to have had many former slaveholders and beneficiaries of slavery in its history, a number of whom are recognised in public honours, including place-names and statuary.The Australian Dictionary of Biography has been criticised for its failure to mention connections to slavery in the biographical entries of notable Australians. However, the ADB is currently undergoing a review that aims to address this - and other - deficiencies.