On the Spot: Nicholas Radburn
‘Who is the most underrated person in history? Olaudah Equiano. His resilience in the face of adversity was phenomenal.’
Slavery & Abolition
Zambi of Palmares is Beheaded
On 20 November 1695, Zambi of Palmares – ruler of an ‘invincible’ community of former slaves in the Brazilian jungle – was killed by the Portuguese.
Scotland Too
Scotland’s profiteering and complicity within the British Empire’s transatlantic slave trade.
Frederick Douglass on Tour
When the abolitionist author visited Britain and Ireland in 1845 he was celebrated in poems and songs wherever he went. Arriving as an enslaved man, he left with his freedom.
Contrabands of War
A new term inadvertently changed the way people thought about runaway slaves.
The Man who Haunts America
John Brown, the abolitionist firebrand, remains a potent figure in the United States’ febrile politics of race.
America’s Western Problem
Indigenous peoples in the West of the United States continued to be held in bondage long after the abolition of plantation slavery in the South.
Victorian Britain’s Culture War
The abolition of slavery was only the beginning of a culture war on race and empire that divided the intellectual classes of Victorian Britain.
Liverpool’s Slave Trade Legacy
Once the slave-trading capital of Britain, the memory of Britain’s empire of enslavement remains visible in Liverpool’s public buildings and streets.
Slaves and Indians
Europeans did not introduce slavery to North America – although they did change the way it was practised.