John Dennen
posted 15 June 2007

How should museums and galleries approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade? Can we learn moral or political lessons from commemorations? A knowledge of the past helps us to understand where we came from, how we behave and where we are likely to go. So yes, historical parallels can serve to illuminate a point, but the danger is that, if inaccurate, they are misleading.

David Miles, an archaeologist who works with English Heritage and is the author of Tribes of Britain, opened the debate. The past is not a pleasant or comfortable place, he said, and slavery was a normal condition for past societies. He also pointed out that slavery itself can be an ambiguous issue, which most people do not appreciate. Recently a logbook from Roman London was discovered that detailed a slave, who was owned by a slave, buying himself a slave. There is a tendency to see white people as wielding all the influence. In West Africa, some Ghanaians were partners in the slave trade. Africans are consistently depicted as suppliants, though some were also sinners. And in fact, it was Catholic Irish who were first transported to the West Indies as slaves. Resistance to enslavement was also normal. Ten per cent of ships saw major revolts, similarly so on land. Miles concluded that although anniversaries are artificial constructs, they give us a chance to talk and to do something about it.

Josie Appleton, the convener of the Manifesto Club, commented on the loaded tone of the current commemoration of abolition. She agreed that using this year to understand museums’ objects would be good. But this commemoration seems more akin to a jubilee. She was suspicious of the national co-ordinating committee, headed by politicians like David Lammey and John Prescott. She also commented on the vast amounts of arts funding being poured into exhibitions on the slavery theme. She believed some of these links were tenuous, citing the examples of the National Museum of Wales holding an exhibition on copper in order to demonstrate Wales’ links to the slave trade. The Natural History museum had an exhibition on plants, claiming that enslaved people were empowered by the knowledge of plants. Appleton, of course, shared our moral revulsion at slavery but questioned the need for this vast amount of money to be spent on a national slavery festival. She believed it was an attempt to re-establish authority and that museums were orchestrating their own confessionals.

There was much dispute as to Wales’ actual role in slaving. Maurice Davies, deputy director of the Museums Association, thought it was perfectly valid for the National Museum of Wales to host such a display. He thought that the commemoration was good in itself and good for galleries. He denied that the National Trust was a New Labour stooge. The commemoration rather presented museums and galleries an opportunity to expand their research of objects and places. They have also had to bring in outside experts on an unprecedented scale, which enriches museums. Davies also believes that it is perfectly possible to make appropriate links to contemporary concerns. A presentation of the Atlantic slave trade can introduce you to unfamiliar issues, like modern trafficking and cheap labour. According to Davies, there is a legitimate historical parallel here, in the way we benefit from an immoral trade. He also disputed the idea that objective analysis of the past is compromised by these modern comparisons.

Dr Mike Phillips, a historian and cross-cultural consultant at the Tate, picked up on this point. He thought it eccentric to talk about the commemoration destroying history because this talk of objectivity was taking place in an atmosphere of omission. He agreed that some aspects of the commemoration made him uneasy. But he did not agree with Appleton’s depiction of the government’s orchestration of the commemoration. Their committee did very little and had nothing to do with the exhibition at the National Gallery and the Tate. He said that these huge sums had been planned a long time previously and that the reasons it was so easy for museums and stately homes to find links with slavery is because they’re there, they’re part of the history of those regions. It is more embarrassing that they have neglected a fundamental part of their own history. Dr Phillips argued that ignoring and evading these issues is bad for society. The commemoration is a small stage in looking at what Britain was and what it did. It is not enough just to claim that we live in more enlightened times. It is worth knowing the differences and how we got from there to here.

One of the main points of disagreement in the debate was whether the way museums and galleries have responded to the 200th anniversary of abolition was a top-down phenomenon. Representatives of the English Heritage and the National Museum of Wales in the audience denied that this was the case. Josie Appleton maintained otherwise and neither side seemed particularly swayed by the other. I think the root of the disagreement here was based on the interpretation of the past through the prism of the present. Appleton thought that this was a fundamentally problematic approach. She insisted that the arguments in favour of what she called a ‘guilt-fest’ were all couched in the language of therapy, in the way they suggested that it was about confronting or facing up to the past and was an opportunity for reconciliation. It was Appleton’s view that this was a problem for an analysis of history. In this sense a moral homily does not help one to understand the past, or to understand what was wrong in the past or what is wrong in the present. It is an act of moral laziness to reach for that metaphor when trying to say why we should treat people well. Instead of coming up with a trite historical analogy, it is necessary to make a moral point.

These struck me as being good arguments but I was not convinced that they were being levelled at the right target. Dr Phillips concurred that in a sense the government did try to hijack the commemoration. John Prescott, for example, crassly attempted to link himself to Wilberforce. But if there was a change in curatorial practice, Dr Phillips suggested that curators were responding to the society of which we all are a part. Reflecting the environment becomes part of what they do.

However all the arguments presented needed to be unpacked and no one was really engaging with the other points of view. Appleton’s main point was that an obsession with modern mores clouds an understanding of the past. Phillips argued that using new aspects to unlock history opened up new kinds of knowledge. Maurice Davies claimed that a knowledge of history, and of slavery in this instance, helped to shed light on our modern world.

Davies argued that this commemoration helps to show up modern forms of slavery, like the human trafficking of Eastern European prostitutes. Appleton disputed this, saying that exploitation was different to coercion, but her claim that these women chose this needed more explanation and certainly lost the hearts of the floor. But Davies in turn had to launch into a reasonably long explanation as to why this historical parallel was valid. But having to do this, I would suggest, defeated his own point. Historical parallels are tricky beasts and in this case complicated the issue unnecessarily. It seems to me you need to get into the issue of slavery in the 19th century and get a grasp of human trafficking in the 21st century before any meaningful parallels between the two can be made.

Dr Phillips asked what was wrong with opening up new aspects of knowledge. But as far as I’m concerned, it all depends on the method with which history is approached. If I decide to ‘learn’ about slavery while labouring under my modern preconceptions, I’m not engaging in what was going on at that time. It is possible to censure the past morally, but it is also possible to censure it in its own terms. The ancient world, for instance, was based on slavery, and I can condemn that because the Greeks in the 5th century BC were more than sophisticated enough to appreciate cultural relativity and to act on ideas of freedom and equality. Seriously, have a read of Herodotus. But to say that it is evil because we are modern and know better is an intellectually lazy method of self-praise.

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