REMEMBERING SLAVERY 2007

LIT AND PHIL LIBRARY LECTURE PROGRAMME

All lectures are free.  As places are limited booking is essential. 

Book via library@litand phil.org.uk, Telephone 0191 232 0192 or visit the library in person at

23 Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE

www.litandphil.org.uk

Professor James Walvin     Wednesday 14th  March 6.00 p.m

How Should We Remember the Slave Trade? : Slavery in British History

March 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the British abolition of the slave trade. But in the century before, the British had shipped more than three million Africans across the Atlantic. In the profusion of events planned for 2007, how should we remember abolition -  and slavery  -  in the shaping of British history?

John Charlton       Wednesday 21st March 6.00 p.m.

Slavery and Abolition: The Tyneside Setting.
The lecture will be organised round the institutions which conducted business and social life and formed and shaped opinion. These will include the Common Council, the electorate, the Churches, the Literary and Philosophical Society, the Assembly Rooms, the press & publishing, and the gentleman's estate. 

Diana Paton         Tuesday 24th April 6.00 p.m.

Enslaved Women's Lives Before and After 1807What effect did the abolition of the slave trade have on women who were already enslaved in the Americas? Diana Paton will address this question focusing primarily on enslaved women in Jamaica. One consequence of the end of the trade, she will suggest, was increased concern about--and surveillance of--enslaved women’s fertility and child-bearing by plantation owners.

Sheree Mack  Wednesday 2nd May 6.00 p.m.

What was the North East’s involvement in the trade and abolition of slavery?

Join Sheree Mack, Lit and Phil’s Writer in Residence, for an exploration of the North East involvement in the slave trade as well as the legacies of the trade and the impact they continue to have in terms of racism and the development of the region. She will be drawing extensively on her research at the library during her residency.

Jan Marsh             Thursday 10th May 6.00 p.m.

Art Against the Slave Trade

Illustrated talk on the visual representation of slavery and the slave trade in the era of abolitionist campaigning. Slaving and slavery were major political issues in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  As such they were depicted both directly and obliquely in contemporary art.  This talk traces the history of the campaign against the Slave Trade through artists’ interventions. Portraits include those of:  Ansah Sessarakoo, Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, Francis Barber, William Davidson, Henry Beckford, Sarah Bonetta. Artists featured include:  Gainsborough, Zoffany, Morland, Reynolds, Blake, Fuseli, Turner, Haydon, Redgrave and others.

Jan Marsh was curator of Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900 (Manchester and Birmingham AG 2005-6)

Baroness Young Thursday 17th May 5.30 p.m.

Title to be confirmed

Elizabeth O’Donnell Wednesday 12th September 6.00 p.m.

There's Death in the Pot!' Ethical Consumerism and the North East in the Age of Slavery

 An examination of consumer activism as a tactic in the anti-slavery movement, including the sugar boycott in the late 18th century and the free produce movement of the mid-nineteenth century, with an emphasis on links with the Society of Friends in the North East.

Andrew Lambert  Friday 21st September 6.00 p.m.

The end of the trade: HMS Trincomalee in the West Indies; 1847-1850.' 

By the late 1840s the Atlantic Slave trade had been broken by the Royal Navy, but there remained major states that continued to use slave labour, and occasionally import slaves from Africa - Brazil, The United States and Cuba. While Spanish ruled Cuba was the worst offender British policy was complicated by the American threat to seize the strategic island - and the important role Spain played in British European policy. Destroying the basis of the Cuban economy, slave grown sugar, would play into the hands of the Americans, and seriously weaken Spain. Consequently British policy was neither simple, nor clear. HMS Trincomalee, the Indian built frigate recently restored at Hartlepool, served in the West Indies at this critical period. This lecture examines her role in this critical period.

Madge Dresser  Tuesday 25 September 6.00 p.m.

Set in Stone: Statues and the Commemoration of Slavery in London

Public monuments have attracted increasing scholarly attention over the past two decades. Since London was the largest  slaving port in late Stuart times, and the capital of what was, by the  Georgian era, the world’s premier slaving nation, it seems fitting to re-assess how the city has represented itself in this regard. More specifically, how many of the city’s statues and public memorials are there devoted to this subject and what can they tell us about attitudes to slavery, race and national identity?

             Madge Dresser, F.R.Hist.S., Reader, School of History, University of the West of England

Dr Jane Webster Monday 8th October 6.00 p.m.

The Social World of the Slave Ship

What do we know about the daily lives of captives and crews confined aboard British slave ships? This lecture examines the physical and social spaces of slave ships, and the daily routines that shaped the Middle Passage to the Americas. Dr Jane Webster is from the School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University

Professor David Richardson Wednesday 17th October 6.00 p.m.

Contemporary Slavery in Historical Perspective 

 The talk will look at recent explanations of the apparent resurgence of slavery and other forms of labour exploitation in the contemporary world and will compare this to historical forms of slavery, notably in the Post-Columbus Americas. 

Sean Creighton  Wednesday 24th October 6.00 p.m.

Slavery and Abolition in Tyne & Wear 

An introduction to the complex economic, political and social relationships on Tyne & Wear involved in English/British colonial and United States slavery and the role of people on/from Tyne & Wear in the abolition campaigns up to the end of the American Civil War. As Tyne & Wear 2007 Remembering Slavery Archive Mapping and Research Project Officer Sean will draw on material contained in the Literary & Philosophical Society, Tyne & Wear Archives, Northumberland Collections Service and the Special Collections at the Robinson Library (Newcastle University).