The Fight Against the Slave Trade

Queen Elizabeth and the Sultan of Morocco | enabling of the slave trade

Al Mansur, the Sultan of Morocco advised his allies to invade Turkey. “why invade Turkey which has such little profit and offers so much trouble…. Invade Songhai for its wealth” 

In 1590 he wrote to Queen Elizabeth of England (img), to conspire an invasion of West Africa. Al Mansur strategised that if Queen Elizabeth provided him with guns, he could use them to over power the West Africans. Queen Elizabeth complied. 

Other Europeans rallied behind Al Mansur to invade Songhai. 2500 of the 4000 soldiers who prepped to invade Songhai were Europeans. The artillerymen were English and Spanish was the official language of the invading army. Whilst travelling from North to Sub-Saharan Africa,  1 third of the invading army perished in the desert, with the remaining 2 thirds being led by Judar Pasha Eunuch. 

Meanwhile, Songhai ruler Askia Ishaq II assembled (img) a force of more than 40,000 men and moved north against the Moroccans; the two armies met at Tondibi in March 1591. The battle was swift. Despite their far inferior numbers, the Moroccan gunpowder weapons easily carried the day, resulting in a rout of the Songhai troops. Judar sacked Gao and then moved on to the trading centers of Djenné and Timbuktu.^[4] He reached Timbuktu in April 1591, carrying a letter from the Sultan al-Mansur demanding their cooperation.

Judar sacked, pilleged and burnt Timbuktu. Songhai (img) was no match for Judar’s canons and guns. Songhai had no ballistic weapons at this point. Many Moroccans died of tropical diseases in their occupation of Songhai. However they continued to use burnt earth tactics, popularised by Julius Cesar over a thousand years before them, by destroying wells and fields. The allied Moroccans and Europeans took the Gold and converted it to coin, kidnapped the West African Scholars and destroyed many of the remaining books. 

Thankfully due to many of the Songhai preemptively hiding their books from invading forces,  over 700,000 Medieval Malian books still remain in circulation and are currently being translated by South Africans organisations. But for West Africa, history had turned (img). Once successful Empires of sub Saharan Africa had collapsed and their lands were soon to be ravaged by invasion, manipulation, slavery and an arms race for ballistic weapons. 

Task: Africa was previously seen as the richest place on the planet. How has this changed today? Why do you feel this has changed?

Other Great Empires | the last to fall to the slave trade

Nok | 1000BC – 1000AD (img)

The Empire of Nok possibly dated back as far as 3000BC as professor Ekpo Eyo explains that because the art work of 1000BC was so advanced, it must have had time to evolve. 

Yoruba (img)

Oni Oluwo was so upset when her regalia was splashed with mud that she ordered every road to be paved. Paved roads thereafter become a common feature in Yorubaland and other empires within West Africa. Dr Frobenius theorised a connection between Yoruba and Mayan civilisations. The pavements of Ife Ife were decorated by rolling corn, which is an American plant, over the surface of potsherds before firing them. Contact between the West Africans and the Americans must have been pre 1100AD. 

Some evidence points the Yoruba having links to ancient Egyptian practices. By 1300AD, huge Yoruba cities were surrounded by farmland (img). They cultivated Maize, which is once again an American plant by origin. They traded via caravan routes. 

Their civilisation thrived but it became a target for slave traders who would raid the outskirts of large cities for slaves. Oyo also at some points enforced resistance against the slave trade. 

Diouf writes: “Oyo, Dahomey, and Asante restored and maintained internal law and order where previously there was chaos and disorder. They all had laws that specifically prohibited the sale of their subjects for export. In Dahomey the law applied also to the servile population incorporated into society (Law 1991, 27778). 78). Contemporary European visitors to Dahomey testified to the prevalence of social order in the kingdom. For example, a 1728 European report stated that the king, Agaja, “cuts off the head of whoever steals only a cowry, one travels in his country with more security than in Europe, those who find something in the roads dare not touch it, it stays there till the one who lost it comes back, travellers are not attacked”

Sylviane A. Diouf. Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Western African Studies) (Kindle Locations 2816-2821). Kindle Edition. 

After the fall of Oyo, Dahomey and Benin evolved to lead the development of West Africa. 

Great Benin (Edo) (img)

Oba Ewuarr built great walls around Great Benin which were comparable to the Great Wall of China. The wall features 9 inner city gates called Ogbe was the largest earthworks previous to the industrial revolution. The Portugese were quick to negotiate with the West African Lords to exchange firearms for their conversion to Christianity.

Summary (img)

West Africa’s golden age had featured the richest man who had ever lived, great architectural feats and an eruption of intellectual literature. Wealth and scientific exploration had enabled exploration of the Atlantic and evidently, the Americas, hundreds of years before Columbus. But within a mere 300 years, West Africa would be torn apart to provide the greatest source of wealth not for itself, but for European commerce. 

The Early Slave Trade and Religion

As we have seen in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome; Empire which have taken thousands of years to reach their peak of development can fall within a fraction of the time. In this section we shall explore how the richest nations the world has ever seen can fall into chaos and poverty under tyrannical foreign powers and internal corruption. 

However, we shall also explore the fight for freedom, which took Africans from being enslaved in unimaginable conditions to fighting and earning their freedom by the sweat of their brow and their determination to break the shackles of oppression. 

Early Portugese Raids | beginning the slave trade

In the year 1526, the Portugese had completed their first raid for African slaves and transported them to Brazil in the Americas. 

Since Columbus ventured to America in 1492, Europeans had committed to one of the greatest atrocities in human history. The Native Americans were genocided and fell victim to foreign disease. Over 20 million Native Americans were killed (img); 95% of their population. This was compounded by the suspicious donation of blankets to the Natives which were riddled with small pox. The Native Americans had no immunity to small pox and died as a result. 

Even today, the Native Americans experience unparalleled levels of poverty, mental illness and drug abuse. 

In 1454 Pope Nicholas (img) granted King Alfonso V “…the rights of conquest and permissions previously granted not only to the territories already acquired but also those that might be acquired in the future”.

…Weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso – to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit…

In 1456, Pope Calixtus III (img) confirmed these grants to the Kings of Portugal and they were renewed by Pope Sixtus IV in 1481; and finally in 1514 Pope Leo repeated verbatim all these documents and approved, renewed and confirmed them.

These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism.

Despite the several papal condemnations of slavery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain and Portugal were never explicitly forbade from partaking in slavery.

In 1488, Pope Innocent VIII (img) accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon, and distributed those slaves to his cardinals and the Roman nobility. The Curse of Ham, a biblical story which describes the descendants of Ham as a cursed people who were turned black by God, was later used to justify the enslavement of Africans. (img)

Task: we have seen that oppression of a people can lead to the regression of their culture and civilisation. This can lead to poverty, crime and mental illness. If a people’s decline has been at little fault of their own and to the gain of others, who should be responsible for their progression out of their disadvantaged position? Is their responsibility their own, their oppressors, or both? Explain

Task: During the Spanish Reconquista, which we have covered before, the Spanish Christians pushed the Spanish and Moorish Muslims out of Spain. The Moors occupied Spain for over 600 years before they were removed. How do you think the Christian Europeans may have viewed the West Africans, many of whom were Muslims, at the time? 

Task: the Church supported slavery but later emerged as a force for anti-slavery. Do you think that religion may be a source of evil or do you think that human nature corrupts religion? Explore

Race For Empire | the demand for the slave trade

Nial Ferugson, in his book “Empire” does a fantastic job of explaining the drivers for Britain to also enter the rat race of Empire. 

State Competition (img)

Britain, at the time, was fairly decentralised meaning that the local Lords of the land executed a lot of control over their towns. This was argued by Nial Ferguson to be different to the Spanish who had fairly centralised control in the Spanish Monarchy. This caused British states to compete against other British states for wealth and status. The transatlantic slave trade would soon be a way to for an Englishman to compete against his fellow Englishman for the accumulation of wealth. 

Feudal Class System (img)

The remnants of the Medieval English class system put a great emphasis on land ownership being key to great wealth. According to Business Insider, even today, Queen Elizabeth II is the worlds greatest land owner

“With her 6.6 billion acres, Elizabeth II is far and away the world’s largest landowner, with the closest runner-up (King Abdullah) holding control over a mere 547 million, or about 12% of the lands owned by Her Majesty, The Queen.” (ref)

This equates to around 5% of the entire land on the earth’s surface under the ownership of one out of 7 billion people. 

This created a drive in upwardly mobile people to attain as much land as possible. The Americas provided the perfect opportunity. After invading the Americas, the British Crown started to gift thousands of acres of American soil to any Englishman daring enough to cross the Atlantic and create American settlements. Despite being faced with foreign disease, dangerous travel and retaliation from Native Americans, the Englishmen went in such large numbers that it is argued that more Englishmen have settled outside of their native country than any other people in history. 

Empire Envy | the competition of the slave trade

The story of Sir Henry Morgan summarises “Empire Envy” better than any other, in my opinion. According to Nial Ferguson, Henry Morgan was a Welsh privateer who, after hearing of the great quantities of gold seized by the Spanish in the Americas, decided to make an attempt for himself. He sailed to South America but ultimately failed in his attempt to find any gold. On his way back across the Atlantic, depressed at his failed efforts, he noticed a Spanish ship returning to Spain from the Americas after mining for gold. 

Henry Morgan raided the Spanish ship (img) and returned to the British Isles. He reported his success to the monarchy who started to invest in Henry Morgan so that he could continue his pirateering. He became a very wealthy man and eventually purchased land in Jamaica and African slaves to work the sugar plantations.

The Monarchy then started to invest in other individuals like Henry Morgan. Pirateering became the start of the British Empire and the British Navy. Pirates would prove their ability; the monarchy would then permit their pursuit of wealth. The pirates would then become privateers. Privateers would continue to arm themselves for protection and invest in faster ships to defend against Piracy, and the cycle continues. 

Henry Morgan can still be found today at many parties. This Knighted Pirate is today known as Captain Morgan whose name is now a popular brand of rum. 

(img)Task: Due to Empire, there are more individuals of English descent outside of their native land than any other nationality of people. Considering this, and the fact that humans have spread from north Africa to all over the world over the past 200,000 years, assess the current arguments of anti-immigration. List the arguments for and against immigration? Assess the strength of these arguments by arguing for and against them. Summarise your opinion on immigration. Debate in class

To summarise the fight against the slave trade

The British were increasingly motivated to participate in the expansion of Empire to compete with fellow Brits and neighbouring countries. The philosophy of wealth i.e. that land equalled wealth and status encouraged them to sail to the Americas to acquire land. Piracy evolved into Privateering which then laid the foundations for the British Naval force

Task: how do the foundations of the British Empire differ to your previous understanding? 

Divide and Conquer

“Divided we fall, together we stand” is a very commonly used phrase. Its origin may be placed 2000 years ago to the New Testament  “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand”. Similar verses of the New Testament include Matthew 12:25 (“And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand”

The British were very aware of this. Unfortunately for the West Africans, since the Cataln Atlas (img) depicted Mansa Musa holding a golden nugget, European powers had become aware of the huge wealth the West Africans possessed. After the death of Mansa Musa and the fall of Songhai to Northern forces, West Africa had been divided and weakened.

To further weaken the West African civilisations, the Europeans leveraged something in their possession that wasn’t in the possession of the west Africans; guns. 

Sylvian A Diouf explains in his book, “Fight the Slave Trade” (img) that the Europeans targeted decentralised and vulnerable communities. Examples are Aja states of Allada, Whydah, Popo, and Jakin. They then traded guns with them for captives. The West Africans had already bare witness to the destruction of 40,000 Songhai warriors by an allied European and Moroccan force 1 tenth of the size. The obvious advantage of guns created appeal. By targeting the smaller, disorganised but upwardly mobile tribes, the Europeans were able to create an arms race. The smaller tribes would use their guns to raid the outskirts of the larger empires, to capture Africans and sell to the Europeans in exchange for money or guns.

As well as this, Europeans would raid coastal towns to capture slaves directly (img). This would eradicate the need for a middle man and would potentially increase profits. The Europeans would beat the slaves into submission or capture them at gunpoint before shackling them and forcing them to walk miles back to the coast line where they would cage them or hold them at large forts such as Elmina Castle in Ghana or Goree Island. 

Task (img): thought experiment. Who is at fault? Nigeria has developed revolutionary new laser beam technology which they have developed into guns that fire from drones. The Nigerians sell these armed drones to small towns in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The members of these towns have experienced long term unemployment due to lack of industry. The Nigerians ask the small towns folk to raid the cities of Liverpool, Manchester and London. They do, leading to widespread chaos in Britain. Britain collapses as a civilisation and its glory days are forgotten. Who is to blame?

The Fight Against the Slave Trade

(img) Imagine your mother, your cousin, your brother. They have been hit around the head with a club and have been dragged out of town. You know you will never see them again unless you move quickly. What would you do? The answer is obvious. You would do everything in your power to find them and bring them home to safety.

Yet, for some reason the impression many historians give is that Africans just sat idly by and watched their relatives be forced or sold into slavery. This isn’t the case.

(img) Once again Sylvan A Diouf in his book, “Fight the Slave Trade” produces extremely detailed accounts of the fight against the trade. There were more African uprisings against the Slave Trade than there were in the Caribbean which itself saw uprisings on a regular basis as the Africans fought for their freedom. 

Walled villages were common almost everywhere that slave raiding posed a threat and they were effective. The only weakness was that people had to leave to work the land. Defense was thus often coupled with major changes in the ways people lived. Most important in some coastal areas was a change in cropping patterns. Crops were planted close to the village and worked collectively (ref)

(img) In Yorubaland, the Oyo Empire illegalised the trade of slaves and put great effort into stamping out the widespread kidnapping in its territories.

However, the daily threat of being forced into captivity completely changed West African priorities. Where once great civilisations would invest huge quantities of time and gold into building magnificent universities, palaces and cities, effort was instead made to build short term settlements which were easy to abandon in a hurry. West Africa was regressing into a lesser version of its former self. 

Oyo’s banishment of the slave trade created political complications leading to the first of the series of wars in Yorubaland in the nineteenth century. With the collapse of Oyo no other state emerged to keep the peace in Yorubaland in the face of growing demand for captives by the European traders. The Yoruba became the largest single source of captives for the Atlantic trade in the nineteenth century.

(img) And it is important to note that not all resistance happened on land. Around 10% of all slave ships experience an uprising of the enslaved Africans on their enforced voyage from the African coast to the Americas. Some Africans were even able to overthrow their oppressors and navigate their ship back to Africa. 

(img) Unbeknown to the Europeans, some of the Africans which they were buying would become their greatest adversaries. Many of the Africans they purchased were prisoners of war, skilled in guerilla warfare. As soon as these African Guerrilla Warriors could, they would escape even if it meant killing their oppressors in the process. We shall read more about them later

Task: 

1. a foreign invader threatens to invade and capture your family and friends and sell them into slavey. You are outgunned but not outnumbered. What are your tactics for survival? 
2. Be careful! Your community leaders may have been paid off by the invaders. How do you think this would change how your community behaves?

Tactics against the slave trade

(img) A vast array of defensive tactics were used by Africans to avoid capture. Many Africans left their townships for more easily defensible terrain. Africans settled in harsh desert environments and some even built their towns on water. Lake Nokoue and the swamplands lands surrounding it provided an ideal refuge for various migrants who came to constitute a homogenous ethnic group, that of the Tofinu (pic)

(img) Sikasso, in southern Mali, was heavily fortified and successfully withstood a siege for over 15 months. Other cities built fortresses with vantage points for riflemen, with walls that stretched over 1km, over 10ft high. 

A song heard on Goree Island in the eighteenth century hauntingly expresses presses their feeling of irremediable loss and despair, as well as their strong will to be reunited with their loved ones, even if-when redemption was not possible-it sible-it entailed the ultimate sacrifice:

(img) Damel [king] has raided the village of Yene He has enslaved the woman I love 

Since then, I have so much pain 

That I cannot drink palm wine

And I cannot eat couscous 

My love is going to be shipped to the islands 

I will ask to be made a slave to be with her 

I’d rather be a slave with her 

Than a free man in a place where she no longer is. 

(Verdun de la Crenne 1778, 158-59)

Task: the African resistance against slavery is often forgotten. A more common narrative is “the European forces saw the errors of their ways and then illegalised slavery”. Why do you think the resistance of Africans against enslavement is often left uncovered?

The Conditions of the Slave Trade – Why did they do it?

The conditions of slavery can be thought of as what happens when one set of humans believe than another set of humans are “sub-human”. This should serve as a lesson to us all. Here are some examples we encounter today:

• Katie Hopkins describing migrants or refugees as “cockroaches” (ref)
• Hitler used pesticide to kill the Jews and described them as “rats” (ref) Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen, or subhumans
• Sailer Winston Mano described Africans as “beasts who have no houses” and also as “people without heads, having their mouth and eyes in their breasts.”

David Livingstone Smith from the Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New England explains (ref)

“We all know, despite what we see in the movies… it’s very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being up close and in cold blood, or to inflict atrocities on them.” So, when it does happen, it can be helpful to understand what it is that allows human beings “to overcome the very deep and natural inhibitions they have against treating other people like game animals or vermin or dangerous predators.”

As author and rapper Kingslee Daley aka Akala said, “as soon as you call a group of people cockroaches it is a mandate for murder…”

How else would a christian, muslim or a jew enslave a fellow human? They have to make them subhuman in their own perspective and the perspective of others.

(img) The conditions in which the Africans were transported and enslaved were horrendous. They would have their feet and hands shackled often in a forward flexed position (pic). Many slaves thought that the Europeans taking them were cannibals, mistaking the wine they drank for blood. Suicide was rife. Many jumped overboard to save themselves from a life of enslavement. Around one third of Africans died in the crossing to the Americas which often took as long as 3 months. The Africans were often disfigured when they arrived due to being chained in abnormal positions for such long periods of times. The smell on the ships was so awful that people claimed to be able to smell slave ships before they saw them. John Newton, The conditions of the slave ships inspired John Newton, a slave trader, to become an abolitionist. He later wrote the popular hymn, “Amazing Grace”

(img) On arrival, the slavers beat the Africans into submission. They forced them to change their names to the names of their owners and abandon their religion. It is estimated that at least ⅓ of the Africans worshipped in accordance to Islam before their capture; the rest worshipped traditional African deitiies. They were forced to convert to Christianity and were provided a Bible with verses such as Exodus removed. This was to prevent them from drawing inspiration from other biblical people who had fought their oppressor. 

(img) Cyril Lionel Robert James in his book “The Black Jacobins” describes some of the punishments that the Africans endured

• Pregnant women had their babies cut out of their wombs
• Heels of runaway slaves were removed
• Slow cooked on an open fire
• Gunpowder inserted into the rectum and set alight
• Rape of female slaves by their masters
• The slavers’ initials were branded onto the Africans skin with a hot poker
• Whipping and beatings; until death. I have family members who have been recorded to have had 500 lashes to the back
• Slave collars prevented them from resting
• Lynchings i.e. hanging from trees by the neck

The average age of the Africans taken to the Americas was 15. 

(img) However, did you know that despite being held in unimaginably horrific conditions, many of our modern innovations come from enslaved Africans? One is the vaccine. An African slave called Onesimus explained to his slaver how he had been protected from small pox by rubbing the puss of an infected person into an open wound (ref). This later gave rise to the concept of vaccination; giving a low dose of a pathogen to promote immunity. 

Task: name as many black celebrities that you know. What are their last names? Explain why their last names aren’t authentically African. What does this tell you of their ancestors past? What does this tell you about the size of the slave trade? 

Task: another example of great evil is the holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis. 6million Jews were killed by the Nazis in unimaginable conditions (ref). They lost 2 thirds of their population to genocide (ref). What do you think would have happened if they were forced to forget who they were as well as this? In what state would this leave a people?

Revenge in the Americas

The slavers had attempted to break the Africans into submission. They wanted the Africans to forget who they were and abandon any measure of self esteem they may have had. But throughout this period of history we shall see how the desire for freedom is an innate desire which cannot be suppressed. 

Interestingly enough, the inspiration for freedom may have started in Europe. The French were cutting the heads off of their monarchy. 

In 1789 a Revolt had started in France which would last a decade (img). After years of austerity due to the French Monarchy fighting expensive wars in the Americas and other ventures, the crown was broke and the people public were starving. They revolted against the monarchy and coined the principles “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” which translates to “Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood”. They decapitated their royal family and laid the foundations for a democracy before Napoleon Bonaparte took dictatorship via coup. 

The French empire’s most profitable territory was Haiti (img), in the Caribbean. At the time it was called St Domingue. The enslaved Africans on the island heard of France’s fight for freedom and equality and held a Voodoo ceremony. Voodoo is a religion which has its roots in West Africa and is still practiced today. During this ceremony, the Voodoo priestess spoke of a messiah who would lead the enslaved Africans to overthrow their European oppressors and earn their freedom. 

Toussaint Louverture, a free man rose to the call and led the enslaved Africans in battle against the French. Toussaint Louverture (img) was a complicated man. He was freed by the age of 33 and reportedly owned a plantation and slaves which worked the plantation. African plantation owners were very uncommon. Most Africans would buy their freedom or be born into freedom, on some rare occasions. Many consider Toussaint Louverture to be a very intelligent and shrewd man. 

At age 50, he joined the fight for freedom. He first fought for the Spanish against the French; then for France against Spain and Great Britain (img); and finally, he fought on behalf of Saint-Domingue in the era of Napoleonic France. Toussaint Louverture successfully led the previously enslaved Africans on the Island of Haiti to defeat the French, the British, the Spanish and Napoleon Bonaparte. Toussaint Louverture was bilingual at a time when it was illegal for Africans in the Americas to learn to read and write. Throughout the history of slavery and colonisation, there is a themed power struggle to keep the Africans uneducated. We shall see that Toussaint Louverture, Samuel Sharp, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglas, Margus Garvey, Malcolm X,Martin Luther King, James Baldwin; all instrumental in the fight for freedom, were extremely well educated people. 

Toussaint Louverture and his carefully selected fellow generals (img) overthrew their oppressors and set up a democracy in its place. This is the first time in recorded human history that a nation of slaves have overthrown their oppressor and created a democracy. Toussaint Louverture ate very little, often survived on fruit, less than 4 hours sleep and often rode over 100 miles a day on horseback. He often rode in front of his men to scope the land for threats and opportunities.

Toussaint Louverture was a fantastic negotiator, often playing common enemies against each other and allying for the provision of guns. 

“But what men these blacks are! How they fight and how they die! One has to make war against them to know how their reckless courage in braving anger when they can no longer have resources to stratagem. I have seen a solid column, torn by grape-shot from four pieces of cannon, advance without making a retrograde step. The more they fell, the greater seemed to encourage the rest. They advanced sining, for the Negro sings everywhere, makes soings on everything….” Lemmonier-Delagosse, in his memoirs

Even when the enemies of the Revolutionaries upped the severity of punishments for the Africans, the Africans fought even harder. They had reached their limit. For them, a life of enslavement was worse than death. 

Toussaint Louverture realised the need to international trade for Haiti. He travelled to France where he was tricked by officials and imprisoned in east France where he died of pneumonia in 1803 (img). His comrade, Jean Jaques Dessalines retaliated and killed every Frenchman on the island. Napoleon Bonaparte wrote to the Haitians and instructed them to pay reparations for their freedom to compensate for the loss of property of their masters. If they didn’t pay, Napoleon Bonaparte would invade with full force to enslave them. The Haitians didn’t finish paying these reparations until 1947 for the Haitians to pay this. The French also forced the Haitians to export their product at a 50% discount. Haiti led the fight for the emancipation of enslaved Africans but is the poorest country in the Caribbean today (ref)

Task: Toussaint Louverture was a slave owner and plantation owner. Many would describe him as an unsavory character however he laid the foundations for the emancipation of lavery in the Americas and Africa. Likewise, Winston Churchill is linked to the Bengali famine which killed 3 million people, and said “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes,” and “I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race…” When leaders have provided a lot of good but also have committed many atrocities, how should we remember them? How should we celebrate them? Should we celebrate them? How does this differ to “cancel culture”? 

The fight against the slave trade in the rest of the Americas