Revealing Histories: Remembering Slavery

The evidence suggests that Greater Manchester wouldn't be the way it is today without the slave trade.

• What people think so far

• l`m in total agreement with the statement, britain perpetuate slavery in human this had detrimental effects that are being felt today,so they should apologise for having started the whole thing.
  

  gail mandaza

• Apologise for what? when they are still practising slavery mentally and still ripping oil and minerals in Africa and asia, so I see no need of them being hypocrite as there generations where, so they are, and will remain; in living in the sweats of africans and asians.
  
  

  Isata

• I think the slave trade had an impact on all parts of Britain - in ways that haven't even been fully explored yet. Just the fact that our diet and fashions changed so much at that time - epsecially the use of sugar in everything we eat!
  But the wealth generated was phenomenal and had a huge benefit on Industrial Britain. The campaigns to abolish slavery also fed into the development of wider social reform and led to the improvement of conditions for factory workers and movements like the co-op.

  Kathy

• The best way to apologise is to act to eradicate 21st century slavery... all goods should be Fair Trade.
  
  

  Anonymous

• I think it is important to study and understand the past but it is a nonsense to try and impose 21st century values on morals and events that happened centuries ago. All the slaves and slave owners are long dead and buried and so cannot take part in any discussion or apology. We should celebrate the fact that slavery was abolished, not get bogged down in apologising for events that no living person had any control over nor took part in. Otherwise we would end up with the Danes aplogising for the Viking raids, the French apologising for the Norman invasion, the Germaic trbes apologising for the sack of Rome, etc, etc, etc.
  
  

• Slavery was a key element of the invasion by European countries of other countries in Africa and the Indian sub-continent. This is often referred to as colonisation. But in reality, European countries, including Britain, plundered the wealth of these countries and treated their inhabitants as second class, subjugated peoples. It was this plundering of wealth that enabled European cities, Manchester included, to develop the infrastructure that led to their current position. When Germany sought to invade Europe it was called war. It should be recognised that the actions of the British, labaelled colonisation, were actually acts of war for which we should be ashmed.

  Austin

• Slavery was a key element of the invasion by European countries of other countries in Africa and the Indian sub-continent. This is often referred to as colonisation. But in reality, European countries, including Britain, plundered the wealth of these countries and treated their inhabitants as second class, subjugated peoples. It was this plundering of wealth that enabled European cities, Manchester included, to develop the infrastructure that led to their current position. When Germany sought to invade Europe it was called war. It should be recognised that the actions of the British, labaelled colonisation, were actually acts of war for which we should be ashmed.

  Austin

• a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

  poopy head

• yo all u idiots out there black people have a right as much as wight people so shut the hell up

  cyon

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  max

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  alfie

• Yes of course. Slavery fueled the Industrial Revolution that built Manchester. A 'no' here is just denial, wishful thinking. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to the world to look at history (and the present) with fearless honesty. In order not to repeat mistakes.

  Susanne Skubik Intriligator

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  gorge

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  gorge

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  wasok

• poo manchester is a fail to day and was yesterday

  wasok

• This nation was one of the first to abolish this trade, and not just within Britain, which helped spell it's end. And yet, the question is still about Britain's complicity, when, exactly, can we turn British attention back towards the continuing trade today and finish what we started? Or is this simply beyond this century's British citizens?
  
  I will vote 'no' with over 90% of others on this post. If you wanted to talk about Bristol, or another port that prospered in this era, rather than the town of slums which Manchester was in this time with it's shocking child mortality rates, midst 19 Century industrialisation, I might've been more sympathetic.

  Markus

• slavery did have impacts on most of britain

• The Cotton trade relied on the Southern States who in return relied on their slave brought to them from Africa, often by merchants from Liverpool via Brazil etc. It was a three way trade. When the States fought over the issue of Slavery (and other things) it was Lancashire that suffered, many cotton works had no work and many immigrated to Australia because of this.
  My ancestors were many things, cotton workers, jewish, catholic, black, white, preachers and - oh yes - Slavers.

  Frances Hall

• Greater Manchesters wealth was created by the poor wretches that worked in the mills and factories in and around manchester. They were badly paid. generally in poor health, lacking decent food and, living in appalling conditions.Also the first slaves in the West Indies and north America were white convicts but they could not cope with the climate . If Africans had not sold their ,own countrymen for a few bits of coloured glass ,and cotton had not existed. Manchester would still be wealthy today. Because of the progression in learning and inventions all over Europe. You insult the memory of the working class people who lived and died in the in the hovels of manchester by your ill thought words suggesting their sufferings amounted for nothing .

  John Wilson

• Manchester was a town ruled by a "lord of the manor" and only very recently became a city in comparison to other UK cities. This was mainly down to the power & wealth of merchants who made their fortunes from the textile industry.
  
  Furthermore, much of Manchester's architecture is down to the immense amounts of money invested by these merchants, whether the large, ornate buildings around Piccadilly or the warehouse buildings around Deansgate.
  
  Despite any movements to end the slave trade and/or abolish slavery in the Victorian era, the most powerful men (and they always ARE men) still made their money from the slave trade, whether it was from cotton picked by African slaves in the West Indies or from importing silk products produced from slave labour in India & China.
  
  Manchester would not exist as it is today without the profits of slavery. The industrial revolution would not have happened without the abundance of raw cotton, hand-picked by people torn from their families and their cultures and transported in huge numbers to foreign countries to make rich merchants even richer.
  
  Don't get me wrong, I think modern-day Manchester is a great city with a strong, unique cultural diversity and some fantastic cultural, sporting and educational assets, but let's not kid ourselves that it wasn't built on the profits of slavery. Even the great philanthropists who established cultural and learning institutions are tainted by the legacy of slavery.
  
  We should all feel a litle embarrassed and ashamed, and make sure that cruelty and human exploitation of this scale never happens again. Modern day slavery goes on but we should make sure that Manchester never again profits from it but rather leads the way in ending it.

  Dave

• William Roscoe said that the numbers of those who made vast profits from the slave trade was limited to "a very narrow compass". The views expressed on this website are those of lazy academics who use apprentices to do the work of adults. For further information please see http://www.tioli.co.uk

  Jon Huddleston

• i am a king of king,i am foreigener and i have a consulate executive chair in bakayam lodge in parrys corner ,chennai,tamilnadu india opp.to high court

  balaji.p

• I trying to understand the past we should not judge their behaviour by our standards today. By the way most of the black slaves were sold by their own people to Arab traders and then on the white man. Most slavery today still takes place in Africa. Think of the poor woman and girls brought in as cheap household slaves by rich blacks and Arabs. While slavery is abhorent in all it's forms Britain was one of the first countries to go against the norm of the time and ban it. I've looked at some of the other arguements below and find the lack of intelligent content in some a sad refelection on the owners intelligence.

  farmermum

• This statement is true. I hate slavery. It is discusting.may it never be again.

  Uncle Tom's rememberer

• Slavery is awful and many have suffered from it.
  i wish nobody had ever DARED to THINK about it. But the statement above i think is true.

  goblestan

• Your intended propaganda is falling a bit flat isn't it? We live in a democracy and we are not stupid.

  Ann Rutherford

• Britain did NOT start slavery. It was NEVER legal here. nor were any slaves here.
  A few unscrupulous city trader mainly in Bristol did briefley benifit from this ancient Arab on African "act" but the British Government soon sent the Royal Navy to spend the next 100 years hunting down and eradicating the trade. Why doesn't the liberal biased education system provide tha facts for our young people? Why do they let this myth be perpetuated with damage to our future comunity cohesion? They are adding to a future powder keg I believe.

  Lee Corbusier

• Give it a rest. The Museum Comunity has been hijacked by the extreme middle, for whom this subject is a well worn old hobby horse.
  Stick to providing places for granddads to take their grandchildren when it is raining.
  If you really want to know what useful ways that you can make a positive contribution to our shared comunity call me and I will enlighten you.
  Anyway your question is rather obscure with its loaded bias and double negatives.
  And do you intend to imply that Manchester benifits from: A. Slavery in particular?
  B, The Empire in general? or C. resultant multiculturalism from either/both?
  
  

  Lee Corbusier

• i think history is very cool and i think that mr mansfeild is ultra special[:

  amelia&lucy

• Your question isn't really appropriate-G.Manchester is pretty much a mess today-the city didn't exactly benefit from the Slave Trade in the way that places like Venice benefitted from overseas trade. The only people who benefitted from slavery were a few rip off merchants who took their ill-gotten gains elsewhere when the game was up-simple people- the cotton workers of the time who were also in a lesser from of slavery-put their lives on the line to stop slavery. The city got nothing from it.

  Julia

• i think that slavery is still in this world not in the obvious name of before but rather in low wages or none.

  abraham moss

• I think there is still slavery in Manchester today

• I wonder if this si the question we should be asking - or whether it is more important to look forward to the future and ask how can we stop forms of slavery continuing???

  Doc H

• I agree that the slave trade is embedded into our history. I'm not sure how helpful a "what if" scenario is - you can't unpick it and imagine what life would have been like without it.

  C Factual

• I see no need to apologise. I don't see the mill and mine pwners apologising to my family for working my parents and gradparents for working them to a standstill at the tender age of 12 and thirteen for just a few pennies a week.
  All of the people concerned are long gone. We have moved on and all lead a better life, including the families of the enslaved, black, white, brown and yellow.
  It happened, we can't change history,
  MOVE ON/
  
  

  philip garrity