Wightwick Manor, near Wolverhampton, reveals high-society tales of Queen Victoria’s god-daughter, the celebrity Indian princess and campaigner for women’s suffrage Sophia Duleep Singh, while Sutton House in Hackney was the home of Captain John Milward, a ‘merchant adventurer’ with shares in the East India Company, who made his fortune from the silk trade; in fact historians highlight that from the late 17th Century to the early 20th Century, one sixth of Britain’s country houses were purchased by merchants whose fortunes depended on colonial trade.
Following the toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol during Black Lives Matter protests in June, the issue of Britain confronting its colonial history is a hot topic. There’s a growing clamour to reform the national curriculum to make teaching Britain’s Imperial history, such as its crucial role in the slave trade – not just its abolition – mandatory in secondary schools; there is also a sense that understanding how the concept of ‘race’ and race hierarchies underpinned Empire, would help combat racism in Britain.
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