Breaking The Chains

Links: Arts

The Slavery History Trail (Liverpool History Tour)
From the 17th century you will be carried along over three hundred years, from Liverpool, a sleepy fishing village, to the coasts of Africa, the Caribbean , South America and the United States of America. You will mix with the lowest and the highest of classes. In their company you will marvel at the disparities of wealth.

International Slavery Museum
The International Slavery Museum, which builds on the success of the award-winning Transatlantic Slavery gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum, will open to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

Three Continents, One History
Three Continents, One History: Birmingham, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Caribbean is an African-Caribbean Millennium Centre (ACMC) project that has received a significant grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to explore the historical links between Birmingham, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Caribbean. Our project seeks to inform you about this bleak chapter in British history by re-stitching the threads that bound the city of Birmingham (UK) to Africa and to the Caribbean through the European slave trade in Africans. A number of links between the trade and the city will be explored:

1. Manufacturing: Birmingham's role in the making of the guns, fetters, shackles, manillas, beads, steam engines, etc. for the African trade, Middle Passage and Caribbean plantations.
2. Regiments: the role of local regiments from Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire in keeping order on plantations and in putting down the struggles for freedom.
3. Finance: the investment in Caribbean plantations and insurance.
4. African presence: the presence of Africans in and around 17th and 18th century Birmingham as a result of the absentee landlordism that generally resulted once owners of Caribbean plantations had made their money in the Caribbean and returned to the UK to enjoy it.
5. Colonial governance: the role played by certain local families in the governance of Caribbean territories.
6. Humanitarianism: the importance of the city as a locus for two key campaigns against slavery and the slave trade: the Female society for the Relief of Negro Slaves and the Lunar Society