British Imperialism and its Legacies: The Products of Enslavement
- Comments
-
Glasgow Museums has a range of collections connected with the raw materials harvested by enslaved people in the Americas. Commodities such as tobacco, sugar, cotton and mahogany that arrived in Glasgow from the 1600s to 1800s were often produced by enslaved people working on plantations under the harshest of conditions. For example, the arrival of sugar resulted in the production of objects such as punch bowls, sugar casters and basins, while the arrival of tobacco resulted in the production of snuff boxes and smoking pipes. Cotton was woven into clothes, shawls and other items in the west of Scotland, thus providing employment for many people. And across the Americas, mahogany trees were felled and transported to the ships by enslaved people, to be made into furniture for wealthy Europeans. Examples of all of these items can be found in Glasgow Museums’ collection.
While valuable sources of evidence for how Glasgow profited from transatlantic slavery and how widely used the products of enslavement were, these artefacts don’t tell us about the brutality of being enslaved and the scale of lives lost. By relying on them alone, we could forget that millions of black people endured the most brutal conditions, the harshest punishments and how many died in the production of these goods. We lack objects that focus on those experiences.
When it comes to understanding the histories of transatlantic slavery, what histories would you like to see represented? Which objects or artworks could tell these stories? Get in touch to share your thoughts.
- Broader term