Slavery and its legacies in Hampshire, England‪.‬ Olivia Mills

Description box:

Hosted by a group of second year historians from the University of Southampton, this podcast explores the largely unknown history of slavery in Hampshire, England, and offers A-Level students the opportunity to see what it’s like studying history at undergraduate level.

Primary Source: ‘It would be extremely easy to excite your sympathetic feelings by drawing… the horrors of slavery… i will, however, content myself with asserting, that he who is not an enemy to slavery, is himself a slave. He, who … invested with all the blessings which liberty can impart is yet doubtful whether the principle… is to be prized by himself, or conferred upon others, is a being whose mental bondage is only less than that of he who toils in chains’. (Rev. Thomas Adkins, 6th April 1830).


List of Further Reading:

Primary Sources:
University College London, Legacies of British Slave Ownership, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/, [Accessed 11th February 2021].

Unknown, ‘House of Peers’, Hampshire Telegraph, 27th November 1837 - Report within a Hampshire newspaper discussing a petition submitted to the House of Peers signed by 1300 residents of Southampton calling for the immediate abolition of slavery, most notably the apprenticeship system.

Unknown, ‘Portsmouth, Portsea and Gosport’, Hampshire Chronicle, 1st October 1832 - Newspaper Article which discusses the large attendance of anti-slavery lectures given by Reverend E. Dewdney and Reverend W. Knibb within the area of Portsea and the resulting formation of an anti-slavery society within this region.


Secondary Sources

David Olusoga, ‘Britain can no longer ignore its darkest chapters - we must teach black history’, The Guardian, 15th June 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/15/britain-can-no-longer-ignore-its-darkest-chapters-we-must-teach-black-history, [Accessed 11th February 2021].

Joel Quirk, The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking, (2011) - The first chapter of this book offers a detailed discussion of the general development of the abolition movement within Britain, while also providing links between Britain and developments throughout Europe within later chapters.

Madge Dresser and Andrew Hann (editors), Slavery and the British Country House, (2013) - https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/slavery-and-british-country-house/ - Research from a range of academics and heritage professionals exploring the links between the wealth derived from the business of slavery and the British Country House.

Nigel Sadler, The Legacy of Slavery in Britain, (2018) - Offers a good overview of the legacies of slavery in Britain in general - the introduction has an interesting and useful discussion about slave legacies in Britain, Africa and the Americas.

Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery, (2009) - Offers a good explanation of the British abolition movement and how it developed from the 1770s to the 1840s.

The National Trust, Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic slavery, (2020) - https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/addressing-the-histories-of-slavery-and-colonialism-at-the-national-trust