Keith McClelland, Documenting British slave-owners in the Carribbean c.1763-c.1860, IHR Digital History Seminar, 31 January 2017
Live notes, so an incomplete, partial record of what actually happened.
Tags: dhist
My asides in {}
Legacies of British Slave-ownership
Three primary concerns:
- put the importance of the slave business back into British history
- to look at enslavement through slave ownership and the people involved
- so what. Why is the legacy of this important
Digitising a list to make a database to make a website to build connections.
Database can be entered into via individuals, eg George Hibbert. From which we can drill via connections: eg cultural institutions they were fellows or presidents of.
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>#dhist Legacies of Slave-ownership Project grew from source docs to thesis to database/website; simple but powerful changes in accessibility
— Dr Mia Ridge (@mia_out) January 31, 2017
~600k slave freed. 1836: 46k-47k people - mostly owners - made claims for compensation. Value ~half UK GDP. Around 10% of claimants were absentees (people who lived as part of a transatlantic world rather than merely in the Caribbean), but they represented around half of those who received compensation. Not just elites, but ordinary middle class men and women: eg Jane Bayne. Slave ownership reaches deep into British society. 40-45% of claimants were women.
One misunderstanding the focus on individuals. So the project now moving from the individual on the familial and estates to overcome this: shift the nodal point. These were societies based on slavery not societies in which slavery existed: eg Barbados, economy reliant on sugar.
Expecting to dig out circa ~20k more people connected with slave ownership by focusing on estates.
Collective act of assemblage: amateur/local/family historians contributed their expert knowledge to the database.
Large plantations (circa 120 slaves) important: scale greater than semi-automated cotton factories of the post-1820 north of England (~80 workers) and of agrarian labour (~10 workers). Organisation of work in plantations a precursor of mid-nineteenth century plantations.
Slavery clearly relevant to the industrial revolution. Cases identified here helps underscore that.
Q: How was class established? A: Estimates. But then judgement.
Q: Legacies: where do you bound these intellectually? (beyond the obvious practical ones) Eg, households do you go beyond the house to the people in the house, or culturally the attempts to influence debate through the letters to newspapers
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>.@anterotesis asks how db intersects with theory. In drawing collective patterns from individual entries, it has theoretical impact #dhist
— IHR Digital History (@IHRDigHist) January 31, 2017
Q: go beyond direct connections to long term family connections? A: Ethics clearly an issue. But then so is the so what.
Q: apart from opening this up to the public, what did doing this as a database and website building research process {perhaps, though, as opposed to just database} enable in terms of research 'findings' or the direction the work has taken.
Q: by making a searchable database available online is this a political act?
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