Black and British: A Forgotten History

by David Olusoga

The two younger Wilberforces also committed one of the most outrageous acts of historical vandalism when they convinced Clarkson to send them much of his correspondence with their father. These letters were not returned and have never been found. They are presumed destroyed. But Clarkson was just one among a long list of historical casualties. The contributions of the black abolitionists, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, Ottobah Cuguano, the Sons of Africa and others were also redacted, and a similar fate befell the female abolitionists, like Elizabeth Heyrick and Hannah More. The pro-slavery men of the West India Interest are rarely discussed and nor is their leader George Hibbert. The slave rebellions that had nudged the nation towards final abolition were likewise forgotten; the black men and women who had led those uprisings, perished in them or who had been executed in the retribution that followed were reduced to footnotes or expunged entirely. The notion that the enslaved people had played a role in their own emancipation, that liberty had been demanded and fought for, rather than simply given, was for the most part forgotten. This version of the history of slavery and abolition, that first took form in the latter half of the nineteenth century, remains dominant even in the twenty-first century, despite half a century of challenge and reassessment by generations of Caribbean and British historians.