Edward Colston’s statue became the target of protesters’ fury, and it’s not difficult to understand why. Colston was director of the Royal African Company when it forcibly transported around eighty-five thousand African men, women, and children, in conditions so inhumane that nearly a quarter of them perished before they reached the Americas. For over a century, his statue was a monument, for some, to the extraordinary beneficence that Colston bestowed on the city. For others, it represented a nation that still boasted an imperial pride built not only on shameless racial assumptions but also
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