The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Thomas Harding White Debt focuses on the vital case of the Demerara Uprising in 1823, Guyana, which has been largely underrepresented in historiography. Told from the viewpoint of four very different, but essential protagonists in the Demerara Uprising, Harding’s...
At 6.30 pm on 18th August 1823, Jack Gladstone walked up to the large bell that hung at the centre of the sugar plantation, and rang it. This was the signal for the start of the Demerara uprising, that would become the largest revolt against British slavery up to that...
Suzette D. Harrison uses her fiction to re-write the stories we think we know about history, and My Name is Ona Judge is no exception. This is Suzette D. Harrison’s twelfth book, and is based on the true story of one of George and Martha Washington’s slaves: Ona Judge...
Suzette D Harrison, many congratulations on your new novel, My Name Is Ona Judge. It’s based on the experience of Ona Judge, enslaved to the Washington family. How did you find out about her? I’ve a passion for African American History, so much so that my...
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For many, these are perhaps the most famous, easily...
Why is it so easy to hate and difficult to love? When societies fracture into warring tribes, we demonise those who oppose us. We tear down our statues, forgetting that what begins with the destruction of statues, often leads to the killing of people. The world is in...
The West African slave trade has become a staple of history teaching and popularisation. Rightly so. The triangular trade – trinkets from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas, plantation commodities from the Americas to Europe – was the most visceral...
Captain Luke Collingwood was used to grim voyages across the Atlantic, but this one had been worse than most. Dysentery, diarrhoea and smallpox had already claimed the lives of seven of the crew aboard the slave ship Zong. The slave cargo had suffered a far higher...
Narrative of My Escape From Slavery by Moses Roper. One of the most important and authentic accounts of life in slavery.
