University wrong to ‘atone’ for slavery ties by focusing on Afro-caribbean aspect
The University of Glasgow has published the results of a piece of admirable scholarship into the origins of funding which it received during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
For anyone with even a passing knowledge of Glasgow’s Victorian mercantile heritage, it surely, however, came as no surprise to learn that much of this was based on the employment of slave labour in the sugar, cotton and tobacco industries of the Americas.
What is disappointing is the predictable response by the university in terms of the proposed creation of a memorial and the focus on the Afro-caribbean aspect of this in its racial diversity policy.
This narrow focus on slavery, which is now seen as a primarily racial issue, has overshadowed the overarching reality of commerce in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the context of western Europe in general, the period of industrialisation and economic growth popularly described as the Industrial Revolution, led to significant fortunes being made which were based on the use of quasi-slavery, whereby the enslaved were indigenous countrymen employed in the mines, mills and factories of entrepreneurial individuals. It is fair to say that this practice continues until the present day, when it has once again evolved a racial component.
Academic studies into these wider abuses would almost certainly lead to similar condemnation of large numbers of donors to both civic and academic institutions throughout the length and breadth of the developed world. The responses of the University of Glasgow have more than a whiff of commercial opportunism about them as they seek to gain publicity for new international jointventures and the status as a leading centre for Africancaribbean issues.
This focus only serves to reinforce the narrow and stereotypical view of what constitutes slavery. How much more advantageous would it be if they simply continued to energetically sponsor and support scholarship into the much wider and important areas of both historical and current social injustice and shine a light into these dark corners irrespective of race or origin.
ALAN SIM Queens Road, Aberdeen