Slavery and the Shaping of British Culture

The past forty years have yielded an astonishingly rich and varied archive and historiography about slavery. Much less impressive however has been the efforts to locate slavery as an integral feature of western cultural life itself. Too often, slavery is seen as an exotic, discreet subject which belongs outside Western culture. This talk takes a different approach, arguing that slavery was pivotal to the way Western Europe emerged over a period of three centuries.

Speaker: James Walvin, Prof of History Emeritus, University of York

James Walvin has written extensively on all aspects of the British involvement in slavery, including comprehensive studies of the Atlantic slave trade and a biography of the black ex-slave abolitionist, Olaudah Equiano.

This event is the sixth of eight talks in the series titled The British Business of Slavery, curated by Deborah Lavin.