Remembering Slavery and Abolition in Bristol

Abstract

This article charts how the public commemoration of slavery and abolition in the former slaving port of Bristol, England, evolved from the late nineteenth century to the bicentennial of the abolition of the British slave trade in 2007. It argues that by the late twentieth century, demographic changes in the city and the explosion in slavery scholarship helped to destabilise the consensus about how the city's slaving past should be characterised. It critically examines the different constituencies within the city who responded in a variety of ways to official calls to mark ‘Abolition 200’.