Set in Stone? Statues and Slavery in London

Abstract

This article examines public monuments in London and their relationship to slavery and abolition, a topic that has attracted remarkably little empirical research. It argues that a significant proportion of the individuals commemorated by public statues in London during the long eighteenth century had important links with the slave-trade or plantation slavery and that these links need to be unearthed, contextualized and made explicit. It goes on to analyse those public statues and memorials which explicitly honour British abolitionists and finds that the way they are conceived and executed has generally favoured a conservatively self-congratulatory and defensive political agenda which has consistently marginalized the experience of enslaved Africans. However, the subsequent social lives of such monuments, it is further contended, merit closer investigation since their meaning is not set in stone but can be subverted and transformed according to context. © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of History Workshop Journal, all rights reserved.