Caribbean news. University College London, Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, Wilkins Building. Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, Tuesday 11 February 2014, 13.00 hrs – 14.00 hrs
Speaker information
Kristy Warren, Research Associate, UCL, Kristy Warren, one of the Research Associates on the project, completed her PhD at the University of Warwick in 2012. Her thesis investigates the extent to which the positions taken by Bermudian politicians and social commentators, concerning the question of independence in the British Overseas Territory, are informed by their lived experiences and understandings of the island’s past. Prior to starting the PhD, she worked at The National Archives in Kew on a Heritage Lottery Funded cataloguing and outreach project entitled Your Caribbean Heritage. She is interested in the ways in which people remember, interpret, and value the past.
The ‘ownership’ of enslaved men and women in the Caribbean by people living in Britain is still not widely known. And the extent to which Britain’s wealth derives from slavery is even less well understood. The Legacies of British Slave-ownership project has developed an online database which uses the compensation records, a listing of all of those who received money when slavery was abolished in the 1830s, to highlight Britons’ connection to slave-ownership. Of those listed, over 3000 were absentees, men and women who lived in Britain – many of whom never visited the Caribbean. The project team is now tracing the development of estates in the Caribbean held by these absentees in order to further understand how their estates were managed and transferred over time.
This talk will show how the database can be used, give an overview of our work engaging with young people, and provide some case studies which show the kinds of information being found in this phase of the project.
Background:
Legacies of British Slave-ownership
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/
Media Coverage | Legacies of British Slave-ownership
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/media/
