broadside

There is a project at the Museum about the sugar trade, based on our local maritime connection. It involves plantations and the slave trade, which did feature in the west of England economy.

I'd also recently read Wake, a graphic novel by Rebecca Hall, an American academic, who skillfully weaves her direct experience of investigation with the narrative of the triangular Atlantic slave trade, comprising sugar, tobacco and cotton to Europe, textiles, manufactured goods and rum to Africa and slaves to America.

It all came together in a short talk by David Olusoga at Budleigh Salterton, when he succinctly presented some of the issues. They are also available in a much longer and more detailed form in his book about Black and British. 

 

Someone in the audience asked him one of those oppositional questions, and I was surprised that he launched into an attack. It was clear that he'd heard this line of questioning before, like those strange agent provocateuers on Twiter.