- há 5 semanas
Famous people with direct links to the slave trade go on journeys around the globe to document their connections to it and examine how it shaped the modern world. In the first episode, actors David Harewood and Hugh Quarshie explore opposite sides of the Atlantic slave trade, which saw an estimated 12 million Africans transported across the ocean and sold into a life of slavery.
Categoria
📚
AprendizadoTranscrição
00:01on the charge sheet of human history few things create such an indelible stain as slavery the
00:10idea that i am not human that i have no soul that i am a beast brand me burn me
00:18whatever and no
00:20recourse nothing yet few histories are more important for us to understand it's power to
00:30know what happened to you in the past because if you don't know what happened to you in the past
00:33you can't stop it from happening again in this series many well-known faces with a direct and
00:40often surprising link to this thousand-year story are embarking on journeys to different corners of
00:48the globe they'll uncover the truth about their past and tell the story of the oppression and
00:54exploitation of one human being by another it beggars belief really how do you make that
01:02transition how do you go through that trauma and that adversity with expert knowledge from across
01:11continents their journeys will be complemented by descendants celebrities and historians to tell
01:19the bigger story of the enslaved peoples of the world the enslavement of africans changed our language
01:26it changed what we eat what we wear what we drink and created a force that still divides us today
01:32yet slavery also inspired resistance and rebellion from a brave but doomed uprising in jamaica
01:42i stand on the shoulders of giants i'm proud to be who i am and i'm proud where i come
01:48from
01:50and who i come from to a long overdue reckoning in our own lifetime black lives matter this is the
01:59thousand-year story of how slavery stained our past and shaped the modern world
02:14in this episode actors david hairwood and hugh kwashi explore opposite sides of the atlantic slave trade
02:23it saw an estimated 12 million africans transported across the ocean and sold into a life of slavery
02:33david travels to barbados where he uncovers the reality of britain's connections with the enslavement
02:39and trading of human beings white supremacy is an english invention that was franchised to several
02:49different countries while hughes travels to ghana and discovers how two of his ancestors met very
02:56different fates one benefits from the european intervention and the other ends up as a slave
03:19david hairwood starred in movies like blood diamond and played cia director of counter-terrorism david estes in
03:27the hit tv show homeland
03:32he was born and grew up in birmingham after his parents emigrated from barbados to the uk
03:43he's come here to try to find out more about his personal history
03:51i know what part of barbados my mother was from but there's still so much that i don't know
03:58there's still so much about my past that i don't understand there's still so many pieces of the jigsaw
04:03but i still miss it the story of this island is bound up with a history of slavery david knows
04:14it
04:14must be part of his heritage but he was never taught anything about it in school it's quite extraordinary
04:21that i was never at any point in my educational history taught any of this this is not on the
04:30curriculum anywhere and in england it is a particularly buried part of history i wasn't
04:38taught anything about slavery it wasn't until i developed an interest in my past myself uh that
04:45i went to dudley library to find books about slavery and there were books there but we just weren't being
04:52taught it in school everyone needs to know you need to be able to talk about it and not feel
04:56that it's just
04:56too much shame for the british no let's find out what happened as well as it making me upset it
05:07also
05:07makes me angry that there has just been no discussion about it my sense of displacement erased a sense of
05:16a dislocated identity erased
05:21that there has been no doubt that there has been no doubt that there has been no doubt that there
05:21has been no doubt
05:21to leave the story of slavery out of the histories that we teach in school
05:26is to lie by omission and make it more difficult for us to know each other
05:35by the middle of the 17th century a small island the size of the isle of white became the most
05:42profitable of
05:43all of england's colonies and a thriving hub of trade
05:49what's the driver of all of that trade sugar sugar and what did that require clearing land creating
06:02profitable crop systems but while the lucrative plantations were owned by british settlers
06:11the back-breaking labor was done by enslaved africans
06:22at bridgetown harbor where the slave ships first made landfall
06:27david is meeting professor pedro welsh he teaches history at the university of the west indies
06:35so they would bring african slaves here yes a ship would arrive um remember this might be um
06:43two months of travel under the most horrendous conditions and they would land in this area
06:51and they're crying but this is land at least
07:02at last we came in sight of the island of barbados as the vessel drew nearer we plainly saw the
07:13harbor
07:14and other ships of different kinds and sizes and we were soon anchored amongst them
07:22we were conducted immediately to the merchant's yard where we were pent up all together like so many
07:29sheep in a fold without regard for sex or age
07:39now comes the worst part of their lives it's pretty horrendous
07:45the sale of these enslaved persons required that they be in tip-top condition they're going to be
07:51inspected by a would-be buyer females are going to have their genitals probed men are going to have
07:57their their their testicles looked at they will be oiled and made to appear a little more presentable
08:04at the sum of a gun don't people rush to get the best as far as the english settlers were
08:12concerned
08:13whilst you were of african origin you were property in this manner without scruple our relations and
08:23friends separated most of them never to see each other again
08:34can't help but think of all those ships arriving with millions of africans brothers sisters mothers
08:41fathers children and just being chucked into some small holding and people grabbing your sister and
08:49brothers and selling them to complete strangers
08:54if you think about all of that trauma it plays a part in my own sense of the dislocation of
09:03my identity
09:03who am i where do i come from
09:11next hugh kwashi discovers the trauma experienced by enslaved africans before they cross the atlantic
09:20i'm not sure if it's possible to be a black man in britain in the usa in africa
09:29and not be angry
09:46many of the enslaved who worked on the sugar plantations in barbados
09:51was shipped across the atlantic ocean from the coast of west africa
10:01hugh kwashi is a british ghanaian actor and hollywood star
10:07he is returning to ghana's capital accra the city he left as a child
10:12he's here to find out more about the brutal history of the slave trade
10:21after he arrived in england hugh was sent to expensive private schools
10:26but like david he never learned much about slavery
10:32if you were told anything it was about how william wilberforce worked tirelessly to
10:38end the slave trade the history of slavery is of course a complicated one but i didn't hear about
10:45it while i was learning about the stewards and henry the eighth and florence nightingale
10:53the portuguese first established a presence here with the blessing of the catholic church in the 15th
11:01century the catholic church divides the world in half they say that spain gets to colonize the western
11:10atlantic world and portugal gets to trade along the western coast of africa
11:16that trade includes gold ivory and people
11:26but as the demand for enslaved africans grew on the other side of the atlantic
11:32european powers competed for a piece of the action
11:40the trade in humans boomed
11:44many millions of africans were violently abducted from their homes
11:50not all of them made it as far as the coast
11:54what the slave traders wanted were young men and women what they would do when they captured a village
12:01is they would kill those who had no value they would kill the old and they would kill children
12:07and they did that because those people would not survive the march to the coast
12:12and they also did it to shock those who would
12:19hugh is going to one of the country's most notorious slave sites osu castle on the edge of accra
12:31the danish built a stone fort here in the 17th century
12:36naming it christiansborg after their king
12:41the danes were small players in the burgeoning slave trade
12:45yet between 1694 and 1803
12:49they shipped a hundred thousand enslaved africans across the atlantic
13:01professor rachel engman who is of ghanaian and english descent is conducting the first ever
13:07archaeological survey here
13:11the coast was like a shopping street people are constantly coming in through the castle every
13:18day and trades are happening right here
13:21so these are carry shells so these are carry shells and these would have been used as currency yes
13:28but would it have been used to buy slaves yes for one enslaved person you would maybe pay for that
13:36person using carry shells using gold dust using beads an assortment of objects
13:54so the enslaved would have been in this room they would have been standing
14:04they would have urinated and defecated as as they were standing because there was just no space
14:10so how many people you could have as many as up to 200 in this space
14:20so
14:24and you'll just ran out into the courtyard all the crap
14:29and you'll find that in all the forts and castles along the coast
14:34the floor is often raised higher than it was originally because it's the the impacted
14:41skin debris filth excrement that has raised the level of the floor
14:54the floor is the most important part of the floor of the floor
14:55thus seeing my miserable companions and countrymen in this pitiful distressed and horrible situation
15:02with all the brutish baseness and barbarity attending it
15:06could not but fill my little mind with horror and indignation
15:14an estimated 12 million captive africans
15:18would be shipped to the new world we know of that 12 million that around one million didn't survive
15:26they died on board ships and their bodies were thrown overboard there are stories that sharks
15:34learned to follow the bloody paths of slave ships because for hundreds of years
15:40bodies of over a million africans were cast into the atlantic ocean
15:51they were forced to be a black man or woman in the usa in britain in africa
16:00and not be angry knowing what we do about our history and knowing what we face in the present
16:14the atlantic slave trade was conducted by europeans but was also underpinned by partnerships with local
16:22african leaders and merchants you know i came here by boat today and it was pretty clear
16:31that even in a boat with an outboard motor it was difficult to land
16:37now big ships couldn't come anywhere near as close so they could only be fed
16:43by canoes going between the ships and the boats so that meant that there had to be some cooperation
16:50some sort of collusion with the local people living around the fort
17:00slavery was already present in the world and it was present in the continent of africa but it was
17:06different your status was not inherited by your children you could find a way to move up in society
17:14now you see where there are europeans trading with people of african descent and they're putting people
17:20into this transatlantic slave trade providing human capital for plantations this form of slavery becomes
17:30racialized and commercialized
17:46the other side of the atlantic david hairwood wants to find out more about how the enslaved were treated
17:54once they were sold to plantation owners
18:03he's come to the barbados museum and historical society
18:09it houses documents that reveal how the british established a brutal model of slavery here
18:16that would soon be exported to other colonies
18:22so let's see if we can find them here for you museum director alessandra cummings has looked out a book
18:31that details a draconian legal framework that was introduced in 1661 the slave code
18:40this volume makes it very clear
18:43that africans were property they were not individual human beings right and the question might occur why
18:54were laws needed well within 20 years of the establishment of a sugar economy in the island
19:01the enslaved population outnumbered in a very significant way the white plantocracy
19:08and they felt the need for a certain level of control
19:16in 1644 before the sugar boom the population of barbados was estimated at 30 000
19:27about 800 were of african descent the rest mostly of english descent
19:36but by 1660 just a year before the slave code was introduced
19:42and with sugar production going into overdrive there were 27 000 blacks to 26 000 whites
19:53i think we sometimes get slavery wrong we focus on the harshness of the agricultural labor people were
19:58forced to do we don't look at the slave codes that mandate forms of bodily mutilation the slitting of
20:06people's cheeks the cutting off of ears the cutting off of toes
20:10if any negro
20:12or slave whatsoever shall offer any violence to any christian by striking or the like
20:19such negro or slave
20:20shall for his or her first offense be severely whipped by the constable
20:28for his second offense of that nature he shall be severely whipped his nose slit
20:35and be burned in some part of his face with a hot iron
20:49when they were really serious they brought to the table this thing this branding iron
20:57these were made in england they were made to order in england for the deliberate defacement
21:04of african individuals this would have been put in like hot coals and literally
21:11you'd just be branded with it exactly
21:15presumably these are the initials of somebody's name yeah you are the property of the individual whose
21:22initials are branded not on your shoulder but on your face on your forehead on your cheek
21:38this law it's taken to jamaica it's taken to south carolina and it spreads all across the region
21:53but there were also rebellions right i mean the people did fight back yes i know there's a very
21:59famous rebellion that took place on this island with a gentleman by the name of busser
22:04this rebellion started on easter sunday in 1816.
22:10the epicenter of the rebellion was bailey's plantation because of a small group of individuals
22:19one of whom happened to be african born not a barbarian so he understood the condition of freedom
22:27and he orchestrated the signaling that activity should spread out to other plantations
22:39the busser rebellion was the first of three major uprisings by the enslaved in the west indies in the
22:47early 19th century busser who had been enslaved in west africa led some 400 rebels into battle against
22:57the british but the rebellion was brutally crushed by the heavily armed colonial militia
23:09and reading that slave code that was british that was english
23:17white supremacy is an english invention
23:22that was franchised to several different countries the idea that i am not human
23:28that i have no soul that i'm a beast
23:31brand me burn me whatever and no recourse nothing because i'm not human and i think
23:44that's fundamental to understand how that has informed
23:50racism
23:57coming up hugh investigates a potential ancestor snatched from his home and transported to europe
24:05he was taken as a very young child at the age of four about the same age that i was
24:10when i left ghana
24:11okay and david makes a shocking discovery about his family tree so he was actually a slave yes
24:34in ghana actor hugh kwashi is on the trail of an 18th century ancestor
24:42when he was growing up hugh's father told him about anton wilhelm amal
24:48a ghanaian he claimed to be descended from
24:53he also gave him a paper about amu's extraordinary life that still haunts him
25:00i didn't read it for a long time but then i suddenly realized that actually this is an interesting
25:05story night that's i started reading it and started doing a bit of research but yes he wanted me to
25:12know
25:17about it
25:18the tiny fishing village of sharma lies 120 miles west of ghana's capital accra
25:27it's home to fort san sebastian one of the oldest slave sites in the country
25:34built by the portuguese in the 1520s it was captured by the dutch west india company
25:40in 1642. it is here that anton wilhelm amu is said to be buried good now something to interest you
25:52right who's met up with historian kwezi essel blankson from the ghana museum and monuments board
26:00dr antonio wilhelm amu the african yeah yeah yeah this is especially poignant for me
26:10because um my father claimed him as an ancestor and gave me the name anthony amu so my name is
26:18wow hugh anthony kobna i've read a little bit about him born around 1703 yeah taken a very young child
26:27at the age of four about the same age that i was when i left ghana okay he was taken
26:32to the netherlands
26:34and then on to prussia damu was transported to europe by the dutch west india company as a child
26:43and given as a gift to the duke of brunswick wuffenbattle in modern-day germany
26:50he was one of the first africans to attend a european university becoming a professor of philosophy
26:57and publishing several important works he returned to ghana in the 1740s also and this i didn't know
27:08until very recently he had a twin brother oh i see and the story is that the twin was seized
27:15illegally
27:16by a dutch privateer okay and taken to surinam i see so amu came back according to the to the
27:24legend
27:24and he demanded the return of his brother of his brother all reparations the dutch got a bit alarmed
27:31and my understanding was that he ended up that was the reason why they brought him house prisoner
27:38it is especially poignant isn't it that within the same family two people experience slavery and
27:44different conditions one who becomes a very distinguished philosopher and academic in europe
27:51the other who stays and eventually ends up as a slave
28:02any african person is always going to be afraid of either finding an ancestor who was a slave
28:08or polluted in some way in the slave trade
28:16i'm fortunate in having found ancestors who don't seem to have colluded and if anything argued strongly
28:25against it in the case of anton wilhelm amont
28:32but i do wonder about the double-edged sword of western civilization on the one side it did produce a
28:41great
28:42intellectual and academic distinction
28:46on the other side it devastated communities and impoverished them
29:03in barbados david hairwood is heading to a cluster of sugar plantations
29:10he's hoping to find a direct link to his enslaved ancestors once owned by the aristocratic hairwood family
29:20i'm finding out about my family and it all helps to color in my identity just the history of my
29:28people
29:29i'm sure that it could get a little emotional
29:35it's a very dark chapter in british history
29:41before 1834 and abolition the enslaved were not included in usual records of births marriages and deaths
29:52they were seen merely as property or chattel
30:08they had two plantations just down from here
30:12but local genealogist pat stafford is expert at combing through little known sources
30:18let me just get out the copy i'm very excited about this
30:22she's drawn up a family tree for david based on some new findings
30:29i am aware of some of my family tree but i gather you've been doing a little bit more work
30:35and you
30:36have a maybe one or two more surprises for me so well yes i can just show you here's the
30:41family tree
30:42document this is your grandfather herbert hairwood and here's benjamin william
30:49and he was living on college estate in saint john and he was born in about 1840
30:54and on his marriage certificate benjamin has told us that his father was called richard hairwood
31:03before great-great-grandfather benjamin was born it was the era of slavery so there are no earlier
31:10records of births marriages and deaths but there is one other place to look the slave registers introduced
31:20in 1817 one year after the busser rebellion
31:27college estate is immediately north the next door plantations were fortescue and thickets
31:37and they were owned by the earl of hairwood oh here we go and on their registers
31:43we found a record um for a lady called betty she had a son called benjamin and then
31:52we thought well where did richard come from the chances are that he's also on this register and sure
31:58enough who do we find well richard age 17 and three quarters in 1834 these are the people that we
32:10believe are your four times great grandparents wow so that's my it's my dad's dad's dad's dad that's
32:21right to connect david here with to richard 1817 i mean that's just fantastic so this guy was obviously
32:31working under slavery this guy was that's what i hadn't got before so he was these guys were
32:36actually he was actually a slave yes he was and so was his wife
32:45that's why it's quite quite a something to know isn't it yeah
32:53yeah
32:58thickets where richard and betty were enslaved is just a mile from bailey's plantation
33:04where buses rebellion began in 1816. so david's forebears would have been acutely aware of the revolt
33:14and experienced the draconian crackdown that followed
33:19just looking at that it does make me proud actually very proud
33:26i can say to my children
33:30these are your grandparents this is what happened to them this is what they survived
33:42i think it's a very good reminder that they really deserve to hold their heads up
33:47and they really must continue the story because you know
33:56that's a proud line of strong people
34:04my mother used to say to me when i was growing up
34:08live up to your ancestors prayers it's a beautiful way to describe that hope and that promise
34:18that those individuals who suffered so much and in their darkest moments of
34:25hoping for freedom hope that their descendants could have so much more than they had
34:48i think it's just a beautiful counter-narrative to history but also he allows us to see
34:53that the impossible is possible and david returns to england to confront a descendant of the family that
35:01owned his enslaved forebears do you feel any guilt or shame about that
35:08you feel any guilt or shame about that
35:30back in london hugh has been doing some more research into the man who could be his ancestor
35:38anton wilhelm amu he's linking up with dwight lewis who teaches philosophy at the university of central
35:47florida he's done extensive research into amu's life and work hi dwight dwight can you hear me i can
35:57i can hey you i'm curious as to what your interest in amu is and what he means to you
36:04you know growing
36:06up here in the u.s i went to school and i wasn't granted the opportunity to read anyone that
36:11was
36:11black i was yelling at my professor saying you know we only have these seven white guys that we
36:17keep focusing on you know we're the black figures in history so my goal has been to some extent to
36:24change the narrative of what we think about black especially in the 18th century you know we read people
36:29like david hume who just tell us right that black is by definition inferior intellectually um and amu
36:38comes prior to them um and shows that that's just not the case and so for me he's just a
36:44beautiful
36:44counter-narrative to history but also he allows us to see that the impossible is possible
36:52despite amu's accomplishments he chose to return to africa in the 1740s no one is sure why
37:02do you think he maybe reached the limits of western philosophy if i was speculating myself i would say
37:11that the racial tensions had grown um astronomically by the middle of the 18th century this is the height of
37:17the slave trade and so uh because of this i actually think he goes home um because being a negro
37:25in
37:25germany actually changed from the early 18th century to the middle of the 18th century
37:32um and i probably say this because we can just look it's clear that um the significance of um to
37:38dwight
37:39is as a historical figure for me it's more personal i guess and i think over the years i've come
37:49to
37:51feel a kind of affinity with the man he came from the same part of ghana as my father did
37:58so it's possible that there is a line of direct descent but in a way it's not critical the fact
38:06that
38:07he lived and he achieved things that in itself is a source of pride to some extent but it's also
38:15it sets a precedent it's an example and it shows what can be done
38:38so david has also returned to england he has come to the seat of the earl of hairwood whose family
38:45once
38:46owned his forebears the vast palladian mansion is built on the profits of sugar and slavery
38:59the opulence the opulence the grandeur it's like a monument to white supremacy
39:07what i don't see is the other side of the story
39:13he's here to meet the current earl of hairwood david lascelles
39:19i didn't really sleep last night i was thinking quite a lot about this meeting
39:27i think the emotional toll of building up to it has left me pretty wasted
39:35to actually meet the eighth earl of hairwood when it was the second earl of hairwood who owned
39:45my grandparents which is quite huge
39:57so david thank you for um you're welcome i've just come back from barbados and um
40:03done work in terms of discovering my history and my family uh connections
40:09so here we have the slave returns at the top there it says the right honorable second earl
40:17of hairwood and you see betty yes and here at the top there we've got richard
40:26so my great great great great grandparents were slaves on your family's plantation
40:35and this is a fine house it's beautiful grounds but it was built on the proceeds of slavery do you
40:42feel any guilt or shame about that
40:48um no not not not in a not in a personal way i mean i don't feel that uh feeling
40:55guilty for
40:57something that you had no involvement with is is a helpful emotion i think you need to take
41:04responsibility for your own actions but in this i don't feel responsible but i feel accountable i guess
41:12you know there's nothing you can do to change the past nothing but you can be active in the in
41:18the
41:18present and in what ways are you actively helping to do that well we did a lot around the time
41:27in 2007
41:28by centenary abolition of the slave trade and subsequently a lot of things to do with the the
41:33programming we have here artists we've worked with educationalists we've worked with and so on
41:38what i'm responsible for is what i try to do about that legacy to try in a small way to
41:45make that a
41:46sort of force for good today
41:51herwood house signals the end of david's journey into his own story and its connection to the history of slavery
42:01i underestimated the psychological toll of it and knowing how much pushback there has been
42:09against black lives matter in the press and on my social media it's exhausting to deal with the
42:17ignorance people saying get over it because it's tangible for me it's stuff that i'm kind of dealing
42:25with and working with and working through and my daughters
42:39will be able to know where they came from and understand where they came from
42:44in a way that i didn't
42:48and so it's a sense of history i think and sense of story and longevity
43:00an understanding of who i am i'm not just this kid that just comes from birmingham you know
43:07and more than that
43:15next time rachel johnson travels to venice to uncover the city's dark history women were traded
43:24like any other commodity here in venice you know silk or spices
43:29while karen gibson who's been called the godmother of gospel discovers the incredible story of enslaved
43:37african turned virtuoso violinist joseph emedy torn from his parents his family and everything that he
43:45knew at the age of 12 and then within a few short years he's playing in an orchestra it beggars
43:51belief
43:52really and trisha goddard discovers shocking details about the indian ocean slave trade
44:02children there's mostly children oh my god
44:09and 1000 years a slave continues next tuesday at 10. on the final leg of his journey alexander
44:15armstrong sees for himself the alarming effects of climate change in iceland brand new tomorrow at
44:202009 and it's a terrifying ordeal for an 11 year old trapped in the wreckage of a car ambulance code
44:25red is next
Comentários