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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
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