Examining slavery at the Fitzwilliam

 

A "trade token", used on a British ship to vouch for the "integrity" of the slave trader (1788)

Hot on the heels of the last slavery exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, here is another show on a similar theme (Rise Up: Resistance Revolution Abolition), co-curated by Victoria Avery, who was also responsible for the Black Atlantic exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in 2023. This exhibition is the result of a study commissioned by the University to identify its links with Atlantic slavery “and other forms of forced labour”. This explains why there are so many references to Cambridge alumni in the exhibits and catalogue.  

The themes of the exhibition appear to be:

• Anti-slavery campaigners with links in and around Cambridge, notably Olaudah Equiano.
• The anti-slavery campaigning movement in Britain.
• Resistance and rebellion in early Black states, primarily, Haiti. The curators state the exhibition focuses on “acts of resistance” rather than “narratives of white abolitionism”.
• Resettlement, comprising a fascinating section about the 3,000 British Black loyalists who fought in the American War of Independence and were offered resettlement in Nova Scotia, and some coverage of an attempt to “repatriate” African slaves in Sierra Leone.
• Some early Black students at the University of Cambridge, specifically, a composer and an actor.  

This is a lot for one exhibition. Is it an art exhibition, a history presentation, or an act of expiation by the University? It sits uneasily somewhere between all three, with some muddled messages as you proceed around the exhibition.

What unites the exhibition, if anything, is a strident tone of injustice, with many heavily pedagogical captions. You will be told the correct interpretation of these exhibits, just in case you missed it; for example, a medal celebrating William Wilberforce is sternly labelled:

Medals like this one  - adopting the individualist conventions of the medium – ensured that abolitionist success was associated for decades to follow with a single white man. This has contributed to the neglect of countless other stories of resistance.

This hectoring style of captioning reminds me of recent exhibitions at the Tate Modern.  

Undoubtedly there are some fine exhibits, but overall the effect is weakened because of the very disparate themes and their wildly differing importance. To remember the first Black actor to play Othello is undoubtedly worth celebrating, as is one of the earliest Black composers as a student at a Cambridge college, but where does that fit in this exhibition of resistance and revolution?

Haiti

Haiti is justified for inclusion as the first successful rebellion by a slave population. Yet the focus here is rather strange. While the story of Toussaint L’Ouverture and the initial rebellion is well known, Haiti after the revolt is not a very edifying tale – as is shown by images in this exhibition. It looked to me there were more objects in the exhibition relating to reaction in Haiti than to revolution.

Dessalines, leader from 1804, introduced “serfdom” (as opposed to slavery, now banned), with all labourers bound to a plantation. The use of a whip was now forbidden, so estate owners used thick vines instead. Before this exhibition, I had no idea that Haiti had ever had a king. Now I know that Henri Christophe, one of the leaders of the rebellion, created a kingdom for himself, with a vast palace, using forced (not slave) labour, “using the corvée system, where people worked without pay instead of paying taxes”. Is this the rebellion we want to celebrate? Do we want to see details of the heraldic arms of the newly created (and short-lived) Haitian nobility?

Links to Cambridge

This is a mixture of significant and trivial. Certainly it is interesting that “the contradictory intertwinement of abolitionism and slavery existed at multiple levels from individuals to institutions to the country at large” [p134]. But does that justify mentioning all possible references to Cambridge alumni, for example that “Cambridge University educated … the heirs of British planters from Barbados, Jamaica and other British colonies long after slavery had ended”? Several references have an unintended effect: “Around 13,000 enslaved people rose up on sixty plantations, including some with connections to the University of Cambridge.” [catalogue, p144]

Contemporary art

One of the common practices with recent exhibitions that take place in an art gallery, but on a historical theme, is to invite contemporary artists to present their interpretation. This is the principle behind, for example, the recent Hew Locke show at the British Museum. However, some of the art seems to be chosen for its compliance with the exhibition theme, but to be in harmony with the message does not always produce an effective piece of propaganda – or art. A collection of hessian sacks by Karen McLean, for example, depicts enslaved women “via their reproductive organs rather than their faces to highlight enslaved women’s resistance and defiance through the control they took over their wombs.”  Sadly, I think that’s just how the slave owners saw the women: as reproductive agents to create more slaves. It doesn’t appear very defiant to me.

Some of the most effective recent art in the exhibition appears to have  little connection with the themes. There is a great picture by Rosmarie Marke (Which One, No Choice – Fleeing) of the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1997, but what is its connection with the rest of the exhibition?

Conclusion

It seems clear that the British Act of 1807 did not end the UK’s involvement with slavery, and I would have welcomed a more nuanced approach. Instead, there is a mixture of central and peripheral topics. The Atlantic slave trade is a fundamental and justified theme; it’s just a shame this Fitzwilliam show dilutes the message.