̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Slavery

Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance

jek67 — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 07:04:00 +0000

A major new exhibition explores Cambridge's role in slavery, the people it affected and their resistance to it.

Legacies of enslavement: report and response

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 12:55:00 +0000

Research indicates that Cambridge had connections to the Atlantic slave trade. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� is creating a Cambridge Legacies of Enslavement Fund which will be put towards research, community engagement and partnership activities.

Cambridge Legacies of Enslavement Inquiry delivers initial report

plc32 — Fri, 15 May 2020 15:41:26 +0000

̽��ֱ��interim report for the Inquiry, led by Professor Martin Millett, outlines a plan of action from Lent Term 2020 that includes research conducted by two new Research Fellows to be based in the Centre for African Studies working in an interdisciplinary context across the ̽��ֱ��, and information gathered from related work across the Collegiate ̽��ֱ��.

In support of this research, the report said the Inquiry will use its website and an email list to provide current information about the project and related activities across the Collegiate ̽��ֱ�� and to serve as a hub for research and engagement around the theme.

A priority over the next two years will be presenting the Inquiry and seeking input on it from a broad audience, both within the ̽��ֱ�� and beyond. In addition to an ongoing series of public forums and seminars, the Inquiry will seek to support research and public-facing engagement on enslavement and its legacies by students, staff, and organisations and institutions throughout the ̽��ֱ��.

Discussions are also progressing with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Museums about an exhibition in 2022 that will explore aspects of the subject and a plan for the work to culminate in a major international conference in 2022. Other ideas include involvement in ̽��ֱ�� outreach events and programmes.

In all this, the Inquiry welcomes proposals and ideas for collaboration from across the Collegiate ̽��ֱ��.

An external advisory panel comprised of academics from King's College, Warwick ̽��ֱ��, Bristol and the ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh has also been added to provide help and advice to the Inquiry.

The Inquiry was convened in April 2019 by Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen J Toope to advise him on the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s historical links with enslavement and on the legacies of those links in light of the growing public interest in the issue of British universities’ historical links to enslavement and the slave trade.

̽��ֱ��two-year inquiry will explore ̽��ֱ�� archives and a wide range of records elsewhere to uncover how the institution may have gained from slavery and the exploitation of coerced labour, through financial and other bequests to departments, libraries and museums.

It will also investigate the extent to which scholarship at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, an established and flourishing seat of learning before and during the period of Empire, might have reinforced and validated race-based thinking between the 18th and early 20th Century.

Professor Millett said: “This will be an evidence-led and thorough piece of research into the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s historical relationship with the slave trade and other forms of coerced labour. We cannot know at this stage what exactly it will find but it is reasonable to assume that, like many large British institutions during the colonial era, the ̽��ֱ�� will have benefited directly or indirectly from, and contributed to, the practices of the time.”

̽��ֱ��Advisory Group is expected to deliver its final report to the Vice-Chancellor in 2022. Alongside its findings on historical links to the slave trade, the report will recommend appropriate ways for the ̽��ֱ�� to publicly acknowledge such links and their modern impact.

Full initial report

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Legacies of Enslavement Inquiry delivered its first report this week outlining its plan of action and initial recommendations.

This will be an evidence-led and thorough piece of research

Professor Martin Millett

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Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� launches inquiry into historical links to slavery

Anonymous — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 23:01:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��two-year inquiry will explore ̽��ֱ�� archives and a wide range of records elsewhere to uncover how the institution may have gained from slavery and the exploitation of labour, through financial and other bequests to departments, libraries and museums.

A specially commissioned Advisory Group appointed by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen J Toope, has been asked to recommend appropriate ways to publicly acknowledge past links to slavery and to address its impact.

̽��ֱ��eight-member Advisory Group overseeing the work is being chaired by Professor Martin Millett, the Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, and draws its membership from relevant academic departments across the ̽��ֱ��. ̽��ֱ��panel will call on further external expertise as necessary.

̽��ֱ��inquiry will be conducted by two full-time postdoctoral researchers, based in the Centre of African Studies, part of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. ̽��ֱ��research will examine specific gifts, bequests and historical connections with the slave trade. Researchers will also look into the ̽��ֱ��’s contribution to scholarship and learning that underpinned slavery and other forms of coerced labour.

“ ̽��ֱ��benefits may have been financial or through other gifts. But the panel is just as interested in the way scholars at the ̽��ֱ�� helped shape public and political opinion, supporting, reinforcing and sometimes contesting racial attitudes which are repugnant in the 21st Century.”

Professor Toope, the Vice-Chancellor, said: “There is growing public and academic interest in the links between the older British universities and the slave trade, and it is only right that Cambridge should look into its own exposure to the profits of coerced labour during the colonial period.

“We cannot change the past, but nor should we seek to hide from it. I hope this process will help the ̽��ֱ�� understand and acknowledge its role during that dark phase of human history.”

̽��ֱ��Advisory Group’s work comes amid a wider reflection taking place in the United States and Britain on the links between universities and slavery. It is among a number of race equality initiatives currently being pursued at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. In February, the Centre of African Studies hosted a round table on 'Slavery and its Legacies at Cambridge'.

̽��ֱ��Advisory Group is expected to deliver its final report to the Vice-Chancellor in summer 2022. Alongside its findings on historical links to the slave trade, the report will recommend appropriate ways for the ̽��ֱ�� to publicly acknowledge such links and their modern impact.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge will conduct an in-depth academic study into ways in which it contributed to, benefited from or challenged the Atlantic slave trade and other forms of coerced labour during the colonial era.

Emancipation Badge (1787), commissioned by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade from Josiah Wedgwood, in the Fitzwilliam Museum collection.

Yes

Before race mattered: what archives tell us about early encounters in the French colonies

amb206 — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 10:00:00 +0000

In the mid-17th century, a French missionary called Pierre Pelleprat visited several Caribbean islands before travelling to French Guyana and the South American mainland. In an infamous account of his travels, he described the blacks of the Caribbean as “so hideous and misshapen that they fill you with horror”. Tellingly, however, he did not consider this ugliness to be beyond salvation: “I do not know whether my eyes were charmed, but I usually found [the negroes] better shaped and more pleasant after their baptism.”

Pelleprat was part of a generation of Europeans who began to travel widely, crossing oceans to encounter people whose cultures seemed alien and uncivilised. Arriving on the shores of the tropical islands of the Caribbean after a long and perilous sea voyage, Pelleprat and his compatriots would have met for the first time large native populations of Caribs as well as Amerindians and Africans. Many were enslaved to white settlers making fortunes in commodities such as sugar and tobacco.

̽��ֱ��missionary's words make shocking reading. But, says Dr Mélanie Lamotte (Faculty of History and Newnham College), it is worth exploring the beliefs that underpinned them. Lamotte is a researcher whose work focuses on colour prejudice and interethnic antagonism in the early modern French empire. A French national, educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Cambridge, Lamotte has a personal reason to be interested in the experiences of enslaved people. On her mother’s side, she is the descendant of a slave who, in the 18th century, was taken from the coast of Senegal to work on a sugar cane plantation on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

A project to trace her own family ancestry took Lamotte on an often frustrating journey into archival materials. Accounts written by slaves are few; for generations, they were denied the opportunities afforded by education and literacy. She says: “I see my work as a form of historical reparation for the inhabitants of France’s former colonies whose history has long been neglected or twisted by analysts – and I hope that a better understanding of France’s colonial past will shed light on the roots of the social tensions apparent in France today.”

Research into the various ways in which race has been understood has generally taken the 18th century as its starting point. Encounters between people with different cultures have, of course, taken place for millennia – and it is hard to know how such differences were registered by those who experienced them. Lamotte suggests that records of 17th-century encounters between Europeans and inhabitants of distant lands reveal something remarkable. She says: “Rather than focusing on race as something inborn, early European travellers saw difference as something more fluid – and often as something that could be corrected by imposing ‘civilising’ influences.”

On the basis of her extensive work on underexplored archival material, Lamotte argues that before the 18th century, “race didn’t matter” in the same way that it came to matter when ideas of racial differences became more fixed, most famously by laws that prohibited marriages between different groups. Accounts from travellers in the French empire reveal that, although notions of blood and breeding were powerful in French society (for example in the preservation of the lineages of French nobility), the non-whites encountered by France’s empire-makers were initially not seen in the same terms.

Lamotte has looked in detail at records relating to the French empire in three contrasting locations: the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Ile Bourbon in the Indian Ocean, and Louisiana in the former French colonies of north America. In making direct comparisons between these widespread colonies, her research extends existing scholarship to a global scale and also reflects the fact that many travellers sailed throughout the French empire. Their ideas circulated too – including the notion that non-Europeans could be schooled out of ‘backward’ customs.

In arguing that “race didn’t matter”, Lamotte does not suggest that prejudice did not exist (it most certainly did) but rather that it took forms dictated by the preoccupations of a society concerned with behaviour, dress and manners – and, of course, with religion. During an era in which the outward signs of politesse were paramount, newly-encountered people were judged, and categorised, in terms of their level of ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’ or (at the other end of the scale) ‘civilisation’.

A good measure of self-interest fuelled the initially cordial relations between the colonialists and the inhabitants of lands seen to be rich in possibilities. In some cases, by forging alliances with the local population, the incomers were able to tap into the local trade networks that were vital to securing goods for export – fur from North America and spices from the East Indies.

Many of the early French settlers were men, and marriageable women were in short supply. In 1690 only 16 white women were recorded on Île Bourbon (now La Réunion), an island located in the Southwest Indian Ocean. Most European men on Ile Bourbon married non-white women – despite an ordinance issued in 1674 which forbade “Frenchmen to marry negresses” and “blacks to marry whites” in the colony.

In New France (Acadia, Canada, the Great Lakes and the Illinois Country), miscegenation (the mixing of groups) was pursued as a deliberate policy to assist integration. In 1603, Samuel de Champlain, French explorer and founder of the Quebec settlement, reportedly assured local communities that “our young men will marry your daughters, and we shall be one people”. From the outset of French colonisation in the Caribbean, the need to maintain a buoyant slave population created a comparatively more prejudiced and segregated ‘plantation society’.

Father Mongin, a Jesuit missionary who spent time in the French Caribbean in the 1680s, wrote that “some [negroes] do not lack intelligence and are capable of all sorts of arts and sciences, should they receive the right education”. Thousands of miles across the world, a surgeon named Sieur Dellon, who had spent some time on Ile Bourbon 20 years earlier, wrote in a similar vein that “among [Malagasies], there are some with common sense, quick witted, and who would be fit for the arts and sciences, if they were educated”.

Education in this context involved imposing all-important French rules of politesse, conversion from idolatry to Christianity, and the stamping out of “absurd” beliefs and “ridiculous” ceremonies. Non-Europeans were described as “sluggish” and indolent. Outrage was expressed when some French settlers in North America, rather than ‘Frenchifying’ the natives, became ‘Indianised’ themselves. In the early 17th century a French administrator complained that, living among the native people, the French coureurs de bois (woodsmen) behaved “like the savages” and enjoyed “an animal life”, doing little more than hunting and fishing.

̽��ֱ��start of the 18th century witnessed a change in attitude on the part of the colonisers. French administrators in North America began to argue against interracial marriages which “would mix good [French] blood with bad [Native American] blood”. In 1723 the colonial Council of Louisiana issued an edict forbidding “all Frenchmen and any other subjects of the king who are white to marry savage women”. ̽��ֱ��number of mixed marriages dropped, and in 1738 one governor observed that “the Illinois Indians do not invite the French to marry their daughters any longer, and the French do not think about this anymore”.

Children of mixed European and indigenous heritage (métis) were, by the middle of the 18th century, frequently considered to be inferior. French colonialists complained that métis children were “extremely swarthy” and “naturally lazy”. Dark complexions were seen as indicators of ‘racial’ inferiority – and the alleged licentiousness and brutishness that had long been attributed to the natives were increasingly believed to be ‘fixed’. Official documents listed colonial populations under headings such as Nègre (negro), Mulâtre (mulato), Métis (mixed) and Sauvage (indigenous).

“Ultimately, ‘racial’ discourses developed partly because the French needed to justify discrimination and segregation towards people who were viewed as a threat to French socio-economic and imperialist ambitions. These people included slaves who could claim emancipation, free peoples of colour who presented as economic competitors, and the large Native American population, unreceptive to French policies of ‘Frenchification’ and evangelisation,” says Lamotte.

“People continue to use language and ideas inherited from colonial times, for example, by using the term ‘nègres’ to designate blacks, and maintaining the image of blacks as lazy or violent. As the result of centuries of prejudice, many blacks in the Antilles consider themselves inferior to whites. A creole phrase often heard in Guadeloupe when a baby is born is ‘ti-moun la bien soti’, meaning ‘your baby looks good as he or she doesn’t have too dark a skin’. Exposing the ways in which such views took hold over the centuries, and telling the tales of those who lived with prejudice, is a powerful way of shaping a more equal world.”

As Europe expanded its overseas colonies, fixed ideas of racial differences took hold. Historian Dr Mélanie Lamotte, whose forebears include a slave, is researching a brief period when European notions of ethnicity were relatively fluid. Early French settlers believed that non-white inhabitants of the colonies could be ‘civilised’ and ‘improved’.

I see my work as a form of historical reparation for the inhabitants of France’s former colonies – and I hope that a better understanding of France’s colonial past will shed light on the roots of the social tensions apparent in France today.

Mélanie Lamotte

Image from Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer (ANOM), Jean-Baptiste Labat, Nouveau voyage aux isles

Mélanie Lamotte: my family history

I was born in France, and my mother comes from the island of Guadeloupe, an overseas department in the French Caribbean. ̽��ֱ��history of France’s colonial empire was, until recently, largely absent from my country’s school curriculum. But I wanted to know more about my family. When I was 20 years old, I reconstructed my family tree, tracing it back three centuries to a slave called Anne Rose. My research inspired me to become a historian. From 2006 to 2015, I received grants from the EU and the UK government to study history at the Sorbonne and Cambridge. Today I’m a historian of slavery, ethnic prejudice and early modern French colonialism.

In the 18th century, Anne Rose was transported from the coast of Senegal to work on a sugar cane plantation in Guadeloupe. White planters were making fortunes in commodities such as sugar, tobacco, coffee and indigo. One of Anne Rose’s children, a man named Quidi, moved to Pointe Noire, Guadeloupe in 1794. My extended family still lives in that same town. Slavery was officially abolished in the 1790s, in the aftermath of the French revolution. Records suggest that Quidi was freed and, remarkably for a former slave, lived for nearly 100 years. He had a daughter, Demoiselle Anne Rose, in 1799. ̽��ֱ��title ‘Demoiselle” suggests that she may have been of relatively high status.

Slavery was permanently abolished in the French colonies in 1848, and blacks in the French Caribbean began to use the names of their slave ancestors as their family names. My family on my mother’s side is still called ‘Annerose’. ̽��ֱ��grandson of Demoiselle Anne Rose was my granddad’s grandfather. My granddad was told that his grandfather had been homeless, and lived on a beach called ‘Plage Caraïbe’ in Pointe-Noire.

Slavery is a significant part of French history. ̽��ֱ��four French overseas departments (former French colonies) are ranked among the poorest regions of the EU. Researchers have shown that this economic distress is in part a consequence of the slavery. ̽��ֱ��French government has been working to raise the profile of Atlantic slavery in French consciousness. ̽��ֱ��Law of May 2001 declared slavery and the slave trade to be ‘crimes against humanity’. May 10th is now an annual day of commemoration of Atlantic slavery in France.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Happy trafficking: how criminals profit from an iniquitous trade

amb206 — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 01:00:00 +0000

No-one knows how many human beings are trafficked each year. Reliable, comparable and up-to-date figures for this worldwide trade are notoriously hard to come by. By its nature, trafficking in human beings (THB) is a furtive and fast-changing phenomenon – and one that is both difficult and dangerous to research.

It is estimated that there exist between 21 million (International Labour Organization) and 31.4 million (United Nations) victims of trafficking and modern slavery. This shadowy trade overlaps and converges with the legitimate global economy, with illegal trades such as the internet’s ‘dark web’ and smuggling, as well as with illicit commerce – and, of course with terrorism.

Attempts to define THB, which is often mistakenly used synonymously with ‘people smuggling’, have resulted in no fewer than 22 definitions in academia (Salt & Hogarth, 2000). ̽��ֱ��EU, for example, earmarked 18 October as its ‘Anti-Trafficking Day’ while the UK calls the same date ‘Anti-Slavery Day’. While academics and policy-makers debate about the semantics, people continue to be bought, sold, and exploited like chattels.

Efforts to curtail this vile underground trade have been notably ineffective. Owing mainly to a lack of partnerships and knowledge-sharing between governments, NGOs, and supranational organisations, the number of people helped, according to the US Department of State, is small (around 48,000 or approximately 0.12% of the total) and the number of criminals convicted lamentable (around 4,000 or roughly 0.8% of the total).

If we are to gain an understanding of THB, convict more traffickers, and protect more victims and potential victims (following the current best practice from the USA of 4Ps – prevention, protection, prosecution and partnerships), we need to pinpoint and share the key data associated with it – and fathom the complex mechanisms used to enable and facilitate it. Research by Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe, for example, has shown that many victims are re-victimised within criminal justice systems which, failing to recognise their true predicament, prosecutes them as complicit criminals and/or illegal immigrants.

My research suggests that traffickers should not to be seen and explained through a moralistic lens as simply depraved persons. These are cynical business men and women who, spotting a gap in the market and by satisfying denied demand, seek to maximise profits and minimise risk, while considering the human beings they buy and sell as commodities.

Risk is minimised by THB being a ‘silent’ crime. Cases are extremely hard to prosecute and high conviction clearance rates difficult to achieve, for many reasons. Profits are maximised because people can be sold and re-sold, while being ruthlessly exploited (my research has found cases where the victim was ‘visited’ by up to 100 ‘clients’ each day). My research in Greece has corroborated findings in other countries that people can change hands up to 15 times, unlike drugs which can be sold only once and weapons two or three times – human beings are markedly more lucrative to criminals.

THB and slavery is thought to generate profits of approximately $31.6 - $150 billion per annum, making the trafficking of human beings the third most profitable transnational organised crime (although and unlike smuggling of persons, THB is not always transnational – internal trafficking takes place within a country’s borders), after drugs and counterfeit goods. ̽��ֱ��human costs of this most inhumane of crimes, which strips people of their basic human rights, are incalculable and damaging to all communities involved.

Lack of consensus about what constitutes trafficking in human beings led the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime (which was supplemented by the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children) to devise an all-encompassing and lengthy, legal definition for ‘trafficking in persons’.

̽��ֱ��UN definition came into effect on 25 December 2003 (and still has not been ratified by many countries as of today). It frames the crime (Act + Means + Purpose = THB), clearly within terms of coercion, threat of force, and abuse or exploitation of the vulnerable by the powerful. This description broadly matches public perceptions of THB.

Nonetheless, there is an even more insidious type of THB. It exists on the blurred boundaries of what is illegal or illicit and what is not – and it’s called ‘happy trafficking’. This concept, shocking in its seeming contradictory nature, was first used some eight years ago to describe a novel THB typology – one in which female victims are sold a ‘happy’ story of a worthwhile employment opportunity in another country.

This positive even joyful narrative is, ironically and tragically, peddled by women who have usually been THB victims themselves. ̽��ֱ��psychological incentives behind the entrapment of these women are many and diverse, and my research has found that most frequently it is due to: severe despondence, confusion, spite, profiteering/not knowing other form of employment, Stockholm syndrome, and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Typically, these female victims, much like their ‘happy’ female recruiters, are poor, illiterate, powerless and, therefore, desperate.

‘Happy trafficking’ is not just a global reality but also a growing reality. Its increase presents a huge challenge at a time when society is both increasingly globalised and increasingly unequal. So, what is happy trafficking and who are the people involved in it?

My initial research focuses on sex-THB (or trafficking of human beings for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation) in and via Greece, and suggests that ‘happy trafficking’ can be divided into two distinct categories: trafficking of victims recruited mainly by women; and trafficking of victims recruited mainly by men.

In the first category, the female trafficker is frequently an acquaintance of the victim, or comes from the same region, and has usually been trafficked herself. Thus, she is able to feign a sense of happiness which reinforces her narrative and recruitment efforts. In the second category, the male trafficker, known in THB slang as ‘lover-boy’, deploys charm and seduction, frequently via the internet, and dupes girls (usually) into various forms of exploitation (eg marriages of convenience, benefits fraud, etc).

Let’s look first at trafficking of women recruited by women via ‘happy trafficking’. Participants of THB engage in a criminal trade that involves multiple layers, networks and areas of expertise. Examples include recruiters, debt-collectors, enforcers, transporters, and accountants/money launderers. Division of labour (whether within a criminal group or via outsourcing to external specialists) is a strategy that helps to spread risk and avoid detection.

Physical and psychological abuse is combined with financial incentives to turn victims into recruiters. Traffickers grant some victims who (due to sexually-transmitted infections and/or age) are no longer profitable, a degree of freedom. They are rewarded with token amounts of cash and gifts, while being coerced through other means to return to their home countries in order to recruit women. These are the women who, frequently, employ the technique of ‘happy trafficking’ in their recruitment efforts.

̽��ֱ��adjective ‘happy’, in this case, refers to the victims-turned-traffickers’ practice of claiming to have had a positive experience in legitimate jobs in the West or elsewhere, hiding the fact that they have, for example, been forced into prostitution and therefore, been sexually, physically and psychologically abused for years on end.

Anti-trafficking researchers and experts maintain that these victims of ‘happy trafficking’ are subjected to a subtle form of psychological coercion with the result that they believe they will be rewarded if they comply and be punished if they do not. Finding themselves trapped, they become ‘happily’ complicit.

Some women who have been trafficked instead of recruiters, become pimps, brokering illegal or illicit commercial sexual transactions. Organised criminal groups (OCGs) employ women to run brothels, partly because criminal justice systems (CJSs) tend to be more lenient to female criminals than to male. In many parts of Eurasia, for instance, researchers have found that female prisoners are released when pregnant or mothers of children, and receive, due to bias, lighter sentences than men, often because they are found guilty only of low-level offences.

̽��ֱ��second ‘lover-boy’ type of ‘happy trafficking’ is devious in different ways, but again focuses on recruiters working for OCGs. When men pose as ‘boyfriends’ and groom women to trust them and willingly travel with them, it is extremely difficult for law enforcement and border patrol agencies to identify the duplicitous and nuanced nature of what is going on – and even to prove that a criminal activity is taking place.

My research has shown that, frequently, the trafficker ‘marries’ his victim in order to obtain visas for EU countries or, in other cases, sends her alone overseas, claiming a delay in his departure and instructing her to meet a ‘friend’ on arrival. That ‘friend’ is usually part of the same OCG and almost always, a slave-trader and/or a brothel owner.

These sham marriages, or as EUROPOL calls them ‘marriages of convenience’, as a product of ‘happy trafficking’ and as cover, neatly eliminate the need for enlisting (and paying) a corrupt border official – for corruption is a historic, vital enabler of THB. Furthermore, when a recruiter presents himself as a genuine spouse, the waters are conveniently muddied. How can a victim be aware of her predicament when she is travelling happily alongside the person she perceives to be her husband (or fiancé) on a plane or train, bound for a rich country where opportunities and jobs abound?

Once these women (and victims of ‘lover-boy’ trafficking are overwhelmingly female) have arrived at their destination, their ‘husbands’ or their ‘friends’, take away their travel documents and identity cards, holding them captive and exploiting them in many ways, in a country where they probably do not speak the local language and may well be perceived as illegal immigrants.

̽��ֱ��total budget of combined global efforts to combat THB is around $350 million per annum, or just 0.23% of THB’s annual profit. In matters of THB, as in other crimes, law enforcement bodies and CJSs struggle to keep pace with the ingenuity of OCGs which increasingly make use of the internet as a facilitator and exploit established legal business structures – such as travel and au pair agencies – as cover and/or as enticing parts of the contrived, ‘happy’ recruitment story. That is where scholars and researchers must step in to foster partnerships and exchange evidenced-based findings.

With a view to contributing to such partnerships, I recently visited EUROPOL at ̽��ֱ��Hague at the invitation of its director, Rob Wainwright, who believes in the importance of partnerships with academia. I was appointed a member of EUROPOL’s Platform for Experts, EPE – an invitation-only, secure collaboration web platform for experts in a variety of law enforcement areas. EUROPOL has discovered that OCGs do indeed recruit using both types of ‘happy trafficking’, alongside the use of the internet. An emerging trend is for victims to come from the European middle classes, perhaps due to the ongoing socioeconomic crises in source countries.

Moreover, EUROPOL’s experts shared new trends related to transnational organised crime. OCGs self-launder their proceeds, exploit family and/or ethnic networks to run their operations, depend chiefly on cash transactions, and sometimes exploit their victims as cash couriers as well. Additionally, they have found that in order to launder their proceeds, OCGs invest in cash-intensive businesses, such as petrol stations or strip-clubs, which provide a veneer of legality.

‘Happy trafficking’ is just one of many recruitment techniques, employed by the perpetrators of the pernicious and illegal trade in human beings. Strong partnerships between law enforcement agencies and academia will contribute to reciprocal knowledge-sharing, as well as to more effective methods of confronting and curtailing such phenomena. I hope that my own research will contribute, in part, to the reduction of the crime-related suffering of others.

George Papadimitrakopoulos is a postgraduate researcher and Alexander S Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Scholar at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��term ‘happy trafficking’ appears deeply contradictory, but new research reveals a shocking dimension of an escalating trade. George Papadimitrakopoulos, Institute of Criminology, offers insights and describes how victims are deceived, manipulated and exploited.

‘Happy trafficking’ is not just a global reality but also a growing reality – its increase presents a huge challenge at a time when society is both increasingly globalised and increasingly unequal

George Papadimitrakopoulos

Hernán Piñera

Airport

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Earliest church in the tropics unearthed in former heart of Atlantic slave trade

fpjl2 — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 10:32:47 +0000

Archaeologists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have unearthed the earliest known European Christian church in the tropics on one of the Cabo Verde islands, 500km off the coast of West Africa, where the Portuguese established a stronghold to start the first commerce with Africa south of the Sahara. This turned into a global trade in African slaves from the 16th century, in which Cabo Verde played a central part as a major trans-shipment centre.

̽��ֱ��earliest remains of the church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição date from around 1470, with a further larger construction dating from 1500. Extensions and a re-cladding of the church with tiles imported from Lisbon have also been documented.

This church is the oldest formal European colonial building yet discovered in sub-Saharan Africa, say researchers. It was found amongst the ruins of Cidade Velha, the former capital of Cabo Verde, which at its height was the second richest city in the Portuguese empire; a city that channelled slavery for almost 300 years.

“It’s a profound social and political story to which these new archaeological investigations are making an invaluable contribution,” said Cambridge’s Professor Marie Louise Stig Sørensen.

Archaeologists from the ̽��ֱ�� and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) have just completed the excavation and conservation of this building for public display, and have been working with the Cabo Verde government and local partners on the town’s archaeology since 2007.

Click on images to enlarge

“We’ve managed to recover the entire footprint-plan of the church, including its vestry, side-chapel and porch, and it now presents a really striking monument,” said Christopher Evans, Director of the CAU.

“Evidently constructed around 1500, the most complicated portion is the east-end’s chancel where the main altar stood, and which has seen much rebuilding due to seasonal flash-flood damage. Though the chancel’s sequence proved complicated to disentangle, under it all we exposed a gothic-style chapel,” he said.

“This had been built as a free-standing structure prior to the church itself and is now the earliest known building on the islands – the whole exercise has been a tremendous success.”

During the excavation several tombstones of local dignitaries were recovered. One enormous stone found in the side chapel belonged to Fernão Fiel de Lugo, a slaver and the town’s ‘treasure holder’ between 1542 and 1557. “This is a place of immense cultural and heritage value. This excavation has revealed the tombs and graves of people that we only know from history books and always felt could be fiction,” Cidade Velha’s Mayor, Dr Manuel Monteiro de Pina, said.

̽��ֱ��research team discovered a densely packed cemetery dug into the floor of the church, which they say will be of great importance for future academic investigations. It is estimated that more than 1,000 people were buried here before 1525, providing a capsule of the first 50 years of colonial life on the island.

Preliminary analysis of samples shows that about half the bodies are African, with the rest from various parts of Europe. An excavation is being planned to collect data for isotope analysis of more bodies to learn more about the country’s founding population and its early slave history.

“From historical texts we have learned about the development of a ‘Creole’ society at an early date with land inherited by people of mixed race who could also hold official positions. ̽��ֱ��human remains give us the opportunity to test this representation of the first people in Cabo Verde,” said Evans.

̽��ֱ��significance of the discovery, a central feature of the Cidade Velha UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been widely acknowledged. Hundreds of people have visited the site since work began, and school groups have frequently been brought out to see the church. On his visit, the President Jorge Carlos Fonseca endorsed the contribution made by this project. “I can see the importance the site has for Cabo Verde to understand our history and our identity,” he said.

“ ̽��ֱ��hope is that the work will both encourage much-needed cultural tourism, and help the nation build a more nuanced sense of its notable past,” said Sørensen.

̽��ֱ��ten small islands that make up Cabo Verde are harsh volcanic rock, and were barren of people, mammals and trees until the Portuguese arrived in 1456. ̽��ֱ��Portuguese transformed the islands into one of the major hubs for the transatlantic slave trade, bringing with them crops, livestock and people in the form of traders, missionaries and thousands upon thousands of slaves. ̽��ֱ��slaves were funnelled through the islands where they were ‘sorted’ and sold before being shipped off to plantations across the Atlantic World.

The discovery of Brazil, in particular, and the establishment of plantations there, caused trade through Cabo Verde to explode. “ ̽��ֱ��islands were a focal point for the initial wave of globalisation, all built on the back of the slave trade,” said Sørensen. “ ̽��ֱ��excavation reveals these global connections as the finds include fine ware and faience from Portugal, German stoneware, Chinese porcelain and pottery from different parts of West Africa.”

In addition to the excavated church, there were around 22 other churches in the small river valley where the old town of Cidade Velha sits, including a large cathedral built with imported Portuguese stones. It is clear the church had huge influence here – a mere 15 degrees north of the equator – from the late medieval period onwards, say the researchers.

Centuries later, pirate attacks plagued the islands. French privateer Jacques Cassard launched a devastating attack on Cidade Velha in 1712, from which it would never recover, and, as slavery began to be outlawed during the 19th century, the islands lost their financial basis and were neglected by the Portuguese. ̽��ֱ��islanders were left to the mercy of an inhospitable landscape with erratic rainfall that undermined agricultural activities and caused drinking water to be scarce.

Cabo Verde became a republic in 1975, and as an independent nation it is coming to terms with a heritage and identity rooted in slavery. ̽��ֱ��research team believe the new archaeological discoveries will prove integral to this process.

“Cabo Verde is a young nation in many ways, and it needs its history to be unearthed and accessed so it can continue to build its national identity,” said Sørensen.

Evans added: “ ̽��ֱ��finds so far clearly demonstrate the fantastic potentials of Cabo Verde’s archaeology and the contribution they can make to the future of these Atlantic islands.”

Remains of a church on Cabo Verde’s Santiago Island, off the West African coast, dates back to late 15th century – when Portugal first colonised the islands that played a central role in the global African slave trade. Archaeological excavations are helping Cabo Verdeans gain new insight into their remarkable and long-obscured history.

̽��ֱ��hope is that the work will both encourage much-needed cultural tourism, and help the nation build a more nuanced sense of its notable past

Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

Cabo Verde: Africa's meeting place with the world

Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

Christopher Evans of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit shows local schoolchildren around the excavation site.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Price of Britain’s Slave Trade revealed

tdk25 — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 05:00:56 +0000

Letters discussing the value and sale of slaves in the 18th century, which provide a distressing reminder of the powerful business interests that sustained one of the darkest chapters in British history, are to be made available to researchers and the public by St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��collection contains the business exchanges of an 18th century English landowner, William Philip Perrin, who ran a sugar plantation near Kingston, Jamaica. In it, Perrin and his correspondents discussed in callously practical terms the human cargo that was being shipped to the West Indies at the height of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a time when the equivalent of millions of pounds were changing hands as slaves were bought and sold.

̽��ֱ��papers have been acquired by St John’s College, which was the undergraduate College of leading anti-slavery campaigners William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, whose combined efforts helped to bring about the Abolition Bill of 1807. While the College already holds a wide-ranging collection of material dealing with the anti-slavery movement, these documents tell the other, rarely-discussed side of the story, by providing an insight into the wealth and influence that lay behind the pro-slavery lobby.

One list, dating from 1797, contemporary with Clarkson’s own evidence-gathering campaign against slavery, details the names, ages and prices of slaves to be bought for Perrin’s plantation. ̽��ֱ��note, described as “a list of Mr John Broomfield’s negroes, with their age and valuation”, catalogues 35 men and 19 women, as well as children as young as 14, who had been valued for sale as slaves.

Entries such as “Dick, 25, able field negro, £140” and “Castile, 45, cook and washerwoman, £60” provide a stark and shocking reminder of the high financial stakes that Clarkson and his contemporaries struggled to overthrow. ̽��ֱ��total valuation for 54 male and female slaves came to £5,100, a sum equal to around £500,000 today.

̽��ֱ��collection is being added to an extensive range of material, already held by the College Library, dealing with the political and social conflicts faced by the anti-slavery campaigners in the fight for Abolition. This is made available both to researchers studying the period, and also used as part of educational activities with schools, enabling students to examine primary sources and discover the historic significance of the Abolitionist movement.

Kathryn McKee, Special Collections Librarian at the College, who acquired the papers, which were previously held in Derby County Records Office, said: “These documents provide first-hand evidence of the sale of slaves to British plantation owners. Though appalling to modern eyes, for those involved these were matter-of-fact business transactions: a routine part of the 18th century economy in which business magnates made substantial profits from commodities produced by slave labour and their customers benefited from cheap goods. In opposing the traffic in human cargo, Clarkson, Wilberforce and the Abolitionists were challenging powerful vested interests.”

̽��ֱ��papers date from between 1772 and 1797, at the time when the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Britain and America was at its peak, and deal with the day-to-day running of Perrin’s plantation in Jamaica. Among letters and bills of sale specifying property disputes, shipping preparations and customs duties, are chilling details revealing the ubiquity and commercialisation of slavery and the vast industry it supported.

A letter from 1796 states that one of Perrin’s estate managers had been “on the lookout for a gang of up to 60 able-bodied Negroes” to purchase on Perrin’s behalf to work on developing his Grange Hill estate. Another discusses how buying cheap slaves to work the land for sugar cane would “relieve the estate from the expense of buying cattle”, and allow for more sugar to be sold for rum, which brought in a profit of £4,500 a year, equal to around £400,000 today. A later note assures the reader that the slaves are “happy and contented with their situation”.

Kathryn said: “What these letters reveal, apart from a total lack of empathy for their human commodities is the sheer amount of money involved. Many anti-slavery campaigns were grassroots efforts by ordinary people, while the pro-slavery lobby had significant wealth and influence they could use to exert pressure on Parliament.”

Dr Richard Benjamin, Head of the International Slavery Museum, said:

“These papers are a rich resource which will rightly now be made available to the wider public. Something that should be done for all such papers wherever they may reside.

“ ̽��ֱ��Perrin papers add another layer of information to the narrative of the transatlantic slave trade, which can be both disturbing and distressing, especially when humans are so calmly and callously treated as cargo. While adding to our understanding of the mechanics of the transatlantic slave trade, they also highlight uncomfortable truths - that greed, power and a misguided sense of superiority made up its dark heart.

“However, here lies the dilemma. Regardless of the unassailable fact that millions of African men, women and children were enslaved and treated as commodities so that individuals like Perrin became wealthy and many countries became powerful, we should never see them solely through those spectrums. Such documents are portals into the lives and struggles of fathers, mothers, sons, sisters, merchants, scholars and every possible profession that makes up any society.

“We should also see these papers as part of a larger body of historical documentation that sheds light on the resistance to that dark heart by abolitionists such as Clarkson and Wilberforce, sons of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, and probably more importantly by Africans themselves, from Olaudah Equiano to the Maroons of Jamaica, from Cuffy in Berbice to daily acts of defiance by the enslaved across the Americas and Caribbean”.

̽��ֱ��anti-slavery campaigners faced vicious and well-funded opposition both in Parliament and on the streets. On one trip in 1787 to Liverpool, which along with Bristol was one of the major hubs of the slave trade in England, an attempt was made to drown Clarkson in the docks for asking too many questions.

Despite this hostility, and after a 20 year struggle, the Abolitionists finally achieved victory on 25 March 1807, with the passing of a Bill to abolish the slave trade, making the sale and purchase of slaves illegal in Britain. Clarkson, reflecting on this momentous event, wrote in 1808:

“Thus ended a contest, not of brutal violence, but of reason. A contest between those who felt deeply for the happiness and the honour of their fellow-creatures, and those who, through vicious custom and the impulse of avarice, had trampled underfoot the sacred rights of their nature”.

̽��ֱ��papers are available to view for research at St John’s College Library by appointment. For more information, contact library@joh.cam.ac.uk.

Additional images: "Am I Not A Man And A Brother", a popular anti-slavery image that appeared on posters and was later turned into a brooch by Josiah Wedgwood as part of the Abolitionist campaign; Poster illustrating plan of a typical slave ship used to support the campaign to abolish slavery. All images reproduced by permission of St John's College, Cambridge.

Letters and papers revealing in detail how human beings were priced for sale during the 18th century Transatlantic Slave Trade have been made available to researchers and the public.

What these letters reveal, apart from a total lack of empathy for their human commodities, is the sheer amount of money involved. Many anti-slavery campaigns were grassroots efforts by ordinary people, while the pro-slavery lobby had significant wealth and influence which they could use to exert pressure on Parliament.

Kathryn McKee

Permission of St John’s College, Cambridge

Detail from a list of the names, ages and prices of slaves bought by British plantation owner William Philip Perrin from John Broomfield in 1796.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes