Future History
March 29th, 2008
posted by Jess Sains
A landlady in Plymouth has decided in all her wisdom to name her revamped pub after the man widely believed to be the first slave trader, John Hawkins. There has been uproar surrounding this all week, with some saying it is culturally insensitive, some saying that Hawkins is more than a slaver, he was a Plymouthian of high standing and still others saying she can call it whatever she likes, what does it matter, it happened so long ago. And yet, still today we see the implications of slavery and the slave trade – for one thing we may only now, in 2008, be seeing our first ever black President of the United States.
Should we bare a historical cultural guilt? Dose being German mean being guilty of what the Nazis did in the 1940s? The Dutch by extension are culturally at fault for Apartheid? Does being British mean you carry upon your shoulders the weight of the famine, the slave trade and the separating of India and Pakistan (plus goodness knows how much else)?
If we pursue this question further, can we separate aspects of an individual? Can we see Hawkins as a man who was a shipbuilder, naval administrator, commander, merchant and a navigator and who sailed with Sir Francis Drake whilst also accepting he was a slaver? Do the other aspects mitigate the one stark fact? Can a Fascist be a great parent or a nice person; can I be a nice person in the eyes of a Fascist? That’s perception, I suppose; what I see as repugnant, another individual may see as the political solution. Whether or not we need to accept one another’s solutions is another question. And a big one at that.
Like many people I am in an odd position being as I am both English and Irish in heritage – does that mean I need to apologise to one half of myself for what the other half did historically? Should I be angry at my English family? This seems highly illogical, but then there are some things which it seems shouldn’t be forgotten – slavery, the famine, both world wars, the holocaust… These things are bigger than history, they are history, they still shape society today, but does that extend to our feeling guilt over them? Perhaps only in so far that we need to be aware so that such things are not condoned by us – as a community – ever again. So, yes, I remember, I am aware and for that reason I would never decide to name a pub – by definition surely a public sort of place – after a man whose actions have caused ripples across the centuries.
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1 Comment Add your own
1. Kevin | March 29th, 2008 at 10:59 am
One of the questions here is about judging people and their actions from centuries distant. Are people products of their time and of a historical process? Was slavery part of humanity’s inevitable economic and social development? Is it too easy to divide history into the bad guys - Hawkins- and the good guys - Wilberforce - and be very sure that if we were born in the sixteenth century we would be out there campaigning for freedom and human rights?
Incidentally, if we were to investigate real involvement in slavery and human rights abuses we would have to rename all the King’s and Queen’s Heads in Devon, and most of the Wetherspoons. Also, it’s not only an issue based on white people exploiting black people, as it’s estimated that over a million people from the coastal communities of Devon, Cornwall and Southern Ireland were taken by North African slavers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
I think that it’s also about a conscious knowledge that we are doing something wrong. Hawkins, and the many millions of people from all ethnic groups who benefited from slavery, did not think at the time that they were acting immorally or illegally.
It may be offensive to make this parallel, though in four hundred years time, perhaps someone will be asking:”They kept on taking those cheap flights to Spain from Exeter Airport and they knew they were going to destroy the climate and kill hundreds of species and millions of people”… “Every day in Devon they drove past factory farms and slaughterhouses, they knew about the cruelty but did nothing”.
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