Guest editorial : museums and the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade

This issue of Museum and Society reports on some of the findings of the 1807 Commemorated Project. Four of the papers (by Cubitt, Wilson, Fouseki and Smith) are by members of the project team; the opening paper by Waterton, based on her own researches in a closely related field, provides an important context in which to view the museum activities that the project studied. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a Knowledge Transfer Fellowship, the 1807 Commemorated Project aimed to map and to promote reflection on the ways in which the Bicentenary of the 1807 Act of Parliament abolishing British participation in the slave trade was marked in museums in Britain. (It should be noted that the 1807 Act did not abolish slavery itself: the emancipation of those held as slaves in the British Caribbean would come only in the 1830s.) Hailed by the then Minister of Culture, David Lammy, as ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“an opportunity to celebrate, educate and informââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢, the Bicentenary was interpreted by many in government and in the media as an occasion to celebrate the achievements of abolitionists like William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. This ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“Wilberfestianââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ mood was challenged, however, by a range of commentators and community and political groups. The response to the Bicentenary of museums and galleries around Britain was to attempt to provide a holistic account of enslavement, resistance, abolition and the consequences of the slave trade for Africa, the Caribbean and Britain. This was perceived by many in the museum sector as a particularly important task in furthering social debate about the legacies of the trade, whose significance in British society is often regarded as a ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“hiddenââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ history (Oldfield 2007; Dresser 2009; Paton 2009).