The project owes much to the late independent historian Sean Creighton (17 July 1947-15 May 2024) who has worked extensively on Black British history and the history of slavery and abolition in the North-East, including his role in the Tyne & Wear Remembering Slavery project in 2007 and the North-East Popular Politics Project in 2010-13. He maintained a blog on History and Social Action. In addition to past Durham University Black History Month events that he has supported as a speaker and to the slavery walks that he co-led with colleagues from the Department of Anthropology. Sean has provided valuable inputs to the University's Legacies of Enslavement and Colonialism project and to the Institute of Advanced Study’s work on Durham’s Black history. The project also draws from John Charlton’s scholarly work: Hidden Chains: The Slavery Business and the North-East of England (1600-1865) (2008, Tyne Bridge Publishing). The sources for the information about Durham and the North East range from parish records to the records of religious organisations, biographies and autobiographies, family estate papers, wills, newspapers and journals, diaries, across a wide range of archives and specialist libraries in the North East and elsewhere, and specialist databases particularly the slave compensation records analysed by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership (Legacies of British Slavery (ucl.ac.uk) at University College London.
It is from these legacies of collaborative teaching and research that this project has arisen. in investigating the ‘absent presences’, of Durham’s black history it is important to move beyond the simplistic and self-congratulatory narratives of the region’s involvement in Abolitionism to focus on the more complex nature of the North East’s industrial ties to slave trade. As we know on 28 August 1833, the British Parliament passed a legislation that abolished slavery within the British Empire, emancipating more than 800,000 enslaved Africans. As part of the compromise that helped to secure abolition, the British government agreed a generous compensation package of £20 million to slave-owners for the loss of their ‘property’. (The collection of slavery compensation, 1835-43 | Bank of England)
Beyond slavery, we intend to investigate the University’s historical relationship as a degree-awarding institution to Fourah Bay College (Sierra Leone) and Codrington College (Barbados). In general, we want to avoid reductive discussions of whether this or that historical figure or institution was ‘innocent’ or ‘guilty’ and, instead, will consider these histories through the concept of the ‘implicated subject’ (Rothberg, 2019).
This is a category for thinking about historical responsibility when it comes to systems of injustice in which individuals or institutions were not directly involved but still benefitted from, either through in their action or inaction, or wider participation in societies or systems perpetrating injustice. In this sense, it is less a case of looking for the ‘smoking gun’ of pro-slavery sentiment or an abolitionist ‘alibi’, than it is about thinking about how individuals and institutions were imbricated in systems of domination and exploitation beyond their stated intentions.
Introduction
In the 18th century Durham was a small town with perhaps at most 4,000 residents. It had very little industry and was a major ecclesiastical centre for the Diocese and Palatinate County of Durham under the control of the Bishop of Durham. The Church was a largescale landowner with rich resources of lead and coal. The growing mining industry owners in Durham leased land to pay rent and other charges to the Bishops. It also involved the Bishops in legal complexities, such as in 1698 supporting the London financier Samuel Shephard. Shepherd had a lease from the Dean and Chapter on the south bank of the Tyne and he made a legal challenge against the Newcastle Corporation monopoly control of ballast sands on both sides of the river.
The Bishops were very wealthy. They were also politically influential both in the region and nationally. They had the ability to not only mint their own coins and levy taxes but also raise an army and establish their own legal court. Because of these princely powers the area that they governed was known as the ‘County Palatine’. The bishops kept their secular powers until 1836. The Bishops had their own Palace at Bishop Auckland whose archive, stored in Palace Green Library, is being examined by the Auckland Project team. There are many links between the Bishops, the Cathedral, slavery, abolition mining, violence and memorialisation. The Cathedral has two memorials to miners out of the three mining memorials within the city of Durham. Most of the memorials within the Cathedral are however specifically dedicated to wealthy people (like Bishops and clergy) as well as to the perpetrators of violence, like Ralph Neville who defeated the Scots at the Battle of Neville’s Cross in 1436, and the Durham Light Infantry.
Increasingly what has come to light in the last few years is the clergy’s involvement in the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (USPG) which owned two slave plantations and 300 enslaved Africans in Barbados called Codrington Estate and the links with the family of the abolitionist Granville Sharp.
Articles in the media attest to these connections:
Revealed: how Church of England’s ties to chattel slavery went to top of hierarchy
$18m to be spent on project
Beatings, brandings, suicides: life on plantations owned by Church of England missionary arm
Archbishop of Canterbury reveals ties to slavery and says ancestors were compensated for abolition
