After the Bicentenary: The Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Recent History
Emma Christopher analyses the recent treatment of the sensitive issue of slavery and abolition, both by historians and popular culture at large.
Heroes are tall and handsome these days. Yet they are not all that dark. In the 2006 film Amazing Grace (directed by Michael Apted), Ioan Gruffudd makes a fantastic hero, standing a full eight inches taller than the real William Wilberforce and – to lapse shamelessly from objectivity – being rather more likely to set the hearts of ladies afire. He rampages across the sets of the film with true heroic fervour, on the side of right and good and being kind to the poor, children and animals all.
It’s all great stuff and Wilberforce was undoubtedly a great man, but the problem is that it tells only one side of the story. Yet again it’s the story of the big white hero protecting all those poor denigrated Africans. Didn’t we get over this years ago with the end of colonialism?
In the film the only dark-skinned person seen at all is Youssou N’Dour playing Olaudah Equiano and he has only a small role. All the other countless people of African origin who fought to resist the slave trade and enslavement happen off-screen, unmentioned and as if largely irrelevant to the work of the great (white) man.
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