Located atop a quiet waterfront, not far from the hustle of Canary Wharf is a rather nondescript warehouse. It is perhaps difficult to imagine that three centuries ago, this warehouse served as the center of the Atlantic sugar trade. Originally funded by Jamaican slave-owners and London merchants as part of the West India Docks expansion, Warehouse No.1 became witness to a barbaric trade that saw millions of Africans subject to brutal labor regimes in the New World contribute to the profit of London merchants and slave-owners. Today, the London Docklands Museum uses the warehouse site as its primary location, both as a callback to the period where the West India Docks served as the heart of London and also a sombre reminder of the violent price that Africans paid for London’s prosperity. The London, Sugar, and Slavery exhibition at the museum perhaps gives some solace to the victims and calls our attention to the brutal institution that once stood behind the sweet sugar and bustling London that we take for granted today.

 

At the entrance of the Sugar part of the exhibit are several large screens and plaques denoting the dominance of West Indies sugar in the English import market. Included in the exhibit are correspondences between Jamaican planters and London merchants as well as advertisements by the latter, including doctoral advice on the usage of sugar as condiments and hand-written recipes for sugared foods. In the absence of twenty-first-century medical science and refrigeration methods, sugar was sought for its medical properties and food preservation utility. With the growing supply of sugar provided by West Indian plantations, English sugar import from the West Indies increased sevenfold over the course of the eighteenth century. In context, 1800s Britons consumed five times as much sugar per head as they had in the previous centuries. This was an interesting reflection of the increasing availability of sugar, as well as its growing appeal even to the lower classes. In a sense sugar was the perfect early modern commodity, as there was an insatiable demand and the market was difficult to saturate. Its cultivation, however, would not have been possible without another commodity: slaves. It is perhaps a sad irony that the men and women who labored to plant and then refine sugar would scarcely taste the sweet products of their labor. Certainly, replicas of the heavy presses and primitive hacking tools tell of the toil behind the seemingly innocuous sweetness.

 

Slavery is not an easy subject to deal with and the London Docklands Museum approaches the topic with appropriate tact and seriousness. The Slavery part of the exhibit begins with two screen-scrolling portraits of 18th century slaves and pictures of modern London side-by-side. “This is your history” is displayed in prominent black letters between images. Indeed, Jamaican planters and London merchants found vast fortunes in enslaving Africans, and London, as the heart of Britain’s fledgling Atlantic empire, was a major benefactor of the trade. The involvement of Londoners in the three centuries of slavery cast another light on the prosperity of contemporary Britain, and for those visiting the exhibit it is a powerful reminder that this ugly period is indeed ours to remember. The Library and Archives section contains detailed graphs and charts displaying the slave trade’s sheer scale. Glass cases held correspondence relating to the operation of the West India Dock company as well as accounting records and journals of West Indies planters themselves. Items of note among the collection include letters documenting the joint investment of three hundred merchants who funded the construction of the West Indian Docks to protect their dominance over the slave and sugar trade. Diaries of Jamaican planters detail the everyday operation of the sugar plantations; every aspect of slaves’ lives was commoditized. Every waking hour was devoted to enlarging the fortunes of slave-owners and merchants, and even the infirm and the children saw harsh toil as domestic servants and caretakers. Brutal working conditions quickly wore down slaves, but in a letter from a Jamaican planter slaves were ordered as casually as one might order firewood. The portraits of individual slaves on the wall however tells another truth, for behind every number is a human being. The human scale of the suffering is magnified by the contrast between the dehumanizing references to the enslaved juxtaposed with their own humanity. This brings into sharp focus Sidney Mintz’s conceptualization of slaves as “false commodities.” As while planters sought to dehumanize them by stripping their identities and assigning value to them as commodities, Africans remained human and fought hard to have their humanity acknowledged. The museum certainly makes no attempt to sanitize the realities of slavery; the accounting records of Thomas Mills, a planter in St. Kitts detailed punishments for slaves who ran away or attempted to resist. Punishments included flogging, confinement and water deprivation. By providing a wealth of primary materials, the exhibit offers visitors first-hand insight into the grim realities of slave life whilst highlighting their humanity. A surprising but welcome feature of the exhibit’s Slavery section is its unique naming convention; all planter portraits and documents are displayed with the label “slave owner” and their actual names are only seen in small annotations while slaves are referred by their names whenever possible. Whilst this does not lighten the bleak mood of the exhibit, it certainly provides a moment of catharsis for visitors. For all the crimes slave-owners had condoned and committed to strip their victims of humanity, it is perhaps only fitting that they become stripped of their names as they did to many of the enslaved Africans who worked for and died because of them.

 

The final section, London, contains slideshows and placards of modern slavery researchers. A plaque commemorates the Slave Act of 1807, as moment in which the inhabitants of London chose humanity over profit. However, the curators show that this was just one small victory in a long and bloody journey. Across the Atlantic thousands of slaves would toil without recourse for another two decades until slavery was abolished in the British empire. Even then, the museum reminds Londoners that slave owners were awarded over 20 million pounds for the loss of important “assets” while apprenticeships continued to bind freed slaves and restrict their access to the labor market. Hanging posters note that slavery persists in myriad forms well into the twenty-first century, and images of contemporary human trafficking offer a stark reminder of humanity’s capacity for inhumanity. At the end of the exhibit, we are treated to a comparison between the reparations paid to slave-owners as part of emancipation and the reparations paid to the descendants of slaves. The former was paid off by the British government only in 2015 while the latter continues to be mired in bureaucracy. It is not all bad news, for the museum also mentions the incorporation of slavery into the British curriculum in 2008 and notes that reparation movements have steadily gained ground in recent public opinion polls. As the cavernous warehouse comes to an end and the visitors emerge into the lights of modern-day Canary Wharf, they are left pondering the true legacies of slavery. “This is your history,” warns the screens at the exit whilst lists of recorded names scroll past. Indeed, even if history remembers only one name amongst a thousand, then posterity would know of their passions, fears, and struggles. Until then, every African in chains deserves to have their stories told.

 

London, Sugar, and Slavery is an intense exhibit that navigates the controversies of slavery with deftness and elegance. Visitors who expect dry lectures would be surprised at the emotional appeal of an exhibit that turns the history of those enslaved into the visitor’s own history.