![\"African](\"http:\/\/www.revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/A-print-shows-African-cap-005-300x180.jpg\")
African captives being taken on board a slave ship. Photograph: Print Collector\/Getty<\/p><\/div>\n
Britain\u2019s Forgotten Slave Owners<\/a>, a documentary looking at the abolition of slavery in Britain and the extraordinary choice by the government of the day to compensate slave owners for their loss of ‘property’,\u00a0will be broadcast on 15 July on BBC2. The documentary is based on\u00a0Legacies of British Slave-ownership<\/a>, the umbrella for two projects tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain: the ESRC-funded Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, now complete, and the ESRC and AHRC-funded Structure and significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership 1763-1833, running from 2013-2015.<\/p>\n The project, which is still continuing, \u00a0-and\u00a0has been converted into an online database; a free, publicly available resource,-\u00a0is led by Professor Catherine Hall and Dr Nick Draper based at University College London.\u00a0The picture of slave ownership that has emerged from their work is not what anyone was expecting.<\/p>\n “Slave ownership, it appears, was far more common than has previously been presumed. Many of these middle-class slave owners had just a few slaves, possessed no land in the Caribbean and rented their slaves out to landowners, in work gangs. These bit-players were home county vicars, iron manufacturers from the Midlands and lots and lots of widows. About 40% of the slave owners living in the colonies were women. Then, as now, women tended to outlive their husbands and simply inherited human property through their partner\u2019s wills.<\/p>\n The geographic spread of the slave owners who were resident in Britain in 1834 was almost as unexpected as the gender breakdown. Slavery was once thought of as an activity largely limited to the ports from which the ships of the triangular trade set sail; Bristol, London, Liverpool and Glasgow. Yet there were slave owners across the country, from Cornwall to the Orkneys. In proportion to population, the highest rates of slave ownership are found in Scotland.”<\/p>\n Source: The Guardian\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n