Edward Colston

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Edward Colston in a portrait by Jonathan Richardson

Edward Colston (born November 2, 1636 in Bristol , † October 11, 1721 in Mortlake , Surrey ) was a British entrepreneur , slave trader and politician . He was involved in the enslavement of over 80,000 people.

Life

Edward Colston was born into a wealthy western English merchant family. His parents were William and Sarah Colston, and he had ten siblings. His father was an important pillar of the "Society of Merchant Venturers", which emerged from the slave trade, and a staunch royalist who was installed as councilor and sheriff in 1643 when Bristol was captured by Prince Rupert , but was removed from office in 1645 by Parliament . During the English Civil War , his family moved to London , where Edward Colston was a trader from around 1672. From 1680 he was heavily involved in the slave trade, from which he drew most of his wealth. He was an active member of the Royal African Company (RAC) from 1680 to 1692 , where he was appointed deputy governor from 1689 to 1690. The RAC was a trading company founded by the Stuart royal family and merchants of the City of London , and from 1662 had a monopoly in England for trading gold, silver, ivory and slaves on the west coast of Africa.

In 1683 Colston was accepted into the Society of Merchant Venturers in Bristol and at that time described as a " West Indian merchant". The 1680s were his most lucrative years, with one report suggesting that he owned over 40 ships. As early as 1682 he used the profits from the slave trade for money lending transactions. After the death of his brother Thomas in 1684, he ran his father's business in Bristol for several years, although he continued to live in London. He inherited his brother's trading business and became a partner in a sugar refinery in St. Peter's Churchyard that shipped and processed raw cane sugar produced by slaves on the plantations on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts . Colston welcomed the revolution of 1688 and quickly established himself with the new government, firstly advancing several loans to the new government, and secondly, William of Orange , who, because of his military success, considered himself King of England , Scotland and Ireland in personal union, shares in the RAC sold for £ 1000. In 1692 Colston withdrew from the RAC, but continued the slave trade privately. In 1710, Colston, who was politically Tory, was elected to the House of Commons for what was then the constituency of Bristol , he had refused to run for reasons of age because he was already 74 years old at that time, but was nominated in absentia . Colston was not particularly active and did not run again in 1713.

While Colston lived most of his life in Mortlake , west of London, he appeared in his hometown Bristol with considerable sums of money as a sponsor of schools, churches, hospitals and poor houses and was therefore long considered a philanthropist .

As part of the Atlantic slave trade , Colston was involved in the enslavement of more than 84,000 people, including 12,000 children. 19,000 people died on board his ships. The survivors were sold into slavery , mostly for tobacco and sugar plantations in the Caribbean .

aftermath

In 1895, 174 years after his death, wealthy merchants in Bristol dedicated a bronze statue to Colston , the construction of which was controversial even then. The statue that stood on Colston Avenue in downtown Colston, towering over the docks from which Bristol's slave ships once departed, made no mention of his past in the slave trade.

Another public debate flared up around this bronze statue in the 1990s, with more than 10,000 people signing a petition against the monument. Bristol's musical flagship Massive Attack refused to play at Colston Hall , a concert venue named after Colston . The concert hall is to be renamed after the renovation, which should be completed in 2020. In 2017, however, the Colston's Girls' School announced that it would not change its name.

In 2019, attempts to put a plaque on the base of the statue failed after the Society of Merchant Venturers insisted on designing the text so that Colston's involvement in the slave trade was relativized. The Society of Merchant Venturers is an organization that Colston was a part of. It still holds services and memorial services in his honor and operates many of the institutions that still bear the Colston name today. Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees , the first Afro-Caribbean mayor in the city's history, declared the proposed wording "unacceptable". It was "extremely naive" of the Society of Merchant Venturers to believe that they should have the final say on the lettering of the new plaque, "without reference to the communities of the descendants of those Africans who were owned by traders like Colston enslaved and treated as a commodity ”.

On June 7, 2020 , protesters overthrew the statue from its pedestal and sank it in Bristol Harbor during protests following the death of George Floyd . Floyd's death in a police operation in the United States sparked mass protests by the Black Lives Matter movement against racism and police violence around the world . Mayor Rees said that as an elected politician, he could not support property damage and civil unrest like this; but the statue of a slave trader in the middle of the city was never anything other than a "personal affront" for him. Labor MP Clive Lewis wrote: “Someone responsible for untold blood and suffering. We will never solve structural racism until we get a grip on our history in all its complexity. ”Labor leader Keir Starmer said the statue should have been dismantled in an orderly manner many years ago; the action was "completely wrong". Criticism came from the conservative government. Home Secretary Priti Patel condemned the statue's destruction as "utterly shameful" and Prime Minister Boris Johnson described it as a "criminal act".

British-Nigerian historian David Olusoga wrote: “Those who have defended the untenable for so long believed that what happened on Sunday would never happen. They simply assumed that the People of Color , who call Bristol home, would forever tolerate living in the shadow of a man who dealt in human flesh and that the power to decide whether Colston stood or fell was in their hands would be. You were wrong on every level. Whatever will be said in the near future, this was not an attack on history - this is history. It is one of those rare historical moments that mean that things can never be the same again. "

On July 15, 2020, a statue of a protester of the Black Lives Matter movement was placed on the pedestal on which Colston's statue had stood until June, without the approval of a city authority . The protester named Jen Reid had stood on the pedestal with her right fist raised after the Colston statue was overthrown and was photographed. The artist Marc Quinn , one of Britain's most famous sculptors, created the Reid statue. Less than 24 hours later, the Reid statue was removed by the city council; Mayor Marvin Rees said it would be a democratic process to decide what to replace the Colston statue.

  • Statue of Edward Colston in Bristol before dismantling

  • Empty monument base with protest posters (June 2020)

Web links

Commons : Edward Colston  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Colston, Edward. In: oxforddnb.com. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , June 8, 2020, accessed June 8, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b COLSTON, Edward II (1636-1721), of Mortlake, Surr. In: historyofparliamentonline.org. The History of Parliament Trust, June 8, 2020, accessed June 8, 2020 .
  3. ^ Protests in Bristol: Protesters throw statue of slave traders in the harbor basin. In: Der Spiegel . Der Spiegel GmbH & Co. KG, June 8, 2020, accessed on June 8, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b Tristan Cork: Second Colston statue plaque not axed and will still happen but mayor steps in to order a re-write. In: bristolpost.co.uk. The Bristol Post, March 25, 2019, accessed June 12, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Sebastian Borger: Wave of protests from the USA spills over to Great Britain. In: The Standard . Standard Verlagsgesellschaft mb H., June 8, 2020, accessed on June 12, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Edward Colston. In: pmsa.cch.kcl.ac.uk. PMSA National Recording Project, January 9, 2010, archived from the original January 9, 2010 ; accessed on June 8, 2020 (English).
  7. ↑ Stuart Ward and Astrid Rasch (eds.): Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, 135.
  8. ↑ Vanessa Fischer: Racists overturned from the pedestal. In: New Germany . Neues Deutschland Druckerei und Verlags GmbH, June 8, 2020, accessed on June 12, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Michael Yong, Tristan Cork and Natasha Davies: Colston Hall to be renamed for 2020 relaunch. In: bristolpost.co.uk. The Bristol Post, April 27, 2017, accessed June 8, 2020 .
  10. ^ Michael Yong: One of Bristol's oldest schools is not changing its name. In: bristolpost.co.uk. The Bristol Post, November 2, 2017, accessed June 8, 2020 .
  11. ^ Edward Colston: Plaque to Bristol slave trader axed over wording. In: BBC News . British Broadcasting Corporation , March 25, 2019, accessed June 12, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Andreas Eckert: Fall of the Colston statue in Bristol - start of a long overdue debate. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . Deutschlandradio , June 8, 2020, accessed on June 9, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Jack Gray: Bristol George Floyd protest: Colston statue toppled. In: BBC News . British Broadcasting Corporation , June 7, 2020, accessed June 8, 2020 .
  14. ^ Martin Evans: Statue of slave trader Edward Colston pulled down and thrown into harbor by Bristol protesters. In: telegraph.co.uk. The Daily Telegraph , June 7, 2020, accessed June 8, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Lizzy Buchan: Keir Starmer says 'completely wrong' to tear Colston statue down but it should have gone 'long ago'. In: The Independent . Independent News & Media, June 8, 2020, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Statue overturned by slaver in Bristol. In: The Standard . Standard Verlagsgesellschaft mb H., June 7, 2020, accessed on June 8, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Edward Colston: Bristol slave trader statue 'was an affront'. In: BBC News . British Broadcasting Corporation , June 8, 2020, accessed June 8, 2020 .
  18. ↑ David Olusoga: The toppling of Edward Colston's statue is not an attack on history. It is history. In: The Guardian . Guardian News & Media Ltd., June 8, 2020, accessed on June 12, 2020 (English, translation of the article by Holger Hutt: WTF ?! on freitag.de. ).
  19. ↑ https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/rassismus-debatte-statue-von-demonstrantin-ersetzt-sklavenhaendler-16861766.html
  20. ↑ Jen Reid: Bristol Black Lives Matter statue removed BBC News , July 16, 2020, accessed July 16, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Colston, Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British entrepreneur, slave trader and politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1636
PLACE OF BIRTH Bristol , UK
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1721
Place of death Mortlake , Surrey , England , UK