Historical Association / Exploring the Past free lecture

The Rise and Fall of Edward Colston

Our next Exploring the Past free lecture, in partnership with the Historical Association, takes place on Wednesday 16th November 2022. Please sign up to book a place, and we will send a Zoom link a few days before the talk.

For November’s talk, we’re excited to welcome Dr Roger Ball and Mark Steeds (Bristol Radical History Group), to speak on the theme: ‘The Rise and Fall of Edward Colston’

When: Wednesday 16th November 2022, 7pm

Where: Zoom

We will send out a Zoom link for the event to all those who have registered. This will arrive early in the week when the talk is being held. Please note that the Zoom link will arrive via email from Dr Paul Webster and we will also send it via Eventbrite. If you have not received a Zoom link by midday on 16th November, email Paul (websterp@cardiff.ac.uk) and he will send it on.

Summary:

In November 2014 the Bishop of Bristol, preaching to school students, claimed that ‘speculation’ about the ‘business roots’ of the city’s philanthropic icon, Edward Colston, was merely ‘speculation’. These incendiary words inspired new historical research into Colston’s slave-trading activities and the origins of his role as a ‘City Father.’ They also led to the formation of the campaign group Countering Colston which challenged both the physical commemoration and memorialisation of his legacy.

This talk will expose Colston’s significant role in the transatlantic slave-trade and his reinvention as an icon in the Victorian period. It will then analyse the successful tactics of the Countering Colston campaign; how it countered the arguments of Colston’s defenders and dealt with the elite institutions that had ideological and financial interests in his legacy.

These elements were to play a critical part in public debates and a series of victories by campaigners, culminating in the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston by Black Lives Matter protestors in June 2020.

Speakers:

Dr Roger Ball worked as an aerospace engineer in Bristol for more than 20 years before completing his doctorate in history at the University of West of England. A founding member of Bristol Radical History Group he has published on several subjects including urban riots, labour history, workhouses and more recently slavery and abolition. He is currently a research fellow at UWE studying the 1831 reform riots.

Mark Steeds is a former draughtsman and current publican of some 27 years, keen on trying to right old wrongs and especially interested in Bristol’s maritime and literary history. A long-time member of Bristol Radical History Group, in 2007 he wrote the group’s first pamphlet entitled Cry Freedom, Cry Seven Stars (about ‘the pub that changed the world’), co-authored Pirates and Privateers out of Bristol in 2010 and in 2020 From Wulfstan to Colston.

Details of publications:

Mark Steeds and Roger Ball, From Wulfstan to Colston: Severing the sinews of slavery in Bristol (Bristol: Bristol Radical History Group, 2020) Paperback, 420 pages, 103 black & white and colour images and 4 maps. RRP: £14.00. Available from Bristol Radical History Group here.

Exploring the Past/Historial Assoc talk: The Rise & Fall of Edward Colston