Britain's slave trade

Gold, silver, Negroes, slaves

Bristol's 600-year history as a great port is celebrated by its people, but there has been little recognition until recently that its wealth lay in the slave trade. Bristolian Christopher Marsden-Smedley's ancestor Azariah Pinney - the forebear of one of Bristol's great merchant families, which made its fortune from sugar and slavery - was himself was one of the first Caribbean slaves, sent to the island of Nevis as a political exile following the defeat of the duke of Monmouth at Sedgemoor in 1685.

Today, Pinney's descendants and the city of Bristol itself are now facing up to their slave past as a new bridge has been dedicated to Pero, a former slave of the Pinney family, brought to England in the late 18th century. Pero's story is one that could be repeated in many parts of Britain. It shows how many British families and towns owe their very existence to a past in the slave trade.

Unfinished business

By the 18th century, the British slave trade was, by today's standards, a multi-billion pound industry and its players were some of the richest people in the world. The combined trades of sugar and slavery offered a level of wealth never before seen, but few in Britain acknowledged that the empire's affluence was acquired from brutal practices inflicted thousands of miles away.

Part II of Britain's Slave Trade - which moves the story of the country's slave roots from Bristol to Liverpool, which became the greatest slaving port in human history - shows how some of today's high street banks and insurance companies have their foundations in slavery. It also brings together descendants of both slaves and slave owners face to face for the first time, as together they make the painful journey into a complex past.

The old corruption

Part III of Britain's Slave Trade challenges the accepted version of the history of abolition: that passive, suffering Negroes were freed by benevolent white crusaders. Descendants of the main players in the struggle for abolition tell how the battle for freedom was really won.

It also shows how the planters sowed the seeds of their own downfall - these corrupt social upstarts became ridiculed and hated back in England. In addition, the lavish lifestyles of the merchants and their inhuman treatment of African people were finally acknowledged.

A message from our ancestors

From the great Victorian monuments to some of today's high street banks, almost everything in Britain has a link to slavery. But for thousands of individuals, it is stronger than they ever imagined. The final part of Britain's Slave Trade goes under the skin of modern-day Britain to examine its Caribbean connections and follows those who are unearthing astonishing facts about their own family histories.

It also examines how the legal emancipation of former slaves could not prevent an anti-abolitionist backlash, encouraging institutionalised bigotry and discrimination. And it looks at how a population of 20,000 black people living in Britain at the time of abolition had become invisible by the end of Victoria's reign. The abolition movement was intended to free those who had suffered under slavery; instead, it sentenced them to another 200 years of racism.