The Museum in Docklands chooses to tell the capital's trading history in linear fashion. Visitors enter the galleries via Roman/Medieval London and work their way chronologically through the centuries to end up at a display of modern shiny skyscrapers. The emphasis is very much on London and what Londoners were doing in each time period, as you might expect. And that's how it's been since the Museum opened. Look, you can see the place for yourself in a (lengthy) video walkthrough here with Jonty from Big Brother - one of the museum's guides (no, honestly, it's much better than it sounds).
But earlier this year the management came along and ripped out the first two decades of the 19th century. Sorry to all the old merchants in wigs who battled to get the docks built in the first place, your story has been cast adrift. Instead their gallery has been emptied to make way for something far more important - sugar. Ah no, London didn't get proper rich by trading iron or coal, London got rich by trading human beings.
The London, Sugar and Slavery gallery, which opened at the Museum of London earlier this month, makes for uncomfortable viewing. If you're from an African background it tells the story of how your ancestors were ripped from their homes and transported across the ocean to be sold into a life of submission. And if you like to think that's not your story, then your ancestors were probably responsible for sustaining the slave trade themselves. Be it a ship owner transporting bipedal cargo or just a Georgian householder taking sugar in their new-fangled cuppa, this whole sorry situation was created by their actions.
The gallery opens with a celebration of ancient African culture... from which, just around the corner, the white man stole countless lives. The displays avoid strident inter-racial hectoring, preferring to tell the story of both slaver and enslaved. The language used is carefully selected, but unsanitised ("You will find that some terms that were used in the 1700s are unavoidable"). Feel how heavy the shackles were, see how far the slave ships travelled, and look at that lovely porcelain sugar bowl. Oh, and take a careful look at the bricks of the room you're standing in. The museum is housed in Warehouse No. 1, originally built by the West India Dock Company to store sugar, rum and coffee from the slave plantations of the West Indies. The foundations of the London Docklands were built with blood money.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts to commemorate the abolitionists, fighting to undo the evils of their greedy forefathers and (eventually) changing the system for the better. It's no cosy tale. In a wall display about the spread of Empire, for example, one unusually forthright phrase stands out. "Believing it had a right and duty to police the world, the British Government interfered in the affairs of many countries". And so we did. And that unforgivable interference has brought a lasting cultural legacy to the UK, explored in the final section of the exhibition. Caribbean settlers would never have made their homes in Britain if Britons hadn't transported their ancestors far from home in the first place. It may be too late to apologise, but it's not too late toremember. by DLR: West India Quay by tube: Canary Wharf by bus: 277, D3, D7, D8 open: 10am - 6pm daily admission: £5
The Museum in Docklands chooses to tell the capital's trading history in linear fashion. Visitors enter the galleries via Roman/Medieval London and work their way chronologically through the centuries to end up at a display of modern shiny skyscrapers. The emphasis is very much on London and what Londoners were doing in each time period, as you might expect. And that's how it's been since the Museum opened. Look, you can see the place for yourself in a (lengthy) video walkthrough here with Jonty from Big Brother - one of the museum's guides (no, honestly, it's much better than it sounds).
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