Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(a) Approaching the past in different ways: monuments and monumentality What is it? What is it for? How is it made? What did the people who made it want us to think and feel about the people or issue it represents? The Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project (STAMP) ‘Captured Africans’ Memorial, Lancaster (England) http://www.uclan.ac.uk/schools/journalism_media_communication/literature_culture/abolition/stamp.php The STAMP Memorial was constructed nearly two centuries after the formal abolition of the slave trade, whose victims it memorialises (the trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807 and had flourished in the port of Lancaster in the second half of the eighteenth century). The STAMP Memorial commemorates the victims of exploitation and indicts the trade that exploited them and it is located near to the quay in Lancaster where ships engaged in the ‘Africa trade’ would dock. The plight of ‘Captured Africans’ is represented on the Memorial as the 'base' of a structure of trade and commerce that is also represented on the memorial and the city’s role in this trade is recorded in a list of ships sailing from Lancaster in the ‘Africa trade’ on one side of the monument. The STAMP memorial expresses a counter-history, commemorates a group of people ‘hidden’ in the older ‘official’ narrative and draws attention to the suffering of the victims of ‘empire’.
The Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project (STAMP) 'Captured Africans' memorial in Lancaster, UK. Photographs courtesy of Arthur Chapman.
62_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities