Sunday 18 September 2011

The latest FLOs

For a FLO on the abolition of the trade in enslaved Africans click here.
For a FLO on the British Empire in India click here.

Who were the real heroes of abolition?




The trade in enslaved Africans resulted in millions of people being kidnapped from Africa and sent to the Americas. Their children were then born into slavery.
In 1807 the slave trade was banned by the British Parliament but it took many years for it finally to end.
In 1833 slavery was abolished all over the British Empire. The owners received money in compensation but the former slaves received nothing.

FLO - a poster, poem, essay (or any other format) on 'My abolition heroes'

In your opinion, who were the heroes or heroines of abolition?

Were they the former enslaved people who wrote down and told their stories to people in Britain?
People like Mary Prince, Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cuguano, Ignatius Sancho and Phyllis Wheatley.

Were they the enslaved people who resisted, rebelled, ran away and fought back against their 'owners'?
People like Samuel Sharpe, Bussa, Quamina, and Nanny of the Maroons and those who rebelled on  the slave ships.

Were they the men and women who led the campaign to change the law and end the slave trade and later slavery itself?
People like Thomas Clarkson, Robert Wedderburn, Elizabeth Heyrick, William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, Josiah Wedgewood and James Ramsay.

Were they the masses of ordinary British people who took action in solidarity with the struggle of enslaved Africans?
People like the Quakers, the women's groups linked to the Anti-Slavery Society and the thousands of ordinary workers who signed peitions and resfused to buy suagr grown on slave plantations.


Find out about resistance and abolition. Decide who you think were the most important people in the struggle for freedom and dedicate your work to them.

Here are two good sites to start you off:

The Abolition Project - check all their different sections (scroll down for the full list).

National Archives Black Presence







Sunday 29 May 2011

The transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, how Britain got rich and our world today.


Before 1500 England was a small northern European country most people in the world hadn’t heard of. Cities in China, Turkey, India, South and Central America and Africa were as rich as or richer than London.
By 1900 London was the richest city in the world and Europe was far more powerful than Africa or Asia.
The world we live in was shaped then. It is a very different world from the one people lived in 500 years ago.
Was the trade in enslaved Africans the reason for this? If so, why? If not, why not? Were there other factors, too? You will try to answer this and other questions to look at the link between their past and our present.


WHAT TO DO
You can:
  • tell the story of the triangular trade and what happened to enslaved Africans
  • explain the link between this trade and Britain’s wealth (the Industrial Revolution)
  • describe life on the slave plantations
  • find out about slave resistance and rebellion (Amistad, Nanny of the Maroons, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle, Mary Prince etc)
  • find out how the slave trade was abolished (got rid of) (Olaudah Equiano, Thomas Clarkson, Ottobah Cuguano, Ignatius Sancho, Granville Sharpe, Robert Wedderbirn, William Wilberforce etc)
  • design a memorial to the slave trade



HOW TO DO IT

Some ideas:
  • well structured writing, either word processed or handwritten
  • your own original artwork
  • an electronic presentation (PowerPoint or similar)
  • a paper display
  • a story in comic form (using ComicLife in the Media Suite)
  • music soundtracks linked to slavery, resistance or freedom
  • a review of a commercial film about the slave trade (ask your teacher - we have a selection on DVD)
Video clips:
Websites:
African Empires - the site we used last year
West Africa before the Europeans
1. The slave trade.
Adventurers and slavers

2. Abolition.
3. The Middle Passage
4. Resistance and rebellion








Monday 3 January 2011

Bad Times Just Around the Corner...




The Great War began in August 1914.
In the streets of Britain there was great enthuasism as soldiers set off to fight in France.
The newspapers talked of the war being over by Christmas.

The reality was very different, especially in Western Europe.
By 1916 millions of men were dead and two lines of trenches spread across France and Belgium. Meanwhile there was fighting in many parts of the world: in Turkey and the Middle East, in East and Central Africa, in Central Asia.... and at sea.
In 1916 two great battles took places involving Britain and Germany: on land, the Battle of the Somme. At sea, the Battle of Jutland in the North Sea.
How did these events affect local people?