Vocabulary: History and Memory of Slavery and Colonisation

Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, European powers, including Britain, transported millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to work on plantations in the Americas.

For a long time, this history was told mainly from the perspective of abolition, focusing on the campaigners who ended the trade rather than on the enslaved people themselves.

In recent decades, many English-speaking countries that colonised territories or practised slavery have started grappling with how to make this history, and the experiences of the peoples they dominated, more fully visible.

Making the History of Slavery Visible

to enslave / enslaved people : réduire en esclavage / des personnes réduites en esclavage
the transatlantic slave trade : la traite transatlantique
a museum / a cultural attraction : un musée / une attraction culturelle
to make visible : rendre visible
a dominated population : une population dominée

Concrete example: the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool traces the history of the transatlantic slave trade, while Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, a former holding site for enslaved people, is now a memorial site visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.

Restitution and Renaming

restitution : la restitution (d'œuvres, d'archives)
to rename a place : renommer un lieu
a school curriculum : un programme scolaire
public policy : une politique publique

Concrete example: several British institutions, including the National Trust (a major charity that preserves historic buildings and sites across the UK), have launched restitution programmes for archives and artworks linked to colonisation, while some localities are renaming places to erase traces of that period.

Key takeaways

Transatlantic slave trade: shared history across many English-speaking countries.
Museums and memorials: tools for making a long-hidden history visible.
Restitution: contemporary step towards symbolic redress.

Slavery, Colonisation and Commemoration