麻豆约拍

Professor Gretchen Gerzina explores a largely unknown past - the lives of black people who settled in Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

She reveals a startling paradox - although Britain was at the heart of a thriving slave trade, it was still possible for many black people to live here in freedom and prosperity. A few even made it to the very top of fashionable society.

But there were others who were brought over by slave-owners from the West Indies and who were never free, despite living for the rest of their lives in Glasgow or Bristol or London. Some took the law into their own hands and managed to free themselves. Others went further and advocated violent revolution. Free or unfree, they all saw Britain as a place of opportunity that could become a home.

The second week of programmes moves towards the 19th century and Abolition.

In this ninth episode, Professor Gerzina discovers the story of Robert Wedderburn, the son of a plantation owner and an enslaved woman. His radical views became so challenging to the British establishment that he was imprisoned several times for sedition and blasphemy.

With Professor Alan Rice, Professor Joan Anim-Addo and novelist Steve Martin.

Presenter Gretchen Gerzina is the author of Black England: Life before Emancipation. She is Dean of the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts and also presents book programmes on NPR.

The music in this series is by the 18th century composer Ignatius Sancho and performed by the Afro-American Chamber Music Society Orchestra.

Reader: Paterson Joseph
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.

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