The next Bristol Radical History Festival will be on Saturday 20th April, from 10am-4.30pm. Once again our partners at M Shed will host us, for what will be our 6th Festival, at the museum on the city’s historic harbourside that tells the story of Bristol and its unique place in the world. We warmly invite you to join us at this popular and free event. So put the date in your diary now! Then tell your friends, fellow workers & communities, comrades and networks. Our festival organising team […]
This is a very long – 777 pages – but very important book. Subtitled “A History of the British Empire”, it not only exposes the violence on which the Empire was built but also reveals the way in which systematic attempts were made to conceal it from journalists and historians. Caroline Elkins, based at Harvard University, is one of the historians who were determined to reveal the truth. She is not inhibited about naming those historians who have accepted the Colonial Office version of past […]
The pandemic of crises that nationalistic hostility and capitalism unfailingly deliver is seemingly intensifying. While the asymmetric Israel-Palestine conflict is currently the most prominent flashpoint, two 2023 films recently screened at the Cube Microplex deal with the global ramifications of the still critical situation in Syria. The action in the Rojava Film Commune’s Kobanê takes place on Syrian soil, featuring a world-changing episode in the conflict whereas, nearer to home, Ken Loach’s […]
As I worked on gathering pertinent words that will appear in the index of my forthcoming book: The Journal of Captain Thomas Phillips of Brecon, the Slave Ship Hannibal, and all who Sailed on Her (1693-1695) the key word ‘museum’ appears on my list. Why had a word associated with exhibition interjected itself into a narrative of events that had occurred nearly 330 years ago? To answer this question, I refer to the plaque commissioned by Brecon Town Council in 2010 to honour the life of the slave […]
As I worked on gathering pertinent words that will appear in the index of my forthcoming book: The Journal of Captain Thomas Phillips of Brecon, the Slave Ship Hannibal, and all who Sailed on Her (1693-1695) the key word ‘museum’ appears on my list. Why had a word associated with exhibition interjected itself into a narrative of events that had occurred nearly 330 years ago? To answer this question, I refer to the plaque commissioned by Brecon Town Council in 2010 to honour the life of the slave […]
Not A BRHG Event
Rosemary Caldicott and Mark Steeds will be speaking at the Colonialism and Memory in Bristol. Join us for a public workshop on colonialism and memory in Bristol. Moving between the museum, the city, and space for discussion and reflection, we’ll be asking what decolonisation means, what it might look like in practice, as well as the challenges facing these efforts. Join us at the M Shed in Bristol on 1st July, The workshop is free and refreshments and lunch will be provided, but space is limited […]
The exhibition provides examples of the activism of Bristol Anti-Apartheid Movement (BAAM) in its campaign to raise awareness of the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. Formed in 1964, BAAM was one of the largest local groups affiliated to the national Anti-Apartheid Movement. Material donated to the Bristol Archives and photographs from the Bristol Post Archive show the diverse range of activities over the group's 30 year history - pickets, boycotts, meetings, fundraising events such as […]
Not A BRHG Event
Two years and one month after the military coup in Myanmar, the BristolWithMyanmar campaign will be showing Myanmar Diaries at Bristol's Cube Cinema on March 1st, from 7pm. It is a film about life under the regime of terror in Myanmar since February 1st 2021, told through personal stories by a group of anonymous young Burmese filmmakers (the Myanmar Film Collective). This is the second annual event at the Cube, following on from last year’s A night of solidarity with Myanmar, organised by […]
The story of how we came to have this Empire is a wonderful tale of adventure and romance Major General Baden-Powell in Scouting for Boys Many children’s ‘classics’, some still in print, glorify the British Empire. In this essay, Colin Thomas argues that they help to perpetuate racist attitudes which only recent children’s books have begun to challenge.
England, tobacco and forced labour Roger Ball will outline the symbiotic relationship between the colonisation of the Americas in the seventeenth Century and the production of tobacco as a commodity. The talk will consider the economic mechanisms that encouraged the expansion of landholdings and the introduction of forced labour, leading to the domination of chattel slavery based upon the use of enslaved West Africans. Nicotiana Brittanica Will Simpson tells the story of the illicit […]
