The National Maritime Museum opens Atlantic Worlds, a new permanent gallery on 30 November 2007. The gallery explores the interrelationship, connections and exchanges created between Britain, Africa and the Americas between 1600-1850 and looks at the impact and legacy of empire on three continents.
The gallery presents four main themes: Exploration and Cultural Encounters; Trade and Commerce; Enslavement and War and Conflict. They reveal how geographical exploration and the navigation of the Atlantic opened up new trade routes from the early 17th-century onwards and brought Europeans into contact with different cultures, setting in motion a dynamic of conquest and exploitation, as well as trading and cultural exchanges.
Paintings, prints and drawings, decorative arts and ethnographic materials are amongst the 220 objects from the Museum's extensive collections showcased in the new gallery. These include, a 16th-century Spanish astrolabe, discovered on the island of Valentia, in Co. Kerry, Ireland in 1845, gold weights, fashioned in the form of muskets, used for weighing gold dust by the Akan people of Southern Ghana during the 18th and 19th-century, and a North American shot pouch, made from moose and caribou skin, with porcupine quillwork embroidery and woven panels of triangles and rectangles – reflecting Métis, Cree and Chippewyan influences.
The opening Atlantic Worlds marks the bicentenary of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade which was passed by parliament on 25 March 1807. The gallery displays new material relating to the transatlantic slave trade including a rare and detailed daily logbook from the slave schooner Juverna, written by Master Robert Lewis, which records the vessel's maiden voyage between Liverpool, West Africa and Surinam during 1804-1805 and includes general observations on a classic Triangular Trade slaving expedition from England.
Atlantic Worlds examines the motivations and ambitions of Europeans, often making long perilous Atlantic crossings to reach the New World and places previously only reached by long overland trade routes. The gallery also explores the encounters and exchanges made by travellers upon reaching North America and West Africa with peoples including the Edo and Akan – sophisticated African societies founded on riches from gold mining and extensive trading.
By the late 17th-century, England had established colonies in North America and the Caribbean, with over 350,000 people having emigrated from England by 1700. These new colonies exported produce including sugar and tobacco and imported finished goods in return, such as woollen cloth. The gallery reveals how the triangular trade began supplying these colonies with enslaved Africans to work on tobacco, rice and sugar plantations.
The wealth generated by the new empire of the seas underpinned population growth stimulating the growth of cities in Britain and fuelling the Industrial Revolution. The British economy moved from one based on agricultural work and domestic production, to one based on manufacturing and industrialisation, sustained by the wealth and goods acquired from overseas. From 1688 to 1815 the growth in Britain's population, wealth and empire combined to create one of the most powerful nations in Europe.
As the demand for cheap labour on plantations in the Americas grew, enslaved Africans became the most valuable commodity for European traders. By the 1730s, Britain had become the largest slave trading country in the world. It is estimated that 12 million African people were enslaved in the course of the transatlantic slave trade, 3.4 million of them in ships of the British Empire.
Atlantic Worlds recounts the stories of some of the people involved in the resistance movement and the campaign for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade - including Toussaint l'Ouverture, Olaudah Equiano and Samuel Sharp whose acts of resistance and rebellion were crucial to the turning of European public opinion against the trade.
Britain's struggle to secure the future of its North American and Caribbean colonies and safeguard the associated commerce culminated in frequent conflicts and resistance. The final part of the gallery explores important events such as the Seven Years' War (1756-63), which was fought between Britain and France and ended with the Treaty of Paris and Britain gaining control over virtually the entire North American continent and acquisitions in the Caribbean.
The new gallery has been funded through the generosity of the DCMS/ Wolfson Foundation Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, Stavros Niarchos Foundation (In memory of Mary A.Dracopoulou), CHK Charities Limited, Dr Lee MacCormick-Edwards, the Kirby Laing Foundation and the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights. -- www.nmm.ac.uk
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