Buildings - Banks
Teaching idea/enquiry: What role did banks play in financing the transatlantic slave trade? Is there an argument for financial reparations today?
Banking developed in the 18th century, financially underpinning the transatlantic slave trade by offering credit and insurance. See: The rise of banking and insurance Background Information.
Prior knowledge
Pupils should know about the economic basis of the transatlantic slave trade – the triangular trade – and the exchange of goods for people.
Suggested teacher led activities (starter):
Show the class this picture.
What do they think it is?
(The Bank of England – probably the first purpose built bank in 1734, extended over 100 years by Sir John Soane).
Ask pupils to identify the building’s Georgian features (see Georgian Housing activity).
Who needed money at each stage of the transatlantic slave trade?
List all the people involved in the trade (investors, European as well as African traders, ships' captains and sailors and the enslaved themselves).
Who made the most money; who made the least?
Suggested pupil activities (main):
Ask pupils to represent the money made in a triangle/hierarchy to show the large number of enslaved Africans at the bottom and the small number of investors and traders at the top.
Build up a flow chart of money needed and exchanged at each stage of the 'triangular trade' using an interactive map such as:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/map/index.shtml or
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/freedom/viewTheme.cfm/theme/triangular
Why were credit and insurance needed?
Can pupils name the different banks in their area?
Do any of the buildings have dates on them?
Do any of them date from the time of the transatlantic slave trade?
Lloyds, Barclays (developed from Heywoods in Liverpool) and Barings (collapsed in 1995) are some of the banks that made money during the slave trade. Most of these have undergone mergers and have little in common with their origins in the 18th century.
Are there any local buildings that were once banks but are now used for a different purpose?
Suggested discussion (plenary):
Debate the question: should companies that made money from the transatlantic slave trade pay reparations to the countries or descendents of those who suffered as a result of the slave trade?
(Reparations are forms of compensation made to the ancestors of those enslaved or the countries from which they came. When slavery finally ended in British colonies in 1833, £20 million in government bonds – almost 40 percent of the national budget – was paid as compensation to Caribbean plantation holders, but nothing was paid to the enslaved.)
The British Museum, the Tate Gallery, The Royal Family and The Church of England are some of the other national institutions associated with money made as a result of the transatlantic slave trade.
What does this say about the impact of the slave trade on Britain (some like to say that the labour of enslaved Africans put the 'Great'' in Britain)?
Suggested homework:
Ask pupils to write a précis of the history of banking and the slave trade from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/building_britain_gallery_02.shtml
or from the Background Information.
Expectations
All pupils must: appreciate that many people made money at different stages of the transatlantic slave trade; realise that wide scale banking developed as a response to financing the slave trade; identify local banks and link some directly to the history of the slave trade; be aware that money from the slave trade financed other national institutions; know that the question of compensation is debated.
Most pupils should: understand that many millions of enslaved Africans generated profits for relatively fewer investors and traders; know that there were African traders (middlemen) as well as Europeans; link the Bank of England building to the investment of wealth in Georgian times; construct an argument for or against financial reparations.
Some pupils could: appreciate the extent to which the transatlantic slave trade financed England's institutions; recognise the complex and unresolved legacies of the trade from different perspectives.
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