Race, Slavery and Abolition at the Liverpool Athenaeum: 1797-1833
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Liverpool
Department Name: Sch of History
Abstract
The Liverpool Athenaeum was founded in 1797, as part of a broader trend of establishing subscription libraries on both sides of the Atlantic. The institution is one of only a handful which still survive and is a living cultural symbol of Liverpool's Georgian past. While the proprietors founded the club to boost the civic, intellectual and artistic status of the town, the formation of this Enlightenment institution took place within the epicentre of the transatlantic slave trade. The project seeks to unpick this uneasy tension at the heart of the library's foundation, and to work with the Athenaeum's membership today to frame their response to the Black Lives Matter movement, authoring a report on its historical connections to the slave trade.
The history of libraries and reading communities has received welcome attention in recent years, as historians have become more attentive to the circulation of ideas during the long Eighteenth-century. However, the current literature has often been limited by national boundaries and has failed to engage critically with the role of knowledge exchange and libraries in colonial violence. The project seeks to challenge this status quo, situating the port town of Liverpool within its Eighteenth-Century global network, as sugar, tobacco, cotton, books, ideas and enslaved people moved through its docks.
A plethora of material survives for the Athenaeum, which is relatively rare for subscription libraries of the period. The surviving minute books, catalogues, account books, contemporary pamphlets and membership records remain under-exploited to date. This wealth of material will be used in a prosopographical approach, mapping the networks of the founding proprietors such as John Gladstone, John Bolton and the Earle brothers, all of whom received significant pay-outs following the Slave Compensation Act of 1837. The meticulous biographical research undertaken by the team behind the AHRC-funded Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online (E-CLO) will be used to trace wider social, personal, cultural and business connections both within the British Isles and across the Atlantic, especially within the Anglo-Caribbean where many Liverpool merchants were heavily involved.
Recent research has uncovered a lively literary community on islands such as Barbados, where a Literary Society existed from 1777 through to the Barbados Public Libraries Act in October 1847. The government of institutions within the colonial peripheries will be compared to the day-to-day running of the Liverpool Athenaeum, the motivations of the membership, and where possible, a comparison of the books which were being read by proprietors. The Athenaeum's printed catalogues from 1802, 1820 and 1864 will be used alongside manuscript acquisition records to assess how the institution's collection evolved, especially as the debates surrounding race, slavery and abolition developed. The wider Enlightenment literature relating to travel, anatomy and natural sciences which underpinned ideas about race and slavery will be traced both within the Athenaeum and across the transatlantic world to understand how Enlightenment knowledge exchange contributed to such debates.
This research will culminate in a PhD thesis which investigates both the monetary and cultural connections to the slave trade and the role of reading and literary communities more broadly in ideas surrounding race, enslavement, resistance and abolition in Liverpool and beyond. This work will be disseminated through research papers and journal articles, making a key contribution to the work of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery in reframing Liverpool's past. The work will be publicly showcased as often as possible to engage with and include community responses to the city's problematic past.
The history of libraries and reading communities has received welcome attention in recent years, as historians have become more attentive to the circulation of ideas during the long Eighteenth-century. However, the current literature has often been limited by national boundaries and has failed to engage critically with the role of knowledge exchange and libraries in colonial violence. The project seeks to challenge this status quo, situating the port town of Liverpool within its Eighteenth-Century global network, as sugar, tobacco, cotton, books, ideas and enslaved people moved through its docks.
A plethora of material survives for the Athenaeum, which is relatively rare for subscription libraries of the period. The surviving minute books, catalogues, account books, contemporary pamphlets and membership records remain under-exploited to date. This wealth of material will be used in a prosopographical approach, mapping the networks of the founding proprietors such as John Gladstone, John Bolton and the Earle brothers, all of whom received significant pay-outs following the Slave Compensation Act of 1837. The meticulous biographical research undertaken by the team behind the AHRC-funded Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online (E-CLO) will be used to trace wider social, personal, cultural and business connections both within the British Isles and across the Atlantic, especially within the Anglo-Caribbean where many Liverpool merchants were heavily involved.
Recent research has uncovered a lively literary community on islands such as Barbados, where a Literary Society existed from 1777 through to the Barbados Public Libraries Act in October 1847. The government of institutions within the colonial peripheries will be compared to the day-to-day running of the Liverpool Athenaeum, the motivations of the membership, and where possible, a comparison of the books which were being read by proprietors. The Athenaeum's printed catalogues from 1802, 1820 and 1864 will be used alongside manuscript acquisition records to assess how the institution's collection evolved, especially as the debates surrounding race, slavery and abolition developed. The wider Enlightenment literature relating to travel, anatomy and natural sciences which underpinned ideas about race and slavery will be traced both within the Athenaeum and across the transatlantic world to understand how Enlightenment knowledge exchange contributed to such debates.
This research will culminate in a PhD thesis which investigates both the monetary and cultural connections to the slave trade and the role of reading and literary communities more broadly in ideas surrounding race, enslavement, resistance and abolition in Liverpool and beyond. This work will be disseminated through research papers and journal articles, making a key contribution to the work of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery in reframing Liverpool's past. The work will be publicly showcased as often as possible to engage with and include community responses to the city's problematic past.
