College of Social Sciences

Speakers:

• Dr Stephen Mullen (University of Glasgow) - Glasgow’s Merchant City and the Public Memory of Transatlantic Slavery
• Dr Sarah Longair (University of Lincoln) - Scottish Architects and the Colonial Built Environment

 

Glasgow’s Merchant City and the development of the Public Memory of Transatlantic Slavery

Dr Stephen Mullen, University of Glasgow

Dr Mullen assesses how Glasgow’s memory of slavery has developed. He opens with a couple of simple questions. Why was there so little criticism when in 1990 the local administration named a historic quarter the ‘Merchant City’? And what has underpinned the route to acknowledging Glasgow’s connections to slavery in the thirty years since?

There have been seminal events over that period: the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade act in 2007, the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and the change in political administration in Glasgow City Council in 2017.

During this time, the city of Glasgow’s colonial myopia in urban space has been replaced with a ‘public memory’ of slavery which has initiated a political commitment to acknowledge and commemorate slavery past.

There are multiple factors underpinning these developments. The activist organisation, Glasgow Anti-Racist Alliance (now Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights), has highlighted a municipal hypocrisy in their creative outputs. The archival research of historians has percolated into the popular consciousness. We have heard the voice of Scottish-Jamaican campaigner Graham Campbell and the Flag-Up Scotland Jamaica group. And Glasgow’s museums, university administrators and political leaders have been willing to listen to such conversations.

Pioneering strategies in Glasgow have influenced approaches across Scotland, contributing to the development of a public conscience around the nation’s historic connections with transatlantic slavery.

Dr Stephen Mullen is Research Associate in History, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow. He is co-author of the report, ‘Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow’, the first report of its type in British history, allowing Glasgow to be the first university to acknowledge financial income from slavery on a large scale. He is the author of numerous articles and essays, as well as the book, It Wisnae Us: The Truth about Glasgow and Slavery (Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland: Edinburgh, 2009).

Scottish Architects and the Colonial Built Environment: John Begg and George Wittet in early twentieth-century India

Sarah Longair, University of Lincoln

Two Scottish architects, John Begg and George Wittet, created several notable landmarks in Mumbai and elsewhere in British India in the early twentieth century. Begg was responsible for numerous buildings in his twenty-year career in India, such as the Post Office in Mumbai. Wittet’s major works included the Prince of Wales Museum (now the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum) and the Gateway to India. They were also instrumental in architectural education in India through their involvement in the development of the architecture curriculum at the Sir Jamshetji Jeejeebhoy School of Art. Both men therefore made major contributions to the colonial built environment as well as the future of the architectural profession in India.

Throughout the rich history of Scotland and empire is an emphasis upon the contributions of Scots in professional fields, with particular attention being given to medicine and education. Scottish architects and their role in shaping imperial cities around the world have remained notably absent from these studies. This paper will investigate the careers of these two men, their architectural designs, and professional networks in Scotland and India to analyse the significance of Scottish, British and colonial identities in their development as architects in the empire.

Dr Sarah Longair is a Senior Lecturer in the History of Empire at the University of Lincoln, having previously worked at the British Museum for eleven years. Her research explores British colonial history in East Africa, South Asia and the Indian Ocean world through material and visual culture. Her first monograph, Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar Museum (Farnham, 2015), examined the history of the Zanzibar Museum, which included a study of the museum building and colonial architecture in East Africa.

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First published: 3 March 2022