The Docklands

               THE DOCKLANDS MUSEUM
AND EXHIBIT: THE ROYAL AFRICAN

Museum of London Docklands

The Docklands museum did not shy away from showing the innovation and the brutal slave trade of British of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British cargo trade. This especially interested us because so many museums we have visited in the past gloss over the negative aspects of history in order to provide for a more family-friendly gallery. Geared towards both adults and children, the Docklands offered both  

entertaining interactive exhibits and information about the the British cargo trade. In the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, the cargo trade made use of impressive innovations. But gruesome images of Africans chained up with tight cuffs around their hands and wrists reminded of its horrors. The Royal African Exhibit memorably blended horrific images of subjugated slaves with the history of how the practice of slavery came to be.

Felicity Petruzzi, Rowan Yeni, Marisa Sully, Lisa Moore

Felicity Petruzzi, Rowan Yeni, Marisa Sully, Lisa Moore

William Ansah Sessarakoo was born in 1736 in the country of Ghana. Seeing the area dedicated to Mr.  Sessarakoo was especially thought provoking. Relating our previous knowledge about the slave trade with a face that makes slavery more immediate. Sessarakoo was sent to London by his father to be educated, but shortly thereafter he was tricked into being sold into slavery. He was stuck being a slave for four entire years before he was freed. According to curator/Alex Werner, most people living in c. 1800 London knew little about the horrors of the slave trade. Public figures such as Sessarakoo put a face on the terrors of slavery and helped spur abolitionist movements in London. According to Werner, displaying Sessarkoo's story in the Royal African Exhibit puts a face to the slaves whose were being debated in parliamentary discussions of the Royal African Company. Displaying Sessarakoo on display in the Museum of London Docklands presents his story in a warehouse originally built to store sugar and coffee produced and harvested by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. 

Aphra Behn's 1689 novella Oroonoko: Or, the Royal Slave, which we studied in class, offers a fictional counterpart of an royal African's enslavement.