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Europe Slavery Travel

Seeing what slavery built: my family’s European tour

My family and I recently returned from a European vacation, spending a few days in London, Paris, Barcelona and Rome. Members of my family had spent time in former colonies including Jamaica, the Bahamas, Mexico, Ghana and Brazil – so it was time to see what all that colonial wealth had built – and who was most benefiting from it today. We toured mostly on our own because we didn’t want to pay to have someone tell us an incomplete story about how all that great stuff got built. 

In London, we walked through Hyde Park passing Speakers Corner on the north-east side –  “where free speech, open-air public speaking, debate, and discussion are allowed…as long as the police consider their speeches lawful.” There was no one speaking when we went by.

We saw Buckingham Palace where newly crowned King Charles doesn’t actually live (he and Queen Camilla continue to live at his London home, Clarence House which is a 3-minute drive to the Palace). 

Buckingham Palace

The article The British Empire: From Profitable to Loss-Making on the UK-based website Historic Cornwall provides a succinct description of the origins of the wealth upon which the British Empire was built:

“The British Empire was one of the largest empires in history and at its peak controlled a territory that was home to over 400 million people…[it] was founded in the 16th century and for centuries it was incredibly profitable…due to the fact that the empire was built on the exploitation of natural resources and the labor of slaves. However, by the 19th century, many of the colonies had been exhausted of their resources and the slave trade had been abolished. This led to a decline in the profitability of the empire.”

So England no longer benefits off the labour of enslaved Black people. However, it still benefits from the labour of all tax paying Canadians, including Black ones, through what the Canadian government pays annually to support the British monarchy. According to the pro-Monarchy Monarchist League of Canada, British royalty “could cost taxpayers more than $58.7 million annually.” In a May 2023 CBC article, royal commentator and historian Rafe Heydel-Mankoo estimated King Charles’s coronation would cost Canadians between 50 million and 100 million pounds (about $85 million to $170.5 million Canadian dollars). 

Our walk ended up at Trafalgar Square that, “commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar, the British naval victory in the Napoleonic Wars over France and Spain that took place on October 21, 1805 off the coast of Cape Trafalgar.” The Battle of Trafalgar is what my African history teacher calls a “European tribal war”. According to a 2005 Socialist Worker article, “Britain’s rulers have reason to be grateful to Horatio Nelson for his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar 200 years ago this week, a victory that would be decisive for the creation of the British Empire. France and Britain had been fighting a long war for control of the world. This started when the French had their revolution in 1789 and chopped off their king’s head four years later. When they did that, Britain went to war with them. It was a war against revolution — a war for kings and to preserve the old power.”

We passed White Hall, “a street…recognised as the centre of the Government of the United Kingdom…lined with numerous departments and ministries. Consequently, the name “Whitehall” is used [to refer to]…the British civil service and government, and as the geographic name for the surrounding area.” I couldn’t help thinking how aptly named Whitehall is considering who no doubt occupied it, especially in its early days.

We saw The Tina Turner Musical in London’s West End – London’s Broadway –  where the almost all Black cast put on a great show for the almost all white audience. 

On our last day, we visited Brixton, “…a multi-ethnic community, with a large percentage of its population of Afro-Caribbean descent.” Emerging from the Brixton tube (i.e. subway) station we expected to encounter a scene similar to what we saw when we exited the subway in Harlem, New York in June of this year. There we saw lots of Black folks, many of whom appeared continental African and Muslim, bustling among lots of small stores. In Brixton, we emerged into a crowd with lots of white folks and big brand name stores and fast food places. We ate an indoor market with moderately priced restaurants of many varieties – but none Black owned from what we could tell. 

We went to the Black Cultural Archives and paid to see the exhibit Over A Barrel: Windrush Children, Tragedy and Triumph. Windrush refers to the “Windrush generation” which is a group of West Indians who arrived in London in June 1948 on the ship the HMT Empire Windrush. The Windrush “was a troopship en route from Australia to England via the Atlantic, docking in Kingston, Jamaica, in order to pick up servicemen who were on leave. An advertisement had appeared in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport on the ship for anybody who wanted to travel to the United Kingdom.” Many Windrush immigrants left children behind who they helped out by sending them barrels of goods, earning their offspring the title “Barrel Children”. The exhibit focused on both Barrel Children – who had minimal contact with their parents beyond the barrels – and children born in Britain to Windrush parents. Some children eventually joined their parents in England and the exhibit, chronicled “the incredible journeys of children who traveled from the Caribbean to the UK during the Windrush era…exploring the profound impact of separation and reunion, isolation and belonging, as well as the cultural and social adjustments these children had to make in order to thrive in a hostile environment.”

On a much lighter note, we also visited the Twist Museum, a museum of visual illusions which was educational and entertaining (see pic below).

Our next stop was Paris where we saw displays of excessive wealth touring the Paris National Opera Garnier Palace and seeing Versailles Palace and the Louvre Museum from the outside. We didn’t buy Versailles tickets online beforehand so found a long line of tourists waiting to get into the sold out venue. 

Versaille is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV. “About 15,000,000 people visit the palace, park, or gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world.” The opulence in all three places was striking and was starkly contrasted by the African men selling cheap Eiffel Tower models outside Versailles. The short film Dafa Metti (Difficult) gives voice to Senegalese men selling Eiffel Towers at the base of the actual Tower. They speak of making the dangerous sea voyage from France due to unemployment in Senegal. They try to sell enough trinkets to eat each day and, hopefully, make some extra to send money to family back home. If they’re lucky, they evade police. If not, some die trying.

As we did in London, we visited a section of Paris with a large Black population called La Goutte d’Or which translates to “The Drop of Gold”. Also known as Little Africa, it’s where you find African food, culture, and fashion and a large population of people from North and West Africa. Throughout the community, there are stores and street vendors selling food, spices, fabric for custom-made outfits and more. Looking from the street, most of the people behind the store counters appeared to be North African rather than West African…

Next stop was Barcelona where we started off with a self-guided tour of Castell de Montjuic which was built due to its raised altitude but which “far from protecting the city in fact bombed it during the 1842 insurrection when Barcelona rose up against the Spanish government in Madrid. The garrison continued to be a sinister symbol on high for the rest of the century and beyond, serving as a political prison and even a place of execution for dissidents such as Catalan nationalist Lluis Companys who was killed there in 1940 by Franco’s men.” A plaque in a less visited corner of the castle said that, when Catalan nationalists briefly took over Montjuic, they used it to execute their enemies.

We also saw La Sagrada Familia church and Park Güell, both designed by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. 

La Sagrada Familia

As the picture shows, La Sagrada is incredible. What it doesn’t show is what Richard Eiler wrote in his April 2016 Guardian article Barcelona’s slave trade history revealed on new walking tour, “The work of Antoni Gaudí in particular defines much of the city centre but few locals, let alone the tourists queueing to get into world-famous sights such as Palau Güell and Park Güell, know their dark secret: many were built with money made from the slave trade.” Eiler added, “Barcelona has a radical new mayor, Ada Colau, who made her name as a social activist, and the city council is supporting a new walking tour of places with a slave history.” We couldn’t find any signs that the walking tour still exists…

We travelled from London to Paris and from Paris to Barcelona via French SNCF trains with Eurail passes and loved that experience. The high speed trains were new, fast and on time. They were also extremely clean due to the great work of the cleaning staff who appeared to be exclusively continental Africans.

Our final stop was Rome where we did our one and only tour with a live tour guide. That started at Piazza Navona which featured yet another amazing fountain – but with a twist. This one has an obelisk with Egyptian hieroglyphics on it – but they weren’t written by Egyptians, they were written by Romans. Turns out the Romans liked the obelisks they took from Egypt so much, they created some of their own, including the Obelisk of Piazza Navona which dates back to the reign of Roman emperor Domitian (81-96 AD). So, as the Arab conquest of Egypt took place between 639 and 646 AD, Domitan and his buddies were ripping off obelisks – and modeling their own – based on ones built by Black Africans.

Without question, the most incredible structure we saw the entire trip was the Roman Colosseum, due to its size, what happened in it and how it happened. The Colosseum appears as big as modern day mega sports stadiums. According to Wikipedia, “It could hold an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 spectators at various points in its history, having an average audience of some 65,000; it was used for gladiatorial contests and public spectacles including animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles, and dramas based on Roman mythology, and briefly mock sea battles. Accounts of the inaugural games held by Titus in AD 80 describe it being filled with water for a display of specially trained swimming horses and bulls.”

I couldn’t help but think about the similarities between what happened in the Colosseum and sports like boxing, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)…and football.

The only water we saw around the Colosseum was in bottles being sold by what appeared to be exclusively Indian men. Rather than African men, like in Paris, all the street vendors we saw in Rome were Indian men. And, like the African men, they all offered their goods once and didn’t ask again if we either didn’t reply or said no thanks. However, clearly other tourists have had different experiences which leads to posts like this from the From Home to Rome website:, “How to deal with street sellers in Rome – Tip no. 2: Ignore & keep walking. We can’t say this enough: whenever you are accosted by someone trying to sell you anything, you must ignore them. Don’t slow down because some African guy has complimented on your shoes or asked you where you’re from: it’s their “in” and they won’t leave you alone until they get money from you. Don’t acknowledge them, don’t make eye contact, don’t talk to them.” We made lots of eye contact, said no thanks, and had no issues. Assuming that, similar to the Senegalese men in Paris, if the Indian men don’t sell they don’t eat, they all showed an amazing amount of restraint in their sales pitch.

What we saw on our European journey supported what American journalist, author, and photographer Howard French argues in his October 2021 book Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War – the intentional obliteration of the central role of Africa in the creation of the West’s vast wealth.

It would be great if the tours of all the European monuments, statues, building and fountains, etc. were held to the same standard as court witnesses: to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.