Liverpool Trip

On Tuesday 27th September, 18 A Level History students travelled up to Liverpool to visit the International Slavery Museum to explore and understand the wider context of historical and contemporary slavery across the world. To do this we looked at four different exhibitions.

The first of these was an exhibition on life in West Africa and allowed us to explore the story and culture of Africa and its people, who are central to the story of the transatlantic slave trade. The next exhibition we looked at was the Enslavement and the Middle Passage gallery. It was here that some of the brutality and trauma inflicted upon enslaved Africans was revealed along with the oppression they faced throughout their lives on the plantations they lived and worked on. The exhibition on Modern Slavery in India was perhaps the most shocking for us because to think that slavery still happens in a world, which we consider very liberal, is extremely repugnant. The final exhibition we explored was the Legacy gallery, which showed us the continuing fight for freedom and equality, as well as the contemporary impact of transatlantic slavery, racism and discrimination.

After lunch we participated in an artefact handling session, in which we looked at their importance in understanding the issues of the slave trade and the underlying story they can tell.

Overall it was a worthwhile day that gave us a much deeper understanding of our three thematic units; The Gilded Age, The New Deal and Malcom X and the Black Power Movement that we are studying this year.

Josef Feiven

Liverpool Trip (1) Liverpool Trip (2)