The Welsh and American Slavery

• Home
• More on the Series
  • The Presenter
  • Programme One 1619 - 1776
  • Programme Two 1776 - 1841
  • Programme Three 1841 - 1865
  • Methodology
• The Slave Trade
• The Slaves
• Slave Owners
• Abolitionists
• Places to Visit

More about the series

Creating the Series

It was not the intention of this series to relate the history of slavery on the American mainland, but rather to relate how the Welsh have been involved in slavery, as slave masters and abolitionists, using Welsh sources in the main.

However, as a counterpoint to these "white" viewpoints, it was decided also to include quotations from slave narratives of the 1930s and from earlier sources which represented something of the views of the black slave.

There were a number of problems with such a project:

• Difficulty in summarising such a range of time 1619 -1865 into three hours of television. As Ira Berlin shows in his book "Generations of Captivity" the slave system was not a changeless process. It varied from generation to generation and indeed from area to area, and it is difficult, if not impossible to convey this in a short series.
• Interpreting slavery at all is an act which verges upon tastelessness. What right does anyone have to try to convey the experience of a slave, being whipped, for example? Marcus Wood in his book "Blind Memory" about how slavery is portrayed is relevant here. How do we decide what is shown?
• It is important for programmes to challenge presumptions sometimes - but a programme maker must try to be honest about his own presumptions as a white Welshman. Pride in the abolitionists. Anger towards the slave masters. His desire to relate to the slave, but his failure to do so.

• There is very much more evidence about the Welsh abolitionists than about the Welsh slave masters. The abolitionists belong to a later, more literate period, and they were very aware of the power of the press as a propaganda weapon, so it is not surprising that so much material has survived. With the slave masters, the references to Welsh people are few, with hardly any being in Welsh.

In view of the lack of Welsh-language evidence from the early period, it was decided to translate quotations from Thomas Phillips and Morgan John Rhys into Welsh. We know that Welsh was the first language of Rhys and it is almost certain that Welsh was the language of Phillips too, as a man of his period, born in Brecon.

With the quotations from former slaves, on the other hand, it was decided to leave them in English. We know that Morgan John Rhys spoke the Wenhwyseg dialect, but which accent would you ask an actor to use when providing the voice of Frederick Douglass in Welsh? Or Olaudah Equiano?

It was not our intention to insult the Welsh language, but to respect the slave - one of the essential elements of American slavery was to deprive the slave of his African language, but he developed his own way of using the English language. To translate it then into our own language would possibly bring the experience closer to the viewers of S4C, but it would also "steal his experience". We were uncomfortable about "taking possession" of the slave experience in this way.

"This is not the song which is going to save the language" said Gruff Rhys in another context, "but it will do it no harm either". We hope that is the case with this series.

The discussion on slavery must continue, due to its importance to the formation of our society, and because slavery is not just history - it is something that is still with is today.