Memory and Commemoration

Public, often contentious exchanges about slavery are not unique to the United States and did not happen in isolation. Caribbean countries have been commemorating slavery in public spaces since at least the 1960s through the construction of monuments honoring enslaved rebels such as Cuffy and Carlota.

During most of the twenty-first century, Brazilian governments have passed legislation and promoted initiatives to recognize the history of slavery and the country’s long-lasting connections with the African continent. In recent years, however, fascist Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has claimed that the Portuguese never set foot in Africa and that therefore Brazil had no responsibility for the enslavement of Africans. Such positions show that, although the history of slavery and the role of the country in the Atlantic slave trade has long been documented and established, publicly elected authorities can at any time decide to make false claims about their country’s history. These attacks confirm not only that historians must revisit and reilluminate this past but also that they need to engage in public debates taking place outside academic settings.

Since 2006, France has acknowledged its past involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and slavery on May 10, a national day commemorating the memories of the slave trade, slavery, and their abolition.

In previous works, I have explored the reasons this new interest has surfaced in recent years, and I have especially sought to explain why and how the Atlantic slave trade and slavery are memorialized in Europe, Africa, and the Americas.⁹ I have argued that this relevance has little to do with what happened in the past but is rather related to how racism and present-day social and racial inequalities perpetuate the exclusion of people labeled as Black in societies where chattel slavery existed. Because racism and white supremacy persist in Europe, Africa, and the Americas as legacies of Atlantic slavery, this long and painful past still matters. But the excessive focus on the present can also blur our ability to clearly address the study of chattel slavery and the Atlantic slave trade.