Taste in high life
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Taste in high life
William Hogarth was one of the most important artists and caricaturists of the 18th century. In this domestic interior scene of a fashionable house, he has included a young African boy attired in ‘oriental’ dress. Obsession with status and fascination with passing fashions are the target of Hogarth’s satire here. For example, the couple on the right fawn ridiculously over a china cup and saucer – another ‘exotic’ import into Britain. We do not know the identities of any of the sitters: they are generic types that would have been recognizable to Hogarth’s audience. It has been suggested, but not proved, that Hogarth modelled the African boy on Ignatius Sancho, a former slave, who, although 16 or 17 when this print was published, had been kept by three sisters in Greenwich as a child.
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The Zong
On 19 March 1783, the African Olaudah Equiano called on anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp (see Campaign for abolition) with news of an event. Read more...
Hull
The city of Kingston upon Hull has a centuries-old sea-faring commercial history, but its location on the east coast of England ensured that its commerce was shaped by maritime links to Europe. Read more...
Liverpool
Bristol continued its involvement in the slave trade until abolition but in decreasing numbers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Read more...
London
Although London would eventually be eclipsed by Bristol and Liverpool as a slave-trading port, its involvement in the trade was both longer...Read more..
Bristol
When the Royal African Company was founded in 1672, it was given a monopoly over the British slave trade. Read more..
