- Gladstone Family to Apologize for Ancestor’s Slave Ownership
- John Gladstone’s Role in the Slave Trade
- Acknowledging Wrongdoings and Aiming for Reconciliation
The Gladstone family will apologise for an ancestor’s slave trade involvement in the Caribbean.
William was the son of one of the greatest slave owners in the British West Indies, John Gladstone.
Charlie Gladstone, John’s great-great-great-grandson, felt “absolutely sick” when he learned that his family once owned slaves.
“We have no excuses for him,” he declared.
According to The Observer, Charlie Gladstone, whose family’s ancestral residence is the Hawarden estate in Flintshire, will travel to Guyana, South America, with five other family members to apologize for John’s ownership of Africans.
Reportedly, they also intend to pay reparations to finance additional research into the effects of slavery.
What was John Gladstone’s identity?
John Gladstone was a Scottish merchant who amassed a fortune as a sugar cultivator in Demerara and employed hundreds of slaves on his plantations in the decade preceding emancipation.
The 1823 rebellion in Demerara, a British colony that later became a part of Guyana, began on one of Gladstone’s plantations, and some historians contend that its violent suppression contributed to the abolition of slavery.
John received the largest compensation payment from the Slave Compensation Commission following the abolition of slavery in 1833: approximately £93,00, or the modern equivalent of approximately £10 million.
In his first Commons speech in 1831, William Gladstone, who served as Liberal prime minister four times in the 19th century, advocated for compensation for slave proprietors.
In 1850, however, his family reported that he was a “changed man,” with the former leader describing slavery as “by far the most heinous crime that stains the annals of history.”
According to Charlie Gladstone, John Gladstone committed offenses against humanity. That is crystal obvious.
We can only try to improve the world, and apologising for him is a good start.
“He was a depraved character. He was avaricious and dominant. We have no justifications for him.”
