Country houses.
Not just a setting for British television actors
trying to be sexy in top hats and corsets,
but also, once upon a time, homes for actual people,
powerful ones, aristocrats, many of whom had close ties to
some of the darkest moments in Britain’s colonial past,
like its involvement with
the transatlantic slave trade, for example.
Today, these grand buildings still dot Britain’s landscape,
but many of them were built off the backs of enslaved people,
like this one, Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire.
Empires of Dirt,
a show about Europeans getting rich at the expense of everyone else.
Previously,
we found out how the objects you see in museums are looted,
and how Britain's top universities were funded by slavery.
[How Britain’s Country Houses Were Built on Slavery]
Country houses are basically symbols of power and influence.
They are a superyacht in brick and marble,
an ego trip handed down through the generations.
If you owned a country house,
it was a way of showing that you belonged to the landed gentry,
the top tier of society.
Most country houses were built in the 17th and 18th centuries,
and some are still lived in to this day.
Entire villages would be employed by the Lord and the Lady of the house,
from the chefs in the kitchen to the gamekeepers in the fields
and the scullery maids scrubbing every inch of the floor.
They were often funded by tenant farmers,
who paid the owners of the house to farm on their land.
But these enormous estates weren’t just created through farming,
some of them were also built off the slave trade.
The National Trust is a charity responsible for maintaining
many of Britain’s remaining country houses.
They recently reported that over 90 of its properties are linked to
slavery and colonialism.
That’s around a third of all of its stately homes.
Some of these homes are linked to the most famous Britons of all time,
like Sir Francis Drake,
the first man to circumnavigate the globe in the 16th century.
Drake was one of Britain's first slave traders,
selling enslaved African people to Spanish-owned plantations
in the Americas in the 1560s.
He put this money towards purchasing Buckland Abbey in Devon.
His descendants lived in this house till at least in 1937.
Some country houses have longstanding connections to the slave trade.
Their owners derived their wealth over the generations
from enslaved people,
like with the Penrhyn estate in Bangor, Wales.
It’s more of a castle, to be honest.
It belonged to Richard Pennant, the first Baron of Penrhyn,
whose family made their fortunes in the 18th century sugar trade
in Jamaica.
Pennant owned six plantations.
Not that he’d ever even been to Jamaica.
If he'd seen the human cost of his castle,
maybe he’d have thought twice about using his position as MP
to block any efforts to abolish the slave trade.
Maybe not.
Pennant wasn’t alone.
Across the UK, loads of country houses have links to slavery,
some more than others,
like Harewood House in West Yorkshire,
which was built by the Lascelles family,
who owned sugar plantations in the West Indies.
Plantation owner Henry Lascelles had shares in 21 slave ships
responsible for trafficking people from Africa to around the world.
At one point, the family even had up to 3,000 enslaved people
working on their plantations.
Some country houses aren't just monuments to slavery,
they’re also reminders of the worst excesses of the British Empire,
like the Claremont Estate in Surrey,
which was once owned by the Clive family.
In the 18th century,
Robert Clive was a leading figure in the East India Company,
the quasi-governmental body that plundered India’s natural resources
for hundreds of years.
Clive helped establish the British Empire in the region
and became the first governor of Bengal
in what is now eastern India.
He’s been called a sociopath by some people,
who point to the atrocities he committed against the Bengali people.
His mismanagement paved the way for the Great Bengal Famine of 1770,
which is estimated to have killed as many as ten million people.
Clive got so obscenely rich from his involvement in India
that he spent £100,000,
the equivalent of around £15 million in today’s money,
on remodeling the Claremont estate.
This is Newstead Abbey.
If it looks a little bit churchy to you,
that's because it used to be an actual priory for monks.
When Henry VIII got rid of all the monasteries
it passed into private ownership.
The famous poet and literary bad boy Lord Byron owned Newstead Abbey.
This was his actual bedroom.
But, in 1818, he had to sell it to help clear some of his debt.
Thomas Wildman, a rich schoolmate, bought it off him
and spent a huge amount of money restoring the abbey,
basically saving it from ruin.
Wildman could afford it.
He was the heir of the Quebec estate,
a plantation in Jamaica with hundreds of enslaved people.
The public know Newstead Abbey for the Byron connection.
They come here to stare at his famous desk
and pay homage to the great writer.
Few know that the only reason this place is still standing
is thanks to exploitation and human misery.
Two years ago, Newstead Abbey
commissioned a report documenting its black history,
including its links to the slave trade.
Organizations like the National Trust
are also conducting their own research projects
to find out just how many of their country houses are linked to slavery.
The answer is... a lot of them.
Slavery was the engine of Britain's economy up until the 19th century,
and after abolition there was a lot more colonialism to come.
But fair play to the National Trust.
It’s not easy being right-on
when your customer base skews old and traditional.
After the organization acknowledged its links to slavery,
some people threatened to cancel their membership.
It might even spark an investigation by the Charity Commission.
You can understand why.
It’s not a nice thought
that your ancestors might have been a bit of a tyrant.
But it’s also cowardly to live in a fantasy
where Britain played by the rules,
the peasants were clean and well-fed,
and handsome gentleman frolicked
in the fountains of enormous country piles.
No one is saying that we need to pull these houses down.
But surely it makes sense to know more about their context and history.
The houses themselves have stood for centuries.
Let them stand with a deeper knowledge of
the blood, sweat and tears they were built on.