How South Australia would sound without our famous slavers
Many of South Australia’s founders had dark ties in the trade of human lives. Historians rewrite the map to explore how different our state would sound without the names of infamous slave traders.
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No more Angas St, Angaston, Currie St, Port “Augusta” or Musgrave Ranges.
Colonel William Light’s statue would no longer grace “Montefiore” Hill, and more obscure localities such as Cape Wiles on the Eyre Peninsula would be shopping for a new name.
The Anglican Archdiocese of Adelaide and the Church of England would be viewed in a very different light.
The controversial idea to erase the names of former slavers, or those who directly or indirectly profited from slave ownership, has been floated as part of an outing of the questionable histories of some of the most significant figures in the formation of the colony of South Australia.
It has all happened before of course, when in 1918 South Australia erased many German names from the map.
Blumberg became Birdwood, Grunthal Verdun, Hergott Springs Marree, and so on.
Today what has now put some of the pioneers of our state in the cross hairs of history revisionists is the work of the University College, London.
Its Legacies of British Slave-ownership database catalogues those who sought compensation from the Imperial Parliament for slaves emancipated in the 1830s, in recognition of their loss of “property”.
How they profited from the practice, which is now scowled upon by history, may forever remain a secret but public records were to reveal how the benefited from its demise.
A fortune in public money at the time — £20,000,000 — was divvied up by those who, albeit in less enlightened times, thought they should be compensated for the loss of ownership of other human beings.
Several scholars took a keen interest in the UCL database, it reflecting a momentous shift in policy between 1833 and 1836 at precisely the same time as colony of South Australia was established as a business eager for seed funding from the wealthy of English society.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it transpired that a small proportion of the profits of slavery quickly made its way directly and indirectly to Adelaide, and to a lesser extent other colonies.
Last year some of the names began to emerge via the work of Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen.
The most prominent was Sir Anthony Musgrave, Governor of South Australia from 1873 to 1877.
The UCL database revealed his family was awash with slave compensation, and therefore the profits of the practice prior to abolition.
Sir Anthony’s father, Anthony Snr., was a slaveholder in Antigua who was awarded £260 compensation for his 89 slaves.
His uncles, William and Richard, were also slavers and awarded compensation.
William Byam, his father-in-law through his first wife, was a slaveholder in Antigua and compensated £4,100 for his 256 slaves.
George Fife Angas, a major funder of the new colony, was also prominent in the slave compensation scheme.
He was an agent for slavers in collecting their compensation, totalling £6,942.
Jacob Montefiore — a merchant, financier and playwright — along with his brother was a trustee of £386 in compensation awarded to child beneficiaries of slavers.
Eliezer Montefiore, their father, was a slaveholder of at least 211 slaves in the British West Indies.
Another expert in the UCL list, Cameron Coventry from Federation University Australia, has now taken the debate one step further for modern day SA.
He wants the State Government and Adelaide City Council to consider renaming some street and placenames, which is allowed in the ‘public interest’.
In terms of the council, history he argues can no longer be used to establish that pioneers like Angas, Currie and Montefiore were ‘prominent and worthy citizens who have contributed to the betterment of the community’.
Even at the time, Mr Coventry argues, slavery had been deemed a repugnant practice, which should have precluded honours in the years following its abolition.
“Evidence of beneficiaries of slavery surrounds us in the present in various public honours and notable buildings,’’ Mr Coventry says.
“It must be considered that beneficiaries of slavery had been engaged in a practice considered immoral at the time (it was abolished) and, as with perpetrators of child abuse in the present time, public honours reflect support of a morally reprehensible act.
“Changing placenames is not a superficial act; it is part of a broader realisation of anti-racism, seemingly ubiquitous at present. Anti-racism cannot coexist with narratives of the past that overlook links to slavery or, indeed, other atrocities.’’
University of Adelaide professor Dr Paul Sendziuk — who co-authored a 2018 book which launched the work of Humphrey McQueen — says the debate is not unlike that in the United States.
There many have argued public honours for Confederate Civil War generals who fought the 1800s war in defence of continuing slavery in that country, should be scrapped.
In 2017, one person died during a violent confrontation over the status of a Charlottesville statue of General Robert E. Lee.
“People who have been found to have behaved badly in the past, or have succeeded through ill-gotten means, some argue their legacy should be revised,’’ Dr Sendziuk says.
“That can mean changing a name or taking down a statue.
“Some ask, should we still be venerating these people?’’
Adelaide is dotted with similar memorials which may be equally controversial in the future.
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