Edward Colston: life of the week

Summary

HistoryExtra Podcast: "Edward Colston: Life of the Week"

Date: July 13, 2026
Host: David Musgrave
Guest: Dr. Richard Stone, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Bristol

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OVERVIEW

This episode delves into the complex life and legacy of Edward Colston, a 17th- and 18th-century merchant, slave trader, and philanthropist. Prompted by the global headlines of 2020, when protesters in Bristol tore down Colston’s statue amid the Black Lives Matter movement, host David Musgrave and historian Dr. Richard Stone explore Colston’s real historical significance—unpacking his involvement in the slave trade, the roots and motives of his philanthropy, how he is remembered, and why he remains such a contentious figure.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

1. Edward Colston: Who Was He?

• Born in Bristol, Colston spent much of his career in London and lived for a time in Spain.
  “He is most famously associated with Bristol, but actually spent most of his life...living in London...but wanted to keep the family association here.” (04:02, Stone)
• Colston came from a family of merchants with roots in trading as far back as the 14th century (08:15-08:23).
• Noted as a ruthless and successful merchant, particularly for his roles in major trading companies (08:38-08:52).

2. Involvement in the Slave Trade

• He was actively involved with the Royal African Company, which held a monopoly on the British slave trade from 1681.
  “He’s initially on the Court of Assistance...So we know he was actively involved in decisions about buying and selling people in slavery in Africa and then...shipping them across the Atlantic.” (04:53–05:10, Stone)
• Rose to deputy governor (de facto CEO) of the company, managing the trafficking of tens of thousands of enslaved people (05:12–05:47).
• Also profited from the South Sea Company, another slave trafficking company, where he is suggested to have withdrawn funds before the bubble crashed (05:58–06:17, Stone).

3. Family and Pioneering Role in Slave Trade

• The Colston family were among the pioneers of English (and specifically Bristol’s) involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, with evidence from customs records as early as 1661 (09:26–10:39).
• Colston’s brother Thomas was a key figure in Bristol’s first slave trafficking voyages (10:40–10:39).

4. Scope of Involvement and Human Cost

• During Colston’s tenure, the Royal African Company shipped an estimated 84,500 enslaved people, of whom 19,300 died during passage (11:47–12:08).
• To put in context: in 12 years, the company trafficked four times the population of Bristol at that time (12:07–12:31).

5. Colston’s Attitude and Contemporary Judgement

• No surviving direct commentary on his views about slavery; available information comes from his actions and philanthropy (12:44–13:47).
• Victorian and later myth-making painted Colston as a saintly philanthropist, but Stone notes this narrative was largely invented long after his death (19:39–20:55).
• The question of “judging by the standards of his time” is nuanced. Colston was a pioneer, not just a participant, in English slave trafficking (09:09–09:26).
• Out of sight, out of mind: Most Bristolians would have been unaware of the slave trade’s brutality, as enslaved Africans were never seen in Bristol (14:11–15:49).

6. Slave Trade Awareness and Morality in 17th Century England

• Slavery was condemned when it affected English people (e.g., Barbary pirates enslaving British sailors), but rarely connected to African enslavement (15:49–16:05).
• Very few overt critics at the time, and when present, the criticism was often mild, e.g., treating slaves kindly, not abolishing the trade (16:21–17:37).

7. Colston’s Personal Life, Legacy, and Family

• Never married; legacy managed through his niece with the Colston name continuing (19:31–20:55).
• Instructions for his funeral and desire to perpetuate his name reflect self-conscious legacy management (20:55–21:02).

8. Philanthropy and Motivations

• Colston’s major charitable giving began in the 1680s, focused mainly on Bristol, though he donated elsewhere (24:08–26:17).
• Estimated to have given the modern-day equivalent of £13.7 million to Bristol causes (25:58–26:14).
• Philanthropy aimed to shape society in his own high Tory, Anglican image—schools, almshouses, and strict moral guidance (27:43–28:27).
• Stone: Philanthropy “used as a vehicle to shape the future of society in his image” (28:27–28:50).

9. Commemoration and Statues

• Posthumous cult quickly founded: societies and commemorations multiply, especially Colston societies (31:21–32:12).
• The now-notorious public statue installed in 1895—over 170 years after Colston’s death—was an artifact of Victorian values, not his own era (33:38–34:50).
• Victorian Bristol used Colston's image to promote a narrative of munificent merchant 'great men'—especially during times of social unrest and labor strikes (34:50–35:16).

10. Pulling Down the Statue (2020) & Modern Memory

• The toppling of the statue during Black Lives Matter protests became a global symbol; the statue is now displayed "reclining" in Bristol's M Shed museum, with original graffiti preserved (36:05–36:34).
• Stone notes this act was a pivotal moment for the city—a shift in collective memory and historical reckoning (36:05–36:46).
• The memory and interpretation of Colston remain active and fraught; debates about how to remember him and Bristol’s slave trade connections continue (37:00–38:19).

11. How Should We Remember Colston?

• Stone argues for remembering Colston both as a significant figure within the context of a much larger, systemic evil—and as a human being with real agency (38:26–39:28).
• Cites G.K. Chesterton: “Philanthropy is increasingly the mark of a wicked man” (39:28–39:30), raising questions about the relationship between charity and self-interest.
• Colston’s legacy: Not unique in scale, but outstanding in how memory was manipulated and has since become a focal point for debates over Britain’s links to slavery (39:59–40:19).

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NOTABLE QUOTES & MOMENTS

• On the pervasiveness of Colston’s name:

  “Thinking how many times I was hearing the name Colston, Colston Street, Colston Avenue, and walking past the almshouses and the pub that used to be named after, just thinking, wow, this guy's name is still everywhere in the city.”
  (03:14–03:28, Stone)

• On the scope of slave trading:

  “During Colston’s 12 years involvement with the company, they shipped 84,500 enslaved people, of whom 19,300 died.”
  (11:47–12:08, Stone) “In just 12 years, the company Colston was heavily involved in managing had shipped the equivalent of four times the population of his native city from Africa to the Americas...”
  (12:07–12:31, Stone)

• On Victorian myth-making:

  “Most of actually what's said about Edward Colston...is a Victorian creation of this idealized saint figure.”
  (19:39–19:53, Stone)

• On philanthropy’s motives:

  “He wants to shape the way people are thinking, he wants to shape the way people are behaving. He wants to kind of shape the future of society in his image, and he's using this charitable giving as a vehicle to do that.”
  (28:27–28:50, Stone)

• On the relevance and teaching of statues:

  “I really liked the way that people kept on customizing it...That kind of thing was really, really powerful. But then as soon as it happened, as soon as the statue was torn down, that became the city really expressing its views in a different way. Cause it's important that memory is active as well.”
  (37:16–37:59, Stone)

• On collective guilt and memory:

  “There's a bit of a tendency that actually cast him as the monster. He draws all the fire. And we forget that there are over 2000 other people in Bristol who also invested in trafficking enslaved people. So, yeah, I always say that not to defend Colston, but kind of as a reminder that we should be thinking about everyone else as well.”
  (30:16–30:41, Stone)

• On Colston’s ambiguous legacy:

  “He is one of thousands, even tens of thousands of investors. So I think it's important that we remember him ultimately as a human being, as someone who, yeah, through the course of what he thought was business, what he thought was the right thing to do, admittedly probably the right thing for himself, caused immense suffering.”
  (38:42–39:28, Stone)

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TIMESTAMPS OF IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

• Colston’s early life and association with Bristol – 03:36–04:20
• Royal African Company involvement – 04:26–05:47
• South Sea Company and ongoing investment in slavery – 05:48–06:17
• Evidence of family’s pioneering role in the slave trade – 09:09–10:39
• Statistics on Colston-era transatlantic slavery – 11:47–12:31
• Judgment by ‘standards of the time’ – 09:05–09:26, 13:47–14:11
• Public awareness of the slave trade in Bristol – 14:11–15:49
• Detail on Colston’s philanthropy and motives – 24:08–28:50
• Inventing Victorian legend and the statue’s history – 33:38–35:16
• Toppling of the statue and legacy debates – 36:05–38:19
• How to remember Colston today – 38:26–40:19

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CONCLUSION

This episode offers a nuanced, deeply-researched portrait of Edward Colston—combining his very real legacy as a ruthless architect of British slave trafficking with the subsequent creation and downfall of his image as Bristolian benefactor. Through expert analysis and engaging storytelling, the discussion challenges listeners to grapple with broader historical responsibility, collective memory, and the meaning of commemoration in the 21st century.

Transcript

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[Narrator/Host Introduction]

In the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020 and with the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement, a crowd of protesters gathered in central Bristol, coincidentally just outside the offices of the History Extra team, and proceeded to pull down the statue of the 17th 18th century philanthropist and slave trader Edward Colston. The protest captured headlines and briefly catapulted Colston to global notoriety. But what did Colston do to ensure such notoriety? And what do we know about his story more widely? In this Life of the Week episode of the History Extra podcast, historian Richard Stone considers the life and legacy of Edward Colston with David Musgrave.

[David Musgrave]

We're going to be talking about a man called Edward Colston, who is significant for quite a few reasons he's a 17th, 18th century slave trader and philanthropist who briefly achieved global fame in 2020 when his statue was pulled down just a few feet away from where we're chatting in central Bristol. So, Richard, welcome to the podcast. How are you?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, I'm good, thanks. And thanks for having me.

[David Musgrave]

Yeah, absolute pleasure. What did you think as you passed by the plinth before we started this recording?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, I'm always. It was actually not the plinth so much as I was following my sat

nav down to help me get here

and thinking how many times I was hearing the name Colston, Colston Street, Colston Avenue, and walking past the almshouses and the pub that used to be named after, just thinking, wow, this guy's name is still everywhere in the city.

[David Musgrave]

He's still here, he's still omnipresent, despite

the controversies that surround him. And we will get into that.

So let's kick off. Who was he? What did he do?

When was he alive?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah. So Edward Colston, as you said, 17th, 18th century merchant. I always like to kind of put

the philanthropist as an afternote. Cause I think that's important to balance kind of what he is and who he is.

And he is most famously associated with Bristol, but actually spent most of his life lived actually sometime in Spain, but most of his life living in London. But he was born in Bristol and had an association with the city of his birth.

Never really traded through here as far as we can make out, but wanted

to keep the family association here and

eventually was buried in Bristol as well, in front of a long, long list of all of the charities that he'd given to in the city to make sure his name was perpetuated.

He's a merchant and money lender who kind of was involved in many different things.

But the one he's most noted is his involvement with the Royal African Company. He was first involved with the company from 1681.

It has a monopoly granted by the

King for exclusive rights to trade with Africa, including of course, trafficking enslaved people, most notoriously.

And he's quite a big player in this company. He's initially on the Court of Assistance, which is basically the group that runs

the company, does the day to day business of it. So they met multiple times a week

and we have kind of minutes of

committee where he was there. So we know he was actively involved in decisions about buying and selling people in slavery in Africa and then of course, shipping them across the Atlantic.

And then he eventually rises to being

deputy governor, which is basically the CEO. So Basically at the end of his involvement with the Royal African Company, he is, yeah, the person in charge of Britain's slave trading company. But that's not the end of his involvement with slavery because I think a

lot of people have probably heard of

the South Sea bubble, kind of famous stock inflation and crash that lost a lot of people a lot of money.

A lot of people other than Edward Colston, who was an investor and promoting

the South Sea Company and got his

money out at about the right time.

So he actually makes a lot of money out of this.

But what people don't know about the

South Sea Company is actually it's a slave trafficking company. So it's got an asiento with supplying enslaved people to Spanish America.

So yeah, a lot of people often think Colston, oh, he has this brief

12 year involvement with the Royal African

Company, but then he mends his ways and thinks, oh no, we shouldn't be trafficking enslaved people. But actually, even right at the end

of his life, he was actively involved in investing in and promoting the latest big slave trafficking company.

[David Musgrave]

Okay.

And he died in 1721.

[Richard Stone]

1721, yes.

[David Musgrave]

And the South Sea bubble was just

a little before that, right? Yes. That's interesting about the South Sea Company.

I didn't know that. Was there like a sense of insider trading, that he got his money out in advance?

[Richard Stone]

Yes, very much so. I think one of his close associates in the company he makes a payment

to around about that time.

And yeah, he obviously had knowledge of what was going on and kind of what was likely.

[David Musgrave]

Okay. Obviously we're gonna talk a bit more about the slave trade in a second.

But what other activities was he involved in?

What other items was he a merchant for?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, so there's all kinds of things. And it's worth saying as well that actually we don't always know.

We don't know the day to day activities of someone from around this time because quite simply the records just don't survive. We don't have his personal account book or anything like that. We maybe could find more of his commercial activities, but that would be a long, long trawl through the customs records from London, which people just haven't really done to this date.

We certainly know he was involved in

trade with Spain early in his career. That would have been things like cloth and wine and things like that. And the Colston family as a whole were heavily involved in trade with Spain. So one of his younger brothers, William, was actually murdered in Lisbon in Portugal. His brother Thomas was a merchant in Spain and eventually moves back to Bristol to take over the family business from his father before promptly dying. And his other brother Richard, we also know, is governor of Marseille, but then moves to Cadiz at one point in his life, where he dies. So, yeah, the family have big trading connections in the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal, and also into the Mediterranean. So we also know Thomas was buying Venetian glass beads, which he sold to the Royal African Company.

[David Musgrave]

Okay, so Colson was from a family of merchant traders. Presumably that's how he got into it. It was kind of the career choice that he had to make.

[Richard Stone]

Yes, very much so. So, yeah, say his father's a merchant, generations of the family are merchants, going back.

I think it's even the 14th century

that they're first known of in BR. So there's a long, long history here. It's the next step in kind of progression. He's apprenticed in London and. Yeah, gets into these strong mercantile connections

[David Musgrave]

and presumably a wily operator, a good merchant.

[Richard Stone]

Yes, I mean, there's no question about that.

He's very efficient, he's very good at what he does, he makes a lot of money and he's very ruthless as well.

Yeah, we can really see he will make judgments, he will make calls, sometimes linked to his politics and his other

motives, but he always comes out on top and always makes the profit from it.

[David Musgrave]

Yeah.

And was it a G that he

would get into the slave trade? Was that like a natural thing for someone at that age who was a merchant?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, so that's another thing that I always hear people say, judge by the

standards of his time.

And actually, I would say, yes, we should, but we need to think the actual standards of his time rather than

what we maybe imagine them to be. So actually, his family and Colston are among the pioneers of English involvement in trafficking enslaved people.

Basically, up till the mid 17th century, England just hadn't done this. It didn't really have American or Caribbean

colonies of its own. It didn't have a market for enslaved people. So they just didn't set up a slave trade of their own. The Royal African Company is only established in the 1670s, so Colston involved about nine years after that. Yeah, one of the early members of this company. And, yeah, as I found in my own research, his family are actually probably the pioneers of Bristol's involvement in slave trading. So I found in the Bristol customs accounts a couple of ships, the Endeavour and the Mary Fortune, which I was

looking at them and I saw the

commodities on board, including things like glass beads, which are a signature commodity of slave trading.

And thought, that looks suspicious. And it was clearly heading to just

off the coast of Africa as well. And I tracked these voyages and I

found, well, they've gone off probably to Africa and they come back carrying goods that have clearly come from the Caribbean.

So very, very clear process of deduction on them suggests.

Yeah.

These, in 1661 are Bristol's first recorded slave trafficking voyages. And one of the main merchants listed as putting goods on board them is Thomas Colston, Edward's younger brother. So, yeah, Colston's very much at the forefront of developing slave trading in England. And actually amongst the people who are maybe starting this process of it being thought of as acceptable rather than it being something that's inevitable, kind of everyone was doing it.

[David Musgrave]

Yeah. Are we able to make any assessment of how many people Colston's wider family actually shipped in nefarious circumstances?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, so it's very, very hard to

be precise about this kind of things because of the lack of surviving records.

So those couple of voyages, the average

for a ship around that time would probably have been 150 to 200 people, but we can't be precise. I'd estimate that Bristol probably trafficked around about 10,000 enslaved Africans over the course of the latter part of the 17th century.

We can be a little bit more

precise about the Royal African. So we know that during Colston's 12 years involvement with the company, they shipped 84,500 enslaved people, of whom 19,300 died. So, yeah, he is directly responsible for managing a company that shipped.

And we also have to remember perspectives

at that time, population of Bristol, around about 20,000. So in just 12 years, the company Colston was heavily involved in managing had shipped the equivalent of, yeah, four times the population of his native city from Africa to the Americas to a life of slavery, of whom literally the equivalent of the entire population of the city died en route.

[David Musgrave]

That's a very bleak balance sheet, isn't it?

[Richard Stone]

Yes.

[David Musgrave]

Okay, so do we know what Edward

Colston thought of what he was doing? Have we got any inkling of his attitude towards the trade he was involved in?

[Richard Stone]

The short answer is no. Again, it just wasn't something that was

really thought about or spoken about at that time.

We haven't really got any of his

private records, private thoughts. The most we can tell is kind of from his philanthropy, from his charitable giving. We can tell quite a lot about his values, where he's quite authoritarian, actually. He really believes in structure of society, respect and kind of respectable behavior. So we can speculate that that have fed into his thoughts about slavery and thoughts about civilization. He's involved in the society for the propagation of the gospel, for example. So there may be some thought about bringing christianity to africans, but that really is speculation. And I think, first and foremost, we would think about this As a business opportunity for him, A way of making money. And any kind of moral thought on that Would very much be a sideline to it.

[David Musgrave]

Interesting. And just going back to the point that we talked about earlier, about judging people by the standards of their time,

can we drill into a little bit

more about the general attitude towards slavery and enslavement in britain? I suppose. How far did everyday people in the street Actually know the trade was going on? Were the ships actually passing by here, or were people ignorant of the fact that black africans were being shipped in these circumstances?

[Richard Stone]

Yes. So really, simply on that, it wouldn't be known, or at least to very, very small extent. So the royal african company Is operating out of london for a start. So in bristol, just that's somewhere else. That's just money moving about. But even the ships coming out of bristol, we're talking hundreds of ships Passing through the port in the course of a year. And maybe a few of them trafficking vessels. And of course, also, ultimately, a trafficking vessel Looks much like any other ship. It's just loading up an assortment of commodities. They might be big, they might be cloth, they might be firearms, Might be metal wares, Anything like that. You never actually see the enslaved people. Cause, of course, you think about the shape of the triangular trade. Ships go down to africa Carrying all these commodities, Pick up enslaved people in africa, Take them across to the new world, Sell them there, Pick up tobacco and sugar. When the ship comes back, all you're seeing is tobacco and sugar. So, yeah, there's very little here. It's out of sight, out of mind. We often talk about cognitive dissonance. Consciously or unconsciously. Just actually probably wouldn't have been aware of a lot of this. And interestingly, when they thought about slavery, they were probably thinking about enslavement of english people in north africa. So, yeah, the barbary corsairs, Barbary pirates, Were a big threat to bristol. We have number of records from the merchant venturers, Records of people petitioning, can you give me ten pounds to redeem my husband from slavery? And, yeah, that's something that people would have been fearful of, People would have

been aware of, of, but also completely condemned.

So, yeah, in the eyes of people in bristol at this time, Slavery was a bad thing. If it was happening to Them. And I always think there's an interesting dichotomy here. Did they think about that comparison?

Quite possibly not.

[David Musgrave]

So was there nobody sort of overtly

condemning the fact that thousands of black Africans were being shipped to the Americas?

And did they know the terrible conditions

that those trafficking ships impose on them?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, so at this stage, probably not an awful lot. There's odd records like the Quaker George Fox, for example, invokes the do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Christian logic. But there he's not necessarily opposing slavery. Potentially more talking about make sure you

treat them kindly when it comes to conditions.

Again, most of the population probably wouldn't know. This is kind of merchants business. This is a relatively small part of the overall economy at this stage. The whole abolition movement and wide questioning is still a century away at this point. But what I would say is that people in the Royal African Company, and particularly its governors, people like Edward Colston, would have seen records. They would have seen these death rates,

because ultimately for them, that's hitting their profit. If you have 19,000 people who've paid

money for die, then that's 19,000 returns on that that you're not getting. So they certainly would have been aware of the death rates. They would have been aware of records for buying and selling, supplying and things like that on their forts on the African coast. So, yeah, Colston, to some extent at least, almost certainly would have been aware of some of the horror of this.

[David Musgrave]

Just want to pick up on that point. To some extent, surely he would have known that people were being shipped in horrific conditions.

Would he not have seen that at

some point, or would that have been a distant aspect for him?

[Richard Stone]

So you always have to remember as

well that merchants tend not to go on their ships. So he sat in a counting house in London somewhere, going to kind of weekly meetings, writing instructions and things like that. The closest he probably would have had to any experience of slavery was early in his career when he was almost certainly living in Spain, where there he would have witnessed enslaved people because, yeah, slavery was much more prevalent actually in Spain at that time. We don't really think about enslaved people on the continent of Europe, but Spain, Portugal, there were tens of thousands of them brought over. In fact, the Colston family certainly did own enslaved people in Spain, used as servants. So the will of Edward Colston's brother Richard, for example, actually explicitly instructs his executors to free Dean and his two menels. So his two enslaved servants. So, yeah, there's a headline, Colston frees his slaves, just not Edward, his brother

Richard, although Edward actually may have been

responsible for actually then enacting the will. So some possibility there, but yeah. And then the only other enslaved person he really would have had much contact with is his servant, Black Mary, who we know very little about her, but we know she was his longstanding maidservant, potentially from the late 18th century where he moved to his manor at Mortlake in Surrey, right up until he gives her 10 pounds on his death.

So he would have known people of

African descent, but probably never seized the inside of the slave ship, as was the case for most merchants of this time.

[David Musgrave]

Interesting. Just in terms of his family, presumably he had a wife and kids.

[Richard Stone]

No. So he famously never marries. And this is where we start getting

into some of the myth making about Edward Colston. So he's supposed to have said, I've never married because every poor woman, he was so devoted to his philanthropy, to his charitable giving that he didn't have time for a wife and children of his own. I think that's a Victorian invention. They like telling stories about him. Most of actually what's said about Edward Colston, he's kind of imaginary, is a Victorian creation of this idealized saint figure. So I think he never married purely because he never got around to it, really. Kind of focus on business. Just assuming he has a lot of younger siblings. Oh, one of them will the next generation. He was certainly later on in life very, very concerned with perpetuating the family name. So he eventually leaves all of his money to his niece on the condition that her husband take the Colston surname. And hence we do have a Colston family go down to today. But yeah, I think he'd always assumed that other members of the family will have the children, but all of them pre decease him and all without issue. So suddenly, you can imagine in his 50s, it suddenly hit him, I didn't do anything about this. And he comes up with these other strategies.

[David Musgrave]

Yeah. So he was worried about his legacy, which is. Which is interesting, isn't it?

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[David Musgrave]

So let's think about the philanthropy aspect. So he's made a load of money with the Royal African Company. When does he start thinking about disseminating that fortune?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, so made a lot of money. Royal African Company and other things as well.

So we need to remember that money lending, all kinds of other avenues would have been part of his business. Although I do always say, actually, people

ask the question, oh, but how much

of his money came from slavery? And I always say, well, it doesn't matter the fact that it's part of it, the fact that he's responsible for this happening is enough to think about it in that way.

And it's just relatively normal for merchants

at this time, or anyone who's wealthy at this time, to think in terms of philanthropy, to think in terms of giving. It's a relatively standard thing in any merchant's will that there will be some gifts, some distribution.

In the case of Colston, he starts thinking about this probably to a more significant extent from about the 1680s onwards. So there are little bits of legacies. And we don't have a complete track

of all of his givings to charity. They're dotted about the country.

But, yeah, mostly from when he starts

this closer association with Bristol following the death of his father and his brother in the 1680s. So, yeah, he gives money to a school in Bristol. He founds an almshouse in Bristol, which I walked past on my way down the hill from the university to here, and founds a school as well.

And, yeah, there's no doubt that in

the latter part of his life, this

is quite a big endeavor for him.

He's devoting a significant amount of money to these various different charitable endeavors and probably a fair amount of time and attention as well. Cause he is quite particular about the nature of his charity and how the things he found.

[David Musgrave]

And as you said, if you visit Bristol or work in Bristol like we do, it's quite hard to avoid the fact of his existence, because there is still a lot of evidence of it.

Was Bristol the locus of his giving

or was he also giving money elsewhere in the country?

[Richard Stone]

So, yeah, I was looking at some

figures generated by two authors from Bristol Radical History Society this morning. Actually. We reckon he gave about £83,000 across the course of his life to various different causes, which is about 18.1 million today, according to standard inflation calculations, of

which around about 63,000.

So that's probably about 13.7 million was the causes in Bristol, though I would say there's some uncertainty about the exact figures given to particular causes, particularly the setting up of the school. We're not sure how much money went into that, so Bristol is the main focus of it. But there's a distribution across the country, predominantly to schools and to Care for and instructing of the poor seem to have been his main focuses.

[David Musgrave]

Yeah, and you've touched on this a bit, but what was the reason, the logic for his giving? Was it to cement his reputation, legacy, or because he particularly wanted to support these causes? Can we answer that question?

[Richard Stone]

I think, again, there's always some uncertainty, but there are two big things I'd say out of this in terms of cementing his legacy. I think there's very little doubt that that was a big part of it. He wants to perpetuate his name, he wants that immortality. And, yeah, like everyone says, oh, he wanted no pomp and ostentation in his funeral because he says so in his instructions for it. And then he goes on to give a detailed list of how many carriages who should be in attendance from the various schools and things like that. And then on the back of his tomb, there is a list of all of the charities he gave to. So who started the cult of Colston? Well, Edward Colston. There's a very deliberate effort here, but there's also a deliberate focus on those particular causes.

And I think he has a concern for the future and he has a concern for the way he thinks society should be and what he thinks should be happening. And Edward Colston is very, very particular in his views.

He's very much high Church Anglican and high Tory, and he really doesn't like anyone being anything other than that. If someone's a Whig, he will fall out with them. If someone's a dissenter, so if they're a Quaker or another type of religious group, he doesn't want them attending his schools. And he is very, very specific in the instructions he gives to how the boys in his school should be educated, who should be admitted, what they should

be given, even the people in his almshouse.

He's very particular. No drinking, no swearing, nothing like that. So, yeah, I think a big part of the reason he's giving these particular charitable causes is he wants to shape the way people are thinking, he wants to shape the way people are behaving. He wants to kind of shape the future of society in his image, and he's using this charitable giving as a vehicle to do that.

[David Musgrave]

That's a fascinating comparison.

On his deathbed, we just talked about

his life, like what he did around his funeral. I presume he didn't express regret for any of his actions or anything like that. Or at least we don't know whether he said anything.

[Richard Stone]

No. So obviously we don't have a record of that.

There's a painting, but the painting is

done over a century later, so not an awful lot. We have his will, that's about all. But there's no record of any regret or anything like that.

I think, if anything, Colston probably would

have been quite proud of his life, quite proud of his achievements and everything that he'd done.

And I always tend to, at this point, when I'm thinking about him as

an old man and things like that, we talk about Colston the monster, and

I do tend to try to think

about him as a human being, because

I think that's really important.

I think there's a lesson there that actually any of us do have that potential danger to be doing the wrong

thing and to be thinking it's the right thing.

And Colston in his own time was Mama. If you agree with him, you really like him. If you think you're gonna get money out of him, you might do a bit of ass licking, but if you disagree with him, then you really, really don't like him. And there are a lot of these accusations and things. So, yeah, think about him later in life. Basically this grumpy, irascible old man, who quite possibly he'd been frail, in not great health for quite a long time and actually may be quite lonely.

So, yeah, thinking about him as human,

I think, is really, really important here. There's a bit of a tendency that actually cast him as the monster.

He draws all the fire.

And we forget that There are over 2000 other people in Bristol who also invested in trafficking enslaved people. So, yeah, I always say that not to defend Colston, but kind of as a reminder that we should be thinking about everyone else as well.

[David Musgrave]

Yeah, no, that's important.

Was he mourned when he died? Was there much outpouring?

I mean, you talked about how he

orchestrated proceedings, but were people upset?

[Richard Stone]

I think upset is hard to say. I think there was a lot of

recognition is probably the way to put it. He was 83 at this point as well, so he'd lived a long, very successful life.

Certainly there was huge parades.

Apparently it was a really gray, rainy day or. Though whether there's some hyperbole about that.

Oh, yes.

Even the weather was miserable to mark Edward Colston's passing coming into the city.

But I think the thing there is there's a lot of commemoration of him relatively quickly.

So commissioning of the statue, not the famous one, but the one that sits above his family vault, there's then the foundation of various Colston societies, which are

basically gentlemen's supper clubs, kind of the

way I'd put it, but designed to keep his memory alive and continue that legacy of charitable giving. So, yeah, the earliest is the Colston society, founded in 1826, only wrapped up, actually relatively recently. 1749 the Dolphin Society, 1759 the Grateful Society and 1769 the Anchor Society.

So we do have, within a relatively

short time after his death, people thinking we should do something to remember this guy and keep on carrying on this tradition of philanthropy, which I've never quite got my head around.

Exactly why they focus on Colston with this, because he did give a fair

amount of money, but it isn't exceptional. He's not Bristol's biggest owner or anything like that. For example, Richard Reynolds, we know, gave over £100,000 to various different causes in the city, but he didn't really want to be celebrated or talked about for that. So it seems to be something about Colston is he's the one who is chosen to be celebrated. He's the one who's chosen to be the kind of poster boy for philanthropy and continuing efforts in Bristol.

[David Musgrave]

So that is fascinating, isn't it? Because that's kind of partly his invention, his work, his desire to be remembered for it.

Partly.

But in a way, it's backfired on him because he's become the poster boy for antagonism towards the slave trade. You know, inferring from what you're saying.

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, completely.

I always think, how would he feel

about the fact we're talking about him today?

[David Musgrave]

What's the answer?

[Richard Stone]

I don't know. On the one hand, I think he'd

be delighted that he's being remembered, that his name is still there.

On the other hand, I think he'd

probably be arguing with us about why are we being critical, why are we not talking about the positives, why are we condemning his business activities? I say it's very, very hard to tell. But the one thing I probably can tell is he was very strong in his views and if he disagreed with someone, he would say so.

[David Musgrave]

Right. Well, that would certainly make for an interesting interview, wouldn't it?

Let's talk about the statue, the famous

statue, as you said. And that's really interesting, isn't it, because it is a much later statue. It's not contemporary to when he was alive. When is it?

Late 19th century. It was put up.

[Richard Stone]

Yeah.

So it's 1895, that statue's put up.

And this is kind of part of

the second phase of Celebration of Coal Saint.

So we have this kind of setting

up of the Colston societies in the 40 years or so after his death

and they kind of quietly get on doing their thing.

They have a party after his birthday every year and they give some money to charity.

But then in the kind of Victorian era, From about mid 19th century, we start this era of kind of the Romantic movement. Thinking back to before the Industrial Revolution, weren't things good then? Weren't things more simple when the rich

man was in his castle, the poor man was at his gate, but the rich man cared for the poor man

and they really start this tradition of

kind of celebrating great men in the past, the Whig version of history.

And Colston really, really gets picked out as one of these people.

He's kind of invented as this saint like figure for Bristol.

And I always talk about a kind

of historiographical concept of invention, of tradition, which is this idea that you create a sense of continuity, a sense of

permanence, in order to justify society as

it is at that time and how you want to see it. And for me, there's no coincidence. The Colston statue goes up in 1895,

just around the time of the birth

of the labour movement and the worst wave of strikes Bristol had ever seen. So I think it's people like J.W. arrowsmith, the publisher, and a lot of the successful businessmen in Bristol are really wanting to create this.

No, everyone in Bristol, you should feel grateful to all of the rich people who give to charity, celebrate Edward Colston

trying to kind of of create that sense of respect and responsibility, to kind of input those values into people in that time.

[David Musgrave]

Let's bring this right up to the present day then. So that statue, as I said, it stands right outside History Extras offices or the Plymouth does. The statue used to until 2020 when it was pulled down by a bunch of protesters. It was dragged along the street and thrown into the river and it now resides recumbent in the local museum, the brilliant Emshed Museum. You can go and look at it. And it's surrounded by sort of the PL that we used on the day and it's still coated in the paint it was daubed in and it became globally famous briefly, I think. What's your take on that whole episode?

[Richard Stone]

Yeah, so I think that was a really important moment in history and I really like the fact that the museum is trying to record that moment.

So the statue's deliberately located in the protest gallery, kind of linking into that long tradition of protest in the city of Bristol.

And actually a lot of conservation work goes into maintaining the painting that was

sprayed onto the statue as it was torn down. Cause it's important that it's a. Yeah. Memory of that moment in time.

And I think we often talk about the way we commemorate the past as something that's very fixed.

We should never change anything. Statues are there and it's important that we remember them. We remember what that represented.

And it can come from either end. You can have people saying, oh, it's important that we celebrate. We show our gratitude to these people

who did so much for us. Or on the other hand, you can

have people say, well, it's important that we never forget. Maybe for a lot of people, Colston's

a bit inconvenient in Bristol now.

We should keep this here so no

one stops talking about Bristol's links to slavery.

So actually, just before the statue was

pulled down, I was always a fan of keeping it there because it was

doing a really, really good job of getting people talking about Bristol's links to slavery.

I really liked the way that people kept on customizing it. So, like someone put a knitted ball and chain around his ankles. Banksy, probably Banksy painted drop coming down from his name. Or you had the famous slave ship Brooks image, put little clay figures underneath the statue, kind of looking down in his contemplative pose at the bodies of enslaved people on a ship, almost as if he was thinking, what have I done?

That kind of thing was really, really powerful.

But then as soon as it happened, as soon as the statue was torn

down, that became the city really expressing its views in a different way. Cause it's important that memory is active as well. So, yeah, that was the city expressing. No, we've moved on from what we

were thinking in the past, what we were told to think. Really now we are condemning this guy. And yeah, that doesn't mean forgetting the plinth is still there. It's got plaques on it that tell literally as of this year, plaques telling both sides of the history.

And I think that's really important.

I think that keeps that conversation going.

[David Musgrave]

And then to wrap up, how should we remember Colston today? What sort of legacy should we think?

And just picking up on some of

the points you've raised as we've been going along, are we actually over egging his importance in the scheme of things and we should be thinking more broadly about society in Georgian England and attitudes, or was he actually an important figure?

[Richard Stone]

I think there's an element of both there.

So there's no doubt that he is one of the pioneers of trafficking enslaved people. He's one of the people who is heavily involved in the administration of some of these big companies from the early days. So he's significant in that regard, but he is one of thousands, even tens of thousands of investors. So I think it's important that we remember him ultimately as a human being, as someone who, yeah, through the course of what he thought was business, what he thought was the right thing to do, admittedly probably the right thing for himself, caused immense suffering. And remember that all of the thousands of people were doing that, too. And it is important that we recognize that there is this charitable giving, but also that we think about what exactly that means.

There's a wonderful quote from G.K. chesterton

saying philanthropy is increasingly the mark of a wicked man. So giving money to charity isn't necessarily a selfless act.

It can be, and I'd never deny

that, that it can be. But also, there's an element of wanting something back. There's an element of either wanting to perpetuate your name, gain cultural capital from

it, or, yes, sometimes there are strings attached.

And certainly in the amount of money that Colston gave to these various causes in Bristol, which also.

That is in many respects, a drop

in the ocean, there's a lot, lot more money given by a lot, lot more people to various different causes. He did want that element of control and that element of shaping, which also you could argue is what a lot of people who, in the couple of centuries afterwards were perpetuating his name and his memory were also trying to do.

[David Musgrave]

Dr. Richard Stone, thank you very much for your time.

[Narrator/Host Introduction]

That was Richard Stone speaking to David Musgrove. Richard is senior Lecturer in history at the University of Bristol.