Unlocking the potential of Britain’s country houses to tell imperial stories at the Historical Association Annual Conference in Liverpool on Saturday 10th May

Hello!

It’s been a long time since I posted here! This is because I’ve been devoting all my energies to finishing my next book, Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery, which I’m delighted to tell you will be published in September by Oneworld in the UK and Pegasus in the US. In it, I tell the stories of nine women who became enslavers, married in Britain and whose lives connect to key historical people and places we thought we knew. More on that later this year…

Meanwhile, I wanted to tell you about my next public talk, Unlocking the potential of Britain’s country houses to tell imperial stories at the Historical Association Annual Conference in the extremely apt location of Liverpool on Saturday 10th May. This will draw on my years of experience working with country houses, from the survey I did of English Heritage properties’ connections to enslavement and abolition back in 2007, to my role as Lead Historian on the Colonial Countryside Project working with Professor Corinne Fowler and the National Trust. You can see the full talk description below.

For the early-bird discount, you need to book by this Thursday 20th May. So check it out here: https://www.haconference.com/


Hope to see some of you there!


Unlocking the potential of Britain’s country houses to tell imperial stories, Historical Association Annual Conference, Liverpool, Saturday 10th May.

Hundreds of historic houses across the country, be they English Heritage, National Trust or in private hands, have connections to Britain’s colonial past. Some were built or bought by enslavers, East India Company merchants or heiresses to imperial fortunes. Others were bought by men who traded in colonial commodities like sugar, tobacco and coffee, or who profited from administering the Empire or fighting colonial wars. Sometimes enslaved Africans worked in these households. Most collections have imperial objects, from Chinese wallpaper and porcelain to furniture made from Jamaican mahogany.These facts are hardly surprising, but they have become hugely controversial in recent years. How, then, do we use these houses and their collections to explore uncomfortable histories, educate an increasingly ethnically diverse next generation and heal a country divided in its attitudes to its imperial past? Using case studies, Kaufmann seeks to explore these questions and draw on the audience’s expertise, with an extended discussion in the Q&A to think about positive ways forward.