Edward Colston

Edward Colston (2 November 1636 – 11 October 1721) was an English merchant and Tory Member of Parliament, involved in the slave trade.

He later came to be regarded as a philanthropist, as a result of donating money to charitable causes which supported those who shared his political and religious views, especially in his native city of Bristol. Since the late twentieth century he has been a controversial figure in Bristol's history, because of his membership of the governing body of the Royal African Company, which made its profits from trading in enslaved Africans.

Colston became a merchant, initially trading in wine, fruits and cloth, mainly in Spain, Portugal and other European ports. In 1680, he became involved in the slave trade through his work on the committees of the Royal African Company, which held a monopoly on the English trade in African slaves. He was Deputy Governor of the company in 1689–90. It is uncertain how much of his wealth stemmed from the slave trade.

Colston used his wealth to support and endow schools, hospitals, almshouses and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. His name is commemorated in several Bristol landmarks, streets, schools and the "Colston bun". Charitable foundations inspired by ones he founded survive.

Early life

Colston was born on 2 November 1636 in Temple Street, Bristol, and baptised in the Temple Church, Bristol. His parents were William Colston (1608–1681), a prosperous Royalist merchant who was High Sheriff of Bristol in 1643, and his wife Sarah Batten (1608–1701), daughter of Edward Batten; he was the eldest of at least 11 and possibly as many as 15 children. The Colston family had lived in the city since the late 13th century.[3] Colston was brought up in Bristol until the time of the English Civil War, when he probably lived for a while on his father's estate in Winterbourne, just north of the city. The family then moved to London where Edward may have been a pupil at Christ's Hospital school.

Career

In 1654 Colston was apprenticed to the Mercers Company for eight years, and in 1673 he was enrolled into it. By 1672 he had become a merchant in London. He built up a successful business trading with Spain, Portugal, Italy and Africa.

In 1680, Colston became a member of the Royal African Company, which had held the monopoly in England on trading along the west coast of Africa in gold, silver, ivory and slaves from 1662. Colston was deputy governor of the company from 1689 to 1690. His association with the company ended in 1692.[3] This company had been set up by King Charles II and his brother the Duke of York (later King James II), who was the governor of the company, together with City of London merchants, and it had many notable investors, including philosopher and physician John Locke (who later changed his stance on the slave trade) and the diarist Samuel Pepys.

During Colston's involvement with the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692 it is estimated that the company transported around 84,000 African men, women and children, who had been traded as slaves in West Africa, to the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas, of whom 19,000 died on their journey. Due to the conditions on many of the vessels, the extended journeys affected the ship's crew mortality rates, which were often similar and sometimes greater than those of the slaves.[10] The slaves were sold for labour on tobacco, and, increasingly, sugar plantations, whose planters considered Africans would be more suited to the conditions than British workers, as the climate resembled the climate of their homeland in West Africa. Enslaved Africans were much less expensive to maintain than indentured servants or paid wage labourers from Britain.

Colston's parents had resettled in Bristol. In 1682 he made a loan to the Bristol Corporation, the following year becoming a member of the Society of Merchant Venturers and a burgess of the City. In 1684 he inherited his brother's mercantile business in Small Street, and was a partner in a sugar refinery in St Peter's Churchyard, shipping raw sugar, produced by slaves, from St Kitts. However, Colston was only resident as an adult in Bristol for a while, and by 1689 he was carrying on his London business from Mortlake in Surrey.

Although a Tory High Churchman and often in conflict with the Whig corporation of Bristol, Colston transferred a large segment of his original shareholding to William III at the beginning of 1689, securing the new regime's favour for the African Co. The value of Colston's shares increased and being without heirs he began to donate large sums to charities. He withdrew from the African Co. in 1692, but continued trading in slaves privately. He retired in 1708. Colston was MP for Bristol (1710-13).

Death

Colston died on 11 October 1721 at his home, (old) Cromwell House (demolished 1857), in Mortlake, aged 84. His will stated that he wished to be buried simply without pomp, but this instruction was ignored. His body was carried to Bristol and was buried at All Saints' Church. His monument was designed by James Gibbs with an effigy carved by John Michael Rysbrack.

Philanthropic works

Colston's name permeates the city on buildings and landmarks. Colston supported and endowed schools, almshouses, hospitals and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. Colston constituted his charities to deny their benefits to those who did not share his religious and political views. Many of his charitable foundations survive to this day.

In Bristol, he founded almshouses in King Street and Colstons Almshouses on St Michael's Hill, endowed Queen Elizabeth's Hospital school, and helped found Colston's Hospital, a boarding school which opened in 1710 leaving an endowment to be managed by the Society of Merchant Venturers for its upkeep. He gave money to schools in Temple (one of which went on to become St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School) and other parts of Bristol, and to several churches and the cathedral.

David Hughson, writing in 1808, described Colston as "the great benefactor of the city of Bristol, who, in his lifetime, expended more than 70,000L. [£] in charitable institutions".

Memorials

Monuments created by the city in commemoration of Colston include the Colston Tower and Colston Hall. Colston Avenue and Colston Street are named after him. A regional bread bun, the Colston bun, is named after him. A statue of him is on the exterior of Bristol Guildhall of 1843–46. There is a 1870 stained-glass window by Clayton and Bell to his memory in the north transept of St Mary Redcliffe.

He is also remembered, particularly by some schools, charities and the Society of Merchant Venturers, on Colston Day (13 November), which celebrates the granting of a royal charter to the Society of Merchant Venturers in 1639, at a church service now at St Stephen's Church.

Modern reappraisal

Since at least the 1990s, with increasing recognition of Colston's role in the slave trade, there has been growing criticism of the commemoration of Colston in Bristol.

According to Morgan in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, it is thought that Colston made much of his fortune from the buying and selling of slaves. According to Morgan in Edward Colston and Bristol, the proportion of his wealth that came from his involvement in the slave trade and slave-produced sugar is unknown, and can only be the subject of conjecture unless further evidence is unearthed. As well as this income, he made money from his trade in the other commodities mentioned above, interest from money lending, and, most likely, from other careful financial dealings.

In April 2017, the charity that runs the Colston Hall, the Bristol Music Trust, announced that it would drop the name of Colston when it reopened after refurbishment in 2020. There had been protests and petitions calling for a name change and some concertgoers and artists had boycotted the venue because of the Colston name. Following the decision, petitions to retain the name of Colston reached almost 10,000 signatures, though the charity confirmed that the name change would go ahead.

In November 2017, after decades of debates, Colston's Girls' School, which is funded by the Society of Merchant Venturers, announced that it would not drop the name of Colston because it was of "no benefit" to the school to do so. In summer 2018, after consultation with pupils and parents, Colston Primary School renamed itself Cotham Gardens Primary School, the first Bristol organisation to take such action. In February 2019, St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School announced that it would rename its Colston 'school house', after the American mathematician Katherine Johnson.

City-centre memorial statue

In 1895, 174 years after Colston's death, a statue designed by John Cassidy was erected in the centre of Bristol, to commemorate Colston's philanthropy. It stood for 125 years, until 7 June 2020, when the statue was toppled and pushed into Bristol Harbour by demonstrators during the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom.

From the 1990s onwards, campaigns called for the removal of the statue, describing it as a disgrace. An unofficial art installation appeared in front of the statue on 18 October 2018 to mark Anti-Slavery Day in the UK, linking historical slave-trading as undertaken by Colston with modern-day slavery. It depicted about a hundred supine figures arranged as on a slave ship surrounded by a border listing jobs typically done by modern-day slaves such as 'fruit picker' and 'nail bar worker'; it remained for some months. Another artistic intervention saw a ball and chain attached to the statue.

In 2018, with involvement of the community, text for a new official plaque was agreed for the statue to inform the public about more of Colston's history. Conservative councillor Richard Eddy and the Society of Merchant Venturers (an organisation Colston belonged to) objected to the wording, and were successful in – among other things – removing mention of Colston's role as a Tory MP and the selective nature of his philanthropy, and disputed the exact number and ages of the thousands of children he trafficked. The new wording was vetoed by the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, who saw the Society having too much say in the process, instructing more parts of the community to be involved in producing the plaque.

After the statue was removed, a petition began to have a statue of Paul Stephenson erected in its place. The former Bristol youth worker is a black man who was instrumental in the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott, inspired by the US Montgomery bus boycott, which brought an end to a then-legal employment colour ban in Bristol bus companies.