"Everywhere in Chains": Wales and Slavery
Most societies have exploited slave labour at some stage in their history. This is also true of Wales.
The transatlantic slave trade flourished from the early sixteenth century (about 500 years ago) until two hundred years ago when, in 1807, the British parliament passed an Act to abolish trading slaves within the British Empire.
Campaigns to stop slavery had been started by black and white people more than thirty years before the Act was finally passed. Even after 1807 the slaves already living in British colonies were not actually set free until 1838.
Slavery remained legal in some other countries for more than another fifty years. Today illegal slavery still continues in many parts of the world — even in Wales.
Comments - (7)
I've been in touch with many of our newfound cousins, to exchange information, and I'm delighted to say that firm friendships have been formed. Though, the search for our common ancestor continues.
Did the actual John Brown (of the battle hymn "John Brown's body lies a rotting in the grave but we go marching on..") lecture there ?
A figure legend of my book in long preparation "Love and War in Cuba" which discussed the Roman invasion of Anglesey reads:
Figure XXX The sacred lake of Llyn Cerrig Bach, “… Perhaps one of the most important iron age sites in the country. A Sacred Lake, into which many votive goods were offered from the late Iron Age (2nd century BC), until just before the Conquest of Anglesey by the Romans. Eleven swords, eight spearheads, wheels of up to 22 different chariots, parts of a shield, and slave chains were found during peat extraction in the Second World War.” Image is from a google site photograph by Tim Prevett. The first discovery, that of the slave chains, was made first by the hard laboring Irish navvies working for Lord McAlpine in the years Dad was stationed there. Strangely similar slave chains were captured by putative maternal ancestor Sancho el Fuerte, from the slave-warriors of the Arab Chief Miramamolins, defeated in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.
The old shield of (now Spanish) Navarra can be found at Navarra (accessed 1-20-2016) in: Heráldica Española - Spanish Civic Heraldry http://www.ngw.nl/int/spa/prov/navarra.htm. Some of these chains are found in the little chapel of Sancho El Fuerte in Roncevalle, Spain. Somewhere in my reading, if memory serves, there is a note on the friendship between Richard the Lionheart and Sancho El Fuerte,