Category: British History

Mancunian Cotton Workers and the American Civil War, by Erin Kilker

Posted On By The Manchester Historian

160 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln sent a letter to the ‘working men of Manchester’, acknowledging their ‘sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country’. These words are now memorialised at the foot of the Lincoln statue, sculpted by George Grey Bernard, which stands in recently-remodelled Lincoln Square just off Deansgate. The historic link between Manchester and the American North is lesser known, but was a hugely significant moment in the US Civil War.

Category: British History

‘Rethinking Restitution’ at the Manchester Museum, by Molly Davies

Posted On By The Manchester Historian

Manchester as a city holds its own colonial past, its construction and industrialisation reliant upon wealth from enslaved labour and the triangular trade. The museum is one of the University of Manchester’s ‘cultural assets’, and thus these narratives both come from and are reflected on the university. The colonial narratives integrated into the city and its institutions are slowly unraveling, but the confrontation of colonial pasts is the first step on a long journey.

Category: British History

Colonialism and the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, by Kimberly Parry

Posted On By The Manchester Historian

“Manchester’s collection is worth almost as much as the Louvre’s” commented French art critic Théophile Thoré regarding the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 – the largest art exhibition to be held in the UK and possibly in the world. While the British public milled pleasurably around the Exhibition’s ‘Oriental Court’, soaking in the triumphant collection of trophies seized from British colonies, public revolts against British rule erupted across India. The ‘Indian Mutiny’ was the country’s First War of Independence, resulting in over 100,000 deaths.