Barbados has taken down a statue of Admiral Nelson in its latest symbolic break with its colonial past, two months after announcing it would sever its links with the British monarchy and become a republic.
The bronze statue of Nelson was unveiled in 1813, eight years after his victory in the Battle of Trafalgar and 30 years before Nelson’s Column was completed in London.
But it has long been seen as an unwelcome vestige of British rule, not least because of Nelson’s defence of the slave trade on which the plantation economy was based.
Months after the George Floyd protests sparked a reassessment of racism and history around the world, the statue has finally gone from Bridgetown’s National Heroes Square after a ceremony on Monday night, and will go to a museum.
Removed: Barbados’s statue of Horatio Nelson, long seen as an unwelcome vestige of colonial rule in the Caribbean, has been taken down following this year’s worldwide race protests
‘Tek Me Down’: This message was spray-painted on the plinth of Bridgetown’s Nelson statue earlier this year. Months later, that person’s wish has been granted as the statue was removed
At the ceremony, Barbadian prime minister Mia Mottley said the government accepted the statue was an ‘important, historic relic’.
But she added: ‘It is not a relic to be placed in the National Heroes Square of a nation that has had to fight for too long to shape its destiny and to forge a positive future for its citizens.’
Barbados was claimed for England in 1625 and became independent after more than three centuries of colonial rule in 1966.
Its present day population of about 287,000 people are mainly the descendants of African slaves brought over by force to work the plantations.
Moves are now underway for Barbados to ditch the Queen as its head of state and to become a republic before the 55th anniversary of its independence next year.
‘The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind,’ said Barbados governor-general Sandra Mason when the move was announced in September.
Several administrations have had their eye on removing the Nelson statue since 1990, and the square where it stood was renamed from Trafalgar Square in 1999.
Nelson was a hero to the ruling classes and plantation elite in the Caribbean, which was largely colonised by Britain, France and Spain, and was itself an important battleground in the Napoleonic wars.
But Nelson was also a supporter of the slave trade and once wrote to a friend in Jamaica that ‘I have ever been, and shall die, a firm friend of our present colonial system’.
In the same 1805 letter, he went on to denounce ‘the damnable doctrine’ of abolitionists of the day such as William Wilberforce.
Nelson, pictured, never owned slaves but wrote a letter in 1805 attacking the ‘damnable doctrine’ of abolitionists such as William Wilberforce
While Nelson never owned slaves himself, he had ‘constant exposure to the realities of the slavery system’, according to the National Museum of the Royal Navy.
Some Caribbean islands had up to 90 per cent of their populations enslaved and producing sugar, meaning it was hard not to be aware of what was happening.
Barbados-based historian Trevor Marshall said ‘the end of slavery would have come even later’ if Nelson had lived.
Nelson was killed on the deck of his flagship HMS Victory by a French sniper at Trafalgar, and the slave trade was abolished two years later.
The Nelson Society offered a defence of the admiral earlier this year, saying he was merely a man of his time and a military officer whose job was not to make policy, adding that the 1805 letter was taken out of context for political reasons.
The society cited one occasion on which Nelson freed 30 African slaves from Portuguese ships, and another where he aided an abolitionist Haitian general.
Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar gave the Royal Navy the control of the seas which it later used to suppress the slave trade, the society argued.
After decades of overlooking Bridgetown’s principal thoroughfare, the Nelson statue will now be housed at the Barbados Museum in the Historic Garrison Area.
It joins a number of other statues across the globe, including slave traders in Britain to Confederate generals in the United States, to be hauled down this year the Black Lives Matter campaign gathered unprecedented momentum.
Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square, which was completed in 1843, has also been targeted by activists for removal.
Why is there a statue of Lord Nelson in Barbados
It was fought of the coast of Spain and was to be Lord Nelson’s (pictured) last and greatest victory against the French
Admiral Horatio Nelson is best remembered for the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, in which the Royal Navy defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, when Bonaparte was intent on invading Britain.
Lord Nelson spent much of his career fighting the Spanish and French in the Caribbean where the imperial powers struggled over fertile islands which were the lucrative producers of white gold – also known as sugar.
He was known to have visited Barbados on June 4, 1805, where, according to Barbados.org, he was considered a hero by the locals for defending them from French invasion.
The statue was erected seven years after Nelson was shot dead by a French sniper at the Battle of Trafalgar.
A plaque on the statue reads: ‘This statue in honour of the hero of the inhabitants of this island erected A.D. MDCCCXII.’
The bronze piece is the work of Sir Richard Westmacott, a renowned artist who sculpted another two likenesses of the admiral, including the first in Britain at the Bull Ring in Birmingham and another at Exchange Flags in Liverpool.
At the time the statue in Barbados was erected, the esteem with which Lord Nelson was held across the British Empire cannot be overstated.
The are statues of him around the world, streets named after him and in memory of his famous victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.
However, the citizens of the island today have been independent of British rule since 1966 and even announced plans to ditch the Queen as their head of state earlier this year.
Many see Lord Nelson as a symbol of Britain’s colonial past which is tied up in the transatlantic slave trade which brought thousands of Africans to Barbados.
The Sugar Revolution, the introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil, in the 1640s was highly lucrative but came at great social cost
Not only this, but Lord Nelson once wrote to a friend in Jamaica that ‘I have ever been, and shall die, a firm friend of our present colonial system’.
In the same 1805 letter, he went on to denounce ‘the damnable doctrine’ of abolitionists of the day such as William Wilberforce.
It is estimated that between 1627 to 1807, some 387,000 Africans were shipped to the island against their will and the country shifted from having a majority white population to a majority black population.
On 28th August 1833, the British Government passed the Slavery Abolition Act, and slaves across the British empire were granted emancipation.
