Lunch with Pi Media: Professor Matthew Smith
Pi Media sits down with the Professor in Caribbean History to discuss topics ranging from UCL’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery to Caribbean culture in London today.
Prof Matthew Smith
Contrary to what you might be thinking, I’m not taking one of my module tutors, Professor Matthew Smith, out for lunch in the hope that he’ll remember this free meal when marking my coursework. Although that would be a plus. Alongside teaching, he is also the director of the UCL Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery (CSLBS), a centre in the History department that is undertaking some fascinating and important work into British and Caribbean History- this is what I’ve come to find out more about, as well as to get his take on wider racial and Caribbean topics.
As the name suggests, the CSLBS (founded in 2009) looks into how British slavery has impacted, and continues to impact, British and Caribbean societies. For Matthew, the centre’s “active mission is keeping that conversation alive of what slavery meant [in Britain and the Caribbean] and what actually happened.”
The plan is to meet at his office on campus and then walk down together to a newly opened Lebanese restaurant called Mira. It’s a flawless winters day- the air crisp and sharp- and as we make our way there, I ask Matthew about his background.
A historian in Caribbean history for over 20 years, he took over the reins of CSLBS in the summer of 2020, moving on from his position as head of the History and Archaeology department at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica, the same place where he took his undergraduate studies. Matthew also enjoyed several stints working at various academic institutions in the USA. What was it that finally pulled him across the pond to the UK? Largely the offer of the CSLBS directorship. “I was always really fascinated with the project and the potential of what the centre can do- I was very eager to take on the role.”
Hidden off Tottenham Court Road, Mira is small, modern, yet has an authentic feel, brightly lit by low-hanging lights that complement the white brick walls and mirrors. We’ve come for an early lunch and take a table in the back corner of the room. The restaurant is close to empty - traditional Lebanese music and waiters joking in Arabic fill the warm and easy atmosphere. Tall and trim, Matthew sits across from me in a sleek jacket, shirt and tie.
Source: Mira Lebanese
The CSLBS started out as an intervention into our approach of studying British history, igniting discussion on how slavery was critical to the building of modern Britain. Its initial database has been crucial here, tracing which enslaver families received compensation (totalling £20m, or £17bn today) from the British government in 1837 after emancipation of slavery in the British Caribbean.
“It’s very difficult to argue against the role and impact of slavery when you have the data right there which shows you how much money individuals, firms, and companies received as compensation”. Ultimately, “the database is hard, rigorous evidence” Matthew says, thoughtfully choosing and enunciating his words with a Jamaican lilt.
But it would be a disservice to the CSLBS to only mention the database. It’s always been more than that. The centre publishes articles and books, and even its own monograph called Legacies of British Slave-ownership, whilst also engaging in public outreach and organising workshops. In fact, it was through a workshop the CSLBS organised in Jamaica with the UWI’s History and Archaeology department that Matthew first became attracted to the centre.
The CSLBS’ role of keeping the conversation on slavery alive resonates with me. I bring up a notorious HM Treasury tweet from 2015, the year that the loan for the £20m in compensation was finally paid off by the UK government. It was proudly announced to the public “that millions of you helped end the slave trade through your taxes”, buying “freedom for all slaves in the Empire”. Outrage ensued for many taxpayers once they later found out their money was not compensating enslaved people as assumed, but rather enslavers. There was no mention in the Treasury’s tweet who had actually benefited from taxpayer money.
Matthew responds soberingly with: “For us in the Caribbean, the memory of all of this has always been that the slave owners got the better deal, whereas here that comes still as a great surprise. It’s a matter of first understanding that the nature of our (the Caribbean’s) relationship with Britain, as former colonial power and also former slave owning power, has always been understood as unequal and repressive.”
In my view, if anything, the unequal way this history has been remembered only reinforces the need and place of the CSLBS in public discourse.
The waiter comes up and chirpily asks if we’re ready to order. We haven’t even touched our menus yet. Neither of us feel like we have the appetite for a full main dish each, so we settle with some starters to share: falafel, humous, and okra, with flatbreads on the side. Matthew waves away an offer for a drink and we stick to tap water.
I ask my guest if he enjoys Lebanese food. “Yeah, I love it!” he says with a smile. “The Middle Eastern connection to the Caribbean is very strong. Lots of people from the Levant came to the Caribbean in the late 19th, early 20th century with the fall of the Ottoman empire. So that's a part of our modern heritage.”
“Also, what we consider Jamaican cuisine draws a lot of influence from India and China too. Indian food is of course part of Jamaican cuisine. After slavery ended there was a lot of indentured immigration from India and China that continued and persisted”. I’m struck by this- I hadn’t previously appreciated the lengthy history of migration into the Caribbean, nor its multi-cultural impact on the region’s cuisine.
I bring the conversation back to the CSLBS. What has struck me so far is that there hasn’t been much mention of the CSLBS studying enslaved people as well as the individuals that enslaved them. Given the suppression of enslaved agency and voices, I’m curious to know whether it’s possible to reconstruct their lives comprehensively.
Matthew becomes a bit more animated after this question. It turns out that the CSLBS is trying to go in this new direction, and he’s excited about it. “For me what’s very attractive about this is that it’s bringing the Caribbean side of the story much more into how we understand British slavery.”
This actively pulls away from a Eurocentric approach to the study of slavery, and with it a move beyond the compensation database that had originally formed a fair chunk of the centre’s foundations. Alongside this focus on enslaved lives and their descendants, Matthew is also actively pushing for greater public engagement by the CSLBS.
Despite the goal of increasing engagement with the general public, the CSLBS’ largest user segment is in fact the average individual, not the academic historian. The centre can help people uncover local histories as they go through the website and recognise names, connected for instance, to a road they know or a family in their area. From there you can follow those dots, tracking the place of slavery in your local history.
I’ve found the CSLBS’ interactive maps to be a really interesting tool in this context, which show buildings that were owned by families linked to slavery. They powerfully illustrate the pervasiveness of slavery. Whole roads and neighbourhoods in London were once owned by enslavers, and just across the street from my student flat in Camden there’s a property previously owned by one who was sizeably compensated for the emancipation of his slaves in the colony of Saint Kitts. When you’re walking down the street, the history of the buildings that surround you never comes to mind.
Whilst the CSLBS may have been founded by academic historians, there’s no doubt about its accessibility- over 2 million people have visited the centre’s website, doubling in 2020 alone. Matthew quite proudly expands: “it’s used in secondary schools here in the UK, and a colleague from Princeton contacted me recently to say she uses it as part of her course when teaching”. Impressively, it’s also served as inspiration for other projects around the world. “So there's a project in Australia looking at the connections between slave ownership and Australia that's being developed. There's also one in Bordeaux.”
But I feel that for Matthew there’s also a sense that all this recent traction around CSLBS is a qualified success. “You know, I'm not taking anything away from the monumental push that this project has done, but it still remains shocking that it took the past decade for this to happen”. A strong catalyst for engagement with the CSLBS last year was in fact the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Our food arrives all at once and we get stuck in, dividing the falafels between us and taking our own portions of the other dishes. I admit that when Matthew suggested the okra starter earlier, I had some reservations – I’d never had it before. Having tried it though, the okra has caught me by surprise and wins out.
Source: Mira Lebanese
The Black Lives Matter movement has definitely encouraged people to actively learn more about the history of slavery. But from a historical point of view, are acts like taking down statues, such as that of Edward Colston in Bristol, helpful in progressing the central tenets of the movement? “It was beneficial to the extent that it raised awareness. There had been petitions dating back to the early 90s to remove the Colston statue and they followed Orthodox channels, right? But it never actually led to the removal of the statue. The events in Bristol opened up this whole conversation and this whole interrogation, but I wouldn't want to say that it solves anything in and of itself.”
“I think that awareness needs to be followed through with an understanding of why the statue went up in the first place in the late 19th century. What does it say about that period in Britain?” Matthew makes the point that the main value here isn’t about understanding the individuals themselves, but rather the societies that they lived in and/or the society of the period in which the statue was erected- often they are not the same. “We must understand that the system or the enterprise was much bigger than the person who's bronzed in this statue.”
Crucially, this is the history that you don’t want to be erased. I ask him how we can ignite these conversations. “By having stories about the evolution of the city in question.”
As I hack away at a falafel, crunchy on the outside yet deceivingly soft inside, I lob a broad question Matthew’s way- in what ways have slavery and imperialism impacted the recent development of independent ex-colonies? “It depends on where you are, but definitely it has slowed down some of the progress.” I admit that the question involves some big, probably unhelpful, generalisations, but he starts to unfold his answer more feelingly nonetheless.
Taking Jamaica as an example, political progress was hampered by its initial adoption of the colonial British Whitehall structure he says; this was the only system that Jamaicans really knew, and the framework would enable a continued economic and diplomatic connection with Europe and the United States. But later attempts to “re-address and change things constitutionally became problematic because of politicians’ vested interests for those systems to remain.”
A political system in turn emerges where only members of a local ruling class see political and economic power. This could divide society. For instance, attempts by activists like Dr Walter Rodney to further spark the political consciousness of Jamaicans, sharply criticising the country’s middle class, were not tolerated by the government. In 1968 Rodney was declared a persona non grata in Jamaica, leading to a student riot in Kingston that resulted in several deaths and millions of dollars in property damage.
Meanwhile, in contrast, ever since independence and the dissolution of a colonial yardstick for cultural attainment, Jamaican society has been evolving rapidly- “Caribbean culture is exploding and becoming more global as people are traveling and migrating.” Matthew takes the example of Reggae music, which grew out of the ghettos of Kingston to become a global force much bigger than Jamaican politics ever has been.
This is all connected. “The main tenants of an older political system just seem even more at odds with cultural change. So that collision between the social and cultural differences with the political structure creates a lot of the friction we see, and some of the manifestations of that is in the attitudes and responses to things like COVID-19.”
It’s about now that the lunchtime rush starts as waves of people are shown to their tables. It’s getting noisy, and our corner table isn’t feeling as secluded as it once was. Strangely, the restaurant has also swapped out the quiet Lebanese music for something more modern and electronic- neither of us were expecting that. Now Matthew’s reflective and soft voice is hard to catch at times over the hubbub as diners arrive.
On the topic of Caribbean culture, I ask how much it comes through in London. “Extremely strongly”, he replies with little hesitation. “London has the strongest connection to the English-speaking Caribbean, due to the colonial relationship but also because of the long history of migration.”
One clear example of the pervasiveness of Caribbean culture that many of us might not realise is how English-based Creole has seeped its way into English slang, such as with the words ‘mandem’ and ‘wagwan’. I ask if it was strange for him after he moved to London, hearing these words now incorporated into British culture. He chuckles. “It’s weird, it’s very weird! It’s British slang, but we’ve been saying it for eons in the Caribbean. I grew up saying all of that.”
We are squeezing this lunch in between Matthew’s teaching commitments, and as we finish up, I ask for his opinion on the best ways to experience Caribbean culture in London. “It really depends on which Caribbean culture,” he starts by saying. It’s easy to homogenise the region without realising.
“The thing is that so much of that Caribbean culture is integrated into Black British culture today, so it really is all over. But if you want to get a sense of it, go to Brixton, go to the record shops and the restaurants. Brixton Market, you feel it very strongly. It’s all there!”
Another top suggestion is to pay a visit to Tate Britain’s Life Between Islands exhibition, which shows how Caribbean culture has found a place in Britain today. “There are a lot of big pieces that are left out of the story,” he admits, but “it opens up a whole different way of exploring the Caribbean in Britain.”
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