Glasgow benefitted hugely from the riches brought about by slavery, either directly or indirectly, with the city still bearing many reminders how that wealth helped turn it into Scotland’s major metropolis.  

Mr Cummins, who curated the ‘Glasgow — City of Empire’ permanent exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, said that museums need to reflect this by explicitly informing people about these links when talking about the city’s past and the history of the British Empire.   

The curator said that this is a change that might go against people’s view of history, but one that would ultimately give them a fuller picture.

Glassford Street in Glasgow is one of the city’s links to the slave trade(Image: Archive)

He said: “If you have quite a set idea of the history that has shaped the place where you’ve lived most of your life, the place where you’ve grown up – and then you’re presented with a history that might sort of shine a negative light, I understand how that can be a challenge. It’s obviously a healthy challenge. 

“I think the majority of people will engage with that and see it as adding to their understanding of where they’re from, and helping to strengthen their feelings of ‘belonging’.  

“But I also do completely recognize why it can be quite challenging, to be confronted and met with this sort of history, which challenges what you’ve been taught and what you’ve been brought up on.” 

In 2022, a ‘slavery audit’ led by historian Dr Stephen Mullen from the University of Glasgow for Glasgow City Council found that there are more than 60 streets named after slave owners who made their fortunes on tobacco plantations. 

These include Buchanan Street, named after Andrew Buchanan Jr, and Glassford Street, after tobacco lord John Glassford. 

Nelson Cummins, curator of Legacies of Slavery and Empire at Glasgow Museums(Image: NQ)

Eight statues erected around Glasgow are also of people with direct connections to African trafficking, while the Glasgow Town Council invested £1,812 – equivalent to £4m in today’s money – in the Company of Scotland (CoS) in 1696, whose ships trafficked enslaved people from Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. 

The 2022 city council report found that gifts from those linked to the trade amounted to more than £300 million in today’s money, with a bequest that would amount to £110m for the Mitchell Library in 1874.  

Later that year Council Leader Susan Aitken offered a full apology on behalf of the city for its role and connections to the slave trade.  

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The Glasgow — City of Empire exhibition, which opened in 2023, was among the first permanent exhibitions in the UK to which lays out the suffering that fuelled the wealth of the Second City of the Empire. 

Mr Cummins said that it was important to acknowledge the part Glasgow played in the slave trade and to reflect that in its cultural institutions.  

He said: “It’s one of these things that’s had. such a huge impact on making our societies the way they are today, and yet it’s still quite under explored in terms of education and school.  

“I know more and more is being done, particularly in Glasgow, but it’s had such a big impact that it’s really important that we continue to explore it and continue to think about how it shapes our world and our cities today.  

“Early 1700s Glasgow is quite a small, semi-rural city, and then there’s money and wealth – from enslavement, tobacco, sugar, cotton comes into the city. It grows and grows and starts to begin to resemble, by the late 1700s the city that is today.

“And that isn’t possible without slavery and Empire, and it means that we need to be taught about it, because ultimately, the city that we live in today wouldn’t look this way. Wouldn’t be this size without those connections.” 

The exhibition features items linked to the slave trade(Image: Kinnear)

He added: “So I think it’s a good thing that it’s been more taught about, because I think it lets us more critically reflect on our histories and how they shaped the world, how they shaped Britain, and maybe made it what it is today.” 

*Nelson Cummins will open the Society of Antiquaries autumn talks with his lecture ‘Reinterpreting the Past to Explain the Present and Reimagine the Future: Addressing Histories of Empire and Slavery in Glasgow Life Museums’ on October 2 in Edinburgh and streaming online.