Statues, Statements and Colonialism

Statues come, statues go

Removals of statues and other symbols, isn’t new to humanity. Many statues have come and gone. History is ridden with examples of statues, sculptures and other art forms honouring real or imaginary icons being removed. In our lifetimes we have seen various statues and other symbols of power and tyranny toppled, including that of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and various statues of Stalin since 1990. There was also the much-celebrated removal of the Berlin wall.

The phenomenon of removing, replacing, moving icons go back much further in history. The eerie underground Basilica Cisterns in Istanbul constructed during the Byzantine empire reuse columns with Medusa’s head and bust upside-down and side-ways: possibly to display the power of the new Christian empire over the previous pagan cultures. The right wing “defend the monuments” protesters seem to forget that removing, or rather plundering, of statues (and other religious and cultural artifacts) from the erstwhile colonies and adding to private collections of colonial officers was extremely common and constitutes much of the content of the beautifully curated museums of Western Europe. So, the call for removing some statues that are anachronistic in our current world isn’t that unreasonable/radical a demand.

Why do we erect statues?

It is often argued that statues are ways of honouring people who have done "good" to society. It has been argued that Colston’s philanthropic contributions which helped the city of Bristol, or Churchill’s role in defeating the Nazis, outweighed the harms they caused. Significantly though, what society considers “good” enough to honor with statues has a lot to do with who has access to power and capital.

Millions of women and people of colour had significant contribution to making of the city of Bristol - especially the slaves from who the city's forefathers profited. Why are there so few statues to commemorate them? Similarly, the victory of the Allied Powers in the WWII came about with significant contributions from colonies - including contributions they didn’t choose to make, and those that came at crippling costs to them like the Bengal famines of 1943. Can we please have more statues representing these contributions? There are significantly fewer statues of non-royal women in the UK and elsewhere, and presumably fewer still of women of colour.

Should these colonialists be judged by moral standards of our times?

I keep hearing the argument individuals shouldn’t be judges by the moral compass of current times. Yes, there is truth in the argument that our analysis of race, of colonial exploitation and labour relations has moved forward significantly in the last century. However, it is also wrong to say that there was no awareness of the inhumanity of slavery and slave trade during colonial times. The hugely influential era of European enlightenment coincided with period of colonialism and transatlantic slave trade. Despite his distinctly problematic views on race, Adam Smith wrote about how despicable (and inefficient) slavery was in both of his most important works. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) Smith referred to the states with slavery that “sell...man, woman, and child, like so many herds of cattle, to the highest bidder in the market” as the “vilest of all states”. Likewise, in The Wealth of Nations (1776) Smith argued that slavery was inefficient, expensive and inhumane. Similarly, despite removing much of his discussion from transatlantic slavery, David Hume viewed slavery as morally problematic and an uncivil institution. There were also voices in the continent that were critical of slavery, particularly that of Voltaire and Rousseau. No, I am not claiming that there wasn’t a race problem in ideas of enlightenment - there is plenty of evidence that there was - but there was also an appreciation in this powerful intellectual discourse that slavery and exploitative labour practices are inhumane . Giving people who benefited from colonialism a free pass because they operated in a different moral compass is being unnecessarily lenient. They were simply choosing their commercial interests over what was considered humane even in their time.