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Atlantic Slave Trade

POETRY

‘THE CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE’

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read2.3K views

Our present government, unfairly perhaps,

is often caricatured as self-serving,

racist and incompetent – and yet,

with a rather modest investment

of taxpayers’ money, has published

a report which may revolutionise

our study of history, showing

not just the costs but the benefits

to victims of great crimes: ‘There is a new

story about the Caribbean

experience which speaks to the slave period

not only being about profit

and suffering but how culturally

African people transformed themselves

into a re-modelled African/Britain.’

 

After ‘THE CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE’

an ambitious revisionist might write of

‘THE BRAZILIAN EXPERIENCE’ – where

half of the ten million were enslaved – then

‘THE REWARDS OF THE U.S. PENAL SYSTEM’,

and ‘APARTHEID: THE BLACK DIVIDEND’.

Next might come three or four new volumes

commissioned under the generic title

‘THE BENEFITS OF GENOCIDE’: as witnessed

in Australasia, the Americas;

by the Armenians; the Uyghurs;

the Roma and the Jews.

 

 

 

 

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SCREENPLAYS

FOUR SCREEN PLAYS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments3 min read2.4K views

I wrote the screenplays between 2001 and 2008. They are presented below in the order in which they were written. Each is set against the background of armed conflict.

I was inspired to learn how to write screenplays as a result of a number of conversations in New York in August 2001 with Annabel Honor-Lissi, a fellow creative, and digital tutorials with her which followed.

 

THE MEMORIAL

The Memorial is about redemption through kindness, compassion and love.  Set in the immediate aftermath of the 1st World War, it is a love story that explores class, religion and anti-war issues through the eyes of Captain Edward Standish VC.  Much of the action takes place at Standish’s country seat, in a Midlands village dominated by a colliery, as well as in London where the Captain meets and commissions artist Clara Zeligman.  The Memorial also takes us to the battlefields on the French/Belgian border where Standish had faced the toughest moment of his military career – an event that haunts him throughout the story.

Download The Memorial by David Selzer (Copyright David Selzer)

 

 

LOYALTIES

Loyalties begins in 1936, when Kathy, sixteen, beautiful, a film fan and fascinated by Elizabeth, last Empress of Austria, about whom she secretly writes romantic fiction, leaves Llandudno to train as a nurse in London. In 1940, she goes to the Isle of Man to nurse refugees from Nazi Germany interned as enemy aliens and falls in love with Peter, an Irish barman, whom, she discovers, is an IRA Bomber whose real name is Pearse. He renounces violence, though not the cause, for her – until she is the victim of an attempted rape. Pearse murders the likely suspect (who is an undercover Special Branch officer). In despair, she rejects Pearse. She returns home pregnant – and tells her mother that she was married in the Isle of Man but that her husband has been killed in action. In 1946, Pearse – now prosperous and married but still active in the struggle – finds her (and their daughter). She rejects him again.

Download Loyalties by David Selzer (Copyright David Selzer)

 

ALTOGETHER ELSEWHERE

Altogether Elsewhere is a tragi-comedy of errors, driven by character, coincidence and circumstance. Both of the main protagonists were born on the same day in 1953 in Liverpool and Daytona respectively. One becomes an acclaimed documentary and fashion photographer, the other a Vietnam Veteran selling oranges by the roadside in Portugal. The story – set against a background of the decline and fall of empires – focuses on key episodes in their lives from 1961 to 2002.

Download Altogether Elsewhere by David Selzer (Copyright David Selzer)

 

IN THE LION’S MOUTH

In The Lion’s Mouth is set in 1865, in a Venice under Austrian occupation, and against the background of the Risorgimento, the revolutionary movement to unify Italy. The story describes a love affair which, bedevilled by jealousy, possessiveness, intrigue and racial and religious prejudice, comes to a tragic and violent end. Though set in the past, the story portrays contemporary issues – particularly those of mixed race and of terrorism. The two main protagonists are a Liverpool sugar heiress of mixed Afro-Caribbean and European origin, who is in her early thirties, and a Austrian Jewish doctor in his forties, a widower, who is attached to the Austrian occupation forces but an active though covert supporter of the Risorgimento.

Download In The Lion's Mouth by David Selzer (Copyright David Selzer)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

A SORT OF EDEN

David Selzer By David Selzer7 Comments1 min read1.9K views

“Did you not hear me ask Sir Thomas about the slave trade last night?…There was such a dead silence.”

MANSFIELD PARK,  Jane Austen

 

It is fitting in certain English novels

that there should be significant absences

in Bath or London, journeys of consequence

to the colonies, and banishments

to darkest Dorset or a coastal town.

It is appropriate too that there should be

rain of whatever kind falling frequently,

forcing protagonists and antagonists

to be housebound, introspective, suffer

ennui, or propinquity’s temptations,

abroad be obliged to seek shelter

with doubtful neighbours, or an unsuspecting

friend who will, in due course, become the bride or groom.

 

When Sir Thomas returned from Antigua –

having spent a whole year in person

ensuring his sugar plantations were in profit –

he ‘was grown thinner and had the burnt,

fagged, worn look of fatigue and a hot climate’.

When Fanny Price returned to Mansfield Park,

from her self-exile with her parents

in squally Portsmouth, it was spring in landlocked

Northamptonshire green with English rains.

 

Mansfield Park became, in due course – when all

had received their (more or less) just deserts –

for her a sort of Eden. Whether Sir Thomas

ever thought he heard, out in the parkland,

foul oaths, whips cracked, and thought he saw black backs

bowed we will never know.

 

 

 

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POETRY

PHILLIS WHEATLEY: 1753-1784

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read2K views

Enslaved in the Gambia or Senegal,

scholars surmise, she survived the nauseous

and violent bottom line of the

Triangular Trade to be bought aged eight

as a maid for his wife by John Wheatley,

merchant and tailor of British-ruled Boston,

a known progressive in education.

 

She was christened ‘Phillis’ after the slave ship

that took her childhood. She was prodigious,

and was removed from domestic duties.

Tutored by his daughter, at twelve she knew

Latin, Greek, the Bible and, later,

became a true genius of Augustan

couplets – their wit, their beat, their certainty.

With her master’s son, she went to London,

where her poems were published to some acclaim.

Her encomium to George Washington

was re-published by Thomas Paine. ‘Proceed…

A crown,  a mansion, and a throne that shine,

With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine.’

 

Ah, how we tolerate unflinchingly,

unthinkingly absurd and absolute

contradictions – freedom and servitude,

enlightenment and doctrinal dogma!

‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.’

 

On Wheatley’s death she was freed – all that his will

left her: liberty without means. She married

a free black grocer. They lived in poverty.

Two infant children died. And yet she wrote –

but without white, male or titled patrons

was unpublished. Her husband was jailed for debt.

She supported herself and her sickly son

as a scullery maid. One December day

they died in squalor, were laid in unmarked graves.

 

What did she choose to remember of the seas

pounding against the timbers, and the cries,

and the chains days after days after days?

Or the drums into the night; or the smoke

from the cooking fires at dawn; the bright clothes;

the songs; her mother’s voice?

 

 

Note: The poem was first published on the site in July 2015.  It is published here with minor amendments.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE COLSTON BUN

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments2 min read2.5K views

‘And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.’ DEUTERONOMY 12.3

‘Black deaths do not have a good press, especially when they occur in the custody of our custodians. The media leads the public to believe that our guardians can do no wrong. Racism leads them to believe that blacks can do no right. The silence of the custodial system is compounded by the silences of racism.’ DEADLY SILENCE: BLACK DEATHS IN CUSTODY, Institute of Race Relations, London, 1991

 

Anger, one Sunday in June, overcame

decorum in that diverse city,

and – no doubt, inspired by the toppling

of other graven tyrants – righteously

pulled down the effigy, with a thump of stone

and a hollow gong of metal, and tossed it

from the quay into the harbour waters.

***

The Royal African Company received

its charter from Charles II and James,

his brother, hence the US east coast seaports

Jamestown and Charleston. It was established

by the restored royals to provide them,

free of interference from the Commons,

with their own spending money. Board members

included the philosopher, John Locke.

The company’s profits came mostly

from enslaving West African men, women

and children, and transporting them across

the North Atlantic’s turbulence. More than

two hundred thousand were taken, and nearly

fifty thousand died on the journey,

the firm’s double entry bookkeeping shows.

 

One prominent member of the board

was Edward Colston, a Bristol merchant,

the city from whose harbour the slavers sailed,

and which, in due course, would make chocolates

and cigarettes. His philanthropy

inveigled the streets like a bad conscience,

almost a rebuke of victimhood:

his name on a hospital, a school,

a bun flavoured with dried currants and allspice

topped with sugar, given to the poor yearly

and still made for sale by local bakeries –

and himself looking thoughtful in bronze

with a periwig and a walking stick.

 

Apologists who claim he was merely

of his time, an accidental racist,

and collateral ethical damage,

like Henry Wills and Elizabeth Fry,

should remember John Locke, his damascene

moment unrecorded, who threw his shares

into the fire. ‘Slavery is so vile and

miserable an estate of man …that ’tis

hardly to be conceived’. That June Sunday

civic anger overcame decorum.

 

 

Note: The above is a revised version of the piece originally published on 25.6.20. The revisions are the result of e discussions with a regular reader, Elise Oliver – please see Comments.

 

 

 

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POETRY

CONTAGION

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read2K views

‘O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe,  and will look upon our testimony as a fable.’ Francesco Petrarch

 

Somewhere near the estuary of the Don,

with its mudflats and meanders, north

of the Sea of Azov, and somewhere

near the Volga Delta, with its pelicans

and flamingos, north of the Caspian,

on the steppe lands are black rats and fleas

and yersinia pestis. The rats

like human warmth, and the fleas can leap.

 

The Mongol khanate of the Golden Horde,

recently converted to Islam,

had closed the Silk Road for religious reasons.

Italian merchants in Kaffa, Crimea,

notwithstanding held their fort. The Mongols

besieged the Christians and, withered by the plague,

so it is said, threw the corpses of their dead

over the ramparts. The merchants decamped.

 

The bacterium was borne along trade routes –

in holds of ships and folds of clothing.

In eight years the Black Death killed fifty million.

There was collateral damage – in Strasburg

and all of Rhineland the burning of Jews.

It probably brought about the end

of the feudal system, and undermined

the Pope’s domination, making the world

free for capital, enterprise and invention –

like mariners’ astrolabes, matchlock guns,

the Atlantic Slave Trade.

 

 

 

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