![]() ![]() While some viewers may see these smaller historical details as unnecessary, they give Georgiana more screen time and more agency, and also show how other characters were reacting to her message before the garden party. We don’t see discussions between characters at abolitionist meetings or plans for action, but we do see Lady Denham openly scoffing at the boycott. In Sanditon Season 2, we did not see examples of bowls with pro-sugar boycott slogans that were popular with the real life boycott, but we did see pamphlets distributed during the fair in Episode 2 and characters avoiding sweets. ![]() The white men who advocated for gradual manumission often claimed newly freedpeople could not be trusted with so much freedom all at once. In addition, many white abolitionists still believed the enslaved and freedpeople were at varying levels of inferiority to whites. As David Olusuga notes in his book on Black British history, many UK abolitionists were advocating for Black British people to be sent “back to Africa” even though many were born in the UK or in UK colonies. It is important to note that actions such as the sugar boycotts cannot be conflated with modern definitions of antiracism work. ![]() Heyrick and other campaigners urged people that if they had to buy sugar it should be sourced from places where laborers were paid. Sugar during the Regency Era was used to sweeten foods as well as preserve summer fruits in jams and jellies. However, Heywick and other women realized their potential economic impact due to their management of household expenditures on consumer goods and food supplies. Most upper-class women in Regency England were also not allowed to be employed outside of the home. Yet these women activists were not treated equally compared to male abolitionists. Women were normally discouraged, if not banned outright from participating in politics, but the antislavery movement was seen as a socially acceptable cause for women to participate in. Heyrick’s boycott had predecessors in the 1790’s that were aimed at establishing the 1807 international slave trade ban.Īll of the leaders of the abolitionist movement were male, and thus they were allowed to directly petition Parliament. Heywick’s organizing efforts are clearly the historical inspiration for Georgiana’s organizing even though the show credits that to her previous off-screen conversations with Otis. Heyrick, like Georgiana, grew up in a well-off family, and recognized that her material possessions were holding back her spiritual progress. The shift towards using paid laborers for agricultural crops such as sugar was a decades-long effort that combined rebellions of the enslaved, political activism from abolitionists, and British consumer boycotts.Įlizabeth Heyrick, a white Quaker abolitionist from Leicester, organized a sugar boycott in the 1820’s because she was frustrated with calls for gradual manumission of slavery. ![]() The abolitionist movement shifted towards fighting slaveholders and companies who profited off of slave labor-produced raw materials and products. Although the British government banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, the ban did not free already enslaved people in British colonies and territories. It may surprise fans to learn that Georgiana’s public confrontation of Lady Denham at the garden party in Episode 4 has more basis in history than one might expect.Īn aspect of the Regency Era many other period dramas purposefully ignore or gloss over is the abolitionist movement. A rematch was inevitable as Lady Denham is still an unrepentant "Lady Karen" and Georgiana has gained a marked degree of self-assuredness in her position and power as the town’s richest resident. Last season on Sanditon, Georgiana confronted Lady Denham for glorifying another product of slavery and colonialism: the pineapple. Throughout Sanditon Season 2, Georgiana has been urging the guests and permanent residents of Sanditon to stop using sugar produced by West Indian plantations. Note: This article contains Sanditon spoilers up to Episode 5. ![]()
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