Memorializing empire, producing global citizens: The British bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade (2007)

This essay examines the 2007 British bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act as a means of remembering empire with a specific end. Trends within the disciplines of critical development and international relations are turning their attention to empires past and present. At the same time, metropolitan countries are beginning to make gestures for reconciliation for the injustices of empires, and one such example is the British commemoration of the abolition of slavery. This essay is a retrospective on the policy of development advocacy of the British Department for International Development (under New Labour) that situates these two sites of remembering empire alongside new types of development advocacy (such as Make Poverty History and Live8) that, prior to the global financial crisis, had the production of global citizens as their aim. The essay then illustrates the way in which, in official communication, the bicentenary for the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was utilized as a vehicle for development communication, a means of advertising the UK Labour government development agenda, which had as its aim the production among domestic citizenry of a global citizen who advocates for development under neoliberal terms.