Robert Burroughs

Leeds Beckett University. 

Date: 2025.

Professor Robert Burroughs, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Leeds Beckett University and cultural historian and literary critic working on the nineteenth century discusses Black history, decolonization, and African Institute of Colwyn Bay, with the Kumbukumbu team.

Robert Oros
I'm going to start with the first question, and you've done such important work on topics
like empire and race. What first sparked your interest in those areas of study?

Robert Burroughs
Yeah, well, my route to these subjects is quite bookish and it does reflect my past
studies, I must admit. It does indeed reflect the benefits of a university education. I
studied English literature, as an undergraduate and then as a postgraduate, but it was as
an undergraduate really where I was introduced to thinking about topics such as empire
and race, and being introduced to really excellent scholars at Nottingham Trent
University. There was a real specialism there in sort of post-colonial studies and that kind
of work. So, I was kindly brought into the fold by those scholars and encouraged to think
about English literature in a really quite critical way, and in terms of the ways in which
English literature has been implicated in violence and in cultural forms of violence, which
has always sort of fascinated me.

And, in particular, my route to the subjects which I've specialised in was through reading
a text which these days is pretty notorious, controversial text which isn't actually taught
very much anymore, but it's Joseph Conrad's short novel 'Heart of Darkness'. Very
famous as I say, but equally controversial these days; and used to be regarded as one of
the most studied texts in the English language, but I doubt it is these days in truth.
Curiosity with that text and a fascination with it, but at the same time a deep sort of
anxiety about what it was saying and a sort of you know repulsion about what it was
saying at the same time and a sense that really this just can't be the last word on central
Africa and colonialism in central Africa which I think it was sort of often positioned as
certainly back then as being sort of you know the thing you needed to read. So, a deep
dissatisfaction with that idea and a lot of my work subsequent to that really has been
about trying to recover different stories particularly as I say from the past of central Africa,
stories to central African Past which could show European colonialism in a more complex
light. But equally one in which would recover a sense of African history and in particular
African agency from that context, which of course Conrad doesn't do, isn't interested in
and cannot. It seems unable to represent.

Like I say, it's really a very studious path to this subject it comes through my own
educational upbringing particularly at university and an encounter with Conrad's novel
which has led me to basically write quite a lot of stuff on the back of and I think my entire
publishing career in truth is a series of footnotes and responses to ‘Heart of Darkness’.

RO
That’s amazing, and it kind of answers the next question as well. It like leaps into it
beautifully. How do you view your role as a historian in shaping how people understand
these historical events, so complex?

RB
So, the role of the historian who grapples with these subjects of empire and race is
difficult because I think two different things and they kind of contrast one another
somewhat.

On the one hand, I think we all need to get to grips with this past because it is
everybody's history. There is no separating yourself out and saying “well, that's
something that happened, you know, to a different country or to different people”. The
history of race, of empire is everybody's story. But at the same time, I'm also really
conscious that there are important senses in which this isn't sort of my history, perhaps
personally or at least, there are certain forms of privilege which come from me being
positioned as somebody who gets to narrate and tell these histories. That’s obviously… a
feeling within me, which has grown over the time of my career, but I suppose particularly
through the late 2010s and early 2020s with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement,
and that increasing question about the white curriculum, and about the sort of the colonial
histories and legacies of a university education. So, it's that sense on the one hand that
we all ought to be thinking about this, and then on the other hand a sense that it perhaps
is important for me to ensure that perspectives other than mine are given space and
given oxygen.

So, my answer to that in terms of my own research, in terms of the publications which I
produced, has really tried to recover forgotten perspectives on empire and race from the
past. Perspectives which perhaps are unusual outside of what we think we know about
the colonial past and which might otherwise be quite inaccessible for students and other
readers. To share those historical perspectives, I suppose in the end, to try to encourage
a broadening out and diversification of present perspectives on the past if that makes
sense.

RO
Yes, and you have so beautifully done in your book on Colwyn Bay, which is part of what
we researched for this project, during our research stage. So, that's going to be my next
question: If we can start by discussing the African Institute of Colwyn Bay, what's the
current discourse on the subject and is it viewed in an accurate light?

RB
Well, thank you for those comments. So, The African Institute of Colwyn Bay is a curious
little story, isn't it? I mean, it's sort of a micro history in truth.

You know, ultimately, a quite small number of young African people who were brought in
very different circumstances to a smallish town, and particularly small back then in North
Wales, over a fairly short period of time. I think, quite an interesting and momentous
experiment, really, in intercultural relations in a form of imperialism and in what in the
19th century was often referred to as the kind of ‘civilising mission’. I don't know if it's a
well-known story even today, but of course, perspectives on it are broadening out thanks
in part to your project and to other recent initiatives to engage Welsh audiences first and
foremost in the history of the African Institute and I think all of that is really positive. It's
becoming more well known. As to how accurate I think our knowledge of that past is, I
think there is some really good reference points out there, some good, good studies.

I think what's really important, less than questions of simple accuracy, what's really
important is who gets to take part in this history? Who gets to have a say and to reflect
on it in terms of its relevance to their lives today? And so, you know, I really welcome the
fact that your project is bringing this history to schools, for instance, because perhaps
what matters even more than questions of historical detail and accuracy are how we
interpret this past in our own presence. My feeling about accuracy is that there are a
couple of things probably which in my book I tried to change the narrative somewhat.
And the first thing was William Hughes, the schoolmaster, a former missionary who
brings a couple of children and, along with it, the idea, back to Wales to raise up the
school and create a school in Colwyn Bay. There are all kinds of good reasons to see
Hughes as a quite sympathetic character, and I can understand all of that. I think what's
probably more beneficial is to plug Hughes into the historical context that makes sense of
him and to understand him as a figure perhaps sort of quite inadvertently and almost
accidentally caught up in an imperial project. Rather than sort of treating him purely as a
sort of heroic figure, as I think has been the case in some of the earlier studies from a
few decades back.

Let's put this guy in his historical context and see him, you know, caught up in world
events, really, which he is slightly. He's trying to get in touch with Leopold II and to get his
patronage, even after some knowledge of the really awful things that Leopold is involved
in in the Congo are coming to light. Let's understand him in his moment and really
understand him in that sort of true three-dimensional complexity that he warrants, rather
than seeing him as a simple good guy or a white saviour or a hero or something like that.
And the other part of the story which I've tried to refine and which my book tries to put
most emphasis on is regarding the students themselves. I think that previously the
students have been seen in rather lumping terms, as a bunch of Africans, basically. What
was needed from my point of view was to sort of disentangle the various stories that kind
of unite, but also separate out the 90-ish young people who were enrolled at that school.
To understand them in terms of their diversity was really important in my book. There is
an incredible difference between the very young Central African children who first are
brought with Hughes for instance, to some of the really quite well-educated effectively
middle-class, university-bound West Africans who are arriving in the school in their late
teens or early 20s. At the end you know to just sort of see them all as one big group
made no sense to me, so thinking about the African Institute as a kind of way of
understanding the complexity and diversity of African experience in Victorian Britain was
the thing that I really tried to bring, I suppose, to the fore in my book.

RO
Thank you so much, Robert. Those were very interesting aspects. Could you share
maybe some examples of stories that are not necessarily acknowledged um about the
Colwyn Bay’s African Institute. And why do you think maybe those stories are
overlooked?

RB
It's one of the challenges of writing the book and of getting down to the individual student
stories was this: some of the students are fairly well known, actually. They came to
Britain fairly well equipped to get on in life, better educated than Hughes in many
instances - he had a fairly modest education, and they used Colwyn Bay briefly as a kind
of launch pad onto university careers and would then travel on often. Some stayed in
Britain, but some would go back to Africa or venture onto the United States, or whatever,
and have quite successful lives. It's relatively easy to recover those stories, and those
stories were already fairly well known, I think, before I'd done my research. I've maybe
added a few details and colors to those stories, but they're relatively well known.
One of the things I think it's really interesting to think about with Colwyn Bay and the
students that attended there are those cases of lesser success or indeed non-success.
You know, there are about 90 students, as I say, that passed through the school. We tend
to talk or focus our memory of the school on about 10 of them.

What about all of those others? Why do we remember those less well? What stories do
they have to tell or what stories didn't they have to tell, I suppose? And what were the
sort of criteria for success or as I'm calling it, non-success? Was it that they simply didn't
speak English so well? Or was it that they sort of maybe thought “this isn't for me, I'm not
actually too into what's happening here”. Maybe they quietly and politely resisted the
premise of the African Institute and spent a bit of time before traveling back home.

Those stories which are harder to get hold of are increasingly of interest to me, in fact.
This is partly a gendered history, of course. You're more likely to be regarded in late
Victorian Edwardian Britain as a success if you conform to the very gendered criteria for
success in that period. The three young girls and women who go to the school, their
stories are a little bit harder to recover and their lights burn a little bit less brightly in
Hughes's eyes, at least. But those are important stories to recover. As I say, it's often
about those sort of stories of the students who just kind of came and went, and perhaps
didn't seem to do too much. And I think I'd love to push to a better understanding of those
stories. But that's really challenging from a historical perspective because, of course, the
archive records success. Or indeed, it records extreme failure. So, you're more likely to
be in the archive if you've done something incredible and there's a record of that you've
made it into the newspapers, or if you've done something really bad of course then you
make it into the newspapers for different reasons. And those more in between
experiences in all history, in all forms of history, are more likely to just be lost. Recovering
some of those lesser-known stories is, I think, a really interesting way forward for
historical research of the African Institute. But it's a problem, an interesting problem of
historical research as to how to do that.

RO
Yeah, we agree with that. Now I'm going to move into Wales' broader involvement in
colonialism.

Hannah Ringane
Before we go on, is it OK, Robert? After hearing you speak, Rob. I really had this
question in my mind about why you think the devolved nations' involvement with empire
isn't as well known.

RB
Yeah, that's right. It feels as if perhaps it's a bit more underrepresented, a bit less well
understood. I think there's been, that said, an awful lot of work in recent years, in
Scotland, in terms of understanding its past and its connections to slavery as well as to
empire. I do think also in Wales, there probably has been really good inroads made in
recent years. I equally would want to just sort of pause and think: How effective has
England been really in recovering its colonial past?

It would seem to me that in England, and then sort of scaling that up in terms of British
discussion and debate, that is very hard these days to have a sensible debate on the
imperial past without, the kind of culture wars backlash happening. And I think, if
anything, there's probably been a little bit… This is my perspective, as an English person
looking out from across to Scotland and Wales, that there probably has been a bit more
headspace for reasoned intelligent debate in those countries than in England in recent
times. I'm kind of complicating the question a bit there, I guess, Hannah. Good question,
though, it is. But each of the nations are on a bit of a journey, aren't they, to a better
understanding of their past, but that really is the work of history isn't it and we'll never
come to a sort of full, accurate, comprehensive or acceptable understanding of that past.
The work of history is always to keep refining and keep questioning what we're doing
rather than imagining that we really understand the past truly.

HR
Thank you, that's an amazing answer. Moving on to the next question, Robert.

RO
Yeah, moving on to Wales' boarder involvement in colonialism. How do you think Wales'
rhetoric around colonialism has evolved, especially in the last decade or so? Are there
aspects of its involvement that are still unrepresented or misunderstood?

RB
Yeah, as I was saying in my answer to the previous question, I think inevitably there will
be aspects which are underrepresented, misunderstood, and the more we recover in a
weird way, the more that will be the case. Right? Because as we discover more and more
about the past, we'll realise more and more about other aspects of the past that we don't
know so well. And as you then recover, certain aspects of the past, others will fall out of
view and become, therefore, more in need of returning to and thinking again as our
understanding shifts. So, we will continue to kind of learn more and more about how little
we know about the imperial past in Wales and elsewhere, as we dig deeper and sort of
learn more at the same time. I think that's just the nature of the discipline.

All of that said, I think there have been really good inroads made in the last few decades.
My sense, and again, sort of looking from afar somewhat, is that an awful lot of the work
in recent decades has been community-led, has been led through researcher activists, I
think through sort of libraries and archives and those kind of institutes. I think there is a
danger that when it comes to sort of mainstream historical research, and I suppose I
mean in higher education, there is a danger of the subject being continuing to be
sidelined and somewhat underfunded. So, bringing together the really good work that's
been happening through communities, arts projects, libraries and so on, with universities
I think is the continuing task and is really imperative.

RO
The next question is about Henry Morton Stanley, and as we know of your practice as
well, you are specialising in Belgian involvement in Congo and Leopold II, and that
connection to Henry Morton Stanley for our project is interesting. Obviously, he's
recognised as a central figure in Welsh colonialism. What are your thoughts on his legacy
and how we should view him in the context of Welsh history?

RB
Having just spoken about the culture wars, we're now going to talk about Stanley, are
we? OK, great. Yeah, so, look, I think I've got a simple answer and then a more qualified
and complicated answer.

And the simple one is, his legacy, as far as I'm concerned, is that he took Leopold's
money to initiate a murderous regime of empire. And I think that's probably his main
legacy. But I think there's definite value at the same time in continuing an intelligent
debate on Stanley and his legacy. Of course, what I've just said is not very nuanced and
is just a sort of headline take. He is interesting. In terms of his Welsh identity, among
other things, which is itself quite complicated. And it's just one of the various aspects of
Stanley's identity, which biographers have found an awful lot of complexity lying within.
So where reasoned debate is possible around Stanley, I think it's worthwhile because it
can just bring home to us the some of the complex psychological, psychosocial, and
other elements of the drive to conquer and to colonise.

He's certainly no hero, but I think at the same time, there's very little value in using him
simply as a punch bag, as a well-known figure from the Welsh imperial past. It's better to
perhaps for the debate to move on to reach for understanding human honest complexity,
I think, also just to say [that] a lot of the debate is about Stanley himself. I wonder how
much these days anybody ever reads what Stanley actually wrote. It's understandable in
a way because life is short and there's a lot of things that we might spend our time
reading and Stanley's sort of 500-to-800-page travelogues are not necessarily top of
everybody's reading list. I can think of other things I would encourage people to read
about Central Africa, way ahead of reading Stanley. But if we are going to have to debate
on Stanley and to continue to research and analyze him, then it might be also sensible
for us to continue to spend time with his travelogues. They're reprehensible in many ways
of course and they've been well studied in terms of, the ways in which they sort of
denigrate and other African peoples and cultures.

All of that's pretty well known, but as scholars such as Brian Murray have identified there
is also some really interesting things happening in Stanley's travelogues and they
themselves are well worthy of our scrutiny. Continuing to think about the man but also I
suppose I'm saying, the writing as well is something that we should do if we are going to
continue to have a reasoned debate on this figure.

RO
Thank you so much, Robert. And now a question about more of a Welsh public
perception of colonialism, I guess, and the empire. when discussing Wales' role in the
empire, do you think there's a gap between historical knowledge and public perception?

RB
So, you kindly shared the questions with me in advance, and this is the one where I kind
of thought ‘oh, I don't know about this question’, if I'm honest. Here's my reasons. I'm not
Welsh. I don't live in Wales. I'm not part of the Welsh public in that sort of sense. I don't
know if I really know Welsh public perception well enough to have a really good answer
to that question nor do I know if I should definitely be opinionated on the Welsh public
given my friendly but outsider status.

RO
I feel the same because I do live in Wales but I'm not Welsh and it's a question that came
to our project a lot and we kind of want to talk with other people about it, especially with
people from academia. It's, you know, it's the question of Wales being colonised, but also
taking part in colonisation. It's that dialogue that we find very interesting and very
relevant. So, yeah, that's mainly the purpose of that question, but we totally understand.

RB
Fair enough, Robert. And I think, since you live in Wales, you actually do have a, and I
think, you know, most people should feel that they're qualified to have a perspective. I'm
just being a little bit self-aware, I suppose, as somebody in a relatively authoritative
position as a historian, as an academic. I don't know if I'd want this necessarily, if I'm part
of the Welsh public someone telling me how to think about this. I don't know, what do you
think Hannah since your hand is up?

HR
We can widen that question to England or the UK in general about that gap between
historical knowledge and public perception if you think there's a gap and if so, how can it
be bridged?

RB
A couple of years back I was honored and fortunate enough to be invited to take part as
a an expert witness in the Belgian parliament's attempt to reflect on its own colonial past
and investigation into its own colonial past, which took place in Parliament. It was a really
serious undertaking, ended in failure, in effect, and in a sort of non-resolution with various
politicians walking out and spoiling the vote if you like at the end, what was a serious
attempt to reckon with the past from a parliamentary perspective. One of my reflections
on that experience, and indeed I made this reflection out loud as part of the parliamentary
sitting that I was part of was [that] at least they're trying, at least there's an attempt here,
however botched and however difficult and flawed it was, and it was flawed in many
ways. Inevitably, I think, at least there's an attempt there, I don't think there's much of an
attempt in in England, in Britain at this moment, really, to try to engage the public in a
serious debate on the colonial or imperial past of Britain.

Too much of it just gets immediately sucked down into a sort of culture wars space and
reason and intelligent debate and the true sharing of ideas just kind of gets, it seems to
me, lost or crowded out. I suppose that, when you sort of think, what does it look like
[and] how does that debate really take place? Maybe a museum would be a good idea,
an intellectual space for the British Imperial past to be thought about. We don't really
have that, I mean we have the International Slavery Museum of course, there are
initiatives for sort of a Black Cultural Archive online and those kinds of things, but there
isn't that central funded museum of Imperial History really, and I think while we've got that
kind of infrastructure lacking that's symptomatic of a real gap between historical
knowledge and public perception.

Having said that, lots of people do… I don't want to sound as if I'm charging the public at
large for being ignorant. I don't think that's the case at all. What I'm saying is I don't think
there's the forum to bring public understanding to bear on historical research, historical
knowledge.

RO
Thank you, Robert. Now we're just going to explore another question, a connection
between the Welsh Black communities and the Welsh working class. It can be in England
as well. In your work, how do you see connections between struggles of Black
communities within Wales and the experience of Welsh working-class communities
during the same kind of periods?

RB
Yeah, okay. Thanks, Robert. Well, those, of course, aren't mutually separate categories,
are they? The Welsh working-class might itself be formed of Black communities. So there
is potential and considerable overlap in those two categories. And when you think about
the sort of sailor communities of Cardiff in the past, for instance, you can see that overlap
quite clearly. But if it's all right, I'll answer the question by thinking specifically about the
bit of the history that I know best, which is the African Institute, and just sort of share
some interesting insights into that question when you look at it in terms of the 1890s,
early 1900s, and what's happening in Colwyn Bay.

One of the really interesting aspects of the history of the African Institute is that William
Hughes does see this connection between the experience of the Welsh people and the
experience of some of the West African societies whose young sons and daughters he's
inviting to come over to Wales. He sees a connection in the shared experience under
English exploitation and the sort of danger of cultural and linguistic loss through England.
He's making this point in speeches. And then that same point is sort of echoed also
through some of the understandings of some of his West African interlocutors and other
sort of intellectuals who are involved in the school at Colwyn Bay.

We've got something in common here. It's not simply, not a sort of common enemy so
much because I don't think he sees England in those sort of terms. But, “we need to fight,
we need to preserve our heritage, our culture and our language and not just simply see it
all be lost to English imperialism”. He sees that as beneficial to West Africa, that they
maintain their own cultures and faiths, because he thinks that that's ultimately the best
way in which the word of God will be spread through West Africa. Even there, there's a
sort of, I suppose, broadly speaking, imperial idea. But he is making a case for sort of
some level of cultural independence and autonomy and relativism separate from rising
English influence, which of course is being felt both in Wales at that time and in West
Africa. So that's an interesting [example of] coming together, of how Black communities
and Welsh communities could think about themselves and think about one another in a
sort of comparative way.

RO
That's a very beautiful example. Thank you so much. Let’s shift towards your current
work, which we're very excited to find out more about. Obviously, share as much as you
want. It's considering your ongoing research project on Black people's role in local and
national cultures at the heart of the British Empire. This is a very important point in our
project as well, we're trying to look for little-known stories, especially when it comes to
rural Wales and how Black communities navigate them, and [how they] influenced and
bought a lot of culture within those those communities. Anything you can say on this
subject?

RB
I am continuing my research in the late Victorian period and I suppose to put it broadly,
the Black experience in Britain at that time. Still that same sort of sense that this is
Victorian history and I'm a Victorian scholar, but it's an undeveloped aspect of our
understanding of the Victorian past.

My current research is focused right in on one individual. As I was saying earlier that the
African Institute is a bit of a micro history, I've gone smaller in my current project and
looking at an individual, but actually a very prolific individual. His name was S. J.
Celestine Edwards, and he was a Barbadian man who came to Britain in his youth as a
stowaway and made his way around northern Britain in the 1880s before developing a bit
of a reputation as a public speaker by the time of the early 1890s.

He then takes up residence in London and becomes a bit of a small minor celebrity,
speaking in Victoria Park in East London, open-air speeches before hundreds of… really
large audiences, often of working-class people, in fact. He's speaking predominantly
about Christianity at that point. But he becomes well known, and part of his Christianity
and part of his Christian thinking does take him in the direction of thinking about empire
and the exploitativeness of empire. And he's particularly concerned about the sale of
liquor to Africa. He sees it as a sort of, in the same way that temperance reformers would
often link questions of race with questions of Christianity; he sees it all as part of the
same problem, the sort of a sinful world and a godless and increasingly secular world.
He becomes the first Black editor of a British newspaper, which again is a sort of
Christian newspaper, Christian evidence newspaper called Lux, and that's 1892. And
then within about 18 months he's editing a second newspaper which is called Fraternity,
which is regarded today, as they didn't have the word anti-racism back then, of course,
but it's sort of… it's a paper which is sort of critical of the role of color prejudice in shaping
global politics. He becomes a sort of a mover and a shaker in that world as well.

He's unfortunately really short-lived. He dies in 1894 while about 37, I think it is, [because
of] over work. He's out lecturing, sometimes several times a week, sometimes a few
times a day and editing two papers at the same time. And he burns himself out when he
develops a lung complication and really can't afford to stop the work. He doesn't have the
sort of wealthy patronage which would enable other newspaper people at that time to
pause, recover their health, go again. He has to keep working unfortunately.

I've been looking at him and looking at some of his strategies in terms of bringing the
message of, what we today call anti-racism, to the Victorian people and thinking about
how he managed to do that because obviously late Victorian England is not a brilliant
space in which to try to speak the language of anti-racism. It's a predominantly racist
society, of course, although there are people who are sympathetic to that cause, quite
progressive in their thinking.

I've been looking at the various ways in which he tries to think about and connect
questions of race prejudice and the violence of empire to other concerns that the
Victorians more naturally shared, such as Christianity. He's really fascinating when it
comes to his thinking about Darwin and Darwinism, for instance. He's lecturing in London
in the 1890s on Darwin. It's just a terrific, interesting aspect to the history of Darwinism,
among other things. He's talking about socialism, trying to connect it up to questions of
race, bigotry in an unjust world. I suppose I'm trying to work with Edwards in trying to
rethink the Victorians and to come to a slightly more nuanced understanding of the
Victorian culture and societies being, not simply racist, although it was predominantly
that, but also, in a sort of emergent sense capable of thinking against that prejudice too.
That’s the project that I'm doing at the moment.

I said it's like a smaller project yet it's not in the sense that he edited two newspapers and
wrote a lot for them as well, and one of them was a weekly newspaper. That just means
it's a lot of his own writing and his own work that we were able to recover. I've also been
able, using 19th century newspapers, to recover a sense of his prolificness out there as a
public speaker as well. It's just incredible, this guy, traveling right around Britain. It's not
just London. He gets himself way out beyond London [to] Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool,
Manchester. He's out there. He's got networks, talking in front of audiences.

There's something in this history about, I suppose, provincial Britain. Britain beyond
London. We sometimes, I think, imagine that those parts of this country may be less
progressive. Maybe when the riots were happening a year or so ago, there was that
narrative out there as well. But there absolutely is a history of progressive support for
challenging slavery, challenging imperialism, challenging race prejudice in Britain's more
northern towns and cities. And it can remind us also that as well as the riots being a sort
of racist backlash, they also produced a whole load of anti-racism campaigning too.

RO
That's a very interesting point. We found that as well, in Swansea, [there] was a huge
anti-racist, anti-apartheid.

RB
That's right and the anti-racism marches were always bigger.

RO
Exactly. So that's a very interesting point. Was he ever in Wales, you think?

RB
Was he in Wales? Do you know what? Really frustratingly for me and for you guys as
well, I don't think he was particularly. It's also frustrating for an academic who's based in
Leeds that he went to Huddersfield, he went to Sheffield, and he even says in one of his
letters, “next year I'll get to Leeds”, but it's becausehis unexpected death, he doesn't get
as far as he'd have liked to have done so.

No, unfortunately. He does make it up into Scotland and actually is in Aberdeen. So, [he]
goes quite far north in Scotland. But as I sit here now, I can't recall him making any forays
to Wales. Probably on his list of things to do.

RO
Probably. Oh, yeah, that is a shame, especially for Leeds, especially since you’re based
and work there. Towards the end we're just going to do some reflection on the future of
Welsh colonial history. If you could encourage one shift in how we talk about Wales and
its colonial history, what would that be? This can also translate to the wider UK, realising
that you're not based in Wales.

RB
I think some of the issues which exist for Wales probably exist for Britain at large as well.
And this is partly going to be me repeating myself and some of my earlier answers
somewhat, but I think that's okay. And maybe it brings those into focus. The great
potential for Black historical research, as I see it in this country, is about people coming
together; I said earlier that a lot of the great work that's happening at the moment is led
by communities and activist researchers. Those groups I think often understandably have
some issues of trust regarding people like me, academic researchers who I think can too
often parachute in, and do the research and kind of leave again. I think that that's that is
a real phenomenon. I also think it's tricky because as an academic researcher, you want
to be able to really understand your topic and come and bring some expertise to the
community that you want to work with, so that might mean that you do go off and do your
reading first if that makes sense. There needs to be ways to come together and for
academia to increasingly find ways to support, and I mean sort of materially support the
really important work which is happening through communities, through libraries, through
archives, museums and so on.

I think that's not completely distinctive because other forms of history are doing that as
well. But it is something which can really define what Black British historical research can
and should look like. It shouldn't be left in the ivory tower of academia. You know, it
makes no sense there, really. And it would just be so much lesser and weaker where it's
confined to that space. The other thing I would sort of say in terms of ways forward, and
this is just a sort of personal feeling I suppose, about Black historical research in Britain. I
think it'd be really interesting for that field to take stock of its methods, and I suppose I've
just been saying that really, in terms of how it goes about the task of recovering the past.
I think that's partly about its sort of ethics and its practices, and about how it can bring
people together. That's part of what I mean by methods.

But I think also it would be really good for that field of research to come together and sort
of think about how we're acquiring a knowledge base. What archives are we using? How
do we search them? You know, some real basic questions like that. What are the sort of
do's and don'ts of approaching that British or Welsh past? What are the sort of trappings?
Why do we keep sort of finding ourselves going back over certain subjects and
continuing to ignore or to have other ones somewhat evade us? I think a lot of this comes
down to funding, essentially, into whether academia is willing truly to back and support
research in this field, because all of this work takes time and so, money.

It sounds a bit dry, but sort of thinking a bit about that question of how, not just what we're
covering, but how we go about our research of Black Welsh history. I think would be a
really interesting set of conversations for the field to be having.

RO
Amazingly said, thank you. And last question: what advice would you give to educators,
students or community members who want to engage more deeply with Black history?

RB
Yeah, sorry if this sounds repetitive. I feel like I've already said it possibly, but it is about, I
think, coming together. There's loads of great research happening at the moment. We are
in a very different place to where we were 10, 20 years ago.

One of the things that is really exciting is when people come together and break down
those boundaries, perhaps in theory [that] exists between those different categories that
you just identified, Robert: students, researchers, community, and so on. Dialogues
across those theoretical divides are really valuable. That would be my kind of hope for
the field, really, that it can work through a dialogue to shed yet new light on the past. That
doesn't mean going to the archive and finding out things that happened in the past that
we were previously unfamiliar with, or which we now want to see differently. But I think it's
that latter point that partly this is about contemporary perspectives, and about shifting our
present day perspectives on the past, not just about simply going off and finding more
and more information, but reinterpreting it in light of, you know, a changing and more
diverse young population in Britain.

RO
Thank you, Robert. That's amazing. Hannah, do you have anything else to add while we
have Rob here?

HR
Thank you so much for your time; that's been so insightful. I can feel like I've learned a
lot, definitely, from hearing from hearing you speak, and it's given us so much to take
back and further our research and our work. let me look through my notes. I think
something that really stuck out to me was this central idea of the importance of
community and coming together but I think now more than ever, that's something that
we're really struggling with, especially in light of COVID and us still recovering and the
recent riots. I wanted to ask perhaps if you could, not necessarily if you have an answer, I
don't think anybody has an answer, but perhaps some advice on how we can come
together, how we can bring about community when sometimes people fall at odds.

RB
I suppose when I was thinking about community in some of my previous answers, I was
kind of thinking about communities of like minds in a way and communities of
researchers. And I don't know, perhaps I'm not quite answering your question. If you're
truly asking how do you bring, perhaps that divided or isolated community together? I
think that's really hard. But perhaps first steps are around that community of researchers
with an interest in this subject and broadening that, and making sure that it can remain
healthy.

As I say, I think that's really hard because time and funding are the issues there. So, then
it kind of passes over to funding bodies, institutions who do have access to material
support to be able to pass that on and to enable those communities to do what they do
so well. I don't think I have a really coherent answer to it Hannah, but it's about building
outward isn't it? From what links you have and where we know the connections exist.
Then let's really keep them strong and tap into one another's knowledge and expertise. I
think that's what your project is doing really well, and in me, you've reached out to one
academic, and I imagine you're kind of reaching out to others as part of the project.
No academic's ever going to mind receiving an email from you to talk about this kind of
stuff, it's what we do and it helps us probably feel a bit more grounded and authentic and
fundamentally, we want to be able to further the work that you're doing. Those
connections between academia, as a as a source of potential support and expertise. The
kind of projects that you're involved in, is a part of the picture here that I'd want you to
never feel shy in trying to strengthen work on, but it is only part of it actually.
I'm kind of almost dodging the really hard question of how do you go out beyond hose
like minds into other communities, across Generational divides perhaps and really bridge
and find the shared ground there and to understand these histories, they're all our
histories.

There is an awful lot of goodwill, tolerance, and understanding out there isn't there? Even
as at the same time, it can often feel as if we're becoming increasingly divided and
isolated from one another.

HR
Thank you so much for your time. That's been amazing.