Abstract
What is the appropriate way to remember historic injustices? How should organizations account for their historical wrongdoing? Organizations face increasing societal pressure to adopt more responsible practices in the present and to take responsibility for socially irresponsible activities in the past. Corporations engage with this historic responsibility differently (Schrempf-Stirling, Palazzo, & Phillips, 2016) and there is no agreement about what the most appropriate way is to remember historical irresponsibility (Mena & Rintamäki, 2020). ‘Slavery & the Bank’(open until February 2024), a special exhibition in the Bank of England Museum, is a thought-provoking example of how an organization can actively engage with a ‘difficult past’. Such problematic histories can be collectively forgotten (Foroughi & Al-Amoudi, 2020), perhaps instrumentally, but may nonetheless demand organizational attention or regain prominence.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the subsequent slave-based economic systems of the New World, are now widely regarded as crimes against humanity similar in monstrosity to the Holocaust of European Jewry. In the late 1990s, Germany’s leading firms publicly atoned for their involvement in the crimes of the Nazi regime by establishing a compensation fund for the surviving slave labourers. Commercial and non-commercial organizations in Britain and the United States are now going through a similar process of coming to terms with their actions during the era of African chattel slavery. The campaign for corporate reparations for slavery intensified following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. That summer, activists protested in front of the headquarters of Lloyd’s Insurance in London, raising awareness of how Lloyd’s underwriters profited by insuring vessels engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Soon after, other Wall Street and City of London firms with similar, slavery-related skeletons in their closets were forced to respond to the accusation that their current wealth was built on money extracted from enslaved Africans (Federman & Schrempf-Stirling, 2022). Oxbridge colleges, prestigious American universities, and the Church of England have also faced highly credible accusations that they have benefited financially from slavery. In response to such societal expectations, organizations have commissioned reports by historians, employed forensic accountants, and launched various forms of remedial action.
The ‘Slavery & the Bank’ exhibition is one such response. The Bank of England (BoE) lies at the very heart of the City, London’s financial district. Its massive building dominates an area that is crammed with blue-chip firms. The BoE has been a core part of Britain’s development of a fiscal-military state since its establishment in 1694. The BoE was created to bolster the power of the British state by allowing the government to borrow cheaply to finance war around the world (Brewer, 1989). In effect, the ability of Britain to construct vast navies, colonize much of the world, displace France as the leading power in Europe, and make English, not, say, French or Spanish, the language of global business, was greatly assisted by the existence of the BoE. Moreover, the BoE has long had close relationships with Britain’s commercial banks and other large financial institutions. Although monetary policy is now nominally independent of the Prime Minister in Downing Street, the BoE remains a highly politicized organization, as are all central banks. Elected politicians appoint the Governor of the BoE which means that the organization must tread a fine line in dealing with political matters, particularly those that connect to the ongoing culture wars.
The BoE is also one of the British financial institutions that benefited from the system of African chattel slavery. While some private-sector organizations, most notably Barclays, have recently created engaging websites to publicize their historical involvement in slavery, the BoE’s response stands out in its ambition to engage the public in this discussion. Notably, it has commissioned extensive historical research into its archives to better understand different ways that the Bank has been involved in slavery. The exhibition – ‘Slavery & the Bank’ – is the result of this endeavour.
The exhibition is currently freely accessible to the public at the site of the Bank of England’s permanent museum, which is located in a corner of the Bank’s headquarters (parts of the exhibit can be seen on the BoE Museum website). The museum curators clearly signposted the exhibition for the visitors. As you enter the museum, a separate brochure for the exhibition is available for collection. The exhibition is located in a large hall at the back of the (relatively small) museum and is signposted with a distinct colour theme (black script with an orange background, see Figure 1).
The entrance of the exhibition (photo by Hamid Foroughi).
As you enter the exhibition hall, you are greeted with a large poster that explains how the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing conversation around the history of slavery by the British establishment prompted BoE directors and staff to look into the bank’s history. The exhibition curators then invite us to reflect on how the legacy of slavery is still with us. A preliminary investigation found the bank’s premises exhibited several artefacts which were considered inappropriate due to their connection to slavery and were subsequently removed. These discoveries prompted further research into archives which provided material for the current exhibition.
The exhibition demonstrates the links between the BoE and slavery, first through the private business of the bank’s governors and directors. The exhibition showed that many of these officials – who were also shareholders of the BoE – had made their fortunes through plantation slavery and the slave trade. For instance, archival research showed that Humphry Morice, a four-times director of the BoE, was involved in more than 100 slave-trading crossings, carrying 30,000 enslaved African men, women and children.
Second, the exhibition explores the role of the BoE in the wider financial system as a key provider of loans to businesses, as well as other banks. Slaving voyages were 18 months long; therefore, companies needed access to generous lines of credit to finance these voyages. The BoE often enabled other financial institutions to provide such loans, but also sometimes provided such loans directly.
Third, the exhibit explains that the BoE obtained title to two sugar plantations in Grenada due to a merchant defaulting on a collateralized loan. The exhibit text notes that in 1789–90, 599 enslaved Africans belonged to the plantations owned by the BoE. The only trace left of these people (in the BoE archives) is a booklet listing them as the BoE’s assets in the plantations. The name of these enslaved people is presented in the exhibition.
The exhibition curators clearly express their discontent with their inability to show more of the lives of those who were enslaved; something that the exhibition historian, Michael Bennett, says he hopes they will to be able to accomplish in the future. Indeed, a key challenge for developing a more inclusive collective memory and historical consciousness is the selectivity of the archive. The documents that record the histories of the rich and powerful are often better preserved than those that document the experiences of marginalized and repressed groups, such as enslaved Africans. As more and more organizations are looking into how to account for their dark histories and make amends, it is essential to explore ways to ameliorate this structural imbalance.
Another challenge facing organizational attempts to remember past mis-justices, such as the one reviewed here, is overcoming the temptation to use the past strategically. While we have seen that corporations increasingly use rhetorical history to pursue organizational goals (Suddaby, Israelsen, Bastien, Saylors, & Coraiola, 2023), this may not be conducive to the most authentic way to remember a difficult past and can, in fact, lead to a public backlash (Coraiola & Derry, 2020). We found that ‘Slavery & the Bank’ exhibits an admirably critical stance in this respect. For instance, the exhibit’s creators refrained from whitewashing the BoE history of slavery, for instance, by focusing narrowly on historical figures from the bank who opposed slavery. The exhibition acknowledges that some key figures connected to the BoE were involved in the fight against slavery, but this information appears in a peripheral position, so that the focus remains on the BoE’s complicity in slavery. The exhibit also provides critical excerpts that called into question the motivations of senior BoE directors who campaigned for the abolition of slavery.
Finally, our review would not be complete without discussing issues that the exhibition has been silent about. As we completed our tour of the exhibition, we were positively impressed with the BoE’s commitment to transparently reflect on this history. At the same time, we were struck that the exhibit does not seem to have been designed to encourage visitors to reflect on current moral dilemmas in banking. From our visits to the exhibit, it is difficult to determine what impact, if any, this exhibit may have had on the thoughts and actions of decision-makers in financial sector organizations, with offices located in close proximity to the BoE museum. We wonder whether many financiers have bothered to visit the museum, let alone reflect on the material in the temporary slavery exhibit. On the days we visited the gallery, it was filled with a wide range of people, from elderly citizens to students in jeans, but we did not spot any investment bankers in suits. For management scholars interested in the capacity of historical narratives to contribute to positive social change, the key question is whether all this discussion of immoral activity by financiers in the past will encourage today’s financiers to be more ethical. For us, the subsequent behaviour of those who have visited this exhibit is a key outcome variable. If all the post-2020 talk about banks and African chattel slavery does not result in higher ethical norms among financiers, for instance, by ensuring that their firms do not profit from the presence of the products of modern slavery in international commodity chains, then all these discussions will be inconsequential in curbing global injustices.
One hopes that at least a few City bankers visited the exhibit and came away with a stronger commitment to ethical behaviour in business and that they start asking serious questions, for instance how banks can help mitigate the climate breakdown. Another question to consider is how to make sure that lessons learnt from this museum are not short-lived, to be forgotten after the exhibition comes to a close in February 2024. How can the BoE make sure that this historical consciousness becomes a solid part of its institutional memory?
In conclusion, we highly recommend a visit to this exhibition to practitioners, students and scholars interested in the history of slavery, and more broadly, organizational memory and corporate social responsibility. Lessons learned from this exhibition are particularly relevant for other European institutions, which are re-examining their history, as we write this review.
