You might think The Postal Museum’s focus is centred just on UK affairs, but its new exhibition will turn its gaze to the lives of enslaved people in the Caribbean – and how their enslavers used the postal service to manage plantations from afar. ‘Voices Of Resistance’ tells the stories of those exploited and persecuted on the island of St. Thomas, where enslaved people – predominantly women – were forced to carry heavy baskets filled with coal to fuel ships belonging to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. By exploring their lives and legacies, it exposes how the 19th-century British postal services profited from and enabled transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans.
The exhibition uses postcards, letters, paintings and clothing, alongside newly unearthed corresponded between UK plantation owners and Caribbean managers, to tell the stories of those affected. There’s also a specially commissioned film showing the annual celebration honouring coal workers, while new research into the lives of those workers has also been commissioned in partnership with a St. Thomas-based historian.
