The High Street - Shops

Teaching idea/enquiry: What has the slave trade got to do with shops and diet 300 years ago and today?

Importing slave grown tropical foods changed the British diet. The use of enslaved Africans to grow more crops meant sugar, tea, coffee, rice and tobacco affected British tastes, especially the 'sweet tooth' and passion for puddings. There was a massive growth of coffee houses in Britain in the 1700s as imported tea and coffee became popular sweetened with sugar. See: The demand for goods Background Information.

Prior knowledge

Pupils should have some ideas of foods sources in relation to world geography.

Suggested teacher led activities (starter):

Start with the store cupboard (support pupils by having a range of labels/packaging for them to look at or asking them to bring them in).
Brainstorm as a class:

• Where does sugar come from (beet and cane)?
• Where does chocolate come from?
• Where did sweetcorn originate?
• And different sorts of fruits?
• What other foods are imported?

List in two columns foods which grow in Britain and those which have to be imported (have some sugar and chocolate to taste – subject to health and safety).
(Many foods were luxuries and not easily available in Britain before the slave trade. And many foods we import now such as bananas would not have been popular 300 years ago.)

Suggested pupil activities (main):

Visit your local high street and look at the range of shops and other buildings (as well as architectural styles, especially if they have any 18th century buildings, see Georgian Housing). Georgian shop front, Lewes, East Sussex
Ask pupils to group the buildings into categories such as banking, food shops and clothes shops.
Younger pupils can create bar charts to say which shops are most common.
Discuss as a class what was needed for living in 1800 and what is needed now – talk about changes in diet as well as how food was sourced, stored and transported.

Stretch pupils by talking about the relationship between buildings and restaurants.
What does a building say about the type of food it serves?
Why are mobile food suppliers (like kebab vans) popular now?

Use images and first hand accounts (see www.understandingslavery.com) to describe to the class the harsh style of plantation agriculture in the Caribbean and the use of enslaved labour to provide the goods that became staple parts of the English diet.

‘The slave sees the mother of his children stripped naked and flogged unmercifully; he sees his children sent to market, to be sold at the best price they will fetch; he sees in himself not a man, but a thing – an implement of husbandry, a machine to produce sugar, a beast of burden!’  Thomas Buxton, House of Commons, 1823. Abbey Church Yard, Bath

Suggested discussion (plenary):

How many coffee shops/cafés are on the local high street today?
Discuss some of the legacies of the slave trade and the similarities (and differences) with sweatshop labour and fair-trade today (developing citizenship links).
What conditions do people work under in countries like Africa and are there child labourers?
Why do global inequalities in trade still exist?
Can this be described as a form of modern day slavery?

Suggested homework:

Find out about fair trade bananas or coffee www.fairtrade.org.uk and make a poster encouraging people to buy fair trade products (which a local shop may put on display).

Expectations

All pupils must: recognise that some foods are sourced from elsewhere; identify different types of shops.

Most pupils should: understand that different food stuffs grow in different parts of the world; be able to name some foods grown and imported at the time of the transatlantic slave trade (especially sugar); understand basic human needs (food, clothing) now and in the past and identify shops that supply goods to meet these needs; use evidence to say which shops are most numerous on their high street.

Some pupils could: know which tropical foods were grown at the time of the slave trade and where; will link the transatlantic slave trade with the expansion of commerce in England; will be able to draw parallels between the slave trade and fair-trade today.