Analysis: The legacy of the collector who brought the banjo and hot chocolate to Europe is overshadowed by his involvement in the slave trade
While he's a relatively obscure figure today, the Irish-born physician, naturalist and collector Sir Hans Sloane was one of most famous men in Europe by the time of his death in 1753. Following a 15-month visit to the English West Indies in 1687-9, where he served as physician to the English fleet stationed in the region, Sloane gained further notoriety by introducing Europeans to exotic plants, foods and other materials that he had acquired during his time abroad.
In addition to popularising a technique he had been taught to create chocolate milk by adding cocoa to milk, the illustrations of two stringed instruments Sloane obtained from enslaved musicians - featured in his published account of Jamaica - are widely regarded as the earliest extant visual evidence of the musical instrument known as a banjo today.
Born in the market town of Killyleagh, Co Down in 1660, Sloane was the seventh child of Sarah (nee Hicks) and Alexander Sloane. His parents had originally migrated to Ireland from Scotland and England in the early 17th century as servants of the Hamilton family, wealthy aristocrats at the forefront of King James VI and I's Plantation of Ulster.
Sickly for much of his early adulthood, Sloane moved to London to study medicine at the age of 19 with the support of the Hamilton family and their estate. Following the completion of his studies, he opened his own private practice in London in 1684. In the years that followed, Sloane would go on to become the personal physician and friend of some of the most influential and powerful figures of the day, including the political philosopher John Locke as well as Queen Anne and the English royal family
From EPIC, Hans Sloane, the man who invented hot chocolate
Besides the fame he gained as physician to leading members of the aristocracy during his early career in England, Sloane would go on to acquire what is generally regarded as the largest private collection amassed by any individual. In accordance with Sloane's wishes, his collection of over 400,000 items acquired from across the globe was bequeathed to the British state after his death in 1753 (for the not-so paltry sum of £20,0000) to create the first free national public museum. This donation ultimately led to the creation of the British Museum, the Natural History Museum and the British Library, three of the oldest public institutions in Britain today.
But Sloane's ability to acquire his massive private collections would not have been possible had it not been for new opportunities brought about by England’s expanding empire overseas in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In addition to income gathered from his private medical practice in London, a large chunk of the wealth that enabled Sloane to purchase the very materials that made up his collections derived from sugar manufactured by enslaved workers on a Jamaican plantation. He acquired this land in 1695 through his marriage to the widow of a planter whom Sloane had befriended during his time on the island in 1687–89.
It was also during his stay in Jamaica that Sloane began his habit of collecting unusual and exotic objects from the far reaches of the planet. In addition to plants and other natural specimens, Sloane’s private collections in London also contained three early banjos. In his account of his time in Jamaica, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, Sloane describes an encounter he had with a large number of enslaved musicians that played these instruments - named by Sloane as "strum strumps" - at a festival that was held on or near the estate of a Jamaican planter that he was then visiting.
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In this 1707 publication, Sloane also included transcriptions of three songs that were performed at this event. These were made for him by a trained musician named Mr. Baptiste who was in attendance. While Sloane failed to comment on such himself, scholars have come to identify the melodic range and call-and-response structure of one of these songs, named Angola, as the most likely of the three to have been performed upon an early banjo.
Though certainly not the first Europeans to comment on the musical practices of the African diaspora in the Americas, the level of detail provided by Sloane and Baptiste about the music they heard at this festival was without precedent. Sloane's published account of this slave festival is widely regarded as the necessary starting point for any investigation into the early history of the banjo and the development of Afro-American music more generally.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Irish Times reporter Ronan McGreevy discusses how the bust of a Co Down slave owner Hans Sloane has been removed from the British Museum in London
But Sloane was also a wealthy slave owner himself. During his tenure as president of the Royal Society in London, Sloane would also play a direct and influential role through talks and publications in popularising the racist idea that the darker skinned inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa and their progeny were innately inferior to Europeans. In spite of the importance attributed to Sloane and his collections, his legacy is a complex one that cannot be separated from the brutal realities of slavery and the enduring violence inflicted upon its victims across the colonial Atlantic world.
A longer piece by the author on Hans Sloane's documentation of the early banjo in Jamaica is published in Ethnomusicology Ireland 10.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
