Cast in Stone

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• René-Corail, Khôko
  Martinican artist and sculptor in the twentieth century.
• Revol, Guy-Charles
  French sculptor
• Reynolds, Joshua
  English painter in the eighteenth century. Some of his notable paintings linked to empire include a portrait of Edward Cornwallis (1756), a painting of Tysoe Saul Hancock, his wife Philadelphia, their daughter Elizabeth and their Indian maid Clarinda (1765), and an unfinished portrait of Francis Barber.
• Rhodes, Cecil
  English colonialist, mining magnate and politician in southern Africa. Rhodes first moved to Africa in 1870 and would spend the next three decades of his life on the continent, save for a brief interlude studying at Oriel College, Oxford. Rhodes made his colonial wealth through diamond mining in Africa and created De Beers Consolidated Mines in 1888. Rhodes was a committed believer in British imperialism and white supremacy. As Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896), Rhodes dispossessed black Africans of their land and their ability to vote through the Franchise and Ballot Act (1892) and the Glen Grey Act (1894). The Glen Grey Act laid down a key precedent for South Africa's Native Land Act (1913), forming one of the cornerstones of what would later become the apartheid regime. Rhodes resigned as prime minister in 1896 after the Jameson Raid, an ill-fated attack on the South African Republic which escalated tensions in the region and eventually led to the Second Boer War (1899-1902). Many of Rhodes' personal views on race during his lifetime have also been subjected to close debate and examination. Rhodes' legacy continues to attract critical scrutiny and protest in the twenty-first century, particularly since the emergence of the global Rhodes Must Fall movement in 2015. His statue above Oriel College, Oxford has been one of the key sites of contestation over empire and its memory in the United Kingdom.
• Robbins, Nick
  British historian and heritage activist based in London.
• Roberts-Jones, Ivor
  British sculptor in the twentieth century.
• Roberts, Frederick, 1st Earl Roberts
  British military commander in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Roberts served as Commander-in-Chief, Madras Army (1880-1885), Commander-in-Chief, India (1885-1893), Commander-in-Chief, Ireland (1895-1900), Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in South Africa (1900), and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces (1904).
• Robertson-Hill, Amelia
  Scottish sculptor active in the nineteenth century.
• Robertson, Archibald
  Bishop of Exeter (1903-1916).
• Robinson, George, 1st Marquess of Ripon
  British politician who served as Secretary of State for India (1866), Viceroy and Governor-General of India (1880-1884), and Secretary of State for the Colonies (1892-1895)
• Rochet, Louis
  French sculptor in the nineteenth century.
• Rodin, Auguste
  French sculptor in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Rolle, John, 1st Baron Rolle of Stevenstone
  British slave-owner and politician in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rolle owned more than three hundred enslaved people on his estate on the island of Exuma in the Bahamas as part of his inheritance from his father Denys Rolle (1725-1797), who had been granted the land as an American loyalist. In 1830, Rolle, who managed the estates in absentia, attempted to move his enslaved people to Cat Island in order to increase profits, sparking a revolt among the enslaved led by a man named Pompey. Pompey fled into the bush alongside 43 others to avoid being forced to move. They later tried to sail to Nassau to appeal to Governor James Carmichael-Smyth, but were arrested, placed in a workhouse, and flogged as punishment. Rolle begrudgingly accepted emancipation in 1834, but complained in Parliament that his emancipated enslaved people 'refused to work' and protested the expenses required to feed them. Rolle was awarded £4,333 in compensation for 377 enslaved people on his estate, which was the largest compensation sum awarded in the Bahamas. Rolle's impact on the physical environment of Devon was extensive, and examples of these material legacies across the county include Bicton House, the China Tower, Rolle Canal, Rolle Quay, and Exmouth Sea Wall. In the Bahamas, the memory of Pompey and his revolt against Rolle has been commemorated with a statue.
• Rooke, George
  English naval officer in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Rooke led the Anglo-Dutch capture of Gibraltar in 1704.
• Roslyn, Louis Frederick
  British sculptor active in the first half of the twentieth century. Roslyn produced a number of First World War memorials both in Britain and the colonies during his lifetime, including works in Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago and Cape Town in South Africa.
• Roubiliac, Louis-François
  French sculptor active in England in the eighteenth century.
• Rougé, A. C.
  French sculptor active in the early twentieth century.
• Roussel, Paul
  French sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Rovelas, Michel
  Guadeloupean sculptor active in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
• Royce, Henry
  English engineer, car designer, and co-founder of Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce produced a range of aircraft engines in the twentieth century, many of which would have been used in Royal Air Force (RAF) planes for military and colonial operations. Rolls-Royce Armoured cars were also used by the RAF in Palestine, Iraq, and the Transjordan during the interwar years.
• Roze, Albert
  French sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Rubin, Auguste Eugène
  French sculptor in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Russell, Francis, 5th Duke of Bedford
  English aristocrat in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
• Russell, Francis, 7th Duke of Bedford
  British aristocrat and member of the House of Lords in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Elder brother of John Russell, twice the Prime Minister of Britain. The latter was associated with Britain's disastrous response to the famine in Ireland, and was involved in decisions regarding colonial and imperial policies, as well as imperial wars.
• Rustat, Tobias
  Courtier to King Charles II and benefactor of the University of Cambridge. Rustat invested in the slave-trading Royal African Company and was a company Assistant in 1676, 1679 and 1680.
• Rylands, Enriqueta Augustina
  British philanthropist who founded the John Rylands Library in Manchester. Enriqueta Augustina was born to a wealthy family of slave-owners in Havana, Cuba in 1843. In 1875 Enriqueta married John Rylands, a leading manufacturer of cotton in nineteenth-century Britain. Rylands' firm Rylands and Sons imported much of the cotton for their Lancashire mills from the American South, which would have been picked by enslaved people until 1865.
• Rylands, John
  English entrepreneur, philanthropist, and a leading manufacturer of cotton in nineteenth-century Britain. John Ryland's firm Rylands and Sons imported much of the cotton for their Lancashire mills from the American South, which would have been picked by enslaved people until 1865. In 1875 Rylands married Enriqueta Augustina, who came from a wealthy family of slave-owners in Havana, Cuba.
• Rysbrack, John Michael
  Flemish sculptor active in England in the eighteenth century. Some of his notable colonial works include the statue of Hans Sloane in Chelsea, the tomb of Edward Colston in All Saints' Church, Bristol, and the panel relief 'Britannia receiving the riches of the East Indies' in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in London.
• Sahota, Kuldeep Singh
  British-Punjabi politician based in Telford, Shropshire.
• Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
  American sculptor in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Sappey, Victor
  French sculptor in the nineteenth century.
• Saupique, Georges
  French sculptor active in the twentieth century.
• Scheemakers, Peter
  Flemish sculptor active in London in the eighteenth century. Son of a significant Flemish sculptor based in Antwerp, Scheemakers moved to London in 1720, and was mentored by other Flemish sculptors. His success arrived after he undertook a well-advertised trip to Italy to acquire classical expertise. Some of his notable works include a statue of Shakespeare within the Westminster cathedral; a statue of King William III in Kingston-upon-Hull; the statue of Thomas Guy at Guy's Hospital and two statues of Robert Clive and Stringer Lawrence at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in London.
• Schœlcher, Victor
  French abolitionist and député of Martinique (1848-1849; 1871-1875) and Guadeloupe (1849; 1850-1851). Born on July 22, 1804 in Paris, into a family of porcelain manufacturers of Alsatian origin (Fessenheim), he died on December 25, 1893 in Houilles. A politician and journalist, he traveled widely and amassed a collection of heterogeneous objects. As a journalist, he wrote for the Revue républicaine, the Revue indépendante and La Réforme. A Republican and abolitionist, in 1840 he published Abolition de l'esclavage. Examen critique du préjugé contre la couleur des Africains et des sang-mêlés. Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Provisional Government of the Second Republic in 1848, he signed the decree of April 27, 1848 abolishing slavery in the colonies. Elected deputy for Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1848, he was a member of the Constituent Assembly and then the Legislative Assembly. Opposed to the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, he went into exile in England. Returning to France in 1870, he was re-elected deputy for Martinique and became an irremovable senator in 1875. On September 30, 1883, he bequeathed some of the objects collected during his travels to Guadeloupe, and the eponymous museum was inaugurated in Pointe-à-Pitre in 1887. Martinique received his books, which enabled the opening of the Schoelcher library in Fort de France. He died in 1893. Since the Third Republic, the figure of Schoelcher has been imposed as a tool of the colonizer in the development of the old colony: the 32 communes of Guadeloupe all have a Schoelcher street; he is synonymous with all emancipations, for example that of women: a society, the "Vraies Filles de Schoelcher" organizes demonstrations and meetings, and has its own newspaper, La crucifiée, published on Sundays from November 1901 to June 1902, subtitled: guerre aux iniquités sociales, printed in Pointe a Pitre. It was especially mobilized by Schoelcherism, a current of thought glorifying, through the figure of Schoelcher, the work of the Republic represented as generous, emancipating slaves and assimilationist. This movement, mainly supported by the petty bourgeoisie of the former "free of color" class, spread to the working classes after the First World War. In 1949, Schoelcher's ashes were transferred to the Pantheon along with those of Félix Eboué, born in French Guiana and the first very popular black governor of Guadeloupe from 1936 to 1938. Criticism of Schoelcherism and the "cult" of Victor Schoelcher developed in the late 1970s, with the publication by the teachers' union of Jean Pierre Sainton's study of the abolitionist movement, showing that it was not the sole cause of the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. Since the 1980s, there has been a paradigm shift in the way the figure of Victor Schoelcher is viewed in the French West Indies: it is now considered to overshadow that of the local actors who, through their revolts, imposed abolition locally. Since the late 1990s, towns in the West Indies have been erecting statues of these actors, whether historical figures of resistance or symbolic figures of maroons. The figure of Schoelcher is still criticized in the West Indies. In 2022, the Schoelcher Museum became the Musarth. The way in which it was able to acquire the works, but above all the local desire to break with what might be called a "cult" around the liberator of the slaves, led the department to change the museum's name after its renovation.
• Scott, George Gilbert
  English Gothic Revival sculptor in the nineteenth century. Some of his notable colonial works include the India and Foreign Offices in Whitehall (today the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Offices), the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, and several church memorials to individuals in India, including James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, Colonel Richard Baird Smith, and Lady Charlotte Canning. Scott's mother, Euphemia Lynch (1785–1853), was the only daughter of Dr Thomas Lynch and Euphemia Gilbert of Antigua. The Gilberts were an established slave-owning and planter family on the island. Scott's father, the Reverend Thomas Scott (1780–1835), tried unsuccessfully to claim for slave compensation for the Gilbert's and Mercer's Creek estate in Antigua after abolition.
• Seacole, Mary
  Black British nurse and businesswoman in the nineteenth century.
• Ségoffin, Victor
  French sculptor in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Selassie, Haile
  Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974.
• Seligman, Hilda
  British sculptor active in the twentieth century.
• Selous, Frederick Courteney
  British colonial explorer, soldier, professional hunter, and conservationist. Selous fought in the two Matabele wars (1893-1894; 1896-1897) and the East African campaign during the First World War. He was also close friends with Cecil Rhodes and Abel Chapman, as well as inspiring the character of Allan Quatermain in H. Rider Haggard's colonial novel King Solomon's Mines (1885). Selous donated numerous animal and plant specimens amassed during his hunting and collecting expeditions in Africa to the British Museum, known as the 'Selous Collection', which are now in the care of the Natural History Museum.
• Serwah, Jendayi
  Independent consultant and reparations activist. Serwah is the co-founder of both the John Lynch Afrikan Education Programme (JLAEP) and the Afrikan ConneXions Consortium (ACC) based in Bristol. The JLAEP focuses on cultural education in pursuit of liberation, while the ACC concentrates on African representation and community interests in Bristol as well as a community reparations plan.
• Shah Alam II, Ali Gauhar
  Emperor of the Mughal dynasty of India, who came to the throne when the empire was practically powerless, although it retained great prestige. He was compelled by the British East India Company to hand over the rights of taxation and revenue management of the provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, which he did by the making the Grant of Diwani in 1765.
• Shannan, Archibald McFarlane
  Scottish sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Shonibare, Yinka
  British-Nigerian artist.
• Simonds, George Blackall
  English sculptor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His most notable colonial work is probably the colossal Maiwand Lion (1886) in the grounds of Forbury Gardens in Reading.
• Sinclair, John
  Scottish politician, military officer, planter and writer. According to Legacies of British Slavery, John Sinclair claimed with Vans Hathorn part of the compensation for the Argyle, Calder and Calder Ridge estates in St Vincent as co-trustees of the marriage settlement of Hon. Archibald Macdonald and Jane Campbell. Sinclair died in 1835, however, and so the award was made to Hathorn alone.
• Singery, François Edouard
  French architect in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Siraj ud-daula
  Nawab Siraj ud-daula was the last independent ruler of Bengal. After the decline of the Mughal empire, several Mughal provinces had turned into autonomous kingdoms, paying ceremonial deference to the Mughal emperor but managing their own administration, revenues and external affairs. Bengal was one of them. Nawab Siraj ud-daula followed his able grandfather, Ali Vardi Khan, to the throne, and headed into conflict with various factions in his own family and court, powerful Hindu financiers and the increasingly ambitious British East India Company. In 1756, following several instances of diplomatic and legal conflicts with the East India Company, Siraj invaded Calcutta and took over the British settlement, set up in the 1690s with Mughal permission. During the capture, he ordered or neglected to prevent, the imprisonment of several dozen British individuals in a small room overnight, causing many die. This episode, which came to be known to the British as the 'Black Hole of Calcutta' provided justification for intrigue against Siraj, leading ultimately to his military defeat and death in June 1757.
• Sloane, Hans
  Anglo-Irish physician, naturalist, collector, writer, and absentee Jamaican slave-owner, through his wife Elizabeth Langley Rose (the daughter of Folk Rose), during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sloane spent time visiting in the Caribbean in 1687 and later recorded his experiences in the two volume work A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica (1707; 1725). He also held investments in both the Royal African Company and the South Sea Company. Sloane bequeathed more than 71,000 items to the United Kingdom upon his death, which provided the foundations for the British Museum (established in 1753), the British Library, and the Natural History Museum in London.
• Smith-Stanley, Edward, 14th Earl of Derby
  Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1852; 1858-1859; 1866-1868). Stanley was also Chief Secretary for Ireland (1830-1833) and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies (1833-1834; 1841-1845).